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THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY


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--------


THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX
TILDEN FOUNDATIO



I STOOD UP AND DROVE FOR ALL I WAS WORTH, AND THE GIBL
BESIDE ME SHOT,—AND HIT I" Frontispiece. See page 76.


THE LA CHANCE
MINE MYSTERY
BY
S. CARLETON
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
GEORGE W. GAGE

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920;



Copyright, 1920,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published March, 1920


CONTENTS
CHAPTER.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XIV.
XV.
-~1
XVI.
»»
XVII.
~
XVIII.
XIX.
5
XX.
I Come Home: And the Wolves
Howl
My Dream: And Dudley's Girl
Dudley's Mine: And Dudley's Gold
The Man in the Dark
The Caraquet Road: And the
Wolves Howl Once More
Mostly Wolves: And a Girl
I Find Little Enough on the
Corduroy Road, and Less at
Skunk's Misery .
Thompson! ...
Tatiana Paulina Valenka!
I Interfere for the Last Time
Macartney Hears a Noise: And I
Find Four Dead Men
Thompson's Cards: And Skunk's
PAGE
I
16
30
46
56
7i
86
100
116
134
148
XII.
XIII.
Misery
A Dead Man's Messenger
Wolves—and Dudley
The Place of Departed Spirits
In Collins's Care
High Explosive
Lac Tremblant .
Skunk's Misery .
The End .
164
182
199
218
231
247
265
283
293





THE LA CHANCE
MINE MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL
I am sick of the bitter wood-smoke,
And sick of the wind and rain:
I will leave the bush behind me,
And look for my love again.
Little as I guessed it, this story really be-
gan at Skunk's Misery. But Skunk's Misery
was the last thing in my head, though I had
just come from the place.
Hungry, dog-tired, cross with the crossness
of a man in authority whose orders have been
forgotten or disregarded, I drove Billy Jones's
old canoe across Lac Tremblant on my way
home to Dudley Wilbraham's gold mine at
La Chance, after an absence of months. It
was halfway to dark, and the bitter November
wind blew dead in my teeth. Slaps of spray
from flying wave-crests blinded me with gouts
of lake water, that was oddly warm till the cut-
ting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on


2 The La Chance Mine Mystery
my bare hands and stinging face, that I had to
keep dabbing on my paddling shoulder to get
my eyes clear in order that I might stare in
front of my leaky, borrowed canoe.
To a stranger there might have seemed to
be nothing particular to stare at, out on a lake
where the world was all wind and lumpy seas
and growing November twilight; but any one
who had lived at La Chance knew better. By
the map Lac Tremblant should have been our
nearest gold route to civilization, but it was a
lake that was no lake, as far as transport was
concerned, and we never used it. The five-
mile crossing I was making was just a fair
sample of the forty miles of length Lac Trem-
blant stretched mockingly past the La Chance
mine toward the main road from Caraquet—
our nearest settlement—to railhead: and that
was forty miles of queer water, sown with
rocks that were sometimes visible as tomb-
stones in a cemetery and sometimes hidden like
rattlesnakes in a blanket. For the depth of
Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two things
no man might ever count on. It would fall in
a night to shallows a child could wade through,
among bristling needles of rocks no one had
ever guessed at; and rise in a morning to the
tops of the spruce scrub on its banks,—a sweet
spread of water with not a rock to be seen.
What hidden spring fed it was a mystery.


I Come Home 3
But in the bitterest winter it was never
cold enough to freeze, further than to form
surging masses of frazil ice that would neither
let a canoe push through them, nor yet sup-
port the weight of a man. Winter or summer,
it was no thoroughfare—and neither was the
ungodly jumble of swamp and mountains that
stopped me from tapping the lower end of it—
or I should not have spent the last three
months in making fifty miles of road through
untrodden bush to Caraquet, over which to
transport the La Chance gold to a post-road
and a railway: and it was no chosen return
route of mine to La Chance now, either.
If I could draw you a map I should not
have to explain the country. But failing that
I will be as clear as I can.
The line of Lac Tremblant, and that of the
road I had just made from Caraquet to La
Chance, ran away from each other in two sides
of a triangle,—except that the La Chance
mine was five miles down the far side of the
lake from Caraquet, and my road had to half-
moon round the head of Lac Tremblant to get
home—a lavish curve, too, by reason of
swamps.
But it was on that half-moon road that I
should have been now, if my order to have a
horse meet me at the Halfway stables I had
built at the beginning of it had not been for-


4 The La Chance Mine Mystery
gotten or disregarded by some one at La
Chance.
Getting drenched to the skin with lake water
was no rattling good exchange for riding home
on a fresh horse that felt like a warm stove
"N under me, but a five-mile short cut across the
apex of the road and lake triangle was better
than walking twenty-two miles along the side
of it on my own legs—which was the only
choice I had had in the matter.
I was obliged to get home, for reasons of
my own; but when I walked in on Billy Jones,
the foreman at the Halfway stables, that after-
noon, after months of absence and road-mak-
ing, there was not even a team horse in his
stables, let alone my own saddle mare. There
was not a soul about the place, either, but Billy
himself, blandly idle and sprawling. over a
grubby old newspaper in front of the stove in
his shack.
His welcome was heartening, but his intelli-
gence was not. No one had told him a word
about me or my mare, he informed me pro-
fanely; also that it was quite impossible for
me to ride over to La Chance that night.
There were not any work horses at the Half-
way, because he had doubled up the teams for
some heavy hauling from Caraquet, according
to my orders sent over from Caraquet the
week before, and no horses had been sent back


I Come Home 5
from La Chance since. He guessed affably
that some one might be driving over from the
mine in the morning, and that after tramping
from Caraquet I had better stay where I was
for the night.
I hesitated. I was dog-tired for once in
my life, but I had not done any tramp from
Caraquet that day, if I had told the bald truth.
Only I had no idea of telling it, nor any wish
to explain to Billy Jones that I had been mak-
ing a fool of myself elsewhere, doing a solid
week of hospital nursing over a filthy boy I
had found on my just-finished road the morn-
ing I had really left Caraquet. From the
look of him I guessed he had got hurt cutting
down a tree and not getting out of the way in
time, though he was past telling me that or
anything else. But I had also guessed where
he lived, by the dirt on him, and was ass
enough to carry him home to the squalid, half-
French, half-Indian village the Caraquet peo-
ple called Skunk's Misery.
It lay in the bush, in a slanting line between
Caraquet and Lac Tremblant: a nest of thrift-
less evil stuck in a hollow you might pass
within twenty yards of, and never guess held a
house. Once there I had no choice but to stay
and nurse the boy's sickening pain, till his
mother came home from some place where she
was fishing eels for the winter; for none of


6 The La Chance Mine Mystery
the rest of the population of fat-faced, indif-
ferent women—I never saw a man, whether
they were away in the lumber woods or not—
would lay a hand on him. I will say plainly
that I was more than thankful to hand him over
to his mother. I had spilt over myself a bottle
of some nameless and abominable brew that
I'd mistaken for liniment, and my clothes
smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I had lived
in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion
all day long, except when I was yawning from
a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether,
as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from
walking, and I might have stayed at Billy
Jones's if I had not been crazy to get rid of
my dirt-infected clothes. The worst reek had
gone from them, but even out in the open air
they smelt. I saw Billy Jones wrinkle up his
nose to sniff innocently while he talked to me,
and that settled me.
"I have to get home," I observed hastily.
"Wilbraham expected me a week ago. But
I don't walk any twenty-two miles! I'll take
your old canoe and a short cut across the lake."
I was the only man who ever used Lac
Tremblant, and the foreman of the Halfway
stables cast a glance on me. "If it was me,
I'd walk," he remarked drily. "But take
your choice. The lake's a short cut right
enough, only I wouldn't say where to—in my


I Come Home 7
crazy old birchbark this kind of a blowing-up
evening!"
That, and a few more things he said as he
squinted a weather-wise eye on the lake, came
back to me as I fought his old canoe through
the water. And fighting it was, mind you,
for the spray hid the rocks I knew, and the
wind shoved me back on the ones I didn't
know. Also the canoe was leaking till she was
dead logy, and the gusts were so fierce I could
not stop paddling to bail her. The short,
vicious seas that snapped at me five ways at
once were the color of lead and felt as heavy
as cold molasses. But, for all that, crossing
Lac /Tremblant was saving me twenty-two
miles on my feet, and I was not wasting any
dissatisfaction on the traverse. Only, as I
shoved the canoe forward, I was nearer to be-
ing played out, from one thing on top of an-
other, than ever I was in my life. I pretended
the paddle that began to hang in spite of me
was only heavy with freezing spray and that
the dead ache in my back was a kink. But I
had to put every ounce there was in my six feet
of weary bones into lightning-change wrenches
to hold the old canoe head on to the splattering
seas and keep her from swamping. I was very
near to thinking I had been a fool not to have
stayed with Billy Jones,—when I was sud^
denly aware of absolute, utter calm in the


I Come Home n
for me, just as I was looking for her. I knew
exactly what she must be like. She would
have that waving bronze-gold hair that stands
out in little separate, shining tendrils; eyes
that startled you with their clear blue under
dark, level eyebrows—I never look twice at a
girl with arched brows—the rose-white, satin-
smooth skin that goes with all of them, and she
would move like Well, you've seen Pav-
lova move! Her voice—somehow one of the
most important things I knew about her seemed
to be her voice—would be the clear, carrying
kind that always sounds gay. I was certain I
should know my dream girl—first—by that.
And that was the girl—I forgot it was all
made-up child's play—who somewhere in the
world was waiting for me, Nick Stretton; a
fool with nothing on earth but six feet of a
passably good body, and a dark, high-nosed
face like an Indian's, who was working in the
bush for Wilbraham instead of sieving creation
for her. Well, I would start to-morrow; and,
where the clean heavens meant me to, I should
find her!
And with the words I came alive to the
dark lake, and the leaky canoe I sat in, and
the knowledge that all I had been thinking
about a bronze-haired girl was just the cracked
dream of a lonely man. Even if it had not
been, and I could have started to look for a


12 The La Chance Mine Mystery
real girl to-morrow, I had to get back to Wil-
braham's to-night. My drenched clothes were
freezing on me, and I was hungrier than the
wolf who had just howled again, as I picked
up my slippery paddle and started for the La
Chance landing.
There was no light there, naturally, since no
one ever used the lake except myself, and I
had been away for months; but as I rounded
the point between the canoe and the landing,
and slipped into the dark of its shadow, the
lamplight from Wilbraham's living room shone
out on me in a narrow beam, like a moon path
on the water. As I crossed it and beached the
canoe I must have been in plain sight to any
one on the shore, though all I saw was the dark
shingle I stepped upon. I stooped to lift the
canoe out of water,—and I did what you mean
when you say you nearly jumped out of your
skin.
Touching my shoulder, her hand fiercely
imperative in the dark, was a girl—at La
Chance, where no girl had ever set foot!—and
she was speaking to me with just that golden,
carrying voice I knew would belong to my
own dream girl, if she were keeping it down
to a whisper.
"So you're here," was what she said; and
it would have fitted in with the fool's thoughts
I had just come out of, if it had not been for


I Come Home 13
her tone. That startled me, till all I could do
was to nod in the dark I could just see her in.
I could not discern what she looked like, for
her head was muffled in a shawl; and I never
realized that all she could see of me was my
height and general make-up, since my face
must have been invisible where I stood in the
shadow.
"You!" her golden voice stabbed like a
dagger. "I won't have you staying here—
where I am! I told you I'd speak to you
when I could, and I'm speaking. You kept
your word and disgraced me once, if I don't
know how you did it; but I won't rim the
chance of that again! I'm safe here, except
for you; and you've got to let me alone. If
you don't, I—I "she stammered till I
knew she was shaking, but she got hold of her-
self in the second. "You won't find it safe to
play any tricks with the gold here—or me—if
that's what you came for," she said superbly,
"and you've given me a way to stop it. That's
why I've sneaked out to meet you: not because
I care for you. You must go away, or—I'll
tell that you're here! Do you hear? I don't
care what promises you make me—they al-
ways came easily to you. If you want me to
hold my tongue about you, you've got to go.
Go and betray me, if you like—but go!"
There was dead, cold hatred in it, the kind


i4 The La Chance Mine Mystery
a woman has for a man she once cared for, and
it staggered what wits I had left. I nodded
like a fool, just as if I had known what she was
talking about, and went on lifting the canoe
ashore. Whether I really heard her give a
terrified gasp I don't know; perhaps I only
thought so. But as I put the canoe on the
bank I heard a rustle, and when I looked up
she was gone. There was nothing to tell me
she had really even been there. It was just as
probable that I was crazy, or walking in my
sleep, as that a girl who talked like that—or
even any kind of a girl—should be at La
Chance. The cold, collected hatred in her
voice still jarred me, since it was no way for
even a dream girl to speak. But what jarred
me worse was that the whole thing had been
so quick I could not have sworn she had been
there at all. I was honestly dazed as I walked
up the rough path to Wilbraham's and my
shack. I must have stood in front of it a good
five minutes, with my wet clothes freezing as
hard as a board, and the noise of the men in the
bunk house down by the mine coming up to
me on the night wind.
"' If I be I, as I should be, I've a little dog
at home, and he'll know me,'" I said to my-
self at last like the old woman in the storybook,
only with a grin. For when I went into the
house there would be the neglected living room


I Come Home 15
with the smelly stove, and Wilbraham walking
up and down there as usual; and Dudley Wil-
braham's conversation would bring any man
back to his senses, even if he needed it worse
than I did. I opened the shack door and went
in,—and in the bare passage I jerked up taut.
The living room faced me,—and there was
no stove in it. And no Wilbraham, walking
up and down and talking to himself. There
was a glowing, blazing log fire in a stone fire-
place that must have been built while I was
away; and, sitting alone before it, exactly as
I had always thought of her, was my dream
girl,—that I had meant to hunt the world for
to welcome me home!


;->
CHAPTER II
MY DREAM: AND DUDLEY'S GIRL
All I could do was to stand in the living-
room doorway and stare at her.
There she sat by the fire, in a short blue
skirt that showed her little feet in blue stock-
ings and buckled shoes, and a blue sweater
whose rolling collar fell away from the column
of her soft throat. And she was just exactly
what I had known she would be! There was a
gold crest to every exquisite, warm wave of her
bronze hair; her level eyebrows were about
five shades darker, and her curled-up eye-
lashes darker still, where she sat with her head
bent over some sort of sewing. And even be-
fore she looked up and I saw her eyes, the
beauty of her caught me at my heart. I had
never thought even my dream girl could be as
lovely as she was. But there was more to her
face than beauty. It was so young and sweet
and gay, and—when you looked hard at her—■
so sad, that I forgot I ought either to speak up
or go away. Of who she was or how she came


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 17
to be at La Chance, I had no earthly clue. I
knew, of course, that it was she who had met
me at the landing, and common sense told me
she had taken me for some one else: but I had
no desire to say so, or to go away either. And
suddenly she looked up and saw me.
Whoever she was she had good nerves, for
she never even stared as women do at a strange
man. I could have been no reassuring vision
either, standing there in moccasined feet that
had come in on her as silently as a wolf or an
Indian; with dirty, frozen clothes; and a face
that the Lord knows is dark and hard at its
best, and must have been forbidding enough
that night between dirt and fatigue. But that
girl only glanced at me as quietly as if she
had known I was there.
"Did you Were you looking for any
one? " she asked. And the second I heard her
voice I knew she guessed she had spoken to me
a quarter of an hour ago in words she would
probably have given all she possessed to pre-
vent a stranger from knowing she had need to
speak to any one.
Only that was not the reason I half stam-
mered, " Not exactly." It was because I could
see her eyes,—and they were like sapphires,
and the sea, and the night sky with the first
stars in it. I snatched off my cap that I had
forgotten, and bits of melting ice fell off it


18 The La Chance Mine Mystery
and tinkled on the floor. The sharp little
sound brought my wits back to me. Perhaps
I had never really thought my dream girl
would come true, but once I had found her I
never meant to lose her. And I knew, if I
cared a straw for my life and the love that was
to be in it, that I must meet her now for the
first time; that nothing, not even if she told
me so herself, must make me admit she had
come to me at the lake by mistake, or that I
had ever heard her voice before.
I said, easily enough, " I'm afraid I startled
you. I'm Stretton, Wflbraham's partner "—
which I was to the extent of a thousand dol-
lars—" I've just come home."
And crazy as it sounds, I felt as if I had
come home, for the first time in my life. For
the girl of my dreams came to her feet with
just that lovely, controlled ease you see in Pav-
lova, and with the prettiest little gesture of
welcome.
"Oh, you're frozen stiff," she said with a
kind of dismayed sympathy. "And I heard
Mr. Wilbraham say some one had forgotten
to send out your horse for you, and that you'd
probably walk—the whole way from Cara-
quet! You must be tired to death. Please
come to the fire and get warm—now you've
come home!"
I thought of the queer smell that clung to


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 19
my stained old coat and the company I had
kept at Skunk's Misery—though if I had
guessed what that wretched boy was going to
mean to me I might have grudged my contact
with him less—and I would not have gone near
my dream girl for a fortune. "I think I'll
get clean first," I began, and found myself
laughing for the first time in a week. But as
I turned away I glanced back from the dark
passage where Charliet, the French-Canadian
cook, was supposed to keep a lamp and never
did, and saw the girl in the living room look
after me,—with a lool^I had never seen in any
girl's eyes, if I'd seen.* hunted man have it.
"Gad, she knows I know she met me—and
she doesn't mean to say so," I thought vividly.
What the reason was I couldn't see, or whom
there could be at La Chance that such a girl
should find it necessary to tell that she would
not have him disgrace her, and that he must go
away. It made me wrathy to think there
could be any one she needed to hit out at like
that. But we had a queer lot at the mine, in-
cluding Dunn and Collins, a couple of edu-
cated boys who had not been educated enough
to pass as mining engineers, and had been
kicked out into the world by their families.
It might have been either of those two star
failures in the bunk house. The only person
it could not have been was Dudley Wilbraham;


20 The La Chance Mine Mystery
since aside from the fact that she could easily
speak to him in the shack she could not have
told him he must go away from his own mine.
Which reminded me I'd never even asked
where Dudley was or one thing about the mine
I'd been away from so long.
But my dream girl, where no girl had ever
been, was the only thing I could think of. I
had meant to get some food and go to bed,
but instead I threw my Skunk's Misery clothes
out of the window, and got ready to go out to
supper and see that girl again. Who under
heaven she could be was past me, as well as
how she came to be at La Chance. I would
have been scared green lest she was the wife of
some man at the mine, only she had no wed-
ding ring on the slim left hand that had
beckoned me to the fire. Yet, " She can't just
be here alone, either, and I'm blessed if I see
who she can have come with," I thought
blankly. And I opened my room door straight
on Marcia Wilbraham,—Wilbraham's sister!
"Well" I said. It was the only thing that
came to me. I knew immediately, of course,
that the girl in the living room must have qome
out with Marcia; but it knocked me silly to see
Marcia herself at La Chance. I had known
Marcia Wilbraham, as I had known Dudley,
ever since I wore blue serge knickerbockers
trimmed with white braid. She never went


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 21
anywhere with Dudley. She had money of
her own, and she spent it on Horse Show
horses, and traveling around to show them.
But here she stood in front of me, in a forsaken
backwoods mine that I should not have ex-
pected even Dudley himself to stay at if I had
not known his reasons.
"I don't wonder you say 'well,'" Marcia
returned crisply. She was good-looking in a
big way, if you did not mind brown eyes that
were too small for her face and a smile that
showed her gums. I had never liked or dis-
liked her especially, any more than you do
any girl about your own age whom you've al-
ways known. "I've been here for three
months! I was very near going home a month
ago—but I don't think I'll go now. I believe
I'll try a winter here."
"A winter!" I thought of Marcia " trying
a winter," and I laughed.
"Oh, you needn't throw back your hand-
some Indian head to grin at me, Nicky S tret-
ton," said she crossly. "I'm tired of always
doing the same thing. And anyhow, the stable
lost money, and I had to sell out!"
"But why stay here—with Dudley?" I let
out. The two of them had always fought
like cats.
"I'm going to do some shooting—and wolf
hunting," Marcia smiled the ugly smile I never


22 The La Chance Mine Mystery
could stand. "I'm going to stay, anyhow; so
you'll have to bear it, Nicky!"
"I'm—charmed!" I thought like lightning
that my dream girl would do whatever Marcia
did, and I blessed my stars she was staying;
though I knew she would be all kinds of a
nuisance if she insisted on turning out to hunt
wolves. She was all but dressed for it even
then, in a horrid green divided skirt that made
her look like a fat old gentleman. But it was
not Marcia I meant to talk about.
"Have you brought the—other girl—to
hunt wolves, too?" I inquired, as we moved
on down the passage; there was no upstairs to
the shack.
"No," said Marcia quite carelessly, if I had
not caught the snap in her eyes. "She's come
to hunt Dudley! She's going to marry him."
"She's what?" I was suddenly thankful
we had left the light from my open door and
that Charliet despised keeping a lamp in the
passage. The bland idea that I had found my
dream girl split to bits as if a half-ton rock had
landed on it. For her to be going to marry
any one was bad enough; but Dudley, with his
temper, and his drink, and the drugs I was
pretty sure he took! The thing was so un-
speakable that I stopped short in the passage.
Marcia Wilbraham stopped short too. "I
don't wonder you're knocked silly," she said.


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 23
"Here, come out of this; I want to speak to
you, and I may as well do it now!" She
pushed me into the office where Dudley did his
accounts—which was his name for sitting
drinking all day, and never speaking to any
one—and shut the door. "Look here, Nicky,
if you're thinking that girl is a friend of mine,
she isn't! I don't know one thing about her.
Except that this summer I had reason to oblige
Dudley, and one day he came to me—you
know he was in New York for nearly two
months"
I nodded. I had not cared where he was,
so that he was away from La Chance, where
he and old Thompson would drive a tunnel
just where I knew it was useless.
"Well, he came to me in the first of August,
and said he was going to marry a girl called
Paulette Brown,—and he wanted me to bring
her out here! Why he didn't marry her
straight off and bring her out here himself, I
don't know; he only hummed and hawed when
I asked him. But anyhow, I met Paulette
Brown, for the first time, at the station, when
we started up here—she and I and Dudley.
And she puzzled me from the second we got
into the Pullman, and I saw her pull off the
two veils she'd worn around her head in the
station! And she puzzles me worse now."
"Why?" I might have been puzzled my-


24 The La Chance Mine Mystery
self, remembering Paulette Brown's speech to
me in the dark, but it was none of Marcia's
business.
"Because I know I've seen her before,"
Marcia returned calmly, " only with no ' Paul-
ette Brown' tacked on to her. I've seen her
dance somewhere, but I can't think where—
and that's the first thing that puzzles me."
"I don't see why," I said disagreeably,
"considering that every one dances somewhere
all day long just now."
"It wasn't that kind of dancing. It was
rather—wonderful! And there was some
story tacked on to it," Marcia frowned, " only
I can't think what! And the second thing
that puzzles me about Paulette Brown—I tell
you, Nicky, I believe she can't bear Dudley,
and that she doesn't want to marry him!"
It was the first decent thing I had heard
from her, and I could have opened my mouth
and cheered. But I said, "Then why's she
here?"
"Just because it suits her for some reason
of her own," Marcia was earnest as I had never
seen her. "Nicky, I don't think she's any-
thing in the world but some sort of an adven-
turess—only what I can't understand about
her is what she wants of Dudley! It isn't
money, for I know he's tried to make her take
it, and she wouldn't. Yet I know, too, that


26 The La Chance Mine Mystery
girl's what I think she is! Don't make any
mistake, Nicky; she's no chorus girl out of
work. She's a lady. Only—she's been some-
thing else, too! You watch how she uses a
perfectly trained body."
I all but started. I had seen it already,
when I thought she moved like Pavlova. "Any-
thing else?" I inquired disagreeably.
"Yes," said Marcia quietly. "She's afraid
for her life, or Dudley's—I can't make out
which. Wait, and you'll see. Come on; we'll
be late for supper. It would have been over
hours ago if Dudley and I hadn't been out
shooting this afternoon. We've only just
come in."
But I was not thinking about supper. The
Wilbrahams had been out, and Paulette
Brown, left alone, had taken her chance to
speak to some one. That she had happened to
mistake her man and spoken to me made no
difference in the fact, and it came too aptly on
Marcia's suspicions about her. But "My
good heavens, I won't care what she did," I
thought fiercely. My dream girl's eyes were
honest, if they were deep blue lakes a man
might drown his soul in, too. If she were
Dudley's twice over I was going to stand by
her, because by all my dreams of her she was
more mine. "I haven't time, or chances, to be
watching pretty ladies," I said drily, "and I


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 27
wouldn't bother over it myself if I were you.
I'd let it go at plain Paulette Brown!"
"If you could," said Marcia, just as drily.
And over her words, close outside the window,
a wolf howled.
It startled me, as it had startled me once
before that evening, only this time I knew the
reason. "Scott, I never knew the wolves to
be coming out so early in the season!" I was
thankful to be back to things I could exclaim
about. "And down here, beside the house, I
never saw any!"
"No; so Dudley said," Marcia returned al-
most absently. She opened the door for her-
self, because I had forgotten it, and stood look-
ing at the lighted living room at the end of the
passage by the front door. "But the wolves
have been round for a week—that was what I
meant when I said I was going to have some
wolf hunts! The mine superintendent's going
to take me."
"Thompson!" I let out. Then I chuckled.
Marcia was likely to have a great wolf hunt
with Thompson, who knew no difference be-
tween a shotgun and a rifle, and would have
legged it from a fox if he had met it alone.
"Marcia Wilbraham, I'll pay you five dollars
if you ever get out wolf hunting with Thomp-
son. Why, the only thing he can do for diver-
sion is to play solitaire!"


28 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Oh, him—yes," said Marcia carelessly and
without grammar. "But I didn't mean old
Thompson. He's been gone for a month, and
we've a new man. His name's Macartney,
and he's been here two weeks."
It was news to me, if it was also an example
of the way Dudley Wilbraham ran his mine.
But before I could speak Marcia nodded
significantly down the passage to the living-
room door. I had been looking into the room
myself, as you do at the lighted stage in a
theatre, and I had seen only one thing in it:
my dream girl—whose name might or might
not be Paulette Brown, whom Dudley Wil-
braham had more right to than I had—sitting
by the fire as I had left her, that fire I had
dreamed I should come home to, just myself
alone, and talking to Dudley. But Marcia had
been looking at something else, and now my
gaze followed hers.
A tall, lean, hard, capable-looking man stood
on the other side of the fire. He was taking
no share in the conversation between Dudley
and the girl who had only lived in my dreams
till to-night. He was watching the living-
room door, quite palpably, and it struck me
abruptly that I had not far to seek for Marcia
Wilbraham's reason for staying the winter at
La Chance. But I might have taken more
interest in that and in Macartney, the new


My Dream: And Dudley's Girl 29
--
mine Superintendent, too, if the girl sitting by
the fire had not seen Marcia in the doorway
and risen to her feet.
For she floated up, effortlessly, uncon-
sciously, to the Very tips of her toes, and stood
*o-like Pavloval


CHAPTER III
DUDLEY'S MINE: AND DUDLEY'S GOLD
I have stared my eyes blind for her,
Bridled my body alive for her,
Starved my soul to the rind for her—
Do I lose all?
The Lost Lover.
I could feel Marcia's satisfied, significant
smile through the back of my neck as I shook
hands with Dudley, and was introduced in turn
to Miss Brown—the last name for her, even
without the affected Paulette, though I might
not have thought of it but for Marcia—and to
Macartney, the new incumbent of Thompson's
shoes. Dudley, little and fat, in the dirty
boots he had worn all day, and just a little
loaded, told me to wait till the morning or go to
the devil, when I asked about the mine. Char-
liet banged the food on the table for supper—
Marcia despised housekeeping, and if the liv-
ing room had been reformed nothing else had—
and I sat down in silence and ate. At least I
shovelled food into my famished stomach. My
attention was elsewhere.


