A PROPERTY Qj 
 
The River s End 
 
THE 
 
 RIVER S END 
 
 A NEW STORY OF 
 GOD S COUNTRY 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 KAZAN, GOD S COUNTRY, 
 THE GOLDEN SNARE, ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 DEAN CQRNWELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 ~~~~~~ Made in the United States of America 
 
Copyright, 1918, by 
 COSMOPOLITAN BOOK CORPORATION 
 
 All rights reserved, inducting that of translation 
 into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "And off There ?" "God s Country," 
 
 Said Keith Devoutly . . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 " Remember, Old Chap, You Win cr Lose the 
 Moment McDowell First Sets His Eyes 
 on You!" 25 
 
 "John Keith Told Me Just What I d Find 
 
 Here," He Said 184 
 
 As Keith Had Dreamed of Those Mountains in 
 Boyhood and Youth, so Now He Dreamed 
 His Dreams over Again with Mary 
 Josephine .., ;., . . . .232 
 
 -^ < 
 
The River s End 
 
THE RIVER S. END : 
 
 BETWEEN Conniston, of His Maj 
 esty s Royal Northwest Mounted 
 Police, and Keith, the outlaw, there was 
 a striking physical and facial resemblance. 
 Both had observed it, of course. It gave 
 them a sort of confidence in each other. 
 Between them it hovered in a subtle and 
 unanalyzed presence that was constantly 
 suggesting to Conniston a line of action 
 that would have made him a traitor to 
 his oath of duty. For nearly a month he 
 had crushed down the whispered temptings 
 of this thing between them. He repre 
 sented the law. He was the law. For 
 twenty-seven months he had followed 
 Keith, and always there had been in his 
 mind that parting injunction of the splen 
 did service of which he was a part " Don t 
 come back until you get your man, dead 
 
 or alive." Otherwise 
 
 A racking cough split in upon his 
 
2 THE RIVER S END 
 
 thoughts, ,He ; sat up on the edge of his 
 cot, ; and -at- the gasping cry of pain that 
 .dame. vf/ith ithfe-red ^ stain of blood on his 
 lips Keith went to him and with a strong 
 arm supported his shoulders. He said 
 nothing, and after a moment Conniston 
 wiped the stain away and laughed softly, 
 even before the shadow of pain had faded 
 from his eyes. One of his hands rested on 
 a wrist that still bore the ring-mark of a 
 handcuff. The sight of it brought him 
 back to grim reality. After all, fate was 
 playing whimsically as well as tragically 
 with their destinies. 
 
 " Thanks, old top," he said. " Thanks." 
 His fingers closed over the manacle- 
 marked wrist. 
 
 Over their heads the arctic storm was 
 crashing in a mighty fury, as if striving to 
 beat down the little cabin that had dared 
 to rear itself in the dun-gray emptiness at 
 the top of the world, eight hundred miles 
 from civilization. There were curious 
 wailings, strange screeching sounds, and 
 heart-breaking moanings in its strife, and 
 when at last its passion died away 
 and there followed a strange quiet, the two 
 
THE RIVER S END 3 
 
 men could feel the frozen earth under 
 their feet shiver with the rumbling rever 
 berations of the crashing and breaking 
 fields of ice out in Hudson s Bay. With 
 it came a dull and steady roar, like the 
 incessant rumble of a far battle, broken 
 now and then when an ice mountain split 
 asunder with a report like that of a six- 
 teen-inch gun. Down through the Roes 
 Welcome into Hudson s Bay countless bil 
 lions of tons of ice were rending their way 
 like Hunnish armies in the break-up. 
 
 " You d better lie down," suggested 
 Keith. 
 
 Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his 
 feet and went to a table on which a seal-oil 
 lamp was burning. He swayed a little as 
 he walked. He sat down, and Keith seated 
 himself opposite him. Between them lay 
 a worn deck of cards. As Conniston 
 fumbled them in his fingers, he looked 
 straight across at Keith and grinned. 
 