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 31
Paulette Brown sat beside Dudley. She
was just twice as pretty as I had realized, even
when the first sight of her struck me dumb.
Her eyes were as dark as indigo, in the lamp-
light, and a marvellous rose color flitted in her
cheeks as she spoke or was silent. She had
wonderful hands, too, slim and white, without
a sign of a bone at the wrists; but I had a
curious feeling that they were the very strong-
est hands I had ever seen on a girl. Remem-
bering Dudley, it hurt me to look at her; and
suddenly something else hurt me worse, that I
had been a fool not to have thought of before.
Macartney, the mine superintendent, was new
there; I knew no more of him than I did of
Paulette Brown—not so much, perhaps, thanks
to Marcia—and it came over me that he might
have been the man for whom she had taken me
to-night, and that it was he she had crept out
into the dark to speak to in secret. I looked
at him over my coffee cup, and there was some-
thing about him I did not like.
He was a tall man, very capable-looking, as
I said; extremely fair and rather handsome,
with hard, grayish eyes that looked straight
at you when he spoke. He had a charming
laugh—yet when he laughed I saw suddenly
what it was that I did not like about him; and
it was nothing more nor less than a certain set
look about his eye muscles. Some gamblers


32 The La Chance Mine Mystery
have it, and it did not strike my fancy in the
new mine superintendent at La Chance. But
watch as I might, I saw no sign of an under-
standing between him and my dream girl. It
was impossible to be sure, of course, but I was
nearly sure. She spoke to him as she spoke to
Marcia and Dudley—she never addressed one
word to me—just easily and simply, as people
do who live in the same house. Macartney
himself talked mostly to Marcia, which was
no business of mine. Only I was somehow
curiously thankful that it had not been
Macartney whom Paulette had meant to meet
in the dark. There was something about his
eyes that said he was no safe customer for any
girl to speak to with hatred,—especially a girl
whom another girl was watching, as Marcia
was watching Paulette Brown. I decided it
must have been either Dunn or Collins—our
two worthless Yale boys at the mine—whom
she had wanted to get rid of, and I felt better;
for it would be easy enough to save her trouble
by doing that myself. They might just have
come back to La Chance like me, for all I
knew, because Dudley had a trick of sending
the men heaven knew where to prospect.
It was rot, anyhow, to be taking a girl's
affairs so seriously. I looked at my dream
girl's clear eyes, and thought that if she knew
what Marcia and I were thinking about her she


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 33
might have good reason to be angry. Also
that Dudley probably knew all about her even-
ing stroll and what she was doing at La
Chance, if Marcia did not. And Dudley's
self-important voice cut through my thoughts
like a knife:
"Where on earth were you this evening,
Paulette?" he was demanding irritably. "I
couldn't see a sign of you when Marcia and I
went out, and you weren't anywhere when we
came in!"
"I don't know "—the girl began—and I
saw the color go out of her face, and it made
me angry.
"I can tell you where Miss Brown was," I
said deliberately, " if she's ashamed to own it.
She was good and settled by this fire."
Why I lied for her I could not say. But
the glance she turned on me gave me a flat sort
of feeling, as if Marcia might be right and she
was there for reasons of her own that I had all
but stumbled on by accident. I was a fool
to care; but then I had been a fool all day
with my silly thoughts of leaving La Chance
to chase the world for an imaginary girl, and
more fool still to think I had found her there
waiting for me. I said something about being
tired and went off to bed. I was tired, right
enough, but I was something else too. All
that business about the girl I meant to find and


34 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
marry may sound like a child's silly game to
you, but it had been more than a game to me.
It had been a solid prop to hold to in ugly
places where a man might slip if he had not
clean love and a girl in his head. And now,
at seven-and-twenty, I wanted my child's game
to come true: just my own fire, and my own
girl, and a life that held more than mere slaving
for money. And it had come true, as far as
the fire and the welcome home; only the girl
was another man's.
I knew what I ought to do was to get out of
La Chance, but I could not screw myself up to
the acceptance of the obvious fact that there
were other girls in the world than Paulette
Brown. I told myself I was too dead tired to
care. I stumbled to my window to open it—
Charliet's lamp had burned out while I was at
supper and the room was stifling—and a sud-
den queer sense that some one or something
was under my window made me stand there
without raising it. And there was some thing,
anyway. The windows in the shack were
about a yard above the ground. There was a
glimpse of the moon through the wind-tor-
tured clouds, now on the rough clearing, now
on the thick spruces round the edge of it,—for
my window looked on the bush, not toward the
bunk house and the mine. And as the moon-
light flickered back on the clearing I saw my


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 35
clothes I had worn at Skunk's Misery and
tossed out for Charliet to burn because they
smelled,—and something else that made me
stare in pure surprise.
There was a wolf—gaunt, gray, fantastic
in the moonlight—rolling on my clothes; re-
gardless of the human eyes on him and within
ten feet of the house. It was so crazy that I
almost forgot the girl Marcia had said was
only " called" Paulette Brown. I jerked up
the window and stood waiting for the wolf to
run. And it did not take the least notice of
me. I could have shot it ten times over, but
the thing was so incredible that I only stood
staring; and suddenly my chance was gone.
The beast picked up my coat, as a dog does a
bone, and disappeared with it like a streak into
the black bush.
"Scott, I never saw a wolf behave like
that!" I thought. But one more impossibility
in an impossible day did not matter. I left
the window open and tumbled into bed.
I would have forgotten the thing in the
morning, only that when I got up all my
Skunk's Misery clothes had disappeared, and
Charliet had not taken them, because I asked
him. I did not mention last night's wolf to
him, because I was in a hurry to catch Dudley
and tell him I meant to leave La Chance. But
I did not tell him, for when I thought of leav-


36 The La Chance Mine Mystery
ing my dream girl to him it would not come to
my tongue. An obstinate, matter-of-fact devil
got up in my heart instead and prompted me
to stay just where I was. I looked at Dud-
ley—little, fat, pompous, and so self-opin-
ionated that it fairly stuck out of him—and
thought that if I had a fair chance I could
take my dream girl from him. I might be
dark as an Indian and without a cent to my
name except the few dollars I had sunk in the
mine, but I did not drink or eat drugs; and I
knew Dudley did one and guessed he did the
other. Interfering with him was out of the
question, of course; it was not a thing any
man could do to his friend, deliberately. I
supposed he would be good to the girl, accord-
ing to his lights. But, all the same, I decided
to stay at La Chance. I saw Dudley was
brimming over with something secret, and I
hoped to heaven it was not his engagement, and
that I should not have to stand my own
thoughts of a girl translated into Dudley's.
But he did not mention her. He hooked his
fat wrist into my elbow and trotted me down
to the mine.
It was an amateur sort of mine, as you may
have gathered. Dudley had no use for expert
assistance or for advice. And it was a simple
looking place. The shore of Lac Tremblant
there ran back flat to a hill, a quarter of a mile


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 37
from the water, with a solid rock face like a
cliff. Along that cliff face came first Dud-
ley's shack, then Thompson's tunnel, then—a
good way farther down—the bunk house, the
mill, and a shanty Dudley called the assay
office. But I stared at a new hole in the cliff,
farther down even than the assay office.
"Why, you've driven a new tunnel," I ex-
claimed.
"Yes, my young son," said Dudley; and
then he burst out with things. Macartney had
run that new tunnel as soon as he came and
struck quartz that was solid for heaven knew
how far, and carrying thick, free gold that
assayed incredibly to the ton. The La Chance
mine, whose name had been more truth than
poetry—for when I made fifty miles of road
that cost like the devil, to haul in machinery
and a mill it was pitch and toss if we should
ever need it—had turned out a certainty while
I was away.
I stood silent. It meant plenty to me, who
had only a trifle in the thing, but I v/as the
only soul in the world who knew what it meant
to Dudley. Stocks, carelessness, but chiefly
bull-headed extravagance, had run through
every cent he had, and La Chance had saved
him from having to live on Marcia's charity,—
if she had any. There was no fear, either, of
his being interfered with in the bonanza he


38 The La Chance Mine Mystery
had struck; for leaving out my infinitesimal
share, Dudley was sole owner,—and he had
bought a thousand acres mining concession
from the Government for ten dollars an acre,
which is the law when a potential mining dis-
trict in unsurveyed territory is more than
twenty miles by a wagon road from a railway.
All he had to do with would-be prospectors
was to chuck them out. He had got in ten
stamps for his mill over the road I had built
from Caraquet, and—since Macartney arrived
—was milling stuff whose net result made me
stare, after the miserable, two-dollar ore old
Thompson had broken my heart with.
"So you see, we're made," Dudley finished
simply. "Macartney struck his vein first go
off, and we'll be able to work it all winter.
You'd better start in to-day and get some
snowsheds built along the face of the work-
ings—they ought to have been started a week
ago. Why in the devil"—drink and drugs
do not make a man easy to work with, and you
never knew when Dudley might turn on you
with a face like a fiend—" didn't you get back
from Caraquet before? You'd nothing to keep
you away this last week!"
"I'd plenty," I returned drily. "And I
may remind you that I didn't propose to have
to walk back!" It was the first time I had
mentioned my missing horse. I did not men-


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 39
tion my stay in Skunk's Misery: it was a side
show of my own, to my mind, and unconnected
with Dudley,—though I ought to have known
that nothing in life is ever a side show, even if
you can't see the door from the big tent.
"Oh, your horse," said Dudley more civilly.
"I didn't think I'd forgotten about it, but I
suppose I must have. I was a good deal put
out getting Thompson off."
"What happened about him?" I had had
no chance to ask before.
"Oh, I never could stand him," and I knew
it was true. "Sitting all the evening playing
cards like a performing dog! And he wasn't
fit for his work, either. I told him so, and he
said he'd go. He went out to Caraquet nearly
a month ago—I thought you knew. D'ye
mean you didn't see him going through?"
I shook my head. It was a wonder I had
not, for I had spent most of last month fussing
over some bad places on the road, by the turn
where I had found my boy from Skunk's Mis-
ery, and I ought to have seen Thompson go by.
But the solution was simple. There was one
Monday and Tuesday I had my road gang off
in the bush, on the opposite side from the
Skunk's Misery valley, getting stuff to finish
a bit of corduroy. In those two days I could
have missed seeing Thompson, and I said so.
"You didn't miss much," Dudley returned


40 The La Chance Mine Mystery
carelessly. "This Macartney's a long sight
better man."
"Where'd you get him?" I was pretty sure
it was not Macartney for whom my dream girl
had mistaken me in the dark, but there was no
harm in knowing all I could about him.
Dudley knocked the wind straight out of
my half suspicion.
"Thompson sent him," he returned with a
grin. "I told him to get somebody. Oh, we
parted friends all right, old Thompson and I!
He saw, just as I did, that he wasn't the man
for the place. Macartney struck that vein first
go off, and that was recommendation enough
for me. But here's Thompson's, if you want
to see it!" He extracted a folded letter from
a case.
It was written in Thompson's careful, back-
number copperplate, perhaps not so careful as
usual, but his unmistakably. And once and
for all I dismissed all idea that it could have
been Macartney who was tangled up with
Paulette Brown. Old Thompson's friends
were not that sort, and he vouched for knowing
Macartney all his life. He was a well-known
man, according to Thompson, with a long
string of letters after his name. Thompson had
come on him by accident, and sent him up at
once, before he was snapped up elsewhere.
"Thompson seems to have got a move on in


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 41
sending up his successor," said I idly. "When
did he write this?" For there was no envel-
ope, and only Montreal, with no date, on th«
letter.
"Dunno—first day he got to Montreal, it
says," carelessly. .* " Come along and have a
look at the workings. I want you to get log
shelters built as quick as you can build them—
we don't want to have to dig out the new tun-
nel mouth every time it snows. After that
you can go to Caraquet with what gold we've
got out and be gone as long as you please.
Now, we may have snow any day."
I nodded. The winter arrives for good at
La Chance in November, and besides the ex-
posed tunnel mouth, there was no shelter over
the ore platform at the mill. This year the
snow was late, but there was no counting on
that. And I blinked as I went out of the
white November sunshine into Macartney's
new tunnel, and the candlelight of his hum-
ming stope. One glance around told me Dud-
ley was right, and the man knew his business;
and it was the same over at the mill. It
seemed to me superintendent was a mild name
for Macartney, and general manager would
have fitted better. But I said nothing, for
Dudley considered he was general manager
himself. Another thing that pleased me about
the new man was that he seemed to be doing


42 The La Chance Mine Mystery
nothing, till you saw how his men jumped for
him, while Thompson had never been able to
keep his hands off the men's work. There was
none of that in Macartney; and if he had
struck me as capable the night before he looked
ten times more so now, as he placidly ran four
jobs at once.
He was a good-looking figure of a man, too,
in his brown duck working clothes, and I did
not wonder Marcia Wilbraham had taken a
fancy to him. Dudley would probably be
blazing if he caught her philandering with his
superintendent, but it was no business of mine.
And anyhow, Macartney had my blessing since
it feould not be he to whom Paulette Brown
had meant to speak the night before. That
ought to have been none of my business either,
and to get it out of my head I turned to Dud-
ley, fussing round and talking about tailings.
And one omission in all he and Macartney had
shown me hopped up in my head. "Where's
your gold?" I demanded.
"That's one thing we don't keep loose on
the doorsteps," Macartney returned drily, and
I rather liked him for it, since he knew nothing
of my share in the mine.
But Dudley snapped at him: "Why can't
you say it's in the house—in my office? Stret-
ton's going to take it into Caraquet; there's no
sense in making a mystery to him. Come on,


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 43
Stretton, and have a look at it now!" He
stuck his fat little arm through mine, and we
went back to the house by the back door and
Charliet's untidy kitchen. It was the shortest
way, and it was not till afterwards that I re-
membered it was not commanded by the win-
dow in his office, like the front way. I was not
keen on going; later I had a sickly feeling that
it was because I had a presentiment of seeing
something I did not want to see. Then all I
thought was that I had a hundred other things
to do, and though I went unwillingly, I went.
"The gold's in my safe, in boxes," Dudley
said on the way, "and that I'm not going to
undo. But I've a lump or two in my desk I
can show you."
"Lying round loose?" I shrugged my
shoulders.
"No, it's locked up. But no one ever comes
in here but me, and "—he gave a shove at the
office door that seemed to have stuck,—" and
Miss Brown!"
But I was speechless where I stood behind
him. There was the bare office; Dudley's
locked desk; Dudley's safe against the wall.
And turning away from the safe, in her blue
sweater and blue skirt and(stockings and little
buckled shoes, was my dream girl!
Something in my heart turned over as I
looked at her. It was not that she had started,


44 The La Chance Mine Mystery
for she had not. She just stood in front of us,
poised and serene, and some sort of a letter she
had been writing lay half finished on Dudley's
desk. But something totally outside me told
me she had been writing no letter while we
were out; that she knew the combination of the
safe; had opened it; had but just shut it; and—
that she had been doing something to the boxes
of gold inside it.
There was nothing in her face to say so,
though, and my thought never struck Dudley.
He gave her a nod and a patronizing: "Well,
nice girl," without the least surprise at seeing
her there. But I had seen a pin dot of blue
sealing wax on the glimpse of white blouse that
showed through the open front of her sweater,
and something else. I stooped, while Dudley
was fussing with the lock of his desk, and
picked up a curious little gold seal that lay on
the floor by the safe.
Whether I meant to speak of it or not I
don't know; for quick as light, the girl held out
her hand for it. I said nothing as I gave it to
her. Dudley did not see me do it; and, of
course, it might have been a seal of his own.
But, if it were, why did not Paulette Brown
say so,—or say something—instead of stand-
ing dead white and silent till I turned away?
I knew—as I said "Oh" over Dudley's
gold, and my dream girl slipped out of the


Dudley's Mine: Dudley's Gold 45
**-that I had helped her to keep some kind
of a secret for the second time. And that if
* had any mysterious business at La Chance
it was something fishy about Dudley's gold!


CHAPTER IV
THE MAN IN THE DARK
It sounded crazy, for what could a girl like
that do to gold that was securely packed?
But women had been mixed up in ugly work
about gold before, and somehow the vision of
my dream girl standing by the safe stuck to
me all that day. Suppose I had helped her to
cover up a theft from Dudley! It was funny;
but the ludicrous side of it did not strike me.
What did was that I must see her alone and
get rid of the poisonous distrust of her that
she, or Marcia, had put into my head. But
that day went by, and two more on top of it,
and I had no chance to speak to Paulette
Brown.
Part of the reason was that I had not a sec-
ond to call my own. La Chance had been an
amateur mine when we began it, and it was one
still. There was only Dudley—who did noth-
ing, and was celebrating himself stupid with
drugs, or I was much mistaken—Macartney,
and myself to run it; with not enough men


The Man in the Dark 47
even to get out the ore, without working the
mill and the amalgam plates. It had been no
particular matter while the whole mine was
only a tentative business, and I had been hav-
ing half a fit at Dudley's mad extravagance in
putting up a ten-stamp mill when we had noth-
ing particular to crush in it. But now, with
ore that ran over a hundred to the ton being
fed into the mill, and Macartney and I doing
the work of six men instead of two, I agreed
with Dudley when he announced in a sober in-
terval that we required a double shift of men
and the mill to crush day and night, instead of
stopping at dark,—besides a cyanide plant and
a man to run it.
But Macartney unexpectedly jibbed at the
idea. He returned bluntly that he could at-
tend to the cyanide business himself, when it
was really needed; while as to extra men he
could not watch a night shift at the plates as
well as a day one, and he would have to be
pretty sure of the honesty of his new amalgam
man before he started in to get one. Also—
and it struck me as a sentiment I had never
heard from a mine superintendent before—
that if we sent out for men half of those we
got might be riffraff and make trouble for us,
without so much as a sheriff within a hundred
miles. "I'd sooner pick up new men one at a
time," he concluded, " even if it takes a month.


48 The La Chance Mine Mystery
We've ladies here, and if we got in a gang of
tramps "he gave a shrug and a significant
glance at Dudley.
"Why, we've some devils out of purgatory
now," I began scornfully, and stopped,—be-
cause Dudley suddenly agreed with Macart-
ney. But the waste of time in making the
mine pay for itself and the stopping of the mill
at night galled me; and so did the work I had
to do from dawn to dark, because any two-
dollar-a-day man could have done it instead.
Macartney seemed to be made of iron, for
he took longer hours than I did. But he could
talk to Marcia Wilbraham in the evenings,
while Dudley stood between me and the dream
girl I thought had come true for me when first
I came to La Chance.
I watched her, though; I couldn't help it.
There were times when I could have sworn her
soul matched her body and she was honest all
through; and times when a devil rose up in me
and bade me doubt her; till between work and
worry I was no nearer finding out the kind she
really was than to discovering the man she had
meant to speak to in the dark the night she
blundered on me. Yet I had some sort of a
clue there, if it were not much of one. Dunn
and Collins, our two slackers who had been
kicked out of Yale to land in our bunk house,
evidently had some game on. Dunn I was not


The Man in the Dark 49
much bothered about: he was just a plain
good-for-nothing, with a perennial chuckle.
But Collins was a different story. Tall, pale,
long-eyelashed, his blase young face barely
veiled a mind that was an encyclopaedia of sin,
—or I was much mistaken. And he and
Dunn had suddenly ceased to raise Hades in
the bunk house every night and developed a
taste for going to bed with the hens. At least,
the snoring bunk house thought so. If they
went abroad instead on whatever they were up
to, I never caught them at it; but I did catch
them watching me, like lynxes, whenever they
were off shift. I never saw either of them speak
to Miss Brown, but I got a good growing idea
it was just Collins she had meant to interview
the night she spoke to me: and it fitted in well
enough with my doubts about her and Dud-
ley's gold, for I would have put no gold steal-
ing past Collins. As for Paulette Brown her-
self, I could see no earthly sense in Marcia's
silly statement that "she was afraid for her
life—or Dudley's." She was afraid of Dud-
ley, I could see that; for she shrank from him
quite often. But on the other hand, I saw her
follow him into his office one night, when he
was fit for no girl to tackle, and try to get him
to listen to something. From outside I heard
her beg him to " please listen and try to under-
stand "—and I made her a sign from the door-


So The La Chance Mine Mystery
way to come away before he flew at her. I
asked her if there were anything I could do,
and she said no; it was only something she
wanted to tell Dudley. But suddenly she
looked at me with those clear eyes of hers.
"You're very—good to me," she said rather
piteously.
I shook my head, and that minute I believed
in her utterly. But the next night I had a jar.
I was starting for Caraquet the morning after,
with the gold Dudley had in his office, so I was
late in the stable, putting washers on my light
wagon, and came home by a short cut through
the bush, long after dark. If I moved Indian-
silent in my moccasins it was because I always
did. But—halfway to the shack clearing—I
stopped short, wolf-silent; which is different.
Close by, invisible in the dark spruces, I heard
Paulette Brown speaking; and knew that once
more she was meeting a man in the dark, and,
this time, the right one! I could not see him
any more than I could hear him, for he did not
speak; but I knew he was there. I crouched
to make a blind jump for him—and my dream
girl's voice held me still.
"I don't care how you threaten me: you've
got to go" she said doggedly. "I know I've
my own safety to look after, but I'll chance
that. I'll give you one week more. Then, if
you dare to stay on here, and interfere with me


p. The La Chance Mine Mystery
instead of going after him. First, because
I had no desire to give my reason for dis-
missing him next morning; second, be-
cause I had a startling, ghastly thought that
I'd heard Macartney's quiet, characteristic
footstep moving away,—and if a hard, set-
eyed man like our capable superintendent had
been out listening to what a girl said to Collins,
as I had, I didn't know how in the devil I was
to make him hold his tongue about it. And in
the middle of that pleasant thought my dream
girl spoke again, to herself this time: "Oh, I
can't trust him! I'll have to get hold of the
gold myself—at least all I've marked."
On the top of her words a wolf howled
startlingly, close by. It was evidently the last
touch on what must have been a cheerful even-
ing, for Paulette Brown gave one appalled
spring and was gone, fleeing for the kitchen
door. I am not slow on my feet. I was in
the front way before she struck the back one.
From the front door I observed the living
room, and what I saw inside it before I strolled
in there made me catch my breath with relief
and comforting security for the first time that
night. Macartney could not have been out
listening in the dark, if I had. He sat lazily
in the living room, talking to Marcia, with his
feet in old patent leather shoes he could never
have run in, even if it had not been plain he had


The Man in the Dark 53
«
not been out-of-doors at all. Marcia had evi-
dently not been spying either, which was a
comfort; and Dudley was out of the question,
for he dozed by the fire, palpably half asleep.
But suddenly I had a fright. The girl who
entered the living room five minutes behind me
had very plainly been out; and I was terrified
that Marcia would notice her wind-blown hair.
I spoke to her as she passed me. "You're
losing a hairpin on the left side of your head,"
was all I said. And much I got for it. My
dream girl tucked in her wildly flying curl with
that sleight of hand women use and never even
looked at me. But the thing was done, and I
•had covered up her tracks for the third time.
I decided to fire Collins before breakfast the
next morning and get off to Caraquet straight
after. But I didn't; and I did not fire Collins,
either. When I went to the bunk house and
then to the mine, where he was a rock man, he
had apparently fired himself, as Paulette had
told him to. He was nowhere to be found,
anyhow, or Dunn either. I wasted an hour
hunting for him, and after that Macartney
wanted me, so that it was late afternoon before
I could load up my gold and get off. And as
I opened the safe in Dudley's office I swore.
There were four boxes of the stuff; small,
for easy handling; and if I had had time I
would have opened every hanged one of them.


54 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Even as it was, I determined to do no forward-
ing from Caraquet till I knew what something
on them meant. For on each box, just as I
had expected even before I heard Paulette
Brown say she had marked them, was a tiny
seal in blue wax!
The reason for any seal knocked me utterly,
but I couldn't wait to worry over it. No one
else saw it, for I loaded the boxes into my
wagon myself, and there was nobody about to
see me off. Dudley was dead to the world, as
I'd known he was getting ready to be for a
week past; Marcia, to her fury, had had to re-
tire to bed with a swelled face; and Macartney
was the only other person who knew my light
wagon and pair of horses was taking our
clean-up into Caraquet,—except Paulette
Brown!
And there was no sign of her anywhere.
I had not expected there would be, but I
was sore all the same. I had helped her out
of difficulties three times, and all I'd got for it
was—nothing! I saw Macartney coming up
from the mill, and yelled to him to come and
hold my horses, while I went back to my room
for a revolver. This was from sheer habit.
The snow still held off, and before me was
nothing more exciting than a cold drive over a
bad road that was frozen hard as a board, a halt
at the Halfway stables to change horses, and


CHAPTER V
THE CAKAQUET ROAD: AND THE WOLVES
HOWL ONCE MORE
Why comest thou to ride with me?
"The road, this night, is dark."
Dost thou and thine then side with me?
"Ride on, ride on and hark!"
The Night Ride.
There she sat, anyhow, alone except for
Macartney, who stood at the horses' heads.
Wherever she was going, I had an idea he was
as surprised about it as I was, and that he had
been expostulating with her about her expedi-
tion. But, if he had, he shut up as I appeared.
I could only stammer as I stared at Paulette,
"You—you're not coming!"
"I seem to be," she returned placidly. And
Macartney gave me the despairing glance of a
sensible man who had tried his best to head off
a girl's silly whim, and failed.
"It's as you like," he said—to her, not to
me. "But you understand you can't get back
to-night, if you go to Caraquet. And—Good
heavens—you ought not to go, if you want the


The Caraquet Road 57
truth of it! There's nothing to see—and
you'll get half frozen—and you mayn't get
back for days, if it snows!"
Paulette Brown looked at him as if he were
not there. Then she laughed. "I didn't say
I was going to Caraquet! If you want to
know all about my taking a chance for a drive
behind a pair of good horses, Miss Wilbraham
wants Billy Jones's wife to come over for a
week and work for her. I'm going to stay all
night with Mrs. Jones and bring her back in
the morning. She'll never leave Billy unless
she's fetched. So I really think you needn't
worry, Mr. Macartney," she paused, and I
thought I saw him wince. "I'm not going to
be a nuisance either to you or Mr. Stretton,"
and before he had a chance to answer she
started up the horses. I had just time to take
a flying jump and land in the wagon beside her
as she drove off.
Macartney exclaimed sharply, and I didn't
wonder. If he had not jumped clear the near
wheels must have struck him. I lost the
angry, startled sentence he snapped out. But
it could have been nothing in particular, for my
dream girl only turned in her seat and smiled
at him.
I had no smile as I took the reins from her.
I had wanted a chance to be alone with her,
and I had it: but I knew better than to think


58 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
she was going to Billy Jones's for the sake of a
drive with me. The only real thought I had
was that behind me, in the back of the wagon,
were the boxes of gold she had marked inex-
plicably with her blue seal, and that I had
heard her say the night before that she " would
have to get that gold!"
How she meant to do it was beyond me; and
it was folly to think she ever could do it, with
six feet of a man's strength beside her. But
nevertheless, when you loved a girl for no other
earthly reason than that she was your dream of
a girl come true, and even though she belonged
to another man, it was no thought with which
to start on a lonely drive with her. I set my
teeth on it and never opened them for a solid
mile over the hummocky road through the end-
less spruce bush, behind which the sun had al-
ready sunk. I could feel my dream girl's
shoulder where she sat beside me, muffled in a
sable-lined coat of Dudley's: and the sweet
warmth of her, the faint scent of her gold-
bronze hair, made me afraid to speak, even if I
had known what I wanted to say.
But suddenly she spoke to me. "Mr. Stret-
ton, you're not angry with me for coming with
you?"
"You know I'm not." But I did not know
what I was. Any one who has read as far as
this will know that if ever a plain, stupid fool


The Caraquet Road 59
walked this world, it was I,—Nicholas Dane
Stretton. Put me in the bush, or with horses,
and I'm useful enough,—but with men and
women I seem to go blind and dumb. I know
I never could read a detective story; the clues
and complications always made me feel dizzy.
I was pretty well dazed where I sat beside that
girl I knew I ought to find out about, and her
nearness did not help me to ask her ugly ques-
tions. If she had not been Dudley's,—but I
broke the thought short off. I said to myself
impersonally that it was impossible for a girl
to do any monkey tricks about the La Chance
gold with a man like me. Yet I wondered if
she meant to try!
But she showed no sign of it. "I had to
come," she said gently. "Marcia really wants
Billy Jones's wife: she won't let me wait on
her, and of course Charliet can't do it. You
believe me, don't you? I didn't come just for
a drive with you!"
I believed that well enough, and I nodded.
"Then," said my dream girl quietly, "will
you please stop the horses?"
I looked round. We were miles from the
mine, around a turn where the spruce bush
ceased for a long stretch of swamp,—bare, fea-
tureless, and frozen. Then, for the first time,
I looked at Dudley's girl that I was fool
enough to love.


6o~ The La Chance Mine Mystery
"What for?" I demanded. "I mean, of
course, if you like," for I saw she was white to
the lips, though her eyes met mine steadily, like
a man's. "Do you mean you want to go
back?"
She shook her head almost absently. "No:
I think there's something bumping around in
the back of the wagon. I"—there was a
sharp, nervous catch in her voice—" want to
find out what it is."
I had packed the wagon, and I knew there
was nothing in it to bump. But I stopped the
horses. I wondered if the girl beside me had
some sort of baby revolver and thought she
could hold me up with it, if I let her get out;
and I knew just what I would do if she tried it.
I smiled as I waited. But she did not get out.
She turned in her seat and reached backwards
into the back of the wagon, as if she had neither
bones nor joints in her lovely body. Marcia
was right when she said it was perfectly edu-
cated and trained. For a moment I could
think of nothing but the marvellous grace of
her movement as she slid her hand under the
tarpaulin that covered the gold; then I thought
I heard her catch her breath with surprise.
But she turned back with an exquisite lithe
grace that made me catch mine, and slid down
in her seat as if she had never slid out of it.
"It's a bottle," she said lightly. But it was


The Caraquet Road 61
with a kind of startled puzzle too, as if she had
sooner expected dynamite. "I can't think
why; I mean, I wonder what's in it!"
"A bottle!" I jerked around to stare at a
whisky bottle in her hands. It was tightly
sealed and full of something colorless that
looked like gin. I was just going to say I
could not see where it had come from, seeing I
had packed the wagon myself, and I would
have gone bail there Avas no bottle in it. But
it came over me that she might be pretending
astonishment and have put the thing there her-
self while I was in my room getting my re-
volver; since there had been no one else near
my wagon but Macartney, and he could not
have left the horses' heads. It flashed on me
that the baby beside me, being used to Dudley,
might have drugged a little gin, thinking I
would take various drinks on the way; and I
nearly laughed out. But I said: "Back there
was no place for a bottle. It's a wonder it
didn't smash on the first bump!"
"Yes," said Paulette slowly. "Only I
wonder—I mean I can't see "and she
paused, staring at the bottle with a thoughtful
sort of frown. "I believe I'll hold it on my
lap."
I was looking at the bottle too, where she
held it with both fur-gloved hands; and I for-
got to wonder if she were lying about it or not.


62 The La Chance Mine Mystery
For the gloves she wore were Dudley Wilbra-
ham's, as well as the coat,—and that any of
Dudley's things should be on my dream girl
put me in a black, senseless fury. I wanted to
take them straight off her and wrap her up in
my own belongings. I grabbed at anything to
say that would keep my tongue from telling
her to change coats with me that instant, and
the bottle in her hand was the only thing that
occurred to me. It brought a sudden recollec-
tion back to me anyhow, and I opened my lips
quite easily.
"Scott, that looks like some of the brew I
spilled over my clothes at Skunk's Misery!"
"Skunk's Misery!" Paulette exclaimed
sharply. "What on earth is Skunk's Mis-
ery?"
"A village—at least, a den—of dirt, chiefly;
off this road, between Caraquet and Lac Trem-
blant." I was thankful to have something to
think about that was neither her, or me, or
Dudley. I made as long a story as I could of
my stay in Skunk's Misery when I took home
the half-killed boy; of the filthy stuff I had
spilled on my clothes, and how I had seen a
wolf carry them off. "By George, I believe
he liked the smell—though I never thought of
that till now!"
"What?" Paulette gave a curious start
that might have been wonder, or enlighten-


The Caraquet Road 63
ment. "And you got the stuff at Skunk's
Misery, out of a bottle like this? Oh, I ought
to have guessed"—but she either checked
herself, or her pause was absolutely natural—
"I should have guessed you'd had some sort of
a horrible time that night you came home.
You looked so tired. But what I meant to say
was I don't see how such poor people would
have a bottle of anything. Didn't they say
what it was?"
"Didn't ask! It looked like gin, and it
smelt like a sulphide factory when it got on
my clothes. They certainly had that bottle."
"Well, Skunk's Misery hasn't got this bot-
tle, anyhow!" I could see no reason for the
look on her face. It was not gay any more; it
was stern, if a girl's face can be stern, and it
was white with angry suspicion. Suddenly
she laughed, rather fiercely. "I'm glad I
thought of it before the jolting broke it in the
wagon! I want to get it safely to Billy
Jones's."
The reason why beat me, since she had pre-
tended to know nothing of it, so I said nothing.
After a long silence Paulette sighed.
"You've been very kind to me, Mr. Stret-
ton," she said, as if she had been thinking. "I
wish you could see your way to—trusting
me!"
I don't know how I've been kind," I left
c<


The Caraquet Road 65
that, I picked up a seal for you, and I told you
your hair was untidy before Marcia could. I
think those are all the enormously kind things
I've ever done for you. But, if you want
kindness, you know where to come!"
"Without telling you things—and when
you don't trust me!"
"Telling things never made a man trust
any one," said I. "And besides," it was so
dark now, as we crawled along the side of the
long rocky hill that followed the swamp, that I
had to look hard to see her face, " I never said
I didn't trust you. And there isn't anything
you could tell me that I want to know!"
"Oh," Paulette cried as sharply as if I had
struck her, " do you mean you're taking me on
trust—in spite of everything?"
"In spite of nothing." I laughed. I was
not going to have her think I knew about Col-
lins, much more all the stuff Marcia had said.
But she turned her head and looked at me with
a curious intentness.
"I'll try," she began in a smothered sort of
voice, " I mean I'm not all you've been think-
ing I was, Mr. Stretton! Only," passionately,
and it was the last thing I had expected her to
say, " I wish we were at Billy Jones's with all
this gold!"
I did not, whether she had astonished me or
not. I could have driven all night with her


66 The La Chance Mine Mystery
beside me, and her arm touching mine when
the wagon bumped over the rocks.
"We're halfway," I returned rather cheer-
lessly. "Why? You're not afraid we'll be
held up, are you? No human being ever uses
this road."
"I wasn't thinking of human beings," she
returned simply. "I was thinking of wolves."
"Wolves?" I honestly gasped it. Then
I laughed straight out. "I can't feel particu-
larly agitated about wolves. I know we had
some at La Chance, but we probably left them
there, nosing round the bunk-house rubbish
heap. And anyhow, a wolf or two wouldn't
trouble us. They're cowardly things, unless
they're in packs." I felt exactly as if I were
comforting Red Riding Hood or some one in a
fairy tale, for the Lord knows it had never oc-
curred to me to be afraid of wolves. "What
on earth put wolves in your head?"
"I—don't know! They seemed to be about,
lately."
"Well, I never saw any on this road! I've
a revolver, anyliow."
"I'm g-glad," said Paulette; and the word
jerked out of her, and my arms jerked nearly
out of me. In the dark the wagon had hit
something that felt like nothing but a boulder
in the middle of my decent road. The wagon
stopped dead, with an up-ending lurch, and


The Caraquet Road 67
nothing holding it to the horses but the reins.
Why on earth they held I don't know. For
with one almighty bound my two young horses
tried to get away from me,—and they would
have, if the reins had not been new ones. As
it was I had a minute's hard fighting before I
got them under. When they stood still the
girl beside me peered over the front of the
wagon into the dark. "It's the whiffletree, I
think," she said, as if she were used to wagons.
I peered over myself and hoped so.
"Mercy if it is," said I. "If it's a wheel we're
stuck here. Scott, I wonder if I've a bit of
rope!"
Paulette Brown pulled out ten feet of spun
yarn from under her coat; and if you come to
think of it, it was a funny thing for a girl to
have. It struck me, rather oddly, that she
must have come prepared for accidents.
"There," she said, "I expect you can patch
us up if I hold the horses. Here's a knife,
too, and "—I turned hot all over, for she was
putting something else into my hand, just as
if she knew I had been wondering about it
since first we started; but she went on without
a break—" here's my revolver. Put it in your
pocket. I'd sooner you kept it."
I was thankful I had had the decency to
trust her before she gave the weapon to me.
But I was blazingly angry with myself when I


68 The La Chance Mine Mystery
got out of the wagon and saw just what had
happened. Fair in the middle of my new road
was a boulder that the frost must have loosened
from the steep hillside that towered over us;
and the front of the wagon had hit it square,—
which it would not have done if I had been
looking at the road instead of talking to a girl
who was no business of mine, now or ever. I
got the horses out of the traces and the pole
straps, and let Paulette hold them while I
levered the boulder out of the way, down the
hillside. I was scared to do it, too, for fear
they would get away from her, but she was evi-
dently as used to horses as to wagons: Bob and
Danny stood for her like lambs, while I set to
work to repair damages. The pole was
snapped, and the whiffletree smashed, so that
the traces were useless. I did some fair jury
work with a lucky bit of spruce wood, the whif-
fletree, and the axle, and got the pole spliced.
It struck me that even so we should have to
do the rest of the way to Billy Jones's at a
walk, but I saw no sense in saying so. I got
the horses back on the pole, and Paulette in
the wagon holding the reins, still talking to the
horses quietly and by name. But as I jumped
up beside her the quiet flew out of her voice.
"The bottle" she all but shrieked at me.
"Mind the bottle!"
But I had not noticed she had put it on my


The Caraquet Road 69
seat when she got out to hold the horses. I
knocked it flying across her, and it smashed to
flinders on the near fore wheel, drenching it
and splashing over Danny's hind legs. I
grabbed the reins from Paulette, and I thought
of skunks, and a sulphide factory,—and dead
skunks and rotten sulphide at that. Even in
the freezing evening air the smell that came
from that smashed bottle was beyond anything
on earth or purgatory, excepting the stuff I
had spilt over myself at Skunk's Misery.
"What on earth," I began stupidly. "Why,
that's that Skunk's Misery filth again!"
Paulette's hand came down on my arm with
a grip that could not have been wilder if she
had thought the awful smell meant our deaths.
"Drive on, will you? " she said in a voice that
matched it. "Let the horses go, I tell you!
If there's anything left in that bottle it may
save us for a—I mean," she caught herself up
furiously, "it may save me from being sick.
I don't know how you feel. But for heaven's
sake get me out of that smell! Oh, why didn't
I throw the thing away into the woods, long
ago?"
I wished she had. The stuff was on Danny
as well as on the wheel, and we smelt like a
procession of dead whales. For after the first
choking explosion of the thing it reeked of
nothing but corruption. It was the Skunk's


CHAPTER VI
MOSTLY WOLVES: AND A GIRL
Oh, what was that drew screaming breath?
"A wolf that slashed at me!"
Oh, who was that cried out in death?
"A man who struck at thee!"
The Night Ride.
The sound might have come from a country
hound or two baying for sheer melancholy, or
after a cat: only there were neither hounds nor
cats on the Caraquet road. I felt Paulette
stiffen through all her supple body. She whis-
pered to herself sharply, as if she were swear-
ing—only afterwards I knew better, and put
the word she used where it belonged: "The
devil! Oh, the devil!"
I made no answer. I had enough business
holding in the horses, remembering that spliced
pole. Paulette remembered it too, for she
spoke abruptly. "How fast do you dare go?"
"Oh, not too fast," my thoughts were still
on the pole. "They're not after us, if you're
worrying about those wolves."
But she took no notice. "How far are we
from Billy Jones's?"


72 The La Chance Mine Mystery
We were a good way. But I said, " Oh, a
few miles!"
"Well, we've got to make it!" I could still
feel her queerly rigid against my arm; perhaps
it was only because she was listening. But—
quick, like life, or death, or anything else sud-
den as lightning—she had no need to listen;
nor had I. A burst of ravening yells, gather-
ing up from all sides of us except in front,
came from the dark bush. And I yelled my-
self, at Bob and Danny, to keep them off the
dead run.
It was rot, of course, but I had a queer feel-
ing that wolves were after us, and that it was
just that Skunk's Misery stuff that had started
them, as it had drawn the wolf that had taken
my clothes. I could hear the yelping of one
after another grow into the full-throated
chorus of a pack. The woods were full of
them.
"I didn't think he'd dare," Paulette ex-
claimed, as if she came out of her secret
thoughts.
But it did not bring me out of mine, even to
remember that young devil Collins. I had
pulled out my gun to scare the wolves with a
shot or two,—and there were no cartridges in
it! I could not honestly visualize myself fill-
ing it up the night before, but I was sure I had
filled it, just as I was sure I had never troubled


Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 73
to look at it since. But of course I could not
have, or it would not have been empty now. I
inquired absently, because I was rummaging
my pockets for cartridges, "Who'd dare?
Whoa, Bob! What he?"
"They," Paulette corrected sharply. "I
meant the wolves. I thought they were cow-
ards, but—they don't sound cowardly! I—
Mr. Stretton, I believe I'm worried!"
So was I, with a girl to take care of, a tied-on
pole and whiffletree, and practically no gun;
for there was not a single loose cartridge in my
pockets. I had been so mighty secure about
the Caraquet road I had never thought of
them. I cursed inside while I said disjoint-
edly, " Quiet, Bob, will you?—There's nothing
to be afraid of; you'll laugh over this to-
night!" Because I suddenly hoped so—if the
pole held to the Halfway—for the infernal
clamor behind us had dropped abruptly to
what might have been a distant dog fight. But
at a sudden note in it the sweat jumped to my
upper lip.
"Dunn and Collins!" I thought. They
had been missing when Ave left. Paulette had
said she did not trust Collins, and since he had
had the nous to get hold of the Skunk's Misery
wolf dope, he or Dunn could easily have
stowed it in my wagon in the night, and been
caught by it themselves where they had started


74 The La Chance Mine Mystery
out to waylay us by the boulder they put in my
road. But all I said was, " The wolves have
stopped!"
"Not they," Paulette retorted, and sud-
denly knocked me silly with surprise. "Oh, I
haven't done you a bit of good by coming, Mr.
Stretton! I thought if I were with you I
might be some use, and I'm not."
I stared stupidly. "D'ye mean you came
to fight wolves?"
"No! I came "but she stopped. "I
was afraid—I mean I hated your going alone
with all that gold, and Marcia really wanted
Mrs. Jones."
Any other time I would have rounded on
her and found out what she was keeping back,
but I was too busy thinking. The horses had
calmed to a flying trot up the long hill along
whose side we had been crawling when the pole
went. Once over the crest of it we should have
done two miles since we heard the first wolf
howl; which meant we were nearer to Billy
Jones's than I had remembered. If the pole
held to get us down the other side of the long
hill there was nothing before us but a mile of
corduroy road through a jungle-thick swamp
of hemlock, and then the one bit of really ex-
cellent going my road could boast,—three clear
miles, level as a die, straight to the Halfway
stables.


Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 75
"We haven't far now," said I shortly.
"And it doesn't matter why you came; you've
been useful enough! I couldn't have held the
horses and patched the wagon too." I omitted
to say I could have tied them to a wheel.
"But if you're nervous now, there's one thing
we could do. Can you ride?"
"Bide?" I thought she laughed. "Yes!
Why?"
"We could cut the horses loose and ride
them in to the Halfway."
"What? And leave the gold out here, as
we were m "I knew she cut off " meant
to." "I won't do it!"
"Wolves wouldn't eat it—and there's no
one to steal it," I returned matter-of-factly—
because if Collins had meant to, the sinister
flurry behind us had decided me his career was
closed. "However, it would be wasting trou-
ble to leave the stuff; there's no sign of any
pack after us now." And a ravening yell cut
the words off my tongue.
The brutes must have scoured after us in
silence, hunting us in the dark for the last mile.
For as we stood out, a black blot on the hilltop
against the night sky, they broke out in chorus
just behind us, for all the world like a pack of
hounds who had treed a wildcat; and too close
for any fool lying to occur to me.
"Paulette," I blurted, "there's not a car-


76 The La Chance Mine Mystery
tridge in my gun! Yours is so little I'm afraid
of it. But it may scare them. Take these
reins!"
But she turned in her seat and knelt there,
looking behind us. If I could have got her on
Danny's back and let her run clear five minutes
ago it was impossible now. No human being
could have pulled up Bob or him.
"See them?" I snapped. "By heaven, I
wish the brutes would stop that yelling; they're
driving the horses crazy! See them?"
"No. But—yes, yes," her voice flashed out
sharp as a knife. "They're on us! Give me
the revolver, quick! I can shoot; and I've car-
tridges. You couldn't do any good with it: it
throws low—and it's too small for your hand.
And I wouldn't dare drive. I might get off
the road, and we'd be done."
It was so true that I did not even turn my
head as I shoved over her little gun. I had no
particular faith in her shooting; my trust was
in the horses' speed. We were getting down
the hill like a Niagara of galloping hoofs and
wheels over a road I had all I could do to see;
with that crazy pole I dared not check the
horses to put an ounce on. I stood up and
drove for all I was worth, and the girl beside
me shot,—and hit! For a yell and a scream-
ing flurry rose with every report of her re-
volver. It was a beastly noise, but it rejoiced


Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 77
me; till suddenly I heard her pant out a sick-
ened sentence that made me gasp, because it
was such a funny thing to say.
"My heavens, I never thought I could be
cruel to animals—like this. But I've got to do
it. I"—her voice rose in sudden disjointed
triumph —" Mr. Stretton, I believe I've
stopped them!"
"I believe you have," I swore blankly,—and
one leapt out of the dark by the fore wheel as
I spoke, and she shotjt.
But it was the last; she had stopped them.
And if I had not known that to have turned
even one eye from my horses as we tore down
that hill would have meant we were smashed
up on one side of it, I would have been more
ashamed than I was of being fought for by a
girl. "You're a wonder—just a marvellous
wonder," I got out thickly. "We're clear—
and it's thanks to you!" And ahead of us, in
the jungle-thick hemlock that crowded the
sides of the narrow road I had corduroyed
through the swamp for a ricketty mile, a single
wolf howled.
It had a different, curious note, a dying
note, if I had known it; but I did not realize it
then. I thought, "We're done! They've
headed us!" I said, " Look out ahead for all
you're worth. If we can keep going, we'll be
through this thicket in a minute."


78 The La Chance Mine Mystery
But Paulette cut out my thought. "We
are done, if they throw the horses!" And in-
stantly, amazingly, she stood up in the bump-
ing, swaying wagon as if she were on a dancing
floor and shed Dudley Wilbraham's coat. She
leaned toward me, and I felt rather than saw
that she was in shirt and knickerbockers like a
boy. "Keep the horses going as steady as you
can, and whatever you do, don't try to stop
them. I'm going to do something. Mind,
keep them galloping!"
I would have grabbed her; only before I
knew what she was going to do she was past
me, out over the dashboard, and running along
the smashed pole between Bob and Danny in
the dark.
It was nothing to do in daylight. I've done
it myself before now, and so have most men.
But for a girl, in the dark and on a broken
pole, with wolves heading the horses,—I was so
furiously afraid for her that the blood stopped
running in my legs, and it was a minute before
I saw what she was after. She had not
slipped; she was astride Danny—ducking un-
der his rein neatly, for I had not felt the sign
of a jerk—but only God knew what might
happen to her if he fell. And suddenly I
knew what she had run out there to do. She
X was shooting ahead of the horses, down the
road; then to one side and the other of it im-
\



Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 79
partially, covering them. Only what knocked
me was that there was no sign of a wolf
either before or beside us on the narrow,
black-dark highway,—and that she was shoot-
ing into the jungle-thick swamp hemlocks
on each side of it at the breast height of a
man!
And at a single ghastly, smothered cry I
burst out, " By gad, it is men!" For I knew
she had shot one. I listened, over the rattling
roll of the wheels on the corduroy, but there
was no second cry. There was only what
seemed dead silence after the thunder of the
wheels on the uneven logs, as we swept out on
the level road that led straight to the Halfway
stable. It was light, too, after the dead black-
ness of the narrow swamp road. I saw the
girl turn on Danny carelessly, as if she were in
a saddle, and wave her hand forward for me to
keep going. But the only thought I had was
to get her back into the wagon. Not because
I was afraid of a smash, for if the mended pole
had held in that crazy, tearing gallop from the
top of the hill it would hold till the Halfway.
I just wanted her safe beside me. I had had
enough of seeing a girl do stunts that stopped
my blood. "Come back out of that," I
shouted at her; " I'm going to stop the horses
—and you come here!"
She motioned forward, crying out some-


80 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
thing unintelligible. But before I could pull
up the horses, before I even guessed what she
meant to do, I saw her stand up on Danny's
back, spring from his rump, and,—land lightly
in the wagon!
It may be true that I damned her up in
heaps from sheer fright; I know I asked
fiercely if she wanted to kill herself. She said
no, quite coolly. Only that that pole would
not bear any more running on it, or the jerk of
a sudden stop either: it was that she had called
out to me.
"Neither can I bear any more—of tricks
that might lose your life to save me and my
miserable gold," I said angrily. "Sit down
this minute and wrap that coat round you." I
had ceased to care that it was Dudley's. "It's
bitter cold. And there's the light at the Half-
way!"
"What I did wasn't anything—for me," my
dream girl retorted oddly. "And I don't
know that it was altogether tc save you, Mr.
Stretton, or your gold either, that you thought
I meant to steal. I was pretty afraid for my-
self, with those wolves!"
I was too raging with myself to answer. Of
course it had not been she who had meant to
steal my gold; and no matter how she had
known some one meant to get at me, with
wolves or anything else. It had been just Col-


Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 81
lins—and the sheer gall of it jammed my teeth
—Collins and Dunn, two ne'er-do-well brats in
our own mine. I had realized already that they
had been missing from La Chance quite early
enough for me to thank them for the boulder on
my good road, and Collins But I hastily
revised my conviction that it was Collins I had
heard the wolves chop in the bush as hounds
chop a fox: Collins had too much sense. It
had more likely been Dunn; he was the kind
to get eaten! Collins must have legged it
early for my corduroy road, where Paulette
had expected him enough to shoot at him; while
Dunn stayed round La Chance to put the wolf
bait in my wagon and got caught by it himself
on his way to join Collins.
As for the genesis of the wolf dope, its his-
tory came to me coherently as letters spelling
a word, beginning with the bottle of mixed filth
I had spilt on myself at Skunk's Misery. The
second I and my smelly clothes reached shore
the night I returned to La Chance, a wolf had
scented me and howled; had followed me to the
shack and howled again while I was talking to
Marcia about Paulette Brown; and another
had carried off those very clothes under my
own eyes where I stood by my window, as if
the smell on them had been some kind of bait it
could not resist. Wherever Dunn and Collins
had got it, the smell from the broken bottle had


82 The La Chance Mine Mystery
been exactly the same, only twenty times
stronger: and it had been meant to smash at
the boulder on my road and turn me into a
living bait for wolves!
The theory may sound crazy, but it happens
to be sane. There is a wolf dope, made of
heaven knows what, except that it contains cer-
tain ingredients that have to be put in bottles
and ripened in the sun for a month. Two
Frenchmen were jailed this last June in Que-
bec province for using it around a fish and
game club, and endangering people's lives.
That same wolf bait had been put in my
wagon by somebody,—and the human cry out
of the swamp at Paulette's shot suddenly re-
peated itself in my ears. I was biting my lip,
or I would have grinned. Paulette had hit the
man who was to have put me out of business,
if the wolves failed when that bottle smashed
and the boulder crippled my wagon. Collins,
who, laid up in the swamp, was to have reaped
my gold and me if I got through! The cheek
of him made me blaze again, and I turned on
Paulette abruptly.
"Look here, do you know you shot a man in
the swamp?"
"I hope I killed him," returned that same
girl who had disliked being cruel to wolves,—
and instantly saw what I was after. "That's
nonsense, though! There couldn't have been


Mostly Wolves: Arjd a Girl 83
any man there, Mr. Stretton. The wolves
would have eaten himl"
"Only one wolf got by you," I suggested
drily.
She shrugged her shoulders. "They'd have
shot at us—men, I mean!"
I made no answer. It struck me forcibly
that Collins certainly would have; unless he
was not out for shooting, but merely waiting to
remove the gold from my wagon as soon as the
wolves had disposed of my horses and me.
Even then I did not see why he had held his
fire, unless he had no gun. But the whole
thing was a snarl it was no good thinking about
till the girl beside me owned how much she
knew about it. I wondered sharply if it had
been just that knowledge she was trying to
give Dudley the night I stopped her. The
lights at the Halfway were very close as I
turned to her.
"If I've helped you at all, why can't you tell
me all the trouble, instead of Dudley?" I
asked, very low.
"I don't know anything," but I thought she
checked a sob, "that I—can tell. I just
thought there might be trouble to-night, but I
imagined it would happen before you started.
That was why I marked that gold. Don't
take any, ever, out of the safe, if it hasn't my
seal on it."


84 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"You can't prevent Collins from changing
the boxes—forever," I said deliberately; be-
cause, unless he were dead, as I hoped, she
couldn't. But Paulette stared at me, open-
lipped, as we drove into the Halfway yard,
and Billy Jones ran out with a lantern.
"Collins?" she repeated, as if she had never
heard his name, much less met him secretly in
the dark. "I don't know anything about any
Collins, nor any one I could—put a name to!
I tell you I don't know who was in the
swamp!"
She had not said she did not know who was
responsible for the bottle in my wagon. But
if I am Indian-dark I can be Indian-silent too.
I said nothing about that. "Well, it doesn't
matter who did anything," I exclaimed sud-
denly, "so long as there's trust between you
and me!" Because I forgot Dudley and
everything but my dream girl who had fought
for me, and I suddenly wondered if she had not
forgotten Dudley, too. For Bob and Danny
stood still, played out and sweating, and Paul-
ette Brown sat staring at me with great eyes,
instead of moving.
But she had forgotten nothing. "You're
very kind—to me, and Dudley," she said
quietly, and slipped out of the wagon before I
could lift her down. A sudden voice kept me
from jumping after her.


Mostly Wolves: And a Girl 85
"By golly," said Billy Jones, sniffing at my
fore wheel. "Have you run over a hundred
skunks?"


CHAPTER VII
I FIND LITTLE ENOUGH ON THE CORDUROY
ROAD, AND LESS AT SKUNK'S MISERY
I told Billy Jones as much as I thought fit
of the evening's work,—which included no
mention of wolf dope, or shooting on the cor-
duroy road.
If he listened incredulously to my tale of a
wolf pack one look at Bob and Danny told him
it was true. They had had all they wanted,
and we spent an hour working over them. The
wagon was a wreck; why the spliced pole had
hung together to the Halfway I don't know,
but it had; and I let the smell on it go as a
skunk. I lifted the gold into the locked cup-
board where Billy kept his stores. It had to
be put in another wagon for Caraquet, any-
how; and besides, I was not going on to Cara-
quet in the morning. The gold was safe with
Billy, and there were other places that needed
visiting first. There was no hope of getting at
the ugly business that had brewed up at La
Chance through Paulette Brown, or Collins
either; since one would never tell how much or


I Find Little Enough 87
how little she knew, and the other would lie, if
he ever reappeared. But the wolf bait end I
-*^ould get at, and I meant to. Which was the
reason I sat on one of the horses I had sent
over to the Halfway—after my one experience
when it held none—when my dream girl and
Mrs. Jones came out of Billy's shack in the
cold of a November dawn.
"I'm riding some of the way back with
you," I observed casually.
Paulette stopped short. She was lovelier
than I had ever seen her, with her gold-bronze
hair shining over the sable collar of Dudley's
coat. I fancied her eyes shone, too, for one
second, at seeing me. But there I was wrong.
"I thought you'd started for Caraquet," she
exclaimed hastily. "You needn't come with
us. There won't be any wolves in the day-
time, and—you know there's no need for you
to come!"
There was not. Even if her voice had not
so significantly conveyed the fact that there
was no bottle in her wagon this time, Mrs.
Billy Jones—to put a hard fact politely—was
about the most capable lady I had ever met.
She was big-boned, hard-faced and profane;
and usually left Billy to look after the house
while she attended to a line of traps, or hunted
bears for their skins. No wolves would worry
the intrepid and thoroughly armed Mrs. Jones.


88 The La Chance Mine Mystery
But all the same I was riding some of the way
back to La Chance.
There was not a thing to be seen on the cor-
duroy road through the swamp, or on the hill
we had come down at the dead run; and I had
not expected there would be. But on the top
of the hill I bade good-by to my dream girl,—
who was not mine, and was going back to Dud-
ley. It was all I could manage to do it, too.
I did not know I was biting my lip until it
hurt; then I stopped watching her out of sight
and turned back on the business that had
brought me.
You could ride a horse down the hill into the
swamp if you knew how; and I did. I tied
him to a tree and went over each side of the cor-
duroy road on my feet. It was silent as death
there in the cold gray morning, with the frost-
fog clinging in the somber hemlocks, and the
swamp frozen so solid that my moccasins never
left a mark. No one else's feet had left a mark
there, either, and I would have given up the
idea that a man had been cached by the road
the night before, if it had not been for two
things.
One was a dead wolf, with a gash in his
throat in which the knife had been left till he
was cold; you could tell by the blood clots
round the wound: the other I did not find at
once. But wolves do not stab themselves, and


I Find Little Enough 89
I remembered that the lone wolf cry ahead of
us on that road had been a dying cry, not a
hunting one. If Collins had killed the beast
he had waited there long enough to let an hour
pass before he took his knife out of its throat:
so he had been there when we raced by,—which
was all I wanted to know, except where he had
gone since. As for the other thing I found, it
was behind the hemlocks when I quartered the
sides of the road in the silence and the frost-
fog: and it was nothing but a patch of shell ice.
But the flimsy, crackling stuff was crushed
into two cup-like marks, as plainly telltale as
if I had seen a man fall on his knees in them.
And by them, frozen there, were a dozen drops
of blood.
I knew angrily that if it were Collins's blood
he had not missed it particularly, for he had
moved away without leaving a sign of a trail.
Where to I had no means of knowing, till five
minutes later I found another spatter of blood
on my corduroy road,—and as I looked at it
my own blood boiled. There was not only no
one but that young devil Collins who could
have lain in wait for me; but he had had the
nerve to walk away on my own road! Where
to, beat me; but considering what I knew of his
easy deviltry it was probably back to La
Chance and a girl who was daring to fight
him.


90 The La Chance Mine Mystery
If I were worried for that girl I could not
go back to her. I had to get my gold to Cara-
quet. Besides, I had a feeling it might be use-
ful to do a little still hunting round Skunk's
Misery. If Collins had had that bottle of
devil's brew at La Chance he had got it from
Skunk's Misery: probably out of the very hut
where I had once nursed a filthy boy. And I
had a feeling that the first thing I needed to do
was to prove it.
As I rode back to Billy Jones's I would have
given a deal for any kind of a motor car that
would have reduced the twenty-seven miles to
Caraquet into nothing, instead of an all-day
job,—which it proved to be.
Not that I met a soul on the road. I didn't.
But it took my wagon four hours to reach
Caraquet over the frozen ruts of that same
road; and another hour to hand over Dudley's
gold to Randall, a man of my own who was to
carry it on the mail coach to the distant rail-
way.
I had no worry about the gold, once Randall
had charge of it: no one was likely to trouble
him or the coach on the open post road, even
if they had guessed what he convoyed. I was
turning away, whistling at being rid of the
stuff, when he called me back to hand over a
bundle of letters for La Chance. There were
three for Marcia, and one—in old Thomp-


I Find Little Enough 91
son's back-number copperplate—for Dudley.
There were no letters for Paulette Brown or
myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected
any. I know I hadn't. I gave the Wilbra-
ham family's correspondence the careless
glance you always bestow on other people's let-
ters and shoved it into my inside pocket.
After which I left my horses and wagon safe
in Randall's stable and started to walk back to
Skunk's Misery and the Halfway stables.
It seemed a fool thing to do, and I had no
particular use for walking all that way; but
there was no other means of accomplishing the
twenty miles through the bush from Caraquet
to Skunk's Misery. Aside from the fact that
I had no desire to advertise my arrival, there
was no wagon road to Skunk's Misery. Its
inhabitants did not possess wagons,—or horses
to put in them.
It was black dark when I reached the place,
and for a moment I stood and considered it.
I had never really visualized it before, any
more than you do any place that you take for
granted as outside your scheme of existence.
I was not so sure that it was, now. Anyhow,
I stood in the gap of a desolate hill and looked
into the hollow before me that—added to the
dirt no skunk could stand—had earned the
place its name. It was all stones: gravel
stones, little stones, stones as big as cabs and as


I Find Little Enough 93
been able to guess. Caraquet said it was on
wolf bounties,—which was another thing that
had set me thinking about the bottle I had
spilt on my clothes. If Collins or Dunn had
got a similar bottle there I meant to find out
about it: and I had the more heart for doing it
since Paulette Brown knew nothing of Skunk's
Misery. You can tell when a girl has never
heard of a place, and I knew she had never
heard of that one. I settled down the revolver
I had filled up at Billy Jones's, and trod softly
down the nearest of the winding alleys, over
the worn pine needles, in the dark.
There were just twenty houses, when I had
counted all I could find. There might have
been twenty more, under rocks and behind
rocks I could not make my way around; but I
was no porcupine, and in the dark I could not
stumble on them. There was not a sign of a
stranger in the place, or a soul about. And
judging from the darkness and the quiet, all
the fat-faced, indifferent women were in bed
and asleep, and the shiftless rats of men were
still away. There were no dogs to bark at me:
I had learned that in my previous sojourn
there. Dogs required food, and Skunk's Mis-
ery had none to spare. I went back through
the one winding alley that was familiar to me,
found the hut Avhere I had nursed the boy, and
walked in.


94 The La Chance Mine Mystery
There was not any Collins there, anyhow.
The boy and his mother were in bed, or what
Avent for being in bed. But at the sound of
my voice the woman fairly flung herself at me,
saying that her son was recovered again, and
it was I who had saved him for her. She piled
wood on the fire that was built up against the
face of the rock that formed two sides of her
house, and jabbered gratitude as I had never
thought any Skunk's Misery woman could jab-
ber. And she did not look like one, either;
she was handsome, in a haggard, vicious way,
and she was not old. I did not think myself
that her son looked particularly recovered.
He lay like a log on his spruce-bough bed,
awake and conscious but wholly speechless,
though his mother seemed satisfied. But I
had not come to talk about any sick boys. I
asked casually where I could find the stranger
who had been in Skunk's Misery lately. But
the woman only stared at me, as if the idea
would not filter into her head. Presently she
said dully that there had been no stranger
there; I was the only one she had ever seen.
It was likely enough; a Skunk's Misery mes-
senger had more probably taken the wolf dope
to Collins. I asked casually if she had any
more of the stuff I had spilt on my clothes, and
where she had got it,—and once more I ran
bang up against a stone wall. The woman ex-


I Find Little Enough 95
plained matter-of-f actly that she had not got it
from any one. She had found it standing in
the sun beside one of the rocks, and stolen it,
supposing it was gin. When she found it was
not she took it for some sort of liniment;
and put it where I had knocked it over on my-
self. She had never seen nor heard of any more
of it. But of course it might have belonged to
any one in the place, only I could understand
she could not ask about it: which I did, know-
ing how precious a whole bottle of anything
was in those surroundings. As to where she
had found it, she could not be sure. She
thought it was by the new house the French-
woman's son had built that autumn and never
lived in!
I pricked up my ears. The Frenchwoman's
son was one of the men arrested in Quebec
province for using wolf dope: a handsome,
elusive devil who sometimes haunted the lum-
ber woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant,
trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to
him, and paying back interruptions with such
interest that no one was keen to interfere with
him. If the Frenchwoman's son were in with
Collins in trying to hold up the La Chance
gold, and was at Skunk's Misery now, I saw
daylight,—anyhow about the wolf dope.
But the woman by the fire knocked that idea
out of me, half-made. The Frenchwoman's


96 The La Chance Mine Mystery
son had not been there for two months past and
had only come there at all to build a house. It
was empty now, but no one had dared to go
into it. She could show it to me, but she was
sure he had had nothing to do with that lini-
ment, if I wanted any more. After which she
relapsed into indifference, or I thought so, till
I showed her what little money I had in my
pocket. She rose then, abruptly, and led the
way out of her hut to the deserted house the
Frenchwoman's son had built for caprice and
never lived in.
It was deserted enough, in all conscience.
The door was open, and the November wind
free to play through the place as it liked. I
stood on the threshold, thinking. I had found
out nothing about any wolf-bait, excepting the
one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or
might not have left there; certainly nothing
about Collins ever having got hold of any; and
if I had meant to spend the rest of the night in
Skunk's Misery I saw no particular sense in
doing it. I had a solid conviction that the
boy's mother would not mention I had ever
been there, for fear she might have to share
what little I had given her—which, as it fell
out, was true—and turned to go.
But when the woman had left me to creep
home in the dark, while I made my own way
out of the village, I altered my mind about


I Find Little Enough 97
going. I cut down enough pine boughs to
make a bed under me, shut the door of the de-
serted house—that I knew enough of the
Frenchwoman's son to know would have no
visitors—had a drink from my flask, and slept
the sleep of the hunting dog till it should be
daylight.
And, like the hunting dog, I went on with my
business in my dreams; till my legs jerked and
woke me, to see a waning moon peering in from
the west, through the hole that served the hut
for a chimney, and I rose to go back to Billy
Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of
men in a cellar under the very hut I slept in,
with a business-like row of wolf-bait bottles at
their feet, where they sat squabbling over a
poker game. But as I said, it was the waning
morning moon that woke me, and the hut was
silent as the grave. I picked up the pine-
bough bed I had slept on and carried it into the
bush with me far enough to throw it down
where it would tell no tales—I did not know
why I did it, but I was to be glad—tightened
up my belt, and took a short cut through the
thick bush to Billy Jones's stables, with noth-
ing to show for my day's and night's work but
a dead wolf, a stained bit of shell ice, and a few
drops of blood on the logs of my corduroy
road. I was starving, and it was noonday,
when I came out of the bush and tramped into


I Find Little Enough 99
with its careful, back-number copperplate ad-
dress, lay in my pocket now.
"It's Thompson 1" was the only thing I
could say.
ot
6033


CHAPTER VIII
THOMPSON!
Thompson it was, if it seemed incredible.
And Billy Jones exclaimed, as he pointed to
him, "He can't have been dead longer than
since last night! And I can't understand this
thing, Mr. Stretton! It's but six weeks since
Thompson left here; and from what he said he
didn't mean to come back. He told me he was
in a hurry to get away, because he was taking
a position in a copper mine in the West. I re-
member I warned him you hadn't got all your
swamps corduroyed, and likely he couldn't
drive clear into Caraquet; so he left his wagon
here and borrowed a saddle from me to ride
over. And a boy brought his horse back next
day, or day after,—I forget which. I remem-
ber Thompson forgot to send me a tin of to-
bacco he promised to get me off Randall, at
Caraquet!"
"D'ye mean you think he never went to
Caraquet?" It was a stupid question, for, of
course, I knew he had gone there, and farther,
or he could not have sent Macartney to La


Thompson! 101
Chance, or a letter to Dudley now. But what
I was really thinking of was that I had been
right about the date old Thompson left the
mine, and that he had gone over my road on
one of the two days I was away with all my
road men, getting logs out of the bush.
Billy Jones scattered my thoughts impa-
tiently: "Oh, he went there all right. It's his
—coming back—that beats me!"
It beat me too, for reasons Billy knew noth-
ing about. Why Thompson had come back
was his own business; but it was plain he had
been dead a scant twenty-four hours, and the
only place I could think of where he was likely
to have been killed was on my corduroy road
the night before. Only I did not see how
Thompson's clothes could have got water-
soaked in a frozen swamp; and I did not see,
either, what a decent man like Thompson could
have been doing out there like a wolf, with
wolves. I had more sense than to think he
could have had any truck with Collins about
our gold. I nodded back at the teamsters:
"Where did they find him?"
"They didn't find him," returned Billy sim-
ply, " it was my hound dog. He was yelling
down at the lake shore this morning, like he'd
treed a wildcat, and when I went down it was
Thompson he'd found,—lying right on shore
in the daylight! You know how that fool Lac


io2 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Tremblant behaves; the water in it had gone
down to nothing this morning, and on the bare
stones it had left was Thompson. Only I
don't see how he ever got there unless he was
coming back, from wherever he'd been outside,
by Lac Tremblant instead of your road!"
"Where was his canoe?"
"He didn't have any! But you know that
lake—it might have smashed his canoe on him
like an egg, and then—just by chance—put
him ashore!" I did know: I had had all I
wanted to keep from being smashed myself the
night I crossed to La Chance. I nodded, and
Billy choked. "It—it kind of sickened me
this morning; I liked Thompson, Mr. Stret-
ton!"
So had I, if I had laughed at his eternal soli-
taire. Billy and I laid him on the bed, de-
cently, after we had done what we could for
him. And I was ashamed to have even won-
dered if he had been the man Paulette had shot
at on the La Chance road; for there was not a
mark on him, and a fool could have told he had
just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. There
was nothing in his pockets to tell how he had
got there: only a single two-dollar bill and a
damp pack of cards in a wet leather case.
Thompson's solitaire cards! Somehow the
things gave me a lump in my throat; I wished
I had talked more to Thompson in the long


TKbmpson! 103
evenings. The letter m my pocket from him
was Dudley's, and I did not mention it to
Billy. I said I would try to find out where
the dead man had come from, and anything
else I could, before he buried him. And with
that I left old Thompson lying on Billy's bed
with his face covered, and rode home to La
Chance.
When I got in, Dudley and Macartney were
in the living room, talking. Any other time I
might have wondered why Dudley looked so
jumpy and bad-tempered, but all I was think-
ing of then was my ugly news. But before I
could tell it, Dudley flew at me. "Where the
devil have you been all day? And what's hap-
pened to my gold?"
I don't know why, but I had a furious, cold
qualm that either Dudley or Macartney had
found out,—I don't mean about Collins so
much as about Paulette having been mixed up
with him. Till I knew I was damned if I'd
mention him.
"I don't understand," I said shortly. "The
gold's in Caraquet. But the reason I didn't
get home this morning is that Thompson's
back!"
"What?" Macartney never spoke loud, yet
it cracked out.
I nodded. "I mean he's dead, poor chap!
They found his body in Lac Tremblant this


104 The La Chance Mine"Mystery-
morning." And suddenly I knew I was star-
ing at Macartney. His capable face was al-
ways pale, but in one second it had gone
ghastly. It came over me that he had known
old Thompson all his life, and I blurted in-
voluntarily, " I'm sorry, Macartney!"
But he took no notice.
"They found Thompson's body," he said
heavily, as a man does when he is sick with
shock. "Who found it? Why,—he wasn't
here! What in hell do you mean?"
I told him. Dudley sat and goggled at the
two of us, but Macartney stared at the floor,
his face still ghastly. "I beg your pardon,
Stretton," he muttered as if he were dizzy.
"Only Thompson was about the oldest friend
I had. I thought "But he checked him-
self and exclaimed with a sudden sharp doubt,
"It can't be old Thompson, Stretton; you
must be mistaken! He couldn't be here—he
was going out West. I was expecting a letter
from him any day, to say he'd started."
"It's here. At least, I mean there's a letter
from him, that I got in Caraquet, only it's for
Mr. Wilbraham. And I wasn't mistaken,
Macartney. I wish I were!"
Macartney could not speak. I was sur-
prised; I had not suspected him of much of a
heart. I pulled out the letter, and Dudley
opened it.