 " It s queer, devilish queer," he said. 
 " Don t you think so, Keith? " He was an 
 Englishman, and his blue eyes shone with 
 a grim, cold humor. " And funny," he 
 added. 
 
4 THE RIVER S END 
 
 " Queer, but not funny," partly agreed 
 Keith. 
 
 " Yes, it is funny," maintained Connis- 
 ton. " Just twenty-seven months ago, lack 
 ing three days, I was sent out to get you, 
 Keith. I was told to bring you in dead 
 or alive and at the end of the twenty- 
 sixth month I got you, alive. And as a 
 sporting proposition you deserve a hundred 
 years of life instead of the noose, Keith, for 
 you led me a chase that took me through 
 seven different kinds of hell before I 
 landed you. I froze, and I starved, and I 
 drowned. I haven t seen a white woman s 
 face in eighteen months. It was terrible. 
 But I beat you at last. That s the jolly 
 good part of it, Keith I beat you and got 
 you, and there s the proof of it on your 
 wrists this minute. I won. Do you cop- 
 cede that? You must be fair, old top, 
 because this is the last big game I ll ever 
 play." There was a break, a yearning that 
 was almost plaintive, in his voice. 
 
 Keith nodded. " You won," he said. 
 " You won so square that when the frost 
 got your lung " 
 
 " You didn t take advantage of me," in- 
 
THE RIVER S END 5 
 
 terrupted Conniston. " That s the funny 
 part of it, Keith. That s where the humor 
 comes in. I had you all tied up and 
 scheduled for the hangman when bing! 
 along comes a cold snap that bites a 
 corner of my lung, and the tables are 
 turned. And instead of doing to me as 1 
 was going to do to you, instead of killing 
 me or making your getaway while I was 
 helpless Keith old pal you ve tried to 
 nurse me back to life! Isn t that funny? 
 Could anything be funnier? " 
 
 He reached a hand across the table and 
 gripped Keith s. And then, for a few 
 moments, he bowed his head while his 
 body was convulsed by another racking 
 cough. Keith sensed the pain of it in the 
 convulsive clutching of Conniston s fingers 
 about his own. When Conniston raised his 
 face, the red stain was on his lips again. 
 
 " You see, I ve got it figured out to the 
 day," he went on, wiping away the stain 
 with a cloth already dyed red. "This is 
 Thursday. I won t see another Sunday. 
 It ll come Friday night or some time Sat 
 urday. I ve seen this frosted lung business 
 a dozen times. Understand? I ve got two 
 
6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 sure days ahead of me, possibly a third. 
 Then you ll have to dig a hole and bury 
 me. After that you will no longer be held 
 by the word of honor you gave me when 
 I slipped off your manacles. And I m ask 
 ing you what are you going to do? ! 
 
 In Keith s face were written deeply the 
 lines of suffering and of tragedy. Yester 
 day they had compared ages. He was 
 thirty-eight, only a little younger than the 
 man who had run him down and who in 
 the hour of his achievement was dying. 
 They had not put the fact plainly before. 
 It had been a matter of some little embar 
 rassment for Keith, who at another time 
 had found it easier to kill a man than to 
 tell this man that he was going to die. 
 Now that Conniston had measured his own 
 span definitely and with most amazing 
 coolness, a load was lifted from Keith s 
 shoulders. Over the table they looked into 
 each other s eyes, and this time it was 
 Keith s fingers that tightened about Con- 
 niston s. They looked like brothers in the 
 sickly glow of the seal-oil lamp. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" repeated 
 Conniston. 
 
THE RIVER S END 7 
 
 Keith s face aged even as the dying 
 Englishman stared at him. " I suppose 
 I ll go back," he said heavily. 
 