Thompson I 105
"Down and out—the poor old devil," said
he slowly, staring at it, " and came back. Well,
poor Thompson!" He read the thing again
and handed it to Macartney. But Macartney
only gave one silent, comprehensive stare at it,
in the set-eyed way that was the only thing I
had never liked about him, and pushed the
letter across the table to me.
It was dated and postmarked Montreal.
There was no street address, which was not like
Thompson. But its precise phrases, which
were like him, sounded down and out all right.
"Dear Mb. Wilbraham: I write to inquire
if you will take me back at La Chance. There
is no work here, or anywhere, and the British
Columbia copper mine, where I intended to
go, has shut down. I have nothing else in
view, and I am stranded. If by to-morrow I
cannot obtain work here I see nothing between
me and starvation but to return to La Chance.
I trust you can see your way to taking me
back, in no matter how subordinate a position,
at least till I can hear of something else. If I
am obliged to chance coming to you I will take
the shortest route, avoiding Caraquet, and com-
ing by Lac Tremblant.
"Yours truly,
"William D. Thompson."
"That's funny," I let out involuntarily.


106 The La Chance Mine Mystery
And Dudley snapped at me that it wasn't; it
was ghastly.
"I don't mean the letter," I said absently.
"It's that about Lac Tremblant. Thompson
was scared blue of that lake; he used to beg me
not to go out on it. And by gad, Dudley, I
don't see how he could have come that way!
He couldn't paddle a canoe!"
"What? " Macartney started, staring at me.
"You're right: he couldn't," he said slowly.
"That does make it queer—except that we
don't know he meant to paddle up the lake.
He might have intended to walk here along its
shore, and strayed or slipped in or something,
in the dark. But what troubles me is—can't
you see he'd gone crazy? This letter "-—he put
a finger on it, eloquently—" isn't sane, from a
self-contained man like Thompson! He must
have been off his head with worry before he
wrote it, or started back to a place he'd left
for"
"Incompetency, if you want the brutal
truth," Dudley broke in not unkindly. "He
was too old-fashioned to make good elsewhere,
I expect; and if he found it out, I don't wonder
if he did go off his head."
I glanced over Dudley's shoulder at the let-
ter he and Macartney were studying. It did
not look crazy, with its Gaskell's Compendium
copperplate and its careful signature. I don't


108 The La Chance Mine Mystery
my life, and I've no gold—if that's what he
means! I "but he broke down completely.
"Old Thompson must have gone stark mad,"
he muttered. "I—it makes me heartsick!"
"I don't know," Dudley snapped unexpect-
edly. "It fits about the gold, perhaps.
Thompson might have suspected something
before he left here!"
He looked at Macartney significantly, and I
remembered the question he had rapped at me
when I came in. Something inside me told me
to hold my tongue concerning my adventures
on the Caraquet road till I knew what Paul-
ette had said about them,—which I was pretty
certain was mighty little. But once again I
had that cold fear that Macartney might have
found out something about the seal she had
put on all our gold, or her talking to Collins
in the dark, for the question Dudley flung at
me was just what I had been expecting:
"You didn't see anything of Dunn or Col-
lins between here and Caraquet—or hear from
Billy Jones that they'd gone by the Half-
way?"
"No," I fenced with a bland, lying truth.
"I saw two of our teamsters at the Half-
way!"
Dudley shook his head. "Not them—I
knew about them! But Dunn and Col-
lins cleared out the day you left, and I


Thompson! 109
thought "he broke off irrelevantly.
"What the dickens possessed you to take
Paulette with you that night? She might
have been killed—I heard you'd the dog's own
trouble on the road!"
That something inside me stiffened up.
Whatever he'd heard, I was pretty certain was
not all; and I was hanged if I were coming out
with the full story of that crazy drive till I
knew whether Paulette came into it. I had
no desire to talk before Macartney either, in
spite of what he might have found out, or
guessed; no matter what Paulette might have
been mixed up in I was not going to have a
stern-faced, set-eyed Macartney put her
through a catechism about it. Or Dudley
either, for that matter. I had no real voucher
for the terms he and Paulette were on, except
Marcia's word; and Dudley was no man to
trust not to turn on a girl.
"We shot a few wolves, if that's what you
mean," I said roughly. "I don't see why that
should have worried you about Miss Paulette—
or what it has to do with Dunn and Collins!"
■—which was a plain lie.
"Few wolves! I know all about them!"
Dudley retorted viciously. "Billy Jones's
wife came out with the plain truth—that you'd
been chased by a pack! And as for what Dunn
and Collins had to do with my worrying about


no The La Chance Mine Mystery
the gold you carried, it's simple enough.
They "but he stopped, chewing two fin-
gers with a disgusting trick he had. "By gad,"
he looked up suddenly, " I believe it was them
the wolves were after to begin with, Stretton—
before they got started on you! And it wasn't
what they left La Chance for!"
"What d'ye mean?"
Dudley was chewing his fingers again, but
Macartney answered with his usual set-eyed
openness. "The gold," he supplied. "I got
an idea those two deserters might have laid up
beside the Caraquet road somewhere, to wait
for you and get it. I had trouble with them
over some drilling the morning you left; and
when I went back to the stope after seeing you
and Miss Paulette off, they'd cleared out.
They must have gone a couple of hours before
you did. They let out something about hold-
ups while I was having the trouble with them,
and Wilbraham and I got worried they might
have managed to get over the road before you,
and be lying up for you somewhere."
"They only left—two hours before I did,"
said I, with flat irrelevance. I must have
stared at Macartney like a fool, but he had
knocked the wind clean out of me as to Collins
having been the man in the swamp. With
only two hours' start neither he nor Dunn, nor
any man, for matter of that, could have legged


Thompson! in
it over my road in time to lie up in the only
place I knew some one had laid up,—on the
corduroy road.
"Well, they didn't get me, and I never saw
them," I began,—and suddenly remembered
that ghastly noi.se, like the last flurry of a dog
fight, that had halted the wolves on my track.
My first thought of it, and of Dunn and Col-
lins, had been right. "By gad, I believe I
heard them though," I exclaimed, " and if they
were on that road they're killed and eaten!
But I didn't have any trouble about the
gold."
It was true to the letter, for my side had
attended to all the trouble, if my side was only
a girl who would not have shot without need.
But when I explained the noise that might have
accounted for Dunn and Collins, Dudley shook
his head.
"They didn't get eaten; not they! And
your having no trouble with the gold isn't say-
ing you won't have any. If no one saw Dunn
and Collins going out to Caraquet I bet they're
laid up somewhere on your rond yet, waiting
for your next trip! And as if that wasn't
worry enough, poor old Thompson has to go
out of his mind and come back here to be found
dead—and I mean to find out how!" He was
working himself up into one of his senseless
rages, and he turned on Macartney furiously.


112 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"You knew him before I did! Write to his
people and find out how he got here, anyhow.
I'm not going to have any man come back,
and just be found dead like a dog, if it is only
old Thompson! I'm going to have him traced
from the time he left Montreal."
"He had no people," said Macartney
blankly. "As far as I know, he was just a
bit of driftwood. And as for finding out any-
thing about his journey here, I don't suppose
we ever can! All we'll get at was that he came
back—and was found dead." And something
made me look past him and Dudley, sitting
with their backs to the living-room door, and
the blood jumped into my face.
Paulette Brown stood in the doorway, mo-
tionless, as if she had been there some time.
I didn't know if she were merely knocked flat
about the wolves and Collins, or scared
Macartney might have found out something
about her. But she was staring at Macartney's
unconscious back as you look at a chair or
anything, without seeing it, and if he were
pale she was dead white,—except her mouth
that was arched to a piteous crimson bow, and
her eyes that looked dark as pools of blue ink.
But she did not speak of Dunn or Collins.
"Do you mean Thompson's been found
dead?—the quiet man who was here when I
came?" she stammered, as if it choked her.


Thompson! 113
And I had an ungodly fright she was going to
say she must have shot him on the corduroy
road!
"Billy Jones found him drowned in Lac
Tremblant; it was an accident," I exclaimed
sharply, before she could come out with more
about shooting and wolf bait, and perhaps her-
self, than I chose any one to know,—till I
knew it first. And I saw the blood flash into
her face as it had flashed into mine at the sight
of her.
"Oh, I thought Mr. Macartney meant he'd
been—murdered," she returned faintly. "I'm
glad—he wasn't. But if he had been, I sup-
pose it would be sure to come out!"
"Crime doesn't always come out, Miss Paul-
ette," said Macartney.
But Paulette only answered listlessly that
she was not sure, one never could tell; and
moved to her usual seat by the fire.
I was knocked endways about Collins; for
who could have been on the corduroy road if he
had not. I would have given most of the
world for ten minutes alone with my dream
girl and explanations. But Dudley began the
whole story of Thompson over again, and
Macartney stood there, and Marcia—whom I
had not seen since she went to bed with a
swollen face—came in, dressed in her hideous
green tweed, and stood on tiptoe to chuck me


ii4 The La Chance Mine Mystery
under the chin, with a " Hullo, Nicky, you're
back again!"
There was no earthly hope of speaking to
my dream girl alone. I shoved the mystery
of Collins into the back of my head and went
off to my room before I remembered I was
still unconsciously holding that torn-off flap
of poor old Thompson's envelope in my shut
fist. I dropped it on my floor,—and grabbed
it up again, to stare at it for a full minute.
Because there was writing on it, too.
"For God's sake, search my cards—my
cards—my cards," Thompson had scrawled
across the three-cornered envelope flap Ma-
cartney's grab had left in my hand: and, know-
ing Thompson, it was pitiful. He was the
sort who must have been crazy indeed before
he spoke of the Almighty and cards in the same
breath.
I remembered taking his measly solitaire
pack out of his pocket at the Halfway, and
wished I had brought them along with me.
But it was simple enough to go and get them
from Billy Jones. Meantime I had no desire
to speak to Macartney of them or the scrawled,
torn-off flap from Thompson's envelope: he
was sick enough already about old Thompson's
aberration, without any more proofs of it. It
hurt even me to remember I had always
laughed at the poor devil and his forlorn cards.


CHAPTER IX
TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!
Poor old Thompson seemed a closed inci-
dent. There was nothing to be found out
about him, even regarding his departure from
La Chance. Nobody remembered his going
through Caraquet, or even the last time he had
been there. He was not a man any one would
remember, anyhow, or one who had made
friends. We put a notice of his death and the
circumstances in a Montreal paper, and I
thought that was the end of it all, till Dudley,
to my surprise, stuck obstinately to his idea of
tracing Thompson from Montreal. He told
Macartney and me that he had written to a
detective about it, and I think we both thought
it was silly. I know I did; and I saw Macart-
ney close his lips as though he kept back the
same thought. But we gave old Thompson
the best funeral we could, over at the Halfway,
with a good grave and a wooden cross. All of
us went except Marcia. She suid she had
never cared about the poor old thing, and she
wasn't going to pretend it.


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 117
It was a bitter day, with no snow come
yet. Macartney looked sick and drawn about
the mouth as he stood by the grave, while
Dudley read the prayers out of Paulette's-
prayer book. I saw her notice Macartney
when I did, and I think neither of us had
guessed he had so much feeling. I stayed a
minute or two behind the others, because I'd
ridden over, instead of driving with them; and
just before I started for La Chance I remem-
bered that torn scrap of paper in my room
there. I turned hastily to Billy Jones.
"Those solitaire cards of Thompson's," said
I, from no reason on earth but that to find
them had been the last request of the dead man,
even if it did sound crazy. "I'd like them!"
Billy nodded and went into his shack.
Presently he came out and said the cards were
gone. He thought he'd put them away some-
where, but they weren't to be found. It was
queer, too, because he remembered replacing
them in their prayer-book sort of case after
he'd spread them by the stove to dry with
Thompson's clothes. But his wife said she
would find them and send them over. Which
she never did, and I forgot them. Goodness
knows I had reason to.
I did an errand instead of going straight
home from Thompson's funeral that took me
into the bush not far from where the boulder


ii8 The La Chance Mine Mystery
had been placed on my road. It was there or
near by I had heard wolves pull down a man or
men; and after I'd tied my horse and done a
little looking around, I found the spot. It
was not the scattered bones of two men that
sickened me, or even that the long thighs
and shanks of one of them were the measure
of Collins. It was the top of a skull, with the
hair still on it. I did not need the face that was
missing. Dunn, with his eternal chuckle, had
had stubbly fair hair without a part in it,
clipped close till it stood on end,—and the
same fair hair was on the top of the skull that
lay like a round stone in the frozen bush.
Whether the two had set out to rob me I didn't
know. I did know they had not done it, and
that the man Paulette had shot at in the swamp
was more of a mystery than ever.
The ground was too hard to do any burying.
I made the bones into a decent heap and piled
rocks into a cairn over them. If I said a kind
of a prayer, too, it was no one's business but
that of the God who heard me; the boys had
been young, and they were dead while I lived,
which was enough to make a man pray. I
felt better when I had done it.
But when I got home to La Chance the bald
story I told Dudley was wasted. He swore I
was a fool, first, for burying two skulls with
no faces and imagining they belonged to Dunn


Tatiana Paulina Valenka 119
and Collins; and next that they were still alive
and meaning to run a hold-up on us. From
where, or how, he couldn't say. But he kept
on at the thing; and the minute he had half a
drink in him—which was usually the first thing
in the morning—he began to worry me to go
out and find where they were cached and hike
them out of it; and he kept at it all day. That
would not have worried me much since it was
only Dudley, and Macartney and the others
believed my story; but everything else at La
Chance began to go crooked, and every one's
nerves got edgy. Marcia was unpleasantly
silent, except when Macartney was there, when
she sat in his pocket and they talked low like
lovers,—only that I was always idiotically
nervous they might be talking about Paulette
Brown. That was seldom enough though, for
half the time Macartney never showed up,
even for meals. He was working like ten men
over the mine, and good, solid, capable work
at that. Whatever had made poor Thompson
send him to us he was worth his weight in the
gold he was getting out of La Chance in
Well, in chunks! Which was one of the rea-
sons he had to work so hard, and brings me
to the naked trouble at La Chance.
We were deadly short of men. Not only
were Dunn and Collins dead, but their grisly
end seemed to have scared the others. Not a


120 The La Chance Mine Mystery
day went by that three or four of them did not
come for their time, chiefly rockmen and team-
sters,—for we had no ore chute at La Chance.
Macartney thought it was Dudley's fault, for
nagging around all the time, and was sore over
it. Dudley said it was Macartney's, though
when I pressed him he said, too, that he did not
know why. The men I spoke to before they
left just said they'd had enough of La Chance,
but I could feel a sulky underhand rebellion in
the bunk house. I ran the ore hauling as best
I could, and Macartney doubled up the work
in the mill. The ore-feeder acted as crusher-
man, too, the engineer was his own fireman,
which, with the battery man and the amalga-
mator, brought the mill staff down to four,—
but they were the best of our men. The others
Macartney turned to with the rockmen, and
in the course of a fortnight he got a few more
men from somewhere he wrote to outside.
They were a rough lot; not troublesome, but
the kind of rough that saves itself backache and
elbow grease. Personally, I think they would
not have worked at all, if Macartney had not
put the fear of death in them. I caught him
at it, and though I did not hear what he said
in that competent low voice of his, there was
no more lounging around and grinning from
our new men. But the trouble among the
old men kept on till we had none of them left


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 121
except the four in the mill. It did not con-
cern me particularly, except that I had to work
on odd jobs that should not have concerned
me either, and I did not think much about it.
What I really did think about—and it put
me out of gear more than anything else at La
Chance—was Paulette Brown!
It had been all very well to call her my dream
girl and -to think I'd got to heaven because
she'd taken the trouble to drive to the Half-
way with me and fight wolves. But she had
hardly spoken to me since. And—well, not
only the bones and skull I'd buried had
smashed up my theory that it was only Collins
who'd meant to hold up my gold, but I'd
smashed it up, for myself, for a reason that
made me wild: Paulette Brown, whose real
name Marcia swore was something else, was
still meeting a man in the dark! Where, I
couldn't tell, but I knew she did meet him;
and naturally I knew the man was not Collins,
or ever had been. I did my best to get a talk
with her, but she ran from me like a rabbit. I
was worried good and hard. For from what
I'd picked up, I knew the man she met could
be nobody at La Chance,—and any outsider
who followed a girl there likely had a gang
with him and meant business, not child's play
like Collins.
The thing was serious, and I had no right


122 The La Chance Mine Mystery
to be trusting my dream girl and keeping si-
lence to Dudley, but I went on doing it. There
is no sense in keeping things back. I was mad
with love for her, and if she had given me a
chance I would have brushed Dudley out of my
way like a straw. I had to grip all the decency
I had not to do it, anyway. But if you think I
just made an easy resignation of her and sat
back meekly, you're wrong. I sat back be-
cause I was helpless and too stupid to formu-
late any way to deal with the situation. I
don't know that I was any more silent than I
always am, though Marcia said so. I did get
into the way of pretending to write letters in
the evenings, while Marcia and Macartney
talked low, and Dudley went up and down the
room in his eternal trudge of nervousness,
throwing a word now and then to Paulette
seated sewing by the fire,—that I kept my
back to so that the others could not see my
face.
But one night, nearly a month after Thomp-
son was buried, I came in after supper, and
Paulette was in my usual place. She was
writing a letter or something, and Dudley was
preaching to Macartney about the shortage of
men in the bunk house. Marcia, cross as two
sticks because she was only there to talk to
Macartney herself, had Paulette's seat by the
fire. I sat down by the table where Paulette


Tatiana Paulina Valenkal 123
was writing, more sideways than behind
her.
If I had chosen to look I could have read
every word she was writing. But naturally I
was not choosing to, for one thing, and for
another my eyes were glued to her face. Some-
thing in the look of her gave me a sick shock.
She was deadly pale, and under the light of
Charliet's half-trimmed lamp I saw the blue
marks under her eyes, and the tight look round
the nostrils that only come to a woman's face
when she is fighting something that is pretty
nearly past her, and is next door to despair.
She looked hunted; that was the only word
there was for it. It struck me that look must
stop. If I had to march her out into the bush
with me by force next morning, I meant to get
a solitary talk with her; find out what her
mysterious business was at La Chance with a
man who had laid up for our gold; and, with
any luck, transfer the hunted look to the face
of the man who was hounding her,—for I felt
certain he was still hanging around La Chance.
After that—but there could be no after that
to matter to me, with a dream girl who scooted
to Dudley every time I tried to speak to her!
I took a half-glance at him, and it was plain
enough he would be no good to her in the
kind of trouble that was on now. If I couldn't
have her—since she didn't want me—I was the


124 The La Chance Mine Mystery
only person who could help her. She was
angel-sweet to Dudley, heaven knows, and he
was charming to her when he was himself.
When he was not, he had a patronizing, half-
threatening way of speaking to her, as if he
knew something ugly about her, as Marcia had
insinuated, that made me boil. She never re-
sented it either, and that made me boil too. If
I had ever seen her even shrink from him, I
don't know that the curb bit I had on myself
would have held. I wished to heaven she
would shrink and give me a chance to step in
between her and a man who might love her, as
Marcia said, but who loved drink and drugs
better, or he would not have been talking be-
tween silliness and sobriety, as he was that
night. And I was so busy wishing it that
Marcia spoke to me three times before I heard
her.
"Nicky, do make Dudley shut up," she
repeated, "he won't let any one else speak!
He's been preaching the whole evening that
Collins and Dunn aren't dead, only laid up
somewhere round and making the other men
desert, and you ought to go and find them—
and now he's worrying us about that old idiot
Thompson, who got himself drowned! For
heaven's sake tell him no one would have
bothered to murder the old wretch!"
"Nobody ever thought he was murdered,


Tatiana Paulina Valenkal 125
and I buried Dunn and Collins right enough,"
said I absently, with my thoughts still on
Paulette. But Dudley whisked around on
me.
"Marcia's talking rot," he exclaimed, his
little pig's eyes soberer than I expected. "I
don't mean about those two boys, for I bet
they're no more dead than I am, and it would
be just like them to lie low and set up a
smothered strike among the men as soon as
you were ass enough to be taken in by some
stray bones! But I do mean it about Thomp-
son. There's no sense in saying there was
nothing queer about the way he came back and
was found dead—because there was! It was
natural enough that the police couldn't trace
him in Montreal, for I hadn't a sign of data to
give them: but it's darned unnatural that I
can't trace him in Caraquet. I've sieved the
whole place upside down, and nobody ever saw
Thompson after he left Billy Jones's that
morning on his way to Caraquet!"
Macartney stared at him for a minute; then
he put down the pipe he was smoking. "If I
thought that, I'd sieve the whole place upside
down, too," he said so quietly that I remem-
bered Thompson had been his best friend, and
that he had looked deadly sick beside his grave.
"But I don't. What it comes to with me is
that no one remembers seeing Thompson in


126 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Caraquet that particular time, but no one says
he wasn't there!"
"Then where's the "But Dudley
checked himself quick as light. If I had been
quite sure he was himself I should have been
curious about what he had meant to say. But
all he substituted was: " Well, nobody remem-
bers seeing him that day, anyway, except Billy
Jones!"
"Seems to me that narrows poor Thomp-
son's potential murderers down to Billy
Jones," said Macartney ironically, since Billy
Jones would not have murdered the meanest
yellow pup that ever walked, and Macartney
knew it as well as I did. But Dudley made
the two of us sit up.
"Who's to say he didn't?" he demanded.
"What darned thing do we know about him to
say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old
Thompson for what money he had on him,
and kept him shut up till he had a chance to
say he found him drowned?"
Macartney and I stared at each other. The
very thought was so monstrous that it must
have struck him, as it did me, that it was born
of Dudley's drugs and not his intelligence.
But it had to be stopped, or heaven knew whom
Dudley would be accusing next.
"For God's sake, Wilbraham, shut up,"
said Macartney curtly. "You make me sick.


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 127
Isn't it enough to have the old man dead, with-
out saying innocent people killed him!"
"Yes, if they are innocent," Dudley re-
turned so quietly that it surprised both of us.
"But I tell you this, Macartney, and Stretton
too—if any one within a hundred miles of this
mine did murder Thompson, Billy Jones or
any one else, it'll come out! " and he jerked his
head around. "Don't you think so, Paul-
ette?"
"I? I never thought of poor old Thompson
having been murdered!" She answered as if
she were startled, but she did not turn. "If
he was murdered I pray God it will be found
out," she added unexpectedly. She had made
two false starts at her letter and torn them up,
but she had evidently finished it to her liking
now, for she sat with the pen poised over the
blank end of the sheet to sign her name. Yet
she did not sign it. She only sat there ab-
stractedly, with her hand lifted from the wrist.
"There, you see," Dudley crowed tri-
umphantly. "Paulette's no fool: it's facts
she and I are after, Macartney. Why, you
take the history of crimes generally—mur-
ders—jewel robberies—kidnapping for money
—half of them with not nearly so much to
them as this thing about Thompson—they're
always found out!"
"If you're going to talk this rubbish, I'm


128 The La Chance Mine Mystery
going to bed," Marcia burst out wrathfully.
I saw her pause to catch Macartney's eye, but
for once his set gaze was on the floor. She
got up, which I don't think she had meant to
do, and flounced out of the room. I had no
idea I was going to be deadly thankful.
Macartney answered Dudley as the door
shut behind her. "I don't know that crimes
are always found out, in spite of your faith—
and Miss Paulette's," he argued half crossly.
"I could remind you of one or two that weren't.
What about the Mappin murder, way back in
nineteen-five? And that emerald business at
the Houstons' country house this spring, with
that dancing and circus-riding girl who used
to be at the Hippodrome—the Russian, who
did Russian dancing on her horse's back?
What was her name? I ought to remember.
I knew a poor devil of a cousin of hers out in
British Columbia who was engaged to her when
it happened, and he talked about her enough.
Oh, yes, Valenka! She had a funny Christian
name too, sort of half Russian, only I forget
it. But when that Valenka girl got away with
an emerald necklace from the Houstons' house
no one ever found out how it was done! You
must have heard about her, Stretton?"
I had. Every one had: Macartney need not
have troubled to hunt his memory for her
Christian name, though it had only reached me


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 129
in the wilderness through a stray New York
paper. But before I could say so Dudley
burst out with the same truculence he had used
about Billy Jones:
"What d'ye mean Stretton must have
heard?"
"Only that Mrs. Houston took a fancy to
Valenka and had her down to ride and dance
at a week-end party at her house in Long
Island; that on Sunday morning, Jimmy Van
Ruyne, one of the guests, was found in
Valenka's room, soaked with morphine and
robbed—not only of the cash in his pocket in
the good old way, but of an emerald necklace
he had just bought at Tiffany's; and that, to
this day, no one has ever laid eyes on that neck-
lace nor on Valenka. She's free and red-
handed somewhere, if no one ever found out
who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds
out of the United States!"
What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was
beyond me. But he fairly yelled at Macart-
ney.
"Free she may be, but when you say ' red-
handed ' you say a lie! If Jimmy Van Ruyne
was fool enough to think so, it was because no
Van Ruyne ever could see a. b. spelled ab.
D'ye know him? Well," as Macartney shook
his head, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one!
Got more money than he knows what to do


130 The La Chance Mine Mystery
with and always chasing after women. As for
Valenka, if you think she came out of a circus
and was fair game, that's a lie, too! She was
a lady, born and bred. Her mother was
American, a Miss Bocqueraz; and her father
was one of the best known men in Petrograd,
and persona grata with one of the Grand
Dukes till he got into some sort of political
disgrace and died of it. His daughter came
to America and danced and rode for her liv-
ing. First because she was beggared; and
second because she'd been taught dancing in
the Imperial School at Petrograd and riding in
the Grand Duchess Tatiana's private ring for
haute manSge; and was a corker at both. She
called herself plain Valenka, and Jimmy Van
Ruyne went crazy about her—though Mrs.
Houston didn't know it, or she never would
have asked the nasty little cad to a spring
week-end party."
"To lose an emerald necklace and be
stabbed and drugged," commented Macartney
drily. "Oh, I'm not saying the Valenka girl
wasn't a marvellous sight on a horse! But what
Van Ruyne told the police was that he gave
his string of emeralds to her on the Saturday
afternoon, and got a note from her just after
dinner saying that she returned them; only
the case—in the time-honored method this
time—was empty when he opened it! He was


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 131
blazing. He went straight up to Valenka's
room when he found it out, which was at two
in the morning, and said he wanted his emer-
alds; and she flew at him with a dagger. After
which he knew nothing at all till a servant
came in at eight and found him lying uncon-
scious in her empty room that she'd just walked
out of with his emeralds in her pocket. And
no one's ever laid eyes on her, or on Van
Ruyne's emeralds ever since."
"That's what Van Ruyne says," Dudley
began hotly—and went on in a different voice.
"The Valenka girl never stole his emeralds!
She may have cut him across the wrist with one
of those knife-things women will use for paper
cutters; I don't say she didn't. Any girl
would have been justified when a man forced
his way into her bedroom—for I bet Van
Ruyne didn't let out the whole story of that,
if he did let out that he bullied her when he
found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress,
either, on the fact that he was found with the
cut artery in his wrist—that was all the stab-
bing that ailed him—bound up as a surgeon
would have done it; or that he'd been given
just enough morphine to keep him from wrig-
gling off his bandage and bleeding to death
before anybody came: not Van Ruyne!"
"All that doesn't explain how Valenka got
away—or what became of her," said Macartney
■


132 The La Chance Mine Mystery
obstinately. "That's the mystery I began
on."
I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And
whether she had Van Ruyne's emeralds or not
I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka
girl's disappearance: she had probably had
some one outside who had taken her clear away
in a motor car. I said so, more because Dud-
ley was glaring at Macartney like a maniac
than anything else. And Dudley caught me
up short. "I won't have either of you say
one more word about Valenka in my house.
She was as good as she was pretty; and if
some one helped her away she—deserved it!"
There was something so like honest passion
in the break in his voice that involuntarily I
glanced at Paulette, to see if by any chance
she was startled at Dudley's evidently intimate
knowledge of a girl none of us had even heard
him speak of—and it took every bit of Indian
quiet I owned not to stare at her so hard that
Dudley and Macartney must have noticed.
She was listening, as motionless as if she were
a statue. Her lifted hand still held her pen
poised over her unfinished letter; but it was
rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it
was from anger, surprise, or jealousy of Dud-
ley, I had no idea, but she sat as if she had been
struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure
if she were perfectly collected,—or absolutely


Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 133
abstracted. For—without even a glance to
show she felt my eyes on her—the carved lines
of her poised hand fell to the level of her wrist
that lay flat on the table, and she began to
write the signature to her unfinished letter. I
could see every separate character as she
shaped it; and with the blazing enlightenment
of what she set down on paper only a merciful
heaven kept my wits in my skull and my tongue
quiet in my head.
For the signature she wrote as plainly as I
write it now was not Paulette Brown. It was
Tatiana Paulina—that" queer Christian name,
half Russian too," of the dancing circus-rider,
that no one had ever mentioned,—Tatiana
Paulina Valenka!


CHAPTER X
I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME
“Must I go now—in the moonlight clear?
Would God that it were dark,
That I might pass like a homeless hound
Men neither miss nor mark.”
The Ransom.
TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA)
I sat as still as if I had been stabbed. It
was no wonder she had laughed when I asked
her if she could ride, no wonder I had thought
she moved like Pavlova. Paulette Brown,
whom Dudley had brought to La Chance, was
Tatiana Paulina Valenka, who had or had not
stolen Van Ruyne's emeralds! But the blood
sprang into my face at the knowledge, for—by
all the holy souls and my dead mother's name—
she was my dream girl too! And I believed
in her.
All the same, I was thankful Marcia had
flounced out of the room before Dudley let
loose. It was no wonder she had thought she
had seen Paulette Brown before. The wonder
was that she had ever forgotten how she had


I Interfere For Last Time 135
seen her—dancing at the Hippodrome on her
four horses as no girl ever had danced—or for-
gotten the story about her that she had said
was “queer”! If Marcia's eyes had fallen on
the signature mine were on now, I knew her
first act would have been to write to Jimmy
Van Ruyne; that even if she had only heard
Dudley defending an ostensibly absent Va-
lenka she would have written—for Marcia was
no fool. Then and there I made up my mind
that Marcia should never guess the whole of
what she already half-guessed about Paulette
Brown; there were ways I could stop that.
As for Dudley But a sudden tide of
respect for Dudley, in spite of his drink and all
his queerness, rose flood-high in me. It
had been Dudley, of course, who had got
Paulette away,+for I could not think of her
as Tatiana Paulina. How, I did not know; I
knew he had not been one of the Houstons'
week-end party; but he had done it somehow,
and spirited Paulette out to La Chance. As
for the rest, a fool could have told that he
respected and believed in her. If it had been
risky bringing Marcia out into the wilderness
with her, it had been clever too, because it was
so bold that Marcia had never suspected it.
Even I never would have, if Macartney had
not brought up Miss Valenka's name. I knew
he had done it merely to get Dudley off his


138 The La Chance Mine Mystery
blackmail her—for he'd cadged on her for
money before her father died—or to scare her
into going to him for help—I'd like to hunt
the worthless hound down for it. And I'd
never stop till I got him!"
"Like poor old Thompson's murderer,"
Macartney commented rather drily, " and with
no more foundation." But the thought of
Thompson seemed to have brought his self-
command back to him; he tried to smooth Dud-
ley down. "I don't honestly believe old
Thompson could have been murdered," he said
gently, "or that Miss" Valenka's cousin could
have stolen those jewels, for any reason. He
seemed a pretty good sort when I knew him
in British Columbia. He was a clever mining
engineer, too."
"He might have been the devil for all I
care! Only if ever I come across him I'll get
those emeralds out of his skin," Dudley ex-
ploded. Paulette gave one glance at him. It
would have killed me; but even Dudley saw
how he was giving himself away to a stranger.
"Why under heaven do you work me up
about abstract justice, Macartney?" he
growled. "You know how I lose my temper.
Talk about something else, for goodness sake!"
. "Not I—I'm going to bed," Macartney re-
turned casually. Dudley always did work him-
self up over things that were none of his busi-


I Interfere For Last Time
»39
ness, and the Valenka argument evidently had
not struck his superintendent as anything out
of the ordinary. He nodded and went out.
Paulette strayed to the fireplace, and I saw
her handful of papers blaze up before she
moved away. I was thankful when that signa-
ture of Tatiana Paulina Valenka was off the
earth, even if Macartney had gone out of the
room. Paulette said good night, and went out
on his heels.
I heard Macartney ask her something as she
passed him where he stood in the passage, get-
ting on his coat to go over to the assay office,
where he slept. I thought it was about Marcia,
from the tone of his voice, and from Paulette's
answer, cursory and indistinct through the
closed door: "I know. I'm going to." She
added something I could not hear at all, but I
heard Macartney say sharply that to-morrow
would be too late.
Paulette said " yes," and then " yes " again,
as though he gave her a message. Then she
spoke out clearly: " There's nothing else to say.
I'll do it now." I heard her move away, I
thought to Marcia's door. Macartney went
out the front door, banging it.
I had no desire to go to bed. I felt as if I
had walked from Dan to Beersheba and been
knocked down and robbed on the way. I knew
my dream girl was not mine, now or ever, be-


140 The La Chance Mine Mystery
cause she was Dudley's, but I had never
thought of her being anything like Tatiana
Paulina Valenka. It was not the jewel story
that hit me: I knew she had not stolen Van
Ruyne's old necklace, no matter how things
looked. It was that she must care for Dudley,
or she would never have let him bring her out
here. And another thing hit me harder still,
and that was Hutton,—the cousin Macartney
said was engaged to her, and Dudley said
cadged on her, till he ended by branding her
as a thief and getting away with the spoils.
And the crazy thought that jumped into my
head, without any earthly reason, was that it
was just Hutton who had been hounding her
at La Chance; that, while I had been addling
my brains with suspecting Collins, it was Hut-
ton that Paulette Brown—whose real name
was Valenka—had stolen out to meet in the
dark!
Once I thought of it, I was dead sure Hut-
ton had followed her to La Chance. I knew
from my own ears that she hated and distrusted
the man for whom she had once mistaken me,
that it was he from whom she had tried to pro-
tect my gold; and I wondered with a horror
that made me too sick to swear, if it were
Hutton himself, and not Dunn nor Collins,
who had cached that wolf dope in my wagon!
If it were, he had not cared about wolves kill-


I Interfere For Last Time 141
ing the girl who drove with me, so long as he
got my gold. But there I saw I was making
a fool of myself, for he could not have known
she was going. I steadied my mind on the
thing, like you steady a machine.
If Hutton had been hanging around La
Chance, either from so-called love, or to get
Paulette into a mess with our gold, as Dudley
swore he had with Van Ruyne's emeralds, he
could not have been seen about the mine,—for
Macartney would have recognized him and
given him away. He must be cached in the
bush somewhere, waiting his chance to grab our
gold and incriminate Paulette, as common
sense told me she expected. I was sure as
death he had a gang somewhere, for no out-
sider would try to run that business alone;
Collins and Dunn might have been on their way
to join it the night they got scuppered, very
likely: they were just devils enough. But if
they had started out to meet Hutton at my
corduroy road they had never got there, and I
was pretty sure the rest of the gang hadn't
either, and Hutton—alone—had been scared
to shoot at us and give himself away.
That thought assured me of two things. It
was Dunn and Collins who had hidden the wolf
bait in my wagon, for Hutton could never have
done it and reached the corduroy road before
us; and Paulette must really hate Hutton


142 The La Chance Mine Mystery
savagely, for she must have known whom she
was shooting at on my swamp roadl That
made me feel better—a little—but there was
something I wanted to know. I turned on
Dudley for it.
"Look here, I never heard anything about
Valenka but newspapers' stories, till to-night.
But, if you know the inside of the business,
how did that cousin Macartney was talking of
ever get hold of that emerald necklace? Didn't
Macartney imply he was in British Colum-
bia?"
"He was more likely anywhere than where
he'd have to work—if he could get money out
of a girl," Dudley snapped. "What I think
is that he was masquerading as a servant in the
Houstons' house—a chauffeur, perhaps—any-
thing, that would let him hang round and drive
a girl half wild. He was a plain skunk. I
don't know how he managed the thing, but I
know he was there in the Houstons' house,
somehow, if Paulette doesn't think so"—he
forgot all about the Valenka—" and that he
took those emeralds; left the girl powerless
even to think so; and disappeared. I never
saw him; don't even know what he looks like.
But if ever I get a chance I'll hand him over to
the law as I'd hand a man I caught throwing
a bomb at a child!"
I said involuntarily: "Shut up!" I knew


I Interfere For Last Time 143
it was silly, but I felt as if walls might have
ears in a house that sheltered Paulette Brown,
—though I knew Marcia was in bed and asleep,
and there was no one else who could hear.
"You're never likely to see him here, anyhow,"
I added, since I meant to see him myself first,
somehow; after which I trusted he was not
likely to matter. And I thought of something
to change the subject. "What were you going
to say to-night about no one having seen
poor old Thompson—when you cut yourself
off?"
"Oh, that," Dudley replied almost care-
lessly. "It mayn't amount to anything, and
I only shut up because I didn't want Macart-
ney to take the wind out of my sails by saying
so. It was just that if Thompson ever went
to Caraquet it ought to be simple enough to
find the boy who took his horse back to Billy
Jones, and—there's apparently no such boy
in Caraquet! What set me on Billy Jones
first was that he stammered and stuttered
about not knowing him, till I don't believe
there ever was any such boy. He's never been
heard of since, any more than if he'd gone into
the ground. And what I want to know is
why?—if it's all straight about Thompson and
Billy Jones!"
I was silent, remembering—I don't know
why—the half-dead boy I had carried home to


144 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
Skunk's Misery. There was no cause to con-
nect him with the return of Thompson's horse
to the Halfway, yet somehow my mind did
connect him with it, obstinately. I had never
really discovered how he had been hurt by a
falling tree, and without reason some animal
instinct told me the two things belonged to-
gether and that they were queer. But before
I could say so, Dudley burst into unexpected
speech* his little pig's eyes as fierce as a tiger's:
"Look here, Stretton! I'm going to find out
who drowned Thompson, and who took Van
Ruyne's emeralds—and hand them both over
to the law, if I die for it. And when I say
that you know I mean it!"
I did. But once more I made no answer,
for I thought I heard Marcia in the passage.
I am quick on my feet, and I was outside the
door before I finished thinking it. But it was
not Marcia outside; it was only Macartney.
Yet I stopped short and stared at him, for it
was a Macartney I had never seen. He was
close to the living-room door, just as if he had
been listening to Dudley, and his face was the
face of a devil. I never want to see set eyes
like his again. But all the effect they had on
me was to make me furiously angry, and I
swore at him.
"What the devil's the matter with you,
Macartney? What do you want?"


I Interfere For Last Time 145
"My keys," roughly. "I left them some-
where around this passage and I had to come
back for them; I couldn't get into my office.
As for what's the matter "—he lowered his
voice and motioned me some feet away, out of
the light from the living-room door—" I heard
all Wilbraham said just now, and by gad, the
man's crazy! We've got to get him off all that
rot about Billy Jones, or any one else, murder-
ing Thompson; it's stark madness. Both of us
know Billy wouldn't murder a cat! And
there's another thing, too! I heard all Wil-
braham said about that Valenka girl's cousin,
and I wish you'd tell him to go slow on it. I
was in too much of a rage, or I'd have gone in
and told him myself. Dick Hutton was a
friend of mine; no matter how much he was in
love with a girl who'd got sick of him for Van
Ruyne, he wasn't the kind to sneak round the
Houstons' house as a servant. I won't let
.any one say that with impunity. It's no use
my telling Wilbraham so in the state he's in
to-night, but you might gently hint it when
you've a chance. I wish to heaven he'd give
up drink and drugs and being an amateur
detective!" He shrugged his shoulders with
a complete return to his ordinary manner.
"I'm sorry I startled you just now, but I was
too cursed angry to say I was here. Oh,
there are my keys!" He stooped, picked them


146 The La Chance Mine Mystery
up off the floor, and went out with a careless
good night.
"Was that Macartney?" Dudley inquired
as I went back to him. "I thought he'd
gone!"
"Forgot the office key and came back for
it." I felt no call to enter on Macartney's
embassy regarding Hutton. "Going to bed?"
Dudley gulped down a horn of whisky that
would have settled any two men in the bunk
house, nodded, and shut the door behind him.
I put out the light and sat on in the living
room alone, how long I don't know. I had
nothing pleasant to think of, either. It was
no use my trying to imagine that Tatiana
Paulina Valenka was not going to marry
Dudley, whatever I had hoped about Paul-
ette Brown. As far as any chance of her
loving me was concerned, I had lost my dream
girl forever. She was none of my business any
more, except that—" By gad, she is my busi-
ness," I thought in a sudden bitter fury, "as
far as Hutton and our gold! If I'm right,
and he's hiding round here, I'll put a stopper
on any more hold-ups. And I'll make good
and sure she never goes out to meet him again,
too!"
As I swore it I turned away from the dead
fire and the dark room, that looked as if we'd
all deserted it hours ago, and went Indian-


I Interfere For Last Time 147
silent into the hallway. And my heart con-
tracted in a hard, tight lump.
The passage was light as day, with the moon
full on the window at the end of it. And
wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood
my dream girl, undoing the front door as noise-
lessly as I had come into the passage.
I let her do it. The hallway on which Mar-
cia's bedroom door opened, let alone Dudley's,
Avas no place for Paulette Brown and myself
to talk. But I was just three feet behind her
as she slid around the corner of the shack, to-
ward the bush that lay dark against the cold
winter moon. And I rustled with my feet on
purpose, so that she turned and saw me, with
the moon full on my face.
"You sha'n't do it," I said. I did not know
I had made a stride to her till I felt her arm
under my hand. "You sha'n't go!"
My dream girl, who had two names and
belonged to Dudley anyhow, said nothing at
all. She and I, who had really nothing to do
with one another, if I would have laid my soul
under her little feet, stood still in the cold
moonlight, looking inimically into one an-
other's eyes.


CHAPTER XI
MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND
FOUR DEAD MEN
We must have stood silent for a good three
minutes. I think I was furious because Paul-
ette did not speak to me. I said, " You're not
to go—you're never to go and meet Hutton
again, as long as you live!" And for the first
time I saw my dream girl flinch from me.
"What?" she gasped so low I could hardly
hear. "You know that? What am I going to
do? My God, what ani I going to do?"
"You're coming back into the shack with
me!" We were on the blind side of the house
for Marcia and Dudley, but we were in plain
view from Charliet's window, and I was not
going to have even a cook look out and see
Paulette talking to a man in the middle of the
night. Her despair cut me; I had never seen
her anything but valiant before, and I had a
lump in my throat. But I spoke roughly
enough. "I didn't know the whole of things
till to-night, but now I do, you'll have to trust
me. Can't you see I mean to do all I can to


Macartney Hears a Noise 149
help you—and Dudley?" If it were tough
to have to add Dudley I did it. But I felt her
start furiously.
"Dudley? " she repeated almost scornfully.
"Nobody can help Dudley but me—and
there's only one way! Mr. Stretton, I prom-
ise you I'll never ask again, but—for God's
sake let me go to meet Dick Hutton to-night!"
"Not blindly," said I brutally. "If you
tell me why, perhaps—but we can't talk here.
If you'll come into the house and trust me
about what you want to do, I may let you go—
just this once—if I think it's the right way!"
"I've only half an hour before it's too late—
for any way!" But she turned under the
hand I had never lifted from her arm.
I led her noiselessly into the office. I was
afraid of the living room. Marcia might come
back to it for a book or something. No one but
Dudley ever went near the'office, and he was
safely dead to the world, judging from the
horn of whisky he had gone to bed on. The
place was freezing, for the inside sash was up,
leaving only the double window between us and
the night; and it was black-dark too, with the
moon on the other side of the house. But
there were more things than love to talk about
in the dark,—to a dream girl you would give
your soul to call your own, and know you never
will. And I began bluntly, "You've never


150 The La Chance Mine Mystery
had any reason to distrust me. I've helped
you"
"Three times," sharply. "I know. I've
been—grateful."
It was four, counting to-night when I had
warned her to hide her signature from Macart-
ney; but I was not picking at trifles. I said:
"Well, I've trusted you, too! I knew the
first night I came back here that you were
meeting some man secretly, in the dark. But
it was none of my business and I held my
tongue about it; then, and when you met him
again—when it was my business."
"Again?" I heard the little start she gave,
if I could not see it.
"The night before you and I took the gold
out," I answered practically, " when I told you
your hair was untidy. I suppose you only
thought I knew you had been out of doors, but
I heard the man you met leave you and heard
you say to yourself that you'd have to get hold
of the gold. I didn't know whether you were
honest or not then, or when I gave you back
your little seal; and not even when you started
for Billy Jones's with me. I knew by the time
I got there, if I was fool enough to believe it
was Collins you were fighting instead of help-
ing. But any fool must see now that Hutton
was the only man likely to have followed you
out here! I suppose he told you some lie


Macartney Hears a Noise 151
about giving you up for Van Ruyne's necklace,
unless you made silence worth while with Dud-
ley's gold?" and her assent made me angry
clear through.
"My soul, girl," I burst out, "you balked
him about that, even when you knew he'd put
that wolf dope in my wagon, and you were
risking your life—you put a bullet in him in
the swamp—I can't see why you should be
worrying to conciliate him by meeting him
to-night!"
But she caught me up almost stupidly.
"Put a bullet in him? I didn't—you must
know I didn't!"
"There was blood in the swamp and on the
road!"
I felt her staring at me in the dark. "It
wasn't Dick's," she said almost inaudibly.
"It must have been some one else's. And—
he doesn't know it was he I shot at that
night!"
"It might do him good if he did!" I felt
like shaking her, if I had not wanted to take
her in my arms more. "Can't you see you've
no reason to worry about Hutton? If Dudley
told the truth to-night, and he stole those em-
eralds and shifted the crime on to you, it's you
who have the whip hand of him!"
"But he didn't," Paulette exclaimed wildly.
"He wasn't near the Houstons' house! It's


152 The La Chance Mine Mystery
mad of Dudley to think so. I know he be-
lieves it, but—oh, it's mad all the same! And
even if Dick did take those emeralds—though
I can't see how it was possible—it wouldn't
clear me! It would only mean he was able
to drag me into it, somehow."
"But you never touched the necklace!"
For I knew that.
"No," simply, "but I'm afraid of Dick all
the more. If he did take it, to get me into his
power "—she caught my arm in her slim hands
I had always known were so strong—" can't
you see he's got me?" she said between her
teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La
Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him
to-night I'll be helpless. I Oh, can't
you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?—not able to
do anything? I can make him go away, if I
meet him! Otherwise "—the passion in her
voice kept it down to a whisper—" it's not only
that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I
stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne:
I'm afraid—for Dudley!"
The two last words gave me a jar. I would
have given most of the world to ask if she loved
Dudley, but I didn't dare: I suppose a girl
could love a man with a face like an egg, if she
owed him enough. But whether she cared for
him or not, " By gad, you've got to tell Dudley
that Hutton's here," I said roughly, because I


154 The La Chance Mine Mystery
knew I'd been a fool not to have said it with
my arms round her, while I told her why—but
since I didn't do it there's no sense in talking
about it. I went on baldly: "I've got to be
in it! I'm not concerned with post-mortems
and your past. All I know, personally, is that
Hutton's hiding somewhere round this mine
to hold up our gold shipments and get even
with Dudley; and if you'll tell me where to
meet him to-night I can stop both—and be
saved the trouble of looking for him from here
to Caraquet, let alone getting you some peace
of mind instead of the hell you're living in."
"Oh, my God," said Paulette, exactly as if
she were in church. "I can't- take peace of
mind like blood-money—I can't tell you where
to find Dick, if you don't know now," and I
should have known why if I had had any sense,
but I had none. "It's no use, Mr. Stretton, I
must go to Dick, alone. I "But sud-
denly she blazed out at me: "I won't let you
see him! And I'm going to him—now. Take
your hand off me!"
I tightened it. "You'll stay here! Please!
And you can't go on preventing me from meet-
ing Hutton, either. What about the first time
I take any gold out over the Caraquet road—
and he and his gang try a hold-up on
me?"
I said gang without thinking, for I was nat-


Macartney Hears a Noise 155
urally dead sure he had one. But I was not
prepared to have the cork come straight out of
the bottle. Paulette clutched me till I bit my
lip to keep steady.
"His gang's what I'm afraid of—for Dud-
ley," she gasped, which certainly steadied me—
like, a bucket of ice. "Look here, when first
I met Dick, he told me things, to frighten me—
that he'd eighteen or twenty men laid up be-
tween here and Caraquet—enough to raid us
here, even, if he chose. It was because I knew
they were waiting somewhere on the road that
night that I drove to Billy Jones's with you.
It was one of them I shot when we tore through
the swamp. But something went wrong with
them; either they'd no guns, or they didn't
want to give themselves away by shooting when
they saw we were ready—I don't know. But
anyhow, something went wrong. And Dick
was black angry. He—the last time I spoke
to him—he wouldn't even tell me what he'd
done with his gang; just said he had them
somewhere safe, in the last place you or Dudley
would ever look for them. Oh, you needn't
hold me any more; I've given in; I'm not going
to meet Dick to-night. But I had to tell you
about his gang, if I can't about him. And
listen, Mr. Stretton. I've tried every possible
way to get it out of him, but Dick won't even
answer when I taunt him for a coward who


156 The La Chance Mine Mystery
has to be backed up. I know he has men
somewhere, but he won't tell me where they
are, or who they are—now. I believe"
but her voice changed sharply. "Those two
boys, Dunn and Collins! You don't think
Dudley can be right and they are still alive—
and have joined Dick's gang?"
"They're dead!" I was about sick of Dunn
and Collins, and anyhow I was wondering
where the devil Hutton's gang could have gone
after their fiasco in the swamp. "They may
have meant to join Hutton. But I found
what the wolves left—and that was dead, right
enough!"
"I don't believe they're dead," said Paul-
ette quietly.
I shrugged my shoulders. But I never even
asked her why. For suddenly—with that flat
knowledge you get when you realize you should
have put two and two together long ago—I
knew where Hutton's gang was now and al-
ways had been. "Skunk's Misery," I thought
dumbfounded. "By gad, Skunk's Misery!"
For the thing I should have added to the
Skunk's Misery wolf dope was my dream of
men talking and playing cards under the very
floor where I slept in the new hut the French-
woman's son had built and gone away from,—
because it had been no dream at all. I had
actually heard real men under the bare lean-to


Macartney Hears a Noise 157
where I lay; and knowing the burrows and
runways under the Skunk's Misery houses, I
knew where—and that was just in some hidden
den under the rocks the njw house had been
built on—that house left with the door open,
ostentatiously, for all the world to see!
I was blazing, as you always are blazing
when you have been a fool. But I could start
for Skunk's Misery the first thing in the morn-
ing and start alone, with my mouth shut.
None of our four old men could be spared from
the mill, and I had no use for any of Macart-
ney's new ones; or for Macartney either, for
he was no good in the bush. As for Dudley,
nerves and a loose tongue would do him less
harm at home. Besides, any ticklish job is
a one-man job and I was best alone: once I
got hold of Hutton there would be no trouble
with his followers. But I had no intention of
mentioning Skunk's Misery to the girl beside
me; she was as capable of following me there
as of fighting wolves for me, and with no more
reason.
"It's late, and neither you nor I are going
to meet Hutton to-night," I said rather cheer-
lessly. "You'd better go to bed."
"I want to say something first," slowly, as
if she had been thinking. "What Macartney
said to-night—that I was engaged to Dick
Hutton when Mr. Van Ruyne said I took those


158 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
emeralds—wasn't true I I never was engaged
to Dick. I was sorry for him once, because
I knew he did—care for me. But I always
hated him—I can't tell you how I hated him!
I didn't think I could ever love any man till—
just lately."
It made me sick to know she meant Dudley.
I would have blurted out that shrinking from
the mere touch of his hand was a queer way to
show it; only I was afraid to speak at all, for
fear I begged her for God's sake not to speak
of love and Dudley to me! And suddenly
something banged even that out of my head.
"Listen," I heard my own whisper. "Some-
body's awake—walking round!"
It was only the faintest noise, more like a
rustle than a footstep, but it sounded like
Gabriel's trumpet to a man alone in the middle
of the night with a girl he had no shadow of
right to. If it were Marcia,—but I knew that
second it was not Marcia, or even Dudley;
though I would rather have had his just fury
than Marcia's evil thoughts and tongue.
"By gad, it's outside," I breathed. "Look
out!" But suddenly I changed my mind on
it. There was only one person who could be
outside, and that was Hutton, sick of waiting
for Paulette and come to look for her. I had
no desire for her to see how I met him instead,
and my hands found her shoulders in the dark.


Macartney Hears a Noise 159
"Get back, in the corner—and don't stir!"
As she moved under my hands the faint sweet
scent of her hair made me catch my breath with
a sort of fierce elation. The gold and silk of
it were not for me, I knew well enough, but at
least I could keep Hutton's hands off it. I
slipped to the side of the window and stared
out into the dark shadow of the house, that lay
black and square in the white moonlight. Qn
the edge of it was a man—and the silly elation
left my heart as the gas leaves a toy balloon
when you stick a pin in it. It was not Hutton
outside. It was—for the second time that
night—only Macartney!
I stood and stared at him like a fool. It
was a good half minute before I even won-
dered what had brought Macartney out of his
bed in the assay office. I watched him stupidly,
and he moved; hesitated; and then turned to
the house door. My heart gave a jump Hut-
ton never could have brought there. Macart-
ney in the house with a light, coming into the
office for something, for all I knew, and find-
ing Paulette and me, would be merely a living
telephone to Marcia! I tapped at the office
window.
Macartney had good ears, I praised the
Lord. He turned, not startled, but looking
round him searchingly, and I stuck my head
out of the hinged pane of the double window,


160 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
thanking the Lord again that I had not to
shove up a squeaking inside sash. "What's
brought you back again?" I kept my voice
down, remembering Marcia. "Anything gone
wrong?"
"What?" said Macartney rather sharply.
He came close and stared at me. "Oh, it's you,
Stretton? I thought it was Wilbraham, and
he wouldn't be any good. It was you I
wanted. I've got a feeling there's some one
hanging round outside here."
I hoped to heaven he had not seen Hutton,
waiting for an appointment a girl was not
going to keep, and I half lied: "I haven't
seen any one. D'ye mean you thought you
did?"
Macartney nodded. "Couldn't swear to it,
but I thought so. And I'd too much gold in
my safe to go to bed; I cleaned up this after-
noon. I was certain I glimpsed a strange man
slipping behind the bunk house when I went
down an hour ago, and I've been hunting him
ever since. I half thought I saw him again
just now. But, if I did, he's gone!"
"I'll come out!"
But Macartney shook his head sententiously.
"I'm enough. I've guns for the four mill men
who sleep in the shack off the assay office, and
you've a whack of gold in that room you're
standing in; you'd better not leave it. Though


Macartney Hears a Noise 161
I don't believe there's any real need for either
of us to worry: if there was any one around
I've scared him. I only thought I'd better
come up and warn you I'd seen some one.
'Night," and he was gone.
I had a sudden idea that he might be a better
man in the woods than I had thought he was,
for he slid out of the house shadow into the
bush without ever showing up in the moon-
light. And as I thought it I felt Paulette
clutch me, shivering from head to foot. It
shocked me, somehow. I put my arm straight
around her, like you do around a child, and
spoke deliberately, "Steady, sweet, steady!
It's all right. Hutton's gone by now. Any-
how, Macartney and I'll take care of you!"
"Oh, my heavens," said Paulette: it sounded
half as if she were sick with despair, and half
as if I were hopelessly stupid. "Take care of
me—you can't take care of me! You should
have let me go. It's too late now." She
pushed my arm from her as if she hated me
and was gone down the passage to her room
before I could speak.
I shut the office window, with the inside sash
down this time, and took a scout around out-
side. But Macartney was right; if any one
had been waiting about he was gone. I could
not find hide or hoof of him anywhere, and the
moon went down, and I went in and went to


162 The La Chance Mine Mystery
bed. In two minutes I must have been asleep
like a log,—and the first way I knew it was
that I found myself out of bed, dragging on
my clothes and grabbing up my gun.
Whatever the row was about it was in the
assay office. I heard Macartney yell my name
through a volley of shots and knew we had
both been made fools of. I had stopped Paul-
ette meeting Hutton, and Hutton had dropped
on Macartney and the assay office gold! I
shook Dudley till he sat up, sober as I never
could have been in his shoes, saw him light
out in his pyjamas to keep guard in his own
office that Paulette and I had only just left,
and legged it for the assay office and Macart-
ney.
I didn't see a soul on the way, except the
men who were piling out of the bunk house at
the sound of a row, as I had piled out of bed;
and I thought Macartney had raised a false
alarm. But inside his office door I knew bet-
ter. The four mill men who slept in the shack
just off it were all on the office floor, dead, or
next door to it. Their guns were on the floor
too, and Macartney stood towering over the
mess.
"Get those staring bunk-house fools out of
here," he howled, as the men crowded in after
me. "I haven't lost any gold, only somebody
tried to raid me. Why didn't you come


Macartney Hears a Noise 163
and cut them off when I yelled for you?
They—they got away!”
And suddenly, before I even saw he was
swaying, he keeled over on the floor.


CHAPTER XII
THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S
MISERY
For that second I thought Macartney was
dead. But as I jumped to him I saw he had
only fainted, and that nothing ailed him but a
bullet that had glanced off his upper arm and
left more of a gouge than a wound. Why it
made him faint I couldn't see, but it had. I
left him where he had dropped and turned to
the four men he had been standing over. But
they were past helping. They were decent
men too, for they were the last of our own
lot,—and it smote me like a hammer that they
might have been alive still if I had not inter-
fered with Paulette that night and kept her
from meeting Hutton.
I knew as I knew there was a roof over my
head that it was he who had fallen on Macart-
ney, and I would have chased straight after
him if common sense had not told me he would
be lying up in the bush for just that, and all I
should get for my pains would be a bullet out
of the dark that would end all chance of me


Thompson's Cards 165
personally ever catching Hutton. I took
stock of things where I stood, instead.
Whether he had a gang or not, I knew he had
been alone in the thing to-night, and he had
done a capable job. Our four men had been
surprised, for they were all shot in the back,
as if they had been caught coming in the office
door.
Whether Macartney had been surprised or
not I could not tell. The revolver he had
dropped as he fainted lay beside him empty,
and there were slivers out of the doorpost be-
hind the dead men. None of them seemed to
have been much help to him. Three had not
fired a shot; the fourth had just one cartridge
missing from his revolver, where he lay with
his face to the door—and I saw it accounted for
by a tearing slash in a blue print stuck on the
wall to the left of the doorway. I turned to
the inside wall to see where the bullet that had
glanced off Macartney had landed, and as I
swung round he sat up.
"You may well look—it was one of our
own men got me," he said thickly, and his curse
turned my stomach; I never knew any good
come of cursing the dead. I told him to shut
up and tell how the thing had happened. And
he grinned with sheer rage.
"It was plain damn foolery! I told you I
believed I'd seen some one spying around the


166 The La Chance Mine Mystery
mine, and after I'd left you I didn't feel so
sure that I'd cleared him out. I woke those
fools up," his glance at the dead matched his
curse at them, " and said if they heard any one
prowling round my door they were to lie low
in their own shack, let him get in at me here,
and then bundle out and cut him off from
behind. And what they did was to lose their
heads. They heard some one or they didn't—I
don't know. But the crazy fools piled out of
their shack and ran in to me; and a man be-
hind them—behind them, mind you—came on
their heels and plugged every son of them be-
fore they were more than inside my door! It
was then I yelled for you."
"D'ye mean you saw him—when he shot
them?"
'"I didn't see what he looked like," scorn-
fully, "with four yelling, tumbling men be-
tween him and me. But I guess he was the
man I'd been looking for. I fired and missed
him, and when I lit for him over the men he'd
killed he was gone. I emptied my gun into
the dark on chance and yelled some more for
you, and it was then I got it myself. As I
turned around in the doorway, Sullivan," he
pointed to the only man whose gun had been
fired, " that I thought was dead, sat up and let
me have it in the arm." He pointed to the
ripped blue print. "You see what I'd have


Thompson's Cards 167
got if it had caught me straight! And that's
all there was to it."
"D'ye mean "—I bit back Hutton's name.
I had no time to hatch up a lie about him, and
I was not going to drag in Paulette—" that—
whoever was there, never even fired at you?"
"How do I know who he fired at?—I
couldn't see inside of his head! I know he hit
those chumps who could have got him if they
had obeyed orders—let alone that if they'd
stayed out I'd have got him clean myself when
he came in. As it was, he cleared out before
I could do it," said Macartney blackly, but the
excitement had gone from his voice. "Call a
couple of the bunk-house men-to carry these
four back to their shack and clean up this mess,
will you? And come into my room while I
tie up this cut. It's no good going after who-
ever was here now."
I knew that: also that I could get after him
better single-handed at Skunk's Misery, where
he would not expect me; or I would have been
gone already. But I didn't air that to Macart-
ney as I followed him into the partitioned-off
corner he called his room. He had the last
two clean-ups in his safe there, and he nodded
to it as he hauled off his shirt for me to bind
up his arm.
"With what's there, and what you and Wil-
braham have in his office, we've too much


Thompson's Cards 169
can't stop this silly blood. Of course I have
Thompson's cards; I can't help it if you think
I'm an ass. I liked the old man, and I didn't
fancy the Billy Joneses playing cribbage with
the only thing in the world he cared for. I
took the cards the day we buried him—saw
them lying in the kitchen."
"I expect you needn't have worried about
Billy," I commented absently. "He was go-
ing to give those cards to me, only he and I
couldn't find them."
"Do come on," snapped Macartney. He
was set-eyed as usual, but I guessed he was
ashamed to have had me find him out in a sen-
timental weakness. "I'd have told you I had
them if I'd known you cared. You can take
the things now, if you want them."
It was not till that minute that I remem-
bered Macartney could not know why I
wanted them, nor anything about the sort of
codi -1 I'd torn off the envelope of Thompson's
letter to Dudley: for there had been nothing
about cards in what he'd read in it, or in the
letter itself. But as the remembrance of both
things shot up in me, I didn't confide them to
Macartney, any more than I had to Dudley
himself. I had a queer sort of idea that if
Thompson's pencilled scrawl had meant any-
thing more than the wanderings of a distressed
mind, I'd better get hold of it myself first. I


Thompson's Cards 171
I kept back a curse at the raw fool that was
me. I might have seen it was not a tightly
folded wad of stiff paper I had watched burn
up, but just the light torn scraps Paulette had
thrown in with it. What was more, I had been
alone with the thing under my very nose in the
light ashes into which it must have sunk and
never had the sense to burrow for it. It was
too late even to snatch for it: Marcia had read
it! She held it up to me now,—and Tatiana
Paulina Valenka, black on the yellow of the
scorched paper, hit me on the eyes.
"Who was right, Nicky Stretton?" she de-
manded triumphantly. "I told you I'd seen
Paulette Brown before! Only I never thought
of the Houston business. I could kill Dud-
ley; how dare he bring me out here with a
thief! I won't have her here another day."
"What thief?" I snapped. "I don't know
what you mean! Why on earth are you
poking in the ashes? What are you up for?"
"Only a Paulette Brown could stay asleep,
with Dudley yelling at you and Macartney,"
scornfully. "But if you want to know what
I was poking in the ashes for, I had no
matches, and my fire was out, so I came in
here for a log to light it up. And I found
this!"
"Well, burn it," said I furiously. But she
had begun to read i' out, and I would have


172 The La Chance Mine Mystery
been a fool to stop her, for what Marcia knew
I had to know. But it knocked me silly. The
something Paulette had "wanted to make
clear" was just a letter to Hutton! And the
Lord knows it made me more set than ever on
getting to. Skunk's Misery before Hutton
could know that Tatiana Paulina Valenka had
given in! Because she had. She was not
only going to meet him; she was going away
with him, Marcia's hard voice read out baldly,
if only he would give up the plan in his head.
But it was the last sentence that bit into me:
"Oh, Dick, have some mercy! I know you
hate me now, but have some mercy; don't do
what I'm afraid of. I'll give you all you want
—myself—everything—if only you'll let that
be. Go away, as I begged you, and I'll leave
Dudley for you, and go too." And it was
signed, as I knew Paulette Brown had not
meant to sign anything, " Tatiana Paulina Va-
lenka."
I never even wondered how she had meant
to get it to Hutton, if she had not supposed she
burned it. Every drop of my blood boiled in
me with the determination that she should
never pay Hutton's price with her lips against
his that she hated, and his cheek on her soft
hair I had never touched; all the gold Dudley
Wilbraham could ever mine was not worth
that. But I kept a cold eye on Marcia. "A


Thompson's Cards 173
half-burnt letter—that wasn't going to be sent
—isn't anything but girl's nonsense," I swore
contemptuously.
"Isn't it? We'll see—when Dudley reads
it I" Marcia looked like a devil hunched up
in her dressing gown, with her gums showing
as she grinned. "I told you she never meant
to marry him. Now we'll see if he marries
her—when she writes letters like this!"
"I won't let you show it to Dudley!"
"You are like—everybody: cracked about a
Paulette Brown!" Marcia retorted; and if I
had only known what the "everybody" was
going to mean I think I could have managed
her, even then, by coming out with it. But I
didn't know, and I did the best I could.
"Marcia Wilbraham, if you dare to show
that thing to Dudley, or so much as speak of it,
I'll pay you out,—so help me," I said; and if it
was in a voice no decent woman knows a man
can use, I meant it to be. It scared Marcia,
anyhow, though heaven knew I didn't see how
I could ever pay her out, no matter what she
did. She let go of the letter, which she had to,
for I had her by the wrist. I would have
burnt it up, only I had no match. Marcia
leaned forward suddenly, electrically, and
tapped the "Oh, Dick" in the last sentence,
that was the only name in the letter.
"Well, I'm damned," said she coolly.


174 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Why, the thing's to you! Do you mean
you're going to run away with that—that
girl?"
"No," I said furiously and then saw I was
an ass, " I mean, not now!"
"Since I know about you," Marcia cut me
off sweetly. But she stared at me calculat-
ingly. "H-m," said she, "I beg your par-
don for mistaking your N for a big, big D,
Nicky darling, but you see I never heard
any one call you plain, short Nick! I don't
exactly see why she had to write with you in
the house, either, but you needn't be nervous.
I'm not going to use my cinch on you—not
now, anyway! I've changed my mind about
telling Dudley. It won't do me any harm to
keep something up my sleeve against you, if
ever I want to do anything you don't admire.
It wasn't the least bit of use for you to snatch
that letter; I learned it off by heart before you
came in on me. And I can always threaten
Dudley now that I'll tell who Paulette Brown
really is, if he tries to bully me about any one
I have a fancy for!"
Of course I knew she was thinking of Ma-
cartney. I didn't believe Dudley would have
cared if she had married him ten times over.
But he might have been making some unrea-
sonable objection to Macartney, at that, for all
I knew.


Thompson's Cards 175
"I don't care one straw about your knowing
I was going to take Paulette Brown out of
this. But if you don't hold your tongue on it,
I'll know it, so you mind that," I observed with
some heat. Yet I was easier. She could not
talk that night, anyhow, and she was welcome
to come out with her crazy lie about Paulette
and myself, once Hutton was dead,—because
he and a snake would be all one to me, once I
got my hands on him. After that I had no
qualms about being able to make Dudley see
the truth concerning that letter, and that it had
been written to save his gold,—and his life,
likely enough! I let Marcia believe the name
in the letter was mine, and that Paulette had
been going off with me. All I wished was that
she had been. I went off to my room and left
Marcia sitting over the dead fire,—not so tri-
.umphant as she'd meant to be, for all the good
face she put on it.
Paulette's letter had pretty well knocked out
all the interest I had in old Thompson's cards,
but I got out the torn scrap of paper I'd put
away. There was nothing on it but what I'd
read before: "For God's sake search my
cards—my cards!"—and it looked crazier
than ever with the things in my hand. The
cards had been water-soaked and were bumpy
and blistery where Billy Jones had dried them,
even though they were flattened Nout again by


176 The La Chance Mine Mystery
the pressure of their tight case; but there was
nothing to them, except that they were old
Thompson's beyond a doubt. If I had thought
there might be writing on them there was not
so much as the scratch of a pencil. There
seemed to be a card missing. I thought it was
the deuce of hearts; but I was too sick over
Marcia's discovery about Paulette to really
examine the things and make sure. I shoved
them into my coat pocket beside what was
there already, just as Dudley came into my
room.
He had enough to worry him without hear-
ing that Marcia had found out about Paulette.
He sat on my bed, biting his nails; and said—
what Macartney had said—that we had too
much gold at La Chance to run the risk of los-
ing it by a better organized raid on it: and—
what I had known for myself—that the mine
output represented his only ready money for
notes that were past renewing, and that it had
to go out to Caraquet. When I said why not,
he bit his nails some more, and said he was
afraid of a hold-up: what he wanted me to do
was to ride over to the Halfway and scout
around from there to clear the Caraquet road,
before I started out from La Chance with an
ounce of gold.
The idea suited me well enough. It would
cover my expedition to Skunk's Misery. But


178 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Neither did I, nor of any one else. But I
was not prepared to find the Halfway stable
empty, when I rode in there just at dark. The
house was as deserted as the stable, though the
fire was alive in the stove, and taking both
things together, I decided Billy and his wife
had taken a four-horse team into Caraquet for
a load. I had meant to borrow one of his
horses to go on to Skunk’s Misery, for this
time I intended to ride there. But with no
horse to borrow, there was nothing to do but to
ride my own, and it was toward ten that night
when I left him to wait for me in a spruce
thicket, within half a mile of the porcupine
burrows that Skunk's Misery called houses.
As I turned away, the cold bit a hundred
times worse for the lack of snow in the woods,
and the bare ground made the pat of my moc-
casins sound louder than I liked; but on the
other hand I should leave no track back to my
waiting horse, if I had to clear out without get-
ting Hutton. The thought made me grin, for
I had no fear of it.
Hutton would be asleep, judging from the
look of things; for as I got fairly into Skunk’s
Misery, it lay still as the dead. The winding
tracks through it were deserted; silent between
and under the great rocks and boulders; slip-
pery in the open with droppings from the pine
trees that grew in and on the masses of huddled


Thompson's Cards 179
rocks. The wind rose a little, too, and soughed
in the pine branches, to die wailing among the
stones. It did not strike me as a cheerful
wind for a man in Hutton's shoes, for it cov-
ered the light sound of my feet as I went past
the hut of the boy I had nursed and through
the maze of tracks his mother had shown me, to
the new log lean-to the Frenchwoman's son
had built and never used. But, as I reached
it, I was suddenly not so sure Hutton was
there!
The lean-to looked all right. The door was
open, just as I had left it. But, as I crossed
the threshold, I knew I was too late, and there
was nobody inside, or in the cave underneath it
where men had been when I slept there. The
place had that empty feeling of desertion, or
late occupancy and a cold lair, that even a
worse fool than I could not mistake now. I
shut the door on mysef without sound, all the
same; snapped my pocket lantern; and stared,
—at just what I had known I was going to
find.
There was nothing in the place now but the
bare lean-to walls and the rock they backed on;
but twenty men had been living there since I
left it. The black mark of their fire was plain
against the rock face; the log floor was splint-
ered by heavy boots with nails in them—which
did not speak of the moccasined return of the
-


180 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Frenchwoman's son—and in the place where
I had once made a bed of pine boughs and car-
ried it away with me there lay a flurry pf litter
that spoke volumes: for among it was a corned-
beef can that was no product of Skunk's Mis-
ery, where meat meant squirrels and rabbits,
and—a corked bottle of wolf dope! That I
laid gingerly aside till I had poked around in
the rest of the mess, but there was not much
else there besides kindling. I got up to leg it for
the underground cave, blazing that I had
missed Hutton and half hoping he might be
there,—but I dropped flump on my knees
again, dumbfounded.
Underneath the displaced litter, stuck side-
ways in a crack of the log floor, was a shiny,
dirty white playing card. I pulled it out.
And in the narrow white beam of my electric
lantern I saw the missing two of hearts out of
Thompson's pack!
I saw more, too, before I even wondered
how one of Thompson's cards had ever got to
Skunk's Misery. The deuce of hearts was
written on—closely, finely and legibly—with
indelible pencil. And as I read the short
sentences, word by word, I knew Thompson
had never got to Caraquet, never got anywhere
but to the cave under the very lean-to I knelt
in—till he had been brought up from it, here—
to be taken away and drowned in Lac Trem-


Thompson's Cards 181
Want, as a decent man would not drown a dog!
And I knew—at last—where Hutton and his
gang were, and who Hutton was!
But I made no move to go underground to
the cave to look for them. And the only word
that came to my tongue was: "Macartney!"


CHAPTER XIII
A DEAD MAN'S MESSENGER
FoR the written message on Thompson's lost
card was plain. Macartney was—Hutton!
And Hutton's gang were just the new, rough
men Macartney had dribbled in to the La
Chance mine!
It was Macartney—our capable, hard-work-
ing superintendent—for whom Paulette had
mistaken me in the dark, that first night I came
home to La Chance and the dream girl, who
was no nearer me now than she was then; Ma-
cartney from whom she had sealed the boxes of
gold, to prevent him substituting others and
sending me off to Caraquet with worthless
dummies; Macartney I had heard her tell her-
self she could not trust; Macartney who had
put that wolf dope—that there was no longer
any doubt he had brought from Skunk's Mis-
ery—in my wagon; Macartney who had had
that boulder stuck in the road to smash my
pole, by the same men who were posted by the
corduroy road through the swamp to cut me
off there if the wolves and the broken wagon
failed; and Macartney who had been balked by


A Dead Man's Messenger 183.
a girl I had left at La Chance to fight him
alone now!
The thing seemed to jump at me from six
places at once, now that I knew enough to see
it was there at all. But what sickened me at
my own utter blindness was not the nerve of
the man, but just the risk he had let Paulette
run on the Caraquet road, and—old Thomp-
son! For Thompson had never sent Macart-
ney to La Chance, and Macartney had had him
murdered in cold blood!
If my eyes fogged as I stared at the dead
man's two of hearts, it was only half with fury.
Old Thompson had been decent, harmless,
happy with his unintelligent work and his sad
solitaire, and he had been through seven hells
before he wrote what I read now:
“Wilbraham—Stretton—pray God one of
you saw all I could put inside envelope of last
letter Macartney forced me to write. I never
sent him to La Chance. I never saw the man
till he waylaid me between Halfway and Cara-
quet, and brought me here. Do not know
where it is, am prisoner underground. Wrote
you two letters to save my miserable life; know
now I have not saved it. Your lives—gold—
everything—in danger too. For any sake get
Macartney before he gets you. No use to look
for me. Tried to warn you inside envelope,
but suppose was no use. Good-by. Take


184 The La Chance Mine Mystery
care, take care! There was a boy Macartney
sent off with my horse; was kind; said he would
come back. When he does, takes this to
you He has not come. Been brought
up into lean-to, am gagged, feel death near.
Forgive treachery—life was dear—get Ma-
car
But the scrawl broke off in a long pencil
line, where death had jerked Thompson's el-
bow, and his card had fallen from his hand.
I sat on the floor and saw the thing. Ma-
cartney, hidden in Skunk's Misery, making
plans to get openly and with decent excuse to
La Chance, had fallen on Thompson and used
him. And for Thompson, writing lying letters
in Skunk's Misery in fear of the death that had
come to him in the end, there had been no res-
cue. His scribbled envelope, even if Dudley
or I had understood it, had come too late. The
boy who took his horse to Billy—whoever he
was—had never come back. Thompson had
not even had time, in the end, to slip his writ-
ten-over card into the cased pack I had found
in his almost empty pockets, before Macart-
ney's men—for of course Macartney himself
had never been near the place since he got his
wolf dope there and left it for good—had
taken him off and made away with him. Once
his last letter was written and posted under


A Dead Man's Messenger 187
ing that the bottom flap of Thompson's en-
velope was missing, and taking it for granted
it had been blank like the top one—he had
made a fool of me all along the line!
I had stopped Paulette from going away
with him the night before, after she thought
she had burned the note she had meant to slip
into his hand; but he must have told her, out-
side in the passage, when I thought he was
sending a message to Marcia, that if she did
not go with him then—in the next hour—he
would begin trouble that very night for Dud-
ley and La Chance.
And he had! It was Paulette he was wait-
ing for, when he lied to me about a strange
man. And he had gone straight down to the
assay office, done his own alarm of a robber,
and killed four men to give it artistic truth.
It was no wonder he had said he was sick of
playing in moving pictures and grinned at me
when I left La Chance to search the Caraquet
road for nobody else but himself.
As for his gang, the very bunk-house men
he had told me to order out of the assay office,
were just Macartney's own gang from Skunk’s
Misery, come over when they had silenced
Thompson forever; at Macartney's elbow
whenever he chose to murder the lot of us and
commandeer the La Chance mine. I wished,
irrelevantly, that Dunn and Collins had got to


188 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Macartney, instead of being killed on the way;
they might have been chancy young devils
about stealing gold, but they would never have
stood for murdering old Thompson! It was
no good thinking of that, though.
I stowed away Thompson's deuce of hearts,
that no boy had ever come for, in the case with
those other pitiful cards he had told me to
search, and got on my feet with only one
thought in my head,—to get back to La
Chance and my dream girl that Macartney was
alone with, except for Dudley,—Dudley whom
he hated, who had threatened him for Paulette
Valenka, for Thompson, till it was no wonder
I had found him with the face of a devil where
he lurked eavesdropping in the shack hall.
And there something else hit me whack.
Baker, Dudley's jackal, was one of Macart-
ney's gang: told off, for all I knew, to put him
out of the way! I wheeled to get out of that
damn lean-to quicker than I had got in; and
instead I stood rooted to the floor. Below me,
somewhere underground, somebody was mov-
ing!
Naturally, I knew it could not be Macart-
ney, because he could not have got there, even
if he had not had other fish to fry at home.
But one of his gang might have been left at
Skunk's Misery and could have the life choked
out of him. There was no way leading under-


A Dead Man's Messenger "189
ground directly from the lean-to, or I would
have been caught the night I slept there and
believed real voices were a dream. I slid out
of the door, around the boulder that backed the
place, and was afraid of my lantern. I went
down on my hands and knees to feel for a track
and found one, down a gully that ran in under
a blind rock. I crawled down it, all but flat,
as I burrowed like a rabbit, with my back
scraping against the living rock between me
and the sky, and my head turned to the place
where I knew the lean-to stood. I was under
it with no warning whatever; in a natural,
man-high cellar I could stand up in, with half
a dozen bolt holes running off it: and I had no
need to flash up my lantern to see them.
There was a light in the place already from a
candle-end Macartney's men must have left be-
hind; and beside it, not looking at me, not even
hearing my step, because he was sobbing his
heart out, lay the boy I had carried home from
the Caraquet road!
"Thompson's boy, who took his horse to
Billy—who never came back!" I said to my-
self. God knows I touched him gently, but he
screamed like a shot rabbit till he saw my face.
"You?" said I. "What's the matter with
you? Brace up; it's only me!"
Brace up was just what he did not do. He
sank back with every muscle of him relaxed.


190 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Bon Dieu, I thought you was him come
back," he gasped in his bastard French Indian,
"that man that half killed me on the Caraquet
road! But it wasn't him I was crying about.
It was the other man—that promised me two
dollars for something."
"To come back and take a letter—where
you had taken his horse?"
The boy—I did not even know his name—
nodded, with a torrent of sullen patois. He
had never come for his two dollars, and now
the man was gone and he would never get it.
But it was not his fault. The first man—the
one who had sent him to the Halfway with the
horse—had caught him crawling back for the
letter, had told him the man who was going to
pay him had gone away long ago, and had
taken him out to chop firewood and let a tree
fall on him. How the lad had ever crawled
out to the Caraquet road I did not ask. I
think the thing that stabbed me was that I had
been within five hundred yards of Thompson
all the time I was nursing this very boy, that
the knowledge of it had lain behind uncon-
scious lips within a hand's breadth of me, that
I had gone away ignorant, leaving Thompson
robbed of the only help he could ever have
had.
"Why didn't you tell me all that—the night
I came over to your mother's?" I groaned.


A Dead Man*s Messenger 191
The boy said shortly that his mother would
have gone straight off and told I'd been there,
if he had come out with the truth. It was all
lies she had told me about the Frenchwoman's
son; he had never been near the place. It was
the man who had half killed him who had built
the lean-to, and his mother had said she would
finish the business if ever he opened his mouth
about it, or let out the truth about the same
man sending him to the Halfway with a horse,
or the smelling stuff she had helped him make.
"You're sure she didn't go and tell that man
about me, anyway?" I remembered Macart-
ney's grin.
But the boy shook his head. "She didn't
worry; she said you were too big a fool to mat-
ter!" After which wholesome truth he an-
nounced listlessly that he was done with his
mother. She had turned him out of her house
now, anyway. She said he was no good to her,
now that he could only crawl, and could not
even trap enough rabbits to live on, and she
had another man living in her house who would
do it for her. So he had come here to find the
man who had promised him two dollars—that
solitary bill that had been all the money in
Thompson's pockets—and when he found him
gone and the place empty he had stayed there
to hide, and because he had nowhere else to go.
I thought of his mother's haggard, hand-


192 The La Chance Mine Mystery
some face and hard mouth. Macartney had
certainly found a good ally while he was laid
up in Skunk's Misery waiting for his chance
to fall on Paulette. But all that did not mat-
ter now. What did matter was that I had
found the missing link between Thompson's
cards and Macartney in the boy who had taken
Thompson's horse back to the Halfway. I
had no mind to produce him now though; for
there were other things to be looked to than
showing up old Thompson's murder. And
the boy was safe where he was, for one glance
at him had told me he could not walk half a
mile.
"Are you safe from your mother here—and
can you get food for yourself?" I demanded
abruptly, and the boy nodded the head I knew
would never be other than a cripple's. "Well,
you stay here," I told him, because if ever I
needed the poor little devil for a witness
against Macartney he would be no good lying
dead somewhere in the bush, "and I'll come
back and pay you ten times two dollars for
just waiting here till I come. But you'll have
to hide if that man comes back who sent you
out with the horse!" I knew Macartney
would kill him in good earnest, if he came back
and found him with a living tongue in his head.
"Don't you trust any one but me—or some
one who comes and gives you twenty dollars,"


194 The La Chance Mine Mystery
to see a lantern held in front of my eyes and
one of Macartney's men from La Chance star-
ing at me.
It struck me even then that it was not he who
was surprised; and the sleep jerked out of me
like wine out of a glass. "What are you do-
ing here? And where the devil's Billy?" I
snapped, without thinking.
I saw the man grin. "Billy's fired," he
returned coolly. "Him and his wife got it in
a note from Wilbraham, day before yesterday,
when your teamsters stopped here on their way
to Caraquet. They doubled up their teams
with Billy's and took him and his wife along,
and all their stuff. And I guess they'd been
fired too, for they ain't come back. Mr. Ma-
cartney sent me over to see. Anything I can
do for you?"
"Take that lantern out of my eyes, and hus-
tle me up some breakfast. I—I'm sorry about
Billy!" I was not; I was startled,—and
worse. It had not been Dudley who had dis-
missed him, asinine as he had been about Billy
and old Thompson, or he would have told me.
It had been Macartney, getting rid of him and
my teamsters under my very nose; and—as
Macartney's parting grin recurred to me—if
his man had any one with him in Billy's vacant
shack they had been put there to get rid of me.
"Get me a bucket of water and make coffee,


196 The La Chance Mine Mystery
cartney had, fired my teamsters with Billy
Jones. There was not a soul about the place,
and ten hungry horses yelled at me at once as
I stamped my half-frozen feet on the floor. I
would have shouted for Charliet if it had not
seemed quicker to feed them myself. I yanked
down a forkful of hay for each of them, after
I saw to my own horse. And if you think I
was a fool to worry over dumb beasts, just that
small delay made a difference in my immediate
future that likely saved my life. If I had
raced off for the house at once I might have
met with Well, an, accident! But that
comes in later.
As it was I was a good twenty minutes in
that stable. When I waded out into the swirl-
ing white dusk of snow and wind between me
and the shack I was just cautious enough, after
the Halfway business, to stare hard through
the blinding storm at the house I was making
for, though I did not think Macartney was ripe
to dare anything open against me at La
Chance. But with that stare I knew abruptly
that he was! Massed just inside the open
door of Dudley's shack, that was black dark
but for one light in the living-room window,
were a crowd of men that looked like nothing
in the world but our own miners, that I knew
now for Hutton's—or Macartney's—gang!
How he dared have them there, instead of in


A Dead Man's Messenger 197
the bunk house, beat me,—but it was them, all
right. The wind was clear of snow for one
second, and I saw them plainly. And they
saw me. Without one sound the whole gang
jumped for me. I had my gun out, and I
could have stopped the leaders before I had to
get back against the stable door; but there was
no need.
There was a shout behind me. The men
checked, sprawling over each other in the snow
—ludicrously, if I had been seeing much hu-
mor in things—and it was then it struck me
that I should have had an accident if I had
bolted straight into a dark house, instead of
delaying in the stable till Macartney's gang got
tired of waiting for me and bundled out them-
selves to see where I was. But I only wheeled,
with my gun in my fist, to Macartney's voice.
What I had expected to see I don't know.
What I did see, stumbling through the drifts
to me, was an indistinguishable figure that
turned out to be two. For it was Macartney,
carrying Marcia Wilbraham. And behind
him, short-skirted to her knees, and with no
coat but her miserable little blue sweater, came
my dream girl.
I forgot Macartney could not know I knew
he was Hutton, or all the rest that I did know.
I said, " What hell's trick are you up to now?"
But Macartney only turned a played-out


198 The La Chance Mine Mystery
face to me. "Take her from me, will you?"
he snapped. "I'm done." He let Marcia
slip down into the snow. "Wilbraham's
killed!"


CHAPTER XIV
WOLVES—AND DUDLEY
It was cleverly done. So was the desperate
gesture of Macartney's hand across his blood-
shot, congested eyes. If I had not had Thomp-
son's deuce of hearts in my pocket I might
have doubted if Macartney really were Hut-
ton, or had had any hand in the long tale of
tragedy at La Chance. But as it was I knew,
in my inside soul, bleakly, that if Dudley were
dead Macartney had killed him,—as only luck
had kept him from killing me.
I saw him give a quick, flicking sign to his
men with the fingers of the hand that still cov-
ered his eyes, and I knew I was right in the last
thing, anyhow, for the men straggled back
from us, as to an order. They were to do
nothing now, before Paulette and Marcia, if
their first instructions had been to ambush in-
side the shack to dispose of me when I got back
from the Halfway,—which I had not been
meant to do. I did not drop my gun hand, or
fling the truth at Macartney. But I made no


200 The La Chance Mine Mystery
move to pick up Marcia. I said, " How d'ye
mean Dudley's killed? Who killed him?"
"Wolves!" If Macartney meant me to
think he was too sick to answer properly he
was not, for he spoke suddenly to the bunk-
house men. "There is no good in your wait-
ing round, or looking any more. They've got
Mr. Wilbraham, and "—he turned his head to
me again—" they damn nearly got me!"
Later, I wished sincerely that they had, for
it would have saved me some trouble. At that
minute all I wanted was to get even with Ma-
cartney myself. I said, " Pick up Marcia and
get into the house. You can talk there!"
Macartney glanced at me. Secretly, per-
haps, neither of us wanted to give the other a
chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I
was not going to do it. But Paulette must
have feared I was. She sprang past me and
lifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength,
as if she were nothing.
Macartney started, as though he realized he
had been a fool not to have done it himself, and
wheeled to walk into the house before us, where
he could have slipped cartridges into his gun;
I knew afterwards that it was empty. But
Paulette had moved off with Marcia and a per-
emptory gesture of her back-flung head that
kept Macartney behind her. I came behind
him. And because he had no idea of all I


Wolves—And Dudley 201
knew about him, he took things as they looked
on the surface. With Paulette leading, and
me on Macartney's heels, we filed into the liv-
ing room. There was a light there, but the
fire was out. I guessed Charliet was hiding
under his bed,—in which I wronged him. But
I was not worrying about Charliet or cold
rooms then. Paulette laid Marcia down on
the floor, and I stood in the doorway. I did
not believe the bunk-house men would come
back till an open row suited Macartney's book,
but there was no harm in commanding the out-
side doors of the shack, all the same. And the
sudden thought that we were all in the living
room but Dudley, and that he would never
come back to it, gripped my soul between fury
and anguish. "Get it out—about Dudley,"
I said; and I did not care if my voice were
thick.
Macartney looked over at me just as an
honest, capable superintendent ought to have
looked. "I can't; because I don't know it.
All I do know's this. After you went off yes-
terday Wilbraham got to drinking; the wolves
began to howl round the place after dark, and
he said they drove him mad. He got a gun
and went out after them—and he never came
back. I didn't even know he was gone till
midnight. I thought "he'd shut himself in his
office as he often does, till I heard shots outside,


204 The La Chance Mine Mystery
wholesale murderer, if it had not been for the
cold hate in his eyes.
"D'ye mean you left Dudley—out there in
the bush? Where the devil was Baker, that
black and white weasel you set to look after
him? I'll bet he saved his skin! Where is
he?"
"Baker's missing, too," simply; and I did
not believe it. "And I don't see what else I
could have done but leave Dudley. None of
the men were with me to carry him in; it had
begun to snow; and in another hour I couldn't
have kept the track back to La Chance. As it
was, Miss Marcia played out; I had to carry
her most of the way. And that's all there is
to it," with sudden impatienpe, "except that
Wilbraham's dead and Baker's missing. If
he wasn't, he would have brought Dudley in."
"Yes," I said. I saw Charliet's head poke
around the corner of the kitchen door and
called to him to carry Marcia to her room, and
to get fires going and something to eat; for the
queer part of it was that there seemed to be
two of me, and one of them was thinking it was
starving. It saw Charliet and my dream girl
take Marcia out, and the other me turned on
Macartney.
"By gad, there's one thing more," I said
slowly. "You don't have to go on playing
moving pictures, Dick Hutton, or using an


206 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Well enough! I have Thompson's deuce
of hearts you didn't see was missing, when you
gave me back his pack! With any luck I'll
pay you out for that, and our four mill men,
and Dudley; not here, where you can fight
and die quick, but outside—where they've
things like gallows! Oh, you would, would
you?"
For his empty gun just missed me as he
made a lightning jump to bring it down on my
head, and my left hand stopped him up just
under the ear. I ought to have shot him. I
don't know why I held back. I was so mad
with rage when he dropped that I could have
jumped on him like a lumberman and tramped
the heart out of him. But I only lit for the
kitchen, and Charliet's clothesline. As I got
back and knelt down by the man who had
called himself Macartney, Thompson rose up
before me, as he had sat in that very room,
playing his lonely solitaire; and the four dead
men in the assay office; and Dudley—only I
had no grief for Dudley, because it was
drowned in rage. I bound Macartney round
and round with the clothesline, whether he was
really Hutton or not,—and I meant to have
the truth out of him about that and everything
else before I was done. But when I had him
gagged with kitchen towels while he was still
knocked out, I sat back on my heels to think;


Wolves—And Dudley 207
and I damned myself up and down because I
had not shot Macartney out of hand.
I had Macartney all right; but I had next
door to nothing else, unless I could find a safe
place to jail him while I disposed of his men.
Now, if they chose to rush me, I could not hold
the eight shack windows against them, if Paul-
ette and I might each hold a door. If I took
to the bush with Paulette and Marcia, and Ma-
cartney, I had nowhere on earth to go. There
could be no piling that ill-assorted company on
horses and putting out for Caraquet, with the
road choked with snow, even if I could have
got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway.
Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow
would be lying sweetly level under a treacher-
ous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to
drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and
put that out of the question. That lake that
was no lake offered about as good a thorough-
fare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to
hold Macartney at La Chance till I downed his
gang
"By gad," I flashed out, "I can do it—in
Thompson's abandoned stope!" It was not
so crazy as it sounds. Thompson's measly en-
trance tunnel would only admit one man at a
time, and I could hold it alone till doomsday.
Macartney could be safely jailed inside the
stope till I had wiped out his men; Paulette


208 The La Chance Mine Mystery-
would be safe; and there remained no doubtful
quantities but Marcia and Charliet the cook.
I guessed I could scare Marcia and that Char-
liet would probably be on-my side, anyway.
If he were and sneaked down now to provision
the stope, the thing would be dead easy, even to
firewood, for Thompson had yanked in a cou-
ple of loads of mine props and left them there.
I lit out into the passage to hunt Charliet and
find out where the bunk-house men had gone
to> But there was no sign of either in the
wind and snow outside the shack. I bolted the
door on the storm, turned for the kitchen, and
saw my dream girl standing outside Marcia's
room.
She was dead white in the dim candlelight
that shone through Marcia's half-open door.
I thought of that as I jumped to her, and I
would have done better to have thought of
Marcia. I could see her from the passage, ly-
ing on her bed, purple-faced still, and with her
eyes shut. But one glance was all I gave to
Marcia. I said:
"For heaven's sake, Paulette, don't look
like that! I'm top-sides with Macartney now.
Got him tied up. Come into the kitchen till I
speak to you. I want Charliet "But as
I pushed Paulette before me, into the kitchen
just across the passage from Marcia's room, I
stopped speaking. She was holding out


Wolves—And Dudley 209
Thompson's case of cards,—open, with that
scrawled two of hearts on the top!
"Charliet's gone—run away somewhere."
Her chest labored as if she were making herself
go on breathing, " and you dropped—this! I
ran out from Marcia to see what you were do-
ing with Macartney," she hesitated on the
name, " and you'd dropped this. I You
know Macartney killed Dudley, really. Does
this mean he killed Thompson, too?"
"You can say Macartney's real name," I
snapped bitterly. "I've known he was Dick
Hutton ever since last night."
But Paulette only gasped, as if she did not
care whether I knew it or not, "Where—
how—did you get these cards?"
I told her, and she gave a queer low moan.
"Dudley's dead, and I'm past crying." Her
voice never rose when she was moved; it went
down, to D below the line on a violin. "I'm
past everything, but wishing I was dead, too,
for I'm the reason that brought Dick Hutton
here as Macartney. Oh, you should have let
me meet him that night! I wasn't only going
to meet him; I meant to go away with him be-
fore morning. It would have been too late for
poor, innocent old Thompson, but it would
have saved the four mill men—and Dudley!"
She had said she was past crying, but her voice
thrilled through me worse than tears; and it


210 The La Chance Mine Mystery
might have thrilled Marcia in her room across
the passage, if I'd remembered Marcia. "God
knows Dudley was good to ine—but it's no use
talking of that now. What have you done
with Macart—with Dick Hutton—that you
said j'ou had him safe for now?"
"Knocked him out; and tied him up with
the clothesline, in the living room—till I can
take him out to Caraquet to be hanged!"
"You ought to have killed him," Paulette
answered very slowly. "I would have, when
we found Dudley, only he'd taken my gun.
At least, I believe he had: he said I'd lost it.
And I'm afraid, without it—while Dick Hut-
ton's alive!"
I looked at her ghastly face and behaved like
a fool for the hundredth time in this history;
for I shoved my own gun into her hand and
told her to keep it, that I'd get another. I
would have caught her in my arms if it had not
been for remembering Dudley, who was dead
because the two of us had held our tongues to
him. "Look here," I said irrelevantly.
"D'ye know Marcia thinks Macartney wants
to marry her?"
"He doesn't want to marry any one—ex-
cept me," Paulette retorted scornfully; and
,once more I should have remembered Marcia
across the passage, only I didn't. "He's made
love to Marcia, of course, for a blind, like he


Wolves—And Dudley 211
did everything else. If we could make her
realize that and that he killed Dudley as surely
as if he'd lifted his own hand to him"
But I cut her off. "By gad, Paulette, what
sticks me is what Macartney did all this for!"
"Me," said Paulette very bitterly. "At
least, at first; I'm not so sure about it now.
When I first met Dick Ave were in Russia.
He'd got into trouble over a copper mine—
you've heard Macartney talk of the Urals? "—
if we both spoke of him as though he were
two different men neither of us noticed. "He
came to me in Petrograd, penniless, and I
helped him. But when I came to America,
alone, I turned him out of my flat. He may
have loved me, I don't know; but when I
wouldn't marry him, he said he'd make me;
that he'd hound me wherever I went and dis-
grace me, till I had to give in and come to him.
And he must have done it at the Houstons', if
I don't know how; for the police would take
me now for those emeralds I never stole, if
they knew where I was. I can't see where
Dick could have been or how he managed the
thing, but all the rest Dudley told you and him
about that night at the Houstons' was true. I
did give Van Ruyne sleeping stuff to keep him
quiet while I got away, but it was because it
came over me—the second I knew those emer-
alds were gone—that Dick must be in that


212 The La Chance Mine Mystery
house!—that if I didn't run away, he'd come in
and threaten me till I had to go with him.
And I'd have died first. I slipped out of the
house unseen; and it was just the Blessed Vir-
gin," simply, " who made me find Dudley's car
stalled outside the Houstons' gate!"
"D'ye mean you'd known Dudley before?"
She nodded. "I'd met him: and I liked
him, because he never made love to me. He
hadn't been at the Houstons' that night; he
was only coming back from Southampton
alone, without any chauffeur. I knew no one
would ever think he'd helped me, so I just got
into his car. But I never should have let him
bring me here," bitterly; "I should have
known Dick would find me, and play gold rob-
beries here to pay Dudley out. He told me he
would, unless I'd go away with him—that first
night you heard me talking to him—but I
didn't see how he could work it. I thought I
could tire him out by always balking him—till
that night I didn't meet him, and he killed
those four men. Then I knew I couldn't fight
him; and the reason was that Dick's a finished
mining engineer who never ran straight in his
life!"
"What?" I knew both things, only I saw
no connection with Paulette.
But she nodded. "He could get good work
anywhere, but he won't work honestly. All he


Wolves—And Dudley 213
cares for is the excitement of big things he can
get at crookedly. That was why he tried a
coup with that copper mine in the Urals and
had to clear out of Russia. And the La
Chance mine that he came to contemptuously,
and just to get hold of me, is a big thing too.
No—listen! You don't know how big, for
you've been kept in the dark. But Dick
knows; and that's how I first knew I couldn't
manage him any more, and why I don't think
it is I he has done all he has for, nor that it was
even to pay out Dudley. I believe it was to
get the mine!"
"Then why, in heaven's name, didn't you
tell Dudley who he was?"
"I couldn't make Dudley listen, at first.
Then," very low, "I didn't dare; I knew it
would mean that Dudley would get killed. I
never thought that—would happen, anyway."
"There was me." I was stung unbearably.
"You must have known ever since the night I
first came here that there was always me!"
"Y-you," she stumbled oddly on it. "I
couldn't tell you! Can't you see I was afraid,
Nicky, that you might—get killed for me,
too?"
For the first time that night she looked at
me as if she saw me—me, Nicky Stretton,
dark, fierce and dirty—and not Dudley Wil-
braham and the dead. My name in that voice


Wolves—And Dudley 215
so full up with drink and drugs that he could
not have smelled even that mixture of skunks
and sulphide—could easily have been sent out
reeking with it, into bush that reeked of it too.
And that second she screamed at me: "You
lie, Nicky Stretton; you, and that girl I He's
not Hutton—he's Macartney!"
But Macartney fired full in my face.
It was Marcia's flying jump that made him
miss me. Even though his very cartridge was
one of hers that she always carried in her
pockets, and must have been given to him the
first thing, I don't think she had been prepared
to see me killed. I didn't wait to see. I was
down the passage to Paulette before Macart-
ney could get in a second shot. As he, and
some of the bunk-house men tore out of the
living room after me, I fired into the brown
mass of them with my own gun, that I
snatched from Paulette. I thought it checked
them, and lit out of the kitchen door, into the
wind and the dark and the raving, swirling
snow, with my dream girl's hand gripped in
mine. We plunged knee-deep, waist-deep
through the drifts, for our lives,—for mine,
anyhow.
"Thompson's stope," I gasped; and she said
yes. I couldn't see an inch before me, but I
think we would have made it, since Macartney
could not see, either. I knew we were far


216 The La Chance Mine Mystery
ahead of him, but that was all I did know, till
I heard myself shout to Paulette, "Run!"—
and felt my legs double under me. If some-
thing hit me on the head like a ton of brick I
had no sense of what had happened, as people
have in books. I only realized I had been
knocked out when I felt myself coming to.
Somehow it felt quite natural to be deadly
faint and sick, and lying flat, like a log,—till
I put out my hand and touched hard rock.
"I don't see how it's rock," I thought dully;
"it ought to be snow! Something hit me—
out in the snow with Paulette!" And with
that sense came back to me, like a red-hot iron
in my brain. I had been out in the snow with
Paulette; one of Macartney's men must have
hit me a swipe on the head and got her from
me. But—where in heaven's name was Paul-
ette now? The awful, sickening thought
made me so wild that I scrambled to my knees
to find out in what ungodly hole I had been put
myself. I had been carried somewhere, and
the rock under me felt like the mine. But
somehow the darkness round me did not smell
like a mine, where men worked every day. It
smelt cold, desolate, abandoned, like
And suddenly I knew where Macartney's
men had carried me when I was knocked out!
It was no comfort to me that it was to the very
place where I had meant to jail Macartney


Wolves—And Dudley 217
and hide Paulette, where Charliet and I were
to have stood off Macartney's men.
"Thompson's stope," I gasped. "It's there
Macartney's put me!" I crawled, sick and
dizzy, to what ought to have been the tunnel
and the tunnel entrance, opening on the storm
out of doors. The tunnel was there, all right.
But as I fumbled to what ought to have been
the open entrance, stillness met me, instead of
a rush of wind; piled rock met my groping
hands, instead of piled snow. I was in Thomp-
son's abandoned stope all right,—only Macart-
ney had sealed up the only way I could ever
get out! I shoved, and dug, and battered, as
uselessly as a rat in a trap, and suddenly knew
that was just what I was! Macartney had not
even taken the trouble to kill me,—not to avoid
visible murder at this stage of the game, when
only the enemy was left, if you did not count a
duped woman and a captured one; but for the
sheer pleasure of realizing the long, slow death
that must get me in the end.
"Die here—I've got to die here," I heard
my own voice in my ears. "While My
God, Paulette! Macartney's got Paulette!"
And in the darkness behind me somebody
slipped on a stone.
I had not thought I could ever feel light and
fierce again. I was both, as I swung round.


Place of Departed Spirits 219
But no one jumped. And out of the grave-
yard blackness in front of me came a muffled
chuckle!
It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it
would have you. For the chuckle was Dunn's:
Dunn's,—who was dead and buried, and Col-
lins with him! But suddenly I was blazing
angry, for the chuckle came again, and—dead
man's or not—it was mocking! I jumped to
it and caught a live throat, hard. But before
I could choke the breath out of it a voice that
was not Dunn's shouted at me: "Hold your
horses, for any sake, Stretton! It's us."
A match rasped, flared in my eyes, and I saw
Dunn and Collins! Saw Dunn's stubbly fair
hair, clipped close till it stood on end, as it
had on the skull I'd said a prayer over and
buried; saw Collins standing on the long shank
bones I knew I had buried in the bush!
I stared, dazed, facing the two boys I could
have sworn were dead and buried. And in-
stead Dunn gasped wheezingly from the rock
where I had let him drop, and Collins drawled
as if we had met yesterday:
"We heard we were dead! But it wasn't
us you buried, or any of Hutton's men either,
for he'd have missed 'em. I expect you'd bet-
ter put your funeral down to two stray pros-
pectors, and let it go at that!" He looked
curiously into my face. "You don't seem to


220 The La Chance Mine Mystery
have got much yourself by playing the giddy
goat with Hutton!"
In the dying flicker of his match I saw his
young, sneering eyes, as he called Macartney
"Hutton," and realized furiously that Paill-
ette had been right, not only that Dunn and
Collins were alive, but that they were on Ma-
cartney's side. I blazed out at the two of
them:
"So you've been in with Hutton all along,
you young swine! I've been a blank fool; I
ought to have guessed Hutton had bought
you!"
Dunn let out a sharp oath, but Collins only
threw down the glowing end of his match. "I
wouldn't say we were on Hutton's pay roll ex-
actly, since you seem to have found out Ma-
cartney's real name at last," he retorted scorn-
fully. "We've been on our own, ever since we
saw fit to disappear and bunk in here.
Though by luck Hutton hasn't guessed it, or
we wouldn't be here now!"
"I don't know that it's any too clear why
you are here," I flung out hotly. "D'ye
mean to say you've been living here, hiding,
ever since you cleared out, and I thought the
wolves ate you? That you knew all along who
Macartney was—and never told me?"
"Not exactly here, if you mean Thompson's
old stope you're corked up in; but of course


Place of Departed Spirits 221
we knew Macartney was Hutton," Collins re-
turned categorically. "As for telling you
about him—well, we weren't any too sure you
weren't Hutton's man yourself — till to-
night!"
"What? " said I.
But Collins apologized calmly. "We
were asses, of course; but we couldn't tell we'd
made a mistake. We didn't have as much
fun as a bag of monkeys while we were making
it, either, especially when there was that—trou-
ble—in the assay office. We came in on the
tail-end of that, only we'd no guns, and it was
too late to help our poor chaps, anyway. Be-
sides, we thought you "but he checked
abruptly. "It's too long to explain in this
freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not
corked up here so dead tight as Hutton-Ma-
cartney thinks," and in the dark I knew he
grinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide
what we're going to do before he discovers
that!"
"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I
lurched as I turned back to the blocked tunnel
entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoul-
der.
"You can't get her," said he succinctly,
"unless we help you! Going to trust us?"
It didn't seem to me that I had any choice;
so I said yes. Then I gaped like a fool. Dunn


222 The La Chance Mine Mystery
and Collins had me by the arms and were
marching me through the dark, not toward
the tunnel where I'd been slung in, but back
through Thompson's black, abandoned stope,
as if it had been Broadway, till the side wall of
it brought us up. "Over you go," said Collins
gruffly. He gave me a boost against the
smooth wall of the stope, and my clawing fin-
gers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf of
stone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically,
and felt my feet go through the solid stope
wall, into space. There was an opening in the
living rock, and as Collins lit another match
where he stood below me, I saw it: a practicable
manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so
sharply that it must have been invisible from
Thompson's stope, even in candlelight. Col-
lins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the
next second we all three slid through the black
slit behind our ledge, and out—somewhere else.
Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in a
second tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe
tunnel, too, if I'd been worrying about trifles,
but not Thompson's!
The thing made me start, and Collins
grinned. "More convenient exit than old
Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll
come on you'll see." He and his candle disap-
peared round a loose looking boulder into a
dark hole in the tunnel side, and his voice con-


Place of Departed Spirits 223
tinued blandly as I stumbled after. "Natural
cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this
second cave leading out of it; and a passage
from here to—outside!" He waved his hand
around as I stood dumb. "Our little country
home!"
AVhat I saw was a small round cave, the
glow of a fire under a shaft that led all betray-
ing smoke heaven knew where into the side of
the hill, and two spruce beds with blankets.
The permanent look of the place was the last
straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspect-
ing Macartney, and I burst out, "Why the
deuce, with all you knew, couldn't you have
brought Paulette here and hidden her?"
"Charliet said we should have." Collins
nodded when I stared. "Oh, yes, there's
more to that French Canadian than just cook!
He's been in the know about us here all this
time, or we'd have been in a nice hole for grub.
Mind, I don't say he's brave"
"He was under his bed when I wanted him
to-night," I agreed with some bitterness.
"Was he?" Collins exclaimed electrically.
"He was here, giving us the office about you!
He tore down and told us you'd got Hutton,
and we'd better light out and help you: but
when we turned out it looked more as if Hut-
ton had got you! When you and Miss Paul-
ette rushed out of the kitchen door you must


Place of Departed Spirits 225
I shook my head; and the smell of coffee
smote my famished nostrils as he took a tin pot
off the fire. I knew how nearly I had been
done when the scalding stuff picked me up like
brandy. But—" You're sure about Paill-
ette? " I gasped. "Remember, Macartney was
bound to get her!"
"Well, he didn't," Collins returned com-
posedly. "I bet he's looking for her right
now, and I'm dead sure he won't find her.
Charliet wasn't born yesterday: he'll bring her
here all right."
"I'll wait ten minutes," I gave in abruptly,
and because I knew I couldn't do anything
else till I had filled my empty stomach. But
there was something I wanted to know.
"What did you mean, just now, about not be-
ing sure of me—with Hutton?"
Dunn spoke up for the first time. "It was
Miss Paulette; we thought it was you we heard
her talking to, two nights in the dark. So
when she drove off to Caraquet with you and
the gold, after we'd heard her say she couldn't
trust you—at least, the man we thought was
you—we didn't know whether you were in with
Hutton or not, or what kind of a game you
were playing."
"Me?" I swore blankly. "I suppose it
never struck you that I believed the man play-
ing the game was Collins—till you both dis-


226 The La Chance Mine Mystery
appeared, and I decided it must be some one
who never was employed around this mine!"
"Well, I'm hanged," said Collins, and
suddenly knocked the wits out of me by mut-
tering that at least we'd both had sense enough
to know that Miss Valenka was square.
"Valenka? D'ye mean you knew who she
was, too?" I stuttered.
"Dunn did," Collins nodded. "I only knew
Hutton. But I knew more than my prayers
about him, and Dunn told me about the girl.
So we sort of kept guard for her and watched
you and Hutton—till the day we had the row
with him."
"In the mine! He told me." Only half of
me heard him. The rest was listening for the
sound of footsteps. But the place was still.
"In'Thompson's stope," Collins corrected
drily. "You see, we thought you and Ma-
cartney-Hutton were working together, and we
didn't see our way to tackling the two of you at
once. So when you went off to Caraquet with
Miss Paulette, we thought we'd get Hutton
cleared out of this before you got back again.
We kind of let him see us leave work in the
mine and sneak into the old stope. When he
came after us, we dropped on him with what
we knew about him; and between us we knew a
deal. We gave him his choice about leaving
the neighborhood that minute, or our going


Place of Departed Spirits 227
straight to Wilbraham and telling who he was
and what he was there for—which was where
we slipped up! He'd the gall to tell us to our
faces that we'd no pull over him, because we
were doing private work in Thompson's stope
and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And
—that rather gave us the check."
"But—why? There wasn't six cents' worth
of gold there to steal!"
Collins smiled with shameless simplicity.
"I know. But stealing gold was exactly what
we were doing, only it wasn't in Thompson's
old stope. We'd have been caught with the
goods on us though, if any one had fussed
round there to investigate. We found our
way in here," he jerked his head toward his
amateur tunnel, " by accident, in Thompson's
time, one day when the stope happened to be
empty; and we burrowed on to what looked like
the anticlinal, before we heard the stope shift
coming and had to slide out. But we'd seen
enough to keep us burrowing. We couldn't
do much, even after Hutton ran the other tun-
nel half a mile down the cliff and caught gold
there; but we kind of slipped in, evenings,
when you missed us out of the bunk house "—
he grinned again—" and got the bearings of
that vein. And you bet we had to find a way
to stay with it; it was too good to leave! We
weren't going to work in Wilbraham's mine


Place of Departed Spirits 229
I would not have known Collins's face as he
asked what I meant about wolf dope now and
when I thought I was swearing at Macartney
in Thompson's stope.
I toJd him, with my ears straining for Char-
liet and a girl creeping to us, through Collins's
back way out. But all I heard was silence,—
that thick, underground silence that fills the
ears like wool. I had said I would wait ten
minutes, and nine of them were gone. I don't
think I spoke. Dunn muttered suddenly,
"They're not coming!"
Collins shook his head and coldly cursed him-
self and me for two fools who had lain low,
when out in the open together we could have
stopped Macartney from getting Dudley, if
we couldn't have helped old Thompson. He
never mentioned Paulette, or his trusted cook.
But he rose, lit a second candle, and led the
way out of his warm burrow by a dark hole
opposite the one we had entered by, and into
a cramped alley where we had to walk bent
double. It felt as if it ran a mile before it
turned in a sharp right angle. Collins pinched
out his light and turned on me. "Just what—
are you going to do?"
"Get Paulette," said I.
"M-m," said Collins. "Well, here's where
we start. Get hold of my heels when I lie
down and don't crowd me." And that was


CHAPTER XVI
IN COLLINS’S CARE
FoR two breaths I did not know where I was.
It was still snowing, and the night was wild,
such a night as we might not have again for
weeks. Any one could move in it as securely as
behind a curtain, for I could not see a yard be-
fore my face, and not a track could lie five
minutes. But suddenly the familiarity of the
place hit me, till I could have laughed out, if I
had been there on any other business. Collins's
long passage had wormed behind Thompson's
stope, behind the La Chance stables; and it
was no wonder he had found it easy enough to
get supplies from Charliet. All he had to do
was to cross the clearing from the jutting rock
that shielded his private entrance and walk into
Charliet's kitchen door. I moved toward it,
and Collins grabbed at me through the smoth-
ering snow. -
“Hang on—you don’t know who's there!
Wait till I ring up Charliet, number one
Wolf!” He stood back from me, and far, far
off, with a perfect illusion of distance broken by


232 The La Chance Mine Mystery
the wind, I heard a wolf howl, once, and then
twice again. If he had not stood beside me, I
could not have believed the cry came from
Collins's throat. But, remembering Dudley,
it had an ill-omened sound to me.
"Shut up! " I breathed sharply.
Collins might have remembered Dudley too.
"I wasn't going to do it again," he muttered,
"but I've had to use it for a signal. It's been
a fashionable kind of a sound around here, if I
hadn't sense enough to know Macartney
brought the beasts that made it. But Charliet
knows my howl. He'll come out, if he's -
Drop, quick!"
But both of us had dropped already. Some
one had flung open the kitchen door and fired
a charge of buckshot out into the night. I
heard it scatter over my head, and a burst of
uproar on its heels told me Charliet's kitchen
was crowded with Macartney's men. Some-
body—not Charliet—shouted over the noise,
"What the devil's that for?" And another
voice yelled something about wolves and firing
to scare them.
"The boss'll scare you—if you get to firing
guns this night," the first voice swore; and a
man laughed, insolently. Then the kitchen
door banged, and Collins sprang up electric-
ally.
"I don't like this one bit," he muttered.


In Collins's Care 237
to my doorway to get Collins, and he was gone.
Where to, I had no earthly idea. I looked to
see if he had been cracked enough to tackle
Marcia, and Marcia was alone on her knees,
chucking all Paulette's things back into her
trunk again. The place suddenly felt dead
quiet. Marcia had stopped sobbing, and I
believe she would have heard a mouse move,—
there was that kind of a listening look about
her. And it was that minute—that unsuitable,
inimical minute—that I heard some one movel
Outside, on the doorstep, somebody stumbled.
The latch lifted, the door swung in,—and I
jumped to meet Macartney with not one thing
on me but some fool snowshoes and a pocketfid
of useless cartridges. But I brought up dead
still, and rigid.
"Charliet—oh, Charliet, come quick"
whispered Paulette. She was snow from head
to foot where she stood in the shack door. "I
couldn't find "But she recoiled as she
saw me, against the light Marcia had burning
inside her own half-open door. "Oh, my
God, Nicky!" she cried in a voice that brought
my soul alive, that fool's soul that had lost her.
She caught at me like a child, incredulously,
wildly. "Oh, Nicky!"
There was no time to ask where she'd been,
nor even of Macartney. I think the unsuitable
thing I said was "Marcia!" For I heard


238 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Marcia jump and fall over Paulette's open
trunk, before she was out of her door like one
of the wolves Macartney was so fond of. I
didn't think she saw us, but she did see Collins.
The thing that cut her off was his rush out of
somewhere. I heard her scream with furious
terror; heard Paulette's door bang on her; and
Collins was beside me with a rifle and some
dunnage I scarcely saw in the sudden dark of
the passage after that banged door.
"Run," said he, through his teeth. "Ginime
that stuff! Run!" he stuffed my snowshoes
under the arm that held the rifle. "No, not
that way! This way." He cut across the
clearing in the opposite direction from the hole
that led to his underground den, and it was
time. Half of Macartney's men were tearing
through the passage toward Marcia's screams,
and the rest were pouring out of the kitchen
door. In the storm we could only hear them.
I was carrying Paulette like a baby, and with
her head against me I could not see her face.
All I could see was swirling, stinging snow in
my eyes, and the sudden dark of the bush we
brought up in. I kept along the edge of it,
circling the clearing, and all but fell over the
end of Collins's jutting rock. And this time
I thanked God for the furious snow; in ten
minutes there would be no sign of our tracks
from the front door to the hold the rock


In Collins's Care 239
shielded, and there was no earthly chance of
Macartney's men picking them up before we
were safe.
It felt like years before the three of us were
inside the curtain of juniper, swarming up the
smooth rock face, but Collins observed con-
trarily that he'd never done it so quickly. He
led the way up to the passage angle where he
had pinched out his light, put down the snow-
shoes and the rifle, laid something else on the
ground with remarkable caution, and walked
on some feet before he lit his candle.
"Better travel light and get home. Dunn
and I'll come back presently and bring up the
dunnage," he observed as blandly as if the
three of us had been for an evening stroll, and
suddenly laughed as he saw me glance at his
stockinged feet. "By golly, I've left my boots
in the shack, and I haven't any others—but it
was worth a pair of boots! I stubbed my toe
on Miss Wilbraham's little revolver she must
have dropped on the passage floor, and I've got
it. Also, let alone her lost toy-dog gun, I got
all her ammunition and her rifle, while she was
grabbing in Miss Paulette's trunk.
"'Taffy went to my house,
Thought I was asleep.
I went to Taffy's house,
And stole a side of beef
—as I learned when I was young. Come on,


240 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Stretton; I bet we'll be top-sides with Macart-
ney-Hutton yet!"
"He's out, looking for me "but Paul-
ette's sentence broke in a gasp. "Why, it's
Collins!" She stared incredulously in the
candlelight.
"Just that," imperturbably. "Stretton can
tell you all about me presently, Miss Paulette.
For now I imagine you'd sooner see a fire and
something to eat. Put her in between us,
Stretton, Indian file, and we'll take her down."
Women are queer things. Tatiana Paulina
Valenka had tramped the bush most of the day
before looking for a dead man, had found
him—a sight no girl should have looked on;
had run for more than her life with me, and
been through God knew what since; and she
walked down that unknown, dark passage with
Collins and me as if nothing had ever happened
to her. She greeted Dunn, too; and then, as
he and Collins disappeared to fetch down our
snowshoes and rifle, went straight to pieces
where she and I stood safe by their fire. "Oh,
oh, oh, I thought you were dead! I saw them
get you. I can't believe—can't believe"
she gasped out in jerks, as if she fought for her
very breath, and suddenly dropped flat on
Dunn's old blanket. "Oh, Nicky," she
moaned, " don't let me faint—now. Nicky!"
There was something in her voice—I don't


In Collins's Care 241
know—but it made me dizzy with sheer, clear
joy. She had said my name as if I were the
one man in the world for her, as if I had risen
from the dead. But I dared not say so. I
knew better than even to lift her head where
she lay with closed eyes on Dunn's blanket,
but I got Collins's old tin cup to her lips some-
how and made her drink his strong coffee till it
set her blood running, as it had set mine. After
a minute she sat up dizzily, but she pushed
away my bread and meat. "Presently—I'd
be sick now," she whispered. "How did you
get—out of Thompson's stope? And where—
I mean I can't understand, about Collins and
Dunn!"
"They got me out," said I, and explained
about them. But there was no particular sur-
prise on Paulette's face. She never made an
earthly comment, either, when I told her they'd
always known all about her and Hutton, ex-
cept, " I never thought they were dead; I told
you that. I'd an idea, too, that Charliet
didn't think so either."
I had one arm round her by that time,
feeding her with my other hand like a child,
with bits of bread soaked in black coffee. If
I had any thoughts they were only fear that
she might move from me as soon as she really
came to herself. But Charliet's name brought
me back from what was next door to heaven.


242 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Charliet," said I blankly; "where in the
world is he? D'ye mean he hadn't told you
about Collins and Dunn? Why, he was to
bring you to them—here—hours ago!"
"Charliet was? But "Suddenly, be-
yond belief, my dream girl turned and clung
to me. God knows I knelt like a statue. I
was afraid to stir. It was Dudley she loved:
I was only a man who was trusted and a friend.
"Oh, Nicky, you don't know," she cried, " you
don't know! You and I ran straight into
some of Dick Hutton's men when we raced
out of the shack. And you threw me—just
picked me up like a puppy and threw me—out
of their way, into the deep snow. I heard
them get you, but I was half smothered; I
couldn't either see or speak. But I heard Dick
shout from somewhere to ' chuck Stretton into
Thompson's old stope!' I thought it meant
they'd killed you; that it was another man I'd
let—be murdered!"
She caught her breath as if something
stabbed her, and I know it stabbed me to think
I Avas just "another man" to her. But I
knelt steady. I had been a fool to think it
was I she cared for, personally, and whether
she did or not she needed my arm. "Well?"
I asked. "Next?"
"I was scrambling out of the snow," I felt
her shiver against me, "only before I could


In Collins's Care 243
stand up Charliet raced up from somewhere
and shoved me straight down in the drift
again. He said Dick was looking for me, and
to lie still, while he got him away; then to race
for the shack and hide just outside the front
door, till he came for me—but before he could
finish Dick ran down on the two of us, with a
lantern. He'd have fallen over me, if Charliet
hadn't stopped him by yelling that I'd run for
the bush. I think he grabbed the lantern—but
anyhow, they both tore off. I got to the
shack, but Oh, Nicky, I couldn't wait
there. I"
"Well?" It seemed to be the only word in
my brain.
"I went down to Thompson's stope. But
I was too late. The men had walled you in
with rocks, and I couldn't move them. I
tried!" (I thought she must hear the leap
my heart gave. I know I shut my jaws to
keep my tongue between my teeth at the
thought of her trying to dig her way in to me,
the only friend she had in the world except a
French-Canadian cook.) "I Oh, I
thought if I could find Charliet we might do
something! I went back to look for him, and I
found you Oh, I found you!" Her arms
were still on my shoulders as I knelt by her,
and suddenly her voice turned low and anxious.
"What do you suppose became of Charliet?


244 The La Chance Mine Mystery
He's so faithful. We can't leave him for Dick
to turn on when he can't find me!"
I was not thinking of Charliet. I couldn't
honestly care what had become of him, with my
dream girl in my arms. I may as well tell the
truth; I forgot Dudley, too. I don't know
what mad words would have come out of my
mouth if Paulette had not pushed me away
violently. What was left of her coffee upset;
I got to my feet with the empty cup in my
hand, just as Collins and Dunn and their
candle emerged round the boulder. I remem-
bered long afterwards that it was before I had
answered Paulette one word about myself,
Thompson's stope, anything. But then all I
did was to stare at something Collins was
carrying carefully in his two hands. "What's
that? " I said—just to say something.
"Some new kind of high explosive Wil-
braham got to try and never did," Collins
returned casually. "Saw it in his office to-
night and thought it was better with us than
with Macartney. Don't know just how it
works, so I'm treating it gingerly." He
moved on into the darkness of his own tunnel
and came back empty-handed. "What are
we going to do—first? " he inquired calmly.
I took a look at Paulette. Whether it was
from Collins's casual mention of Dudley's
name or not, she was ghastly. Who she was


In Collins's Care 245
looking at I don't know; but it wasn't at
me.
"Sleep," said I grimly. "Two of us need
it, if you and Dunn don't. Macartney can't
get us to-night." Though of that I was none
too sure. Charliet might get rattled any
moment and give us away. But there was no
good in sticking at trifles.
But Collins was an astute devil. "He
won't," he rejoined as calmly as if I had spoken
of Charliet out loud. "He won't get hurt,
either; you can bank on that. Make up that
fire, Dunn, and we'll give Miss Paulette the
blankets."
We did, where she lay at one side. We
three men dropped like dogs in a row in front
of the fire. I was next Paulette, with the
space of a foot or so between us. I had not
known how dead weary I was till I stretched
out flat. Collins and Dunn may have slept; I
don't know; but Paulette certainly did, as soon
as she got her head down. I thought I lay and
watched the fire, but I must have slept, too.
For I woke—with my heart drumming as if
I'd heard the trump for the Last Judgment,
and Paulette's hand in mine. I must have
flung out my arm till I touched her, and her
little fingers were tight round my hard, dirty
hand, clinging to it. I lay in heaven, in the
dark of a frowsy cave we might be hunted out


246 The La Chance Mine Mystery
of any minute, with the dying glow of the fire
in my eyes and my dream girl's hand in mine.
And suddenly, like a blow, I heard her whisper
in her sleep, " Dudley! Oh, dear Dudley!"
I was only Nicky Stretton, and a fool. I
lay in the dark with a heart like a stone and a
girl's warm, clinging hand in mine.


CHAPTER XVII
HIGH EXPLOSIVE
There was nothing to tell of any handclasp
when I woke in the morning. Paulette lay in
her blankets with her back to me, as if she had
lain so all night; Dunn was making up the fire;
Collins was absent, till he appeared out of his
tunnel where he had put Dudley's high ex-
plosive the night before and nodded to me.
None of us spoke: we all had that chilly sort of
stiffness you get after sleeping with your
clothes on. As we ate our breakfast I took
one glance at Paulette and looked away again.
She was absolutely white, almost stunned look-
ing, and her eyes would not meet mine. I had
an intuition she had waked in the night after I
slept and discovered what she had been doing;
but if she were ashamed there was no need.
God knows I would not have reminded her of
the thing. I knew the dark hollows and the
tear marks under her eyes were for Dudley,
not for me. But I had to take care of her
now, and Collins glanced at me as I thought it.


High Explosive 249
"You ass, Collins, with Macartney ignorant
of the real way in on us, and he and his gang
digging open Thompson's tunnel against the
daylight, with you and me and Dunn in the
dark on that shelf in Thompson's stope we
came in here by, we'd have the drop on the lot.
Except—Marcia!" Her name jerked out of
me. We would have to count Marcia in with
Macartney's gang; and, remembering she had
known me all her life, it made me smart.
"Oh, Miss Wilbraham—I should let her
rip!" Collins returned callously. "Listen,
Stretton; what you say's all very well, only
we can't count on holding this place when we're
discovered, while it's a matter of if Charliet
can get guns! Miss Marcia's rifle and her toy
popgun aren't going to save us, and I doubt
if Charliet can swipe any more. What I say
is let's cut some horses out of the stable after
dark, all four of us clear out on them to Cara-
quet, and set the sheriff and his men after Ma-
cartney. Unless," he turned boldly to her,
"you don't want that, Miss Valenka?"
But if she had been going to answer, which
I don't think she was, I cut her off. "We
can't let Marcia rip—don't talk nonsense, Col-
lins! She's Dudley's sister, if she and Ma-
cartney are a firm. We can't clear out and
leave her with a man like that!"
"We can't take her to Caraquet," Collins


250 The La Chance Mine Mystery
argued with some point. "You own she
doesn't know anything about Macartney's wolf
dope; you haven't any witnesses to prove he
tried it on your wagon, or to set the wolves on
Dudley. Miss Marcia would just up and
swear your whole story was a lie—and all
Caraquet would believe her! Nobody alive
ever heard of such a thing as wolf dope!"
"That's just where you're wrong!" I re-
membered the boy I'd left cached in Skunk's
Misery—and something else, that had been in
my head ever since wolves and the smell of a
Skunk's Misery bottle seemed to go together.
"Two Frenchmen were run in for using wolf
dope in Quebec province last winter, for I've an
account of their trial somewhere that I cut out
of an Ottawa paper. And as for a witness,
I've a boy cached at Skunk's Misery who can
prove Macartney made the same stuff there.
The only thing we might get stuck on in Cara-
quet is the reason for all the murders he's done
—with, and without it!"
"I guess Miss Valenka knows the reason all
right," Collins spoke as coolly as if she were
not there, which may have been the wisest thing
to do, for though she flushed sharply she said
nothing. He went on with exactly what she
had said herself. "But after Hutton came
here to get her, he saw he'd be a fool not to
grab the La Chance mine, too; and unless we


High Explosive 251
can stop him you bet he and his gang have
grabbed it! They've disposed of Thompson,
of all our own men who might have stood by us,
of Wilbraham," categorically; "they think
they've disposed of Dunn and me and buried
you alive, and—except for having lost Miss
Valenka—Macartney's made his game! No-
body'U know there's anything wrong at the
mine till the spring, because there's no one
interested enough to ask questions till Wilbra-
ham's bank payments have stopped long
enough to look queer. And by that time Ma-
cartney and his gang will be gone, and the
cream of Wilbraham's gold with them. As
for us, we can't fight him by sitting in this
burrow with Miss Paulette, and without any
guns, even if he doesn't end by nosing out
Dunn's and my gold as well as Wilbraham's,
Why, we depend on Charliet for our food, let
alone anything else; and for all we know, Char-
liet may have squeaked on us by this time. I
say again, let's get a sheriff and posse at Cara-
quet, and come back here and get Macartney!
We could do it, if we took Miss Paulette and
hit the trail to-night."
"And Macartney'd get us, if we tried it!"
I had thrashed all that out in my head before,
while I was tying up Macartney with Char-
liet's clothesline. "We'd be stopped by his
picket at the Halfway, if ever we got to the


252 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Halfway, for the Caraquet road's likely drifted
solid and you don't make time digging out
smothering horses. No; we'll fight Macartney
where we are! And the way to do it is with
Charliet and guns."
"If you'll tell me how we're to connect with
either!" Collins was grim. "It's a mighty
dangerous thing calling up Charliet on number
one Wolf, with the whole of La Chance crawl-
ing with Macartney and his gang, hunting for
Miss Paulette. But we can go up to the back
door and try it!"
"Oh, no," Paulette burst out wildly, "I'm
afraid! I mean I know we must find out first
if Charliet's all right, but you mayn't get him
—and you'll give yourselves away!"
It was almost the first time she had spoken,
and it was more to Collins than to me, but I
answered. "We'll get Charliet all right," I
began—and Collins gripped me.
"I dunno," he drawled. "Strikes me some
one's going to get us—first!"
He snapped out our candle, which was sense-
less, since Dunn's red-hot fire showed us up as
plain as day, and all four of us stood paralyzed.
Somebody—running, slipping, with a hideous
clatter of stones—was coming down the long
passage Collins called his back door.
"Macartney," said I, " and Charliet's given
us away!" And with the words in my mouth


High Explosive 253
I had Paulette around the waist and shoved
out of sight behind the boulder that separated
Collins's cave from his tunnel and the pierced
wall of Thompson's stope. Macartney might
be a devil, but there was no doubt the man was
brave to come like that for a girl, through the
dark bowels of the earth where Charliet must
have warned him Dunn and Collins would be
lurking. Only he had not got Paulette yet,
and he would find three men to face before he
even saw her. I stooped over her in the dark
of Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of
the cave firelight cut over the boulder's top.
"Keep still, Paulette—and for any sake
don't move and kick Collins's devilish explo-
sive he's got stuck in here somewhere," I said,
exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not,
because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent
chance to get square with Macartney. I
sprang around the boulder to do it and saw
Collins strike up the barrel of Marcia's rifle in
Dunn's stretched left arm.
"Don't shoot," he yelled. "You fool, it's
Charliet!"
I stood dead still. It was Charliet, but a
Charliet I had never seen. His French-Cana-
dian face was tallow white, as he tore into the
cave, grinning like a dog with rage and ex-
citement. He brushed Dunn and Collins
aside like flies and grabbed my arm. "Come


High Explosive 257
Marcia's popgun and her rifle; two of us, even
on the shelf in Thompson's stope, would do
little good with those against all Macartney's
men crowding into the stope and giving us a
volley the second our fire from the shelf
drew theirs. We might pick off half a
dozen of them before our cartridges gave
out. But there was no sense in that business.
We would have to try But here I
came alive to what Collins was really talking
about.
"That high explosive," he was saying.
"It's a filthy trick, but God knows they de-
serve it! If we blow them back far enough at
the very entrance of the tunnel, they may
never come on again to get in."
I daresay I'd have recoiled in cold blood.
But my blood ran hot that morning. I did
think, though; hard. I said, "Can't do it!
No fuse."
"Heaps. Dunn's and mine!" I heard Col-
lins grabbling for it, somewhere in the dark of
the tunnel.
Behind me somebody lit a candle; who, I
never looked to see. In the light of it I saw
Collins pick up his bundle of blasting powder
and warned him sharply.
"Look out with that stuff! We don't know
it; it may work anyway. If it bursts up in
the air the stope roof'll be down on us. It


258 The La Chance Mine Mystery
may fire back, too—and we'd be hit behind the
point of burst!"
"We won't be," said Collins, between his
teeth. "I'll burst it out the tunnel, and blow
Macartney's gang to rags!"
But that lighted candle at my back had
shown me other than explosives: the silly,
pointless snowshoes I had lugged from my own
room in the shack. My conscious mind knew
now what my subconscious mind had wanted
them for, like a mill where some one had turned
on the current. I swore out loud. "By gad,
Collins, listen! If we don't smash Macartney,
and he gets in on us, he'll get Paulette! I've
got to stop that, somehow. Macartney doesn't
know she's here yet; Marcia only guessed it.
Supposing he were to see only me, alone in
Thompson's stope, he might never know she
was here too!"
"Dunno what you mean," Collins snapped.
And I snapped back:
"I mean that if we blow a clean hole at the
tunnel entrance, and I burst out of it and run,
I can get the T ^.ole gang after me—and make
time for you and Charliet to get Paulette away
somewhere, by the back door."
"But"—Collins halted where he swarmed
up into Thompson's stope —" where'll you go?
You can't, Stretton. It's death!"
"It's sense," said I. "As for where I'll go,


262 The La Chance Mine Mystery
free in front of me,—that Lac Tremblant I
had thought of subconsciously when I carried
snowshoes into Collins's cave.
In the beginning of this story I said what
Lac Tremblant was like. It was a lake that
was no lake; that should have been our water-
way out of the bush instead of miles of expen-
sive road; and was no more practicable than a
rope ladder to the stars. For the depth of
Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two things
no man might count on. It would fall in a
night to shallows a child might wade through,
among bristling rocks no one had ever guessed
at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the
spruce scrub on its banks,—a sweet spread of
water, with never a rock to be seen. What
hidden spring fed it was a mystery. But in
the bitterest winter it was never frozen further
than to form surging masses of frazil ice
that would neither let a canoe push through
them, nor yet support the weight of a
man. It was on that frazil ice, that some
people called lolly, that I meant to run for
my life now, trusting to the resistance of
the two feet of snow that lay on the lake in
the mysterious way snow does lie on lolly, and
to the snowshoes on my feet. And as I slith-
ered on to the soft snow of the lake, from the
crackling, breaking shell ice on the La Chance
shore, I knew I had done well. Some—a


CHAPTER XVIII
LAC TREMBLANT
"Across the ice that never froze
The snow that never bore,
My love ran out to follow me—
To follow to the shore."
The Day the World Went Mad.
It may be true that I swore aloud; but what
I meant by it was more like praying. Over
me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun;
under me the treacherous spread of the lake
that was no lake, that one misstep might send
me through, to God knew what hideous depth
of unfrozen water, or bare, bone-shattering
stone; behind me were Macartney and Macart-
ney's men; and close up to me, nearer every
second, my Paulette, my dream girl who had
never been mine. There was nothing to do for
both of us but to keep on crossing Lac Trem-
blant. Missteps might be death, but turning
back was worse—for her, anyway.
I yelled, "Keep wide! Get abreast of me
—don't take any direction you don't see me
take. But keep wide!" Because what held


266 The La Chance Mine Mystery
one of us would never hold two, and behind me,
running in my tracks Well, even a light
girl would not run longl
Paulette only screamed, "Yes. Keep on!
They're coming!" She may have needed her
breath, I don't know; but she didn't run like it.
She ran like a deer, with my own flat, heel-
dragging stride on the snowshoes J had not
thought she knew how to use. One more shot
came after us. I yelled again to her to keep
wide and heard her sheer off a little to obey
me; but she still ran behind me. God knows I
didn't realize, till afterwards, that it was to
keep Macartney from shooting me. I didn't
even wonder why Collins and Dunn weren't
firing into the brown of Macartney's men with
Marcia's rifle and popgun. I was too busy
watching the snow surfaces before me.
There was a difference in them. I can't ex-
plain what, but a difference between where
there was water to buoy the snow, and where it
lay on shell ice. The open black holes where
there was nothing at all any one could see, and
I didn't worry over them. I only knew we
must run over water, or the light stuff under
us would let us through. I kept moving my
hand in infinitesimal signals to Paulette, and
God knows she was quick at understanding.
My heart was in my mouth for her, but she
never made a mistake, or a stumble where a


268 The La Chance Mine Mystery
have dared trust to return on,—and it was all
lumps of snowy lolly and blue water, where
Macartney's men had broken through. I
looked ahead of me with my mind running like
a mill. We had done about half the five-mile
crossing; we might do the rest if we could stop
and breathe for ten minutes, for five, even for
two. Only, in all the width of the lake that lay
like cake icing in front of us, there was not one
place where we could dare to stand. The water
under us was higher than I had ever known
it. Not one single dagger-toothed rock showed
as they had showed when I crossed it in a canoe
the night before it froze to the thick slush that
was all it ever froze to. There was not one
single place to But violently, out of the
back of my memory, something came to me.
There was one place in Lac Tremblant where,
high water or low, a man might always stand—
if I could hit it in the smothering, featureless
snow.
"The island! " I gasped out loud. Because
there was one—a high, narrow island without
even a bush on it—rising gradually, not pre-
cipitately like the rest of the rocks in Lac
Tremblant, out of the uncertain water. But
for half an hour I thought it might as well be
non-existent. Stare as I might I could see no
sign of it—and suddenly I all but fell with
blessed shock. I was on it; on the highest end


270 The La Chance Mine Mystery
your stuff blew up. I'd just got on your shelf
when it went off, and it stunned me till I had
just sense enough left to lie still and hold on.
But afterwards, when I saw what you were
going to do, I put on the snowshoes you'd left
by the tunnel entrance and came after you.
I'm sorry I did, nowl"
"But Collins "I looked blankly across
the two miles of quivering death trap we still
had to cross before we gained what safety there
might be in the Halfway shore and the neigh-
borhood of Macartney's picket, and my
thoughts were not of Collins—" Why, in
heaven's name, didn't Collins have sense
enough to lug you back into his cave with him
and Charliet, instead of letting you take a
chance like this?"
"Collins couldn't get back himself," Paul-
ette retorted, as if I were unbearably stupid.
"Nobody could get back! I told you the tun-
nel caved in, till it was solid between us and the
others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In
two more minutes Dick would have come to
hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no
guns to stave him off. You and Collins left
them in the tunnel!" It was just what we
had done, and I wasted good time in remem-
bering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and-
twisted back her streaming cloud of hair.
"So, as I had to come with you," she resumed


Lac Tremblant 271
without looking at me, " don't you think we'd
better get on? If you're waiting for me to
rest, you needn't."
I wasn't, altogether. I stared back over the
perilous way we had come. There was no
black speck of any one following us on its
treacherous face; no sound of shots; no any-
thing from the shore we had left. Yet,
"Where do you suppose Macartney is?" I
asked involuntarily.
"Dead." Her voice was almost indifferent,
but she shivered. "Or he'd have gone on
shooting at us."
I nodded, but I would have felt easier if I
had thought so. Somehow I didn't, I don't
know why. I know nothing would have in-
duced me to take Paulette back to La Chance,
even if the trodden lolly would have borne us
again. I had a pang about Collins, left alone
there; but Collins could take care of himself,
and Paulette's shiver had reminded me we
should freeze to death if we loitered where we
were. I pointed to the snowy lake between us
and the Halfway shore. "Can you do two
more miles of running, over that?"
"Yes," she glanced down at her slim,
trained body, rather superbly. "Only—
there's no one following us! Have we got to
be quite so quick?"
"Quicker! We don't know about Macart-


272 The La Chance Mine Mystery
ney. If he's alive he has a stable full of horses,
and he knows where we're running to. He
may try to cut us off." I half lied; he could
not cut us off, since horses would be of no use
to him in the heavy snow, and on foot it would
take him two days to go round Lac Tremblant
to the Halfway, where crossing the lolly could
bring us in two hours. But I had no mind to
air my real reason for haste.
I should have known Paulette was too
shrewd for me. "I'm a fool—Lac Tremblant
never bears, of course," she said quite quietly.
"Go on, Mr. Stretton. Only—don't stop, if
anything goes wrong with me!"
"Nothing will go wrong," said I, just as if
I believed it. If she had called me Nicky, as
she had done by mistake the night before, when
she slept with her hand clasping mine, if she'd
even looked at me, I must have burst out that
I loved her, past life and death, and out to the
world to come. But it was no time to force
love-making on a girl who had seen the man
she meant to marry lie dead before her eyes.
If she turned shaky, or cried, I could never
save her. For the bit of lake in front of us
was ten times worse than what we'd crossed.
I knew that when I tightened up the snowshoes
silently and led my dream girl out on it. I
would have given half my life for a rope, *uch
as people have on glaciers. But I had no


Lac Tremblant 273
rope, and each of us would have to run, or
sink, alone.
I meant, of course But that's no mat-
ter. I got Paulette off the island and, inch
by inch, feeling my way, back to the channel
where buoyant water, at least, lay under us.
I twisted and turned like a corkscrew, but I
dared not leave it. Once I cautioned Paulette
never to try a short cut, just to keep abreast
of me; and twice my heart was in my mouth at
a hollow, instant-long clatter under our shoes.
But we got on over the stuff somehow, leaving
holes of blue water in our tracks, with great
gobbets of snow floating in them. The shore
lay close in front of us, with a hard distinct
edge of shell ice showing where the water
stopped. I was just going to call out that in
ten feet more we'd be safe over the lolly, when
—smash—both of us went through! I thought
I fell a mile before I hit the water that was
going to drown us; hit it knees first, just as I'd
gone through, and—I sprawled in icy slush
that rose no higher than my waist. I was in a
sort of pocket between two rocks that were
holding up the lolly. There was an avalanche
of caving snow and ice all round me, but I was
not drowned or likely to be,—only I barely
thought of it. For I could not see Paulette.
Suddenly, past belief, I heard her scream:
"Nicky!"


Lac Tremblant 275
and shelter in the Halfway shack—and it
might as well have been in Heaven, for with
Macartney's men cached in it I naturally could
not take her there. Behind that, twenty-seven
miles off, was Caraquet; but even a girl with a
trained body like Paulette's could never make
twenty-seven miles on top of all we'd done.
"It's no question of wanting you," I ex-
claimed angrily. "It is that I don't know
what to do. But want you—when do you sup-
pose I haven't wanted you, ever since the night
I first saw you by Dudley's fire? What do
you suppose I'd ever have been in this game
for, if I hadn't wanted just you in all this
world? My heart of hearts, don't you know I
love you?" I lost my head, or I never would
have said it, for I saw her flinch. That
brought me back to myself in the snow and
desolation round us that stood for God's world
as nothing else would have done. I burst out
in shame, " Oh, forgive me! I never meant to
let that out. I know you never cared a hang
for me; that you were going to marry Dudley,
if he hadn't been killed!"
For one solid minute Paulette never opened
her mouth. She sat like a colored statue, with
rose-crimson cheeks and gold-bronze hair, un-
der the white January sun. Her eyes were so
dark in her face that they looked like blue-
black ink. "I—I never was engaged to Dud-


Lac Tremblant 277
wound up in your coat buttons—if you mean
that!"
I didn't. "I meant I knew where we could
go, and that's to Skunk's Misery," I harked
back soberly, remembering the boy I had left
there with a fire and shelter anyhow, if not
food.
"But you said it was a horrible place!"
"So it is, when you have anywhere else to
go. But we can't try the Halfway with Ma-
cartney's men in it, and neither of us could
make Caraquet to-night. We've got to have
shelter, darling."
Paulette stopped plaiting her hair in a thick
rope. "Say that again," she ordered curi-
ously.
"What—Skunk's Misery?" But suddenly
I understood, and used that word I had never
said aloud before:
"Darling darling, Skunk's Misery is our
only chance. Get up and come on!"
But she answered without moving.
"Want to tell you something first. The
tunnel falling in wasn't all the reason I ran
after you. I thought—thought Dick might
not dare to shoot at you if I were between you
and him, so Oh, Nicky, don't kiss my
horrid, chapped hands!"
But I was glad to hide my humbled face on
them, remembering how I had stormed at her.


Lac Tremblant 279
us and the spruce bush we had to strike through
to avoid the Halfway and Macartney's picket.
Some kind of a trail we must leave to Skunk's
Misery, but it need not begin here, in the first
place Macartney would look, if he were alive to
look anywhere. Paulette's eyes followed mine
as I thought it, and she nodded. It was with-
out a track of any sort, after the lake trail
ended, that she and I stopped in the thick
spruces and put on our snowshoes for the last
lap of the way to Skunk's Misery.
My dream girl's trained young body served
her well. As she stepped out after me, I
would never have guessed she had run a yard.
It was easy enough to avoid the Halfway, and
unlikely that Macartney's men would ever dis-
cover our devious track in the thick bush.
Crossing the Caraquet road was the only place
where we had to leave a track in the open. I
did the best I could with it by picking up Paul:
ette, and carrying her and her shoes into thick
bush again; but I could not honestly feel much
pleasure in the result. Any one with any
sense would know my sunken shoe marks had
carried double, but it was the best I could do.
It was no pleasure to me either to hear Paul-
ette exclaim sharply, as I set her down:
"Nicky, I forgot! Dick can snowshoe after
us, if he's alive. Charliet made a lot of snow-
shoes at odd times, to sell in Quebec if he ever


Lac Tremblant 281
roads, under rocks and around them; and on
the hard-trodden paths our feet left no trace.
At least, I thought so: and it was just where I
slipped up! If I had looked behind me, when
Paulette would not let me carry her snowshoes,
I would have seen the tails of them dragging a
telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they
sagged from her tired arm. But my eyes were
straight before me, on the door of Macartney's
lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung,
but I only glanced in to make sure it was
empty. It was elsewhere I was going, around
the huge boulder that backed the place, and
down a gully that apparently brought up
against blind rock—only I knew better. I
found the opening of the rocky passage I had
wormed down once before with my back scrap-
ing the living rock between me and the sky,
and on my hands and knees, with Paulette
after me, I went down it again. It ended
without warning, just as I had known it would
end, in an open cave. A glow of fire was
ahead of me; and, stooping over it—what I had
never imagined I should see with joy and grati-
tude—the boy I had left there, toasting a raw
rabbit on a stick. That was all I saw. And
what possessed me I don't know, but as I stood
up I turned on Paulette with a sudden wave of
stale jealousy overwhelming me, and a ques-
tion I had kept back all the afternoon:


282 The La Chance Mine Mystery
"Paulette, you're sure—sure—it's me, and
not Dudley? That you didn't love the poor
chap best?"
Paulette scrambled to her feet beside me.
"It's you," she said clearly. "I told you
Dudley never loved me, or I him. I'll mourn
for him always, for he met his death through
me. But he never wanted to marry me, and if
he were alive, he'd be the first person to tell
you so!"
There was a pause, definite, distinct, while
you could count five. The boy at the lire
started to frozen attention at sight of us, as
sharply as his distorted body could start. But
before he could speak, or I did, another voice
answered Paulette's from the dark of the cave
behind the fire,—an unexpected, mind-shatter-
ing voice, that took me toward it with one
bound. "By gad," it said, " he would, would
he? Two things have to go to that!"
I stood paralyzed where I had jumped.
Paulette's snowshoes dropped clattering on the
cave floor. Dudley Wilbraham, whom the
wolves had eaten—little, fat, with a face more
like an egg than ever, but whole and alive—
stood in the dimness of the cave behind the fire
and my Skunk's Misery boy!


CHAPTER XIX
SKUNK'S MISERY
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 Cara-
quet 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 conver-
sation I imagine it wasn't. Thank the Lord
you are here though, anyway. I've been


284 The La Chance Mine Mystery
pretty wild, tied up here with this snow.
But"—sharply—"where the devil's Mar-
cia?"
"Hidden away from Macartney, with Char-
liet 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—unrecogniz-
able 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 re-
flected 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


Skunk's Misery 285
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 ycu? Why, Macart-
ney 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 Dud-
ley. A second man—white-faced, black-eye-
browed, slim looking—was standing just where
the fire glow did not reach him, staring at Paul-
ette 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


Skunk's Misery 287
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 dis-
missal 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,


290 The La Chance Mine Mystery
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 pro-
cession 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 some-
thing 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 Ma-
cartney, 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 Dud-
ley held out to her. "You're not angry, Dud-


Skunk's Misery 291
ley?" 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 Paul-
ette and I did fifteen, even if he knew where to
do it to!"
"He doesn't have to, my young son," Dud-
ley stood musing on it. "Baker and I didn't
do any twenty, coming here; and it was Ma-
cartney'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


CHAPTER XX
THE END
The boy at the fire let out a yelp and
dropped flat. Dudley and Baker, invisible
somewhere, neither spoke nor stirred. And I
stood like a fool, as near the death of Nicholas
Dane Stretton as ever I wish to get.
But Macartney only stood there, looking so
much as usual that I guessed he must have
rested outside the mouth of our burrow before
he wormed down to tackle me.
"You wouldn't have left any tracks," he
said, picking up what I'd just said in his every-
day manner, if it had not been for the dog's
grin he always wore when he was angry, "if
I hadn't run on single snowshoe tracks carry-
ing double, where you crossed the Caraquet
road. And if one of you hadn't trailed your
shoe tails through Skunk's Misery — that
doesn't wear them!"
"How did you get here? " said I slowly, be-
cause I was calculating my spring to Macart-
ney's gun hand.
"I walked," and I thought he had not no-


The End 295
ney might speak naked truth to Paulette and
myself, where he would have varnished it up to
a mysteriously resurrected employer whom he
might yet bamboozle as he always had bam-
boozled him. Anyhow, neither of us saw fit
to give Dudley away. Macartney sneered into
our silent faces.
"There's not much fight in you," he com-
mented contemptuously. "Though it was
never any good to try to fight me! If you like
to have it in black and white, I've been all
the brains of the business here—single-handed I
It was I got the secret of the wolf bait from
the mother of your lame friend here," he
pointed with his unoccupied hand to my grov-
elling boy, "when first I followed Paulette
out from New York and laid up in Skunk's
Misery to wait till I had a clear way to get to
La Chance. That old ass Thompson gave me
that, when I scooped him up on the road.
After I'd used him, two of my men drowned
him in Lac Tremblant—and you'd never have
guessed a word about it, if it hadn't been for
his cursed card they overlooked in the shack
here, where you found it. It was I put that
bottle in your wagon the day it broke there. I
did it before I knew Paulette was going to
drive with you; that was the only thing in the
whole business that ever gave me a scare! It
was I got rid of Collins and Dunn "—I saw


298 The La Chance Mine Mystery
note you sent outside the case, instead of in-
side! Remember?" But this time he did not
laugh. "I missed fire about getting you that
night, thanks to that fool Wilbraham happen-
ing round with his car. But now I'll take all
I did this whole business for—and that's
you,—Paulette Valenkal"
Paulette never took her eyes from him.
"That's a lie," she said quite evenly. "Oh,
not that you took the emeralds; I believe that.
But it was not only to get me into trouble. It
was for themselves! You had to steal some-
thing. You hadn't one penny."
"Not then!" Even in the gloom I saw two
scarlet spots flare out like sealing-wax on the
always dead blondeness of Macartney's cheeks.
I thought I could hear his heart beat where I
stood. "But I have now! With the emer-
alds, your late friend Dudley's mine, and you,"
—his voice was unspeakably, insultingly sig-
nificant, but that unheard rustle behind him,
growing nearer, more unmistakable, kept me
motionless. "By heaven, a man might call
himself rich! Did you suppose Stretton here
could fight me? Why, I've been the secret
wolf he never had the nous to guess at!
I "he swung around on me like light, his
revolver six inches from my ear. "Stand
there," he shouted at me, "and die like Wil-
braham, you"


300 The La Chance Mine Mystery
fell and lay there. None of us had said a
word since Dudley came out and faced Ma-
cartney. None of us said a word now.
I saw, almost indifferently, Collins burst
out of the burrow behind Macartney, as
Marcia had burst out, and grab me. "Stret-
ton," he gasped, "thank God—found your
tracks. But that she-devil Marcia got away
from me, and "But in his turn he jerked
taut where he stood, at sight of Dudley, and
stood speechless.
But I never looked at him. I looked at
nothing but Macartney's face. 1
It was rigid, as if it were a mask that had
frozen on him. The sealing-wax scarlet on his
cheeks had gone out like a turned-out lamp.
His eyes went from Dudley to Collins and
back again, as if they were the only living part
of his deathly face.
"Ah," said Macartney, "A-ah!" He
dropped on the floor all in one piece, like a
cut-down tree.
Collins made a plunge for him. I sent Col-
lins reeling.
"Let him alone, you young fool," I swore.
"We've got him, and he's fainted. I've seen
him like this before—the night he shot our own
men in the assay office. It's only his old faint-
ing fits."
"It's his new death," said Dudley, quite


304 The La Chance Mine Mystery
Anyhow, you've got Macartney's gun! You
can go ahead and see."
But I had no need to. An abandoned picket
has a way of knowing when the game is up, and
Macartney's men had cleared out on the
double, even before Charliet's first rifle bullet
missed them. We caught them afterwards,
half dead in the bush,—but that doesn't come
in here. I walked into the Halfway with my
dream girl beside me, and both of us jumped
as Dudley suddenly poked his pig-eyed face
between us.
"You needn't hop, you two," he commented
irritably; " you can have your Old Nick, Paul-
ette, for all me! What I'm thinking of's that
boy—and Baker! I guess they saved my life
all right between them, and I'm going to set
them up for what's left of theirs. Got any-
thing to say against that, hey?" with his old
snarl.
"Not much," I returned soberly. But
Paulette clasped both Dudley's podgy hands
in hers.
"Oh, dear Dudley," she said softly. But
there were tears in her eyes.
I know; for I kissed them away afterwards,
when we were alone.
THE END











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