 " You mean to Coronation Gulf? You ll 
 return to that stinking mess of Eskimo 
 igloos? If you do, you ll go madl" 
 
 " I expect to," said Keith. " But it s the 
 only thing left. You know that. You of 
 all men must know how they ve hunted me. 
 If I went south " 
 
 It was Conniston s turn to nod his head, 
 slowly and thoughtfully. " Yes, of course," 
 he agreed. "They re hunting you hard, 
 and you re giving em a bully chase. But 
 they ll get you, even up there. And I m 
 sorry." 
 
 Their hands unclasped. Conniston filled 
 his pipe and lighted it. Keith noticed that 
 he held the lighted taper without a tremor. 
 The nerve of the man was magnificent. 
 
 " I m sorry," he said again. " I like 
 you. Do you know, Keith, I wish we d 
 been born brothers and you hadn t killed a 
 man. That night I slipped the ring-dogs 
 on you I felt almost like a devil. I 
 wouldn t say it if it wasn t for this bally 
 lung. But what s the use of keeping it 
 
8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 back now? It doesn t seem fair to keep 
 a man up in that place for three years, run 
 ning from hole to hole like a rat, and then 
 take him down for a hanging. I know it 
 isn t fair in your case. I feel it. I don t 
 mean to be inquisitive, old chap, but I m 
 not believing Departmental facts any 
 more. I d make a topping good wager 
 you re not the sort they make you out 
 And so I d like to know just why you 
 killed Judge Kirkstone? " 
 
 Keith s two fists knotted in the center of 
 the table. Conniston saw his blue eyes 
 darken for an instant with a savage fire. 
 In that moment there came a strange 
 silence over the cabin, and in that silence 
 the incessant and maddening yapping of 
 the little white foxes rose shrilly over the 
 distant booming and rumbling of the ice. 
 
II 
 
 TT THY did I kill Judge Kirkstone?" 
 
 VV Keith repeated the words slowly. 
 His clenched hands relaxed, but his eyes 
 held the steady glow of fire. "What do 
 the Departmental facts tell you, Con- 
 niston? " 
 
 " That you murdered him in cold blood, 
 and that the honor of the Service is at 
 stake until you are hung." 
 
 " There s a lot in the view-point, isn t 
 there? What if I said I didn t kill Judge 
 Kirkstone?" 
 
 Conniston leaned forward a little too 
 eagerly. The deadly paroxysm shook his 
 frame again, and when it was over his 
 breath came pantingly, as if hissing 
 through a sieve. " My God, not Sunday 
 or Saturday," he breathed. " Keith, it s 
 coming tomorrow!" 
 
 " No, no, not then," said Keith, choking 
 back something that rose in his throat 
 " You d better lie down again." 
 
 9 
 
io THE RIVER S END 
 
 Conniston gathered new strength. 
 " And die like a rabbit? No, thank you, 
 old chap! I m after facts, and you can t 
 lie to a dying man. Did you kill Judge 
 Kirkstone?" 
 
 " I don t know," replied Keith slowly, 
 looking steadily into the other s eyes. " I 
 think so, and yet I am not positive. I 
 went to his home that night with the de 
 termination to wring justice from him or 
 kill him. I wish you could look at it all 
 with my eyes, Conniston. You could if 
 you had known my father. You see, my 
 mother died when I was a little chap, and 
 my father and I grew up together, chums. 
 I don t believe I ever thought of him as 
 just simply a father. Fathers are common. 
 He was more than that. From the time I 
 was ten years old we were inseparable. I 
 guess I was twenty before he told me of 
 the deadly feud that existed between him 
 and Kirkstune, and it never troubled me 
 much because I didn t think anything 
 would ever come of it until Kirkstone got 
 him. Then I realized that all through the 
 years the old rattlesnake had been watch 
 ing for his chance. It was a frame-up 
 
THE RIVER S END 11 
 
 from beginning to end, and my father 
 stepped into the trap. Even then he 
 thought that his political enemies, and not 
 Kirkstone, were at the bottom of it. We 
 soon discovered the truth. My father got 
 ten years. He was innocent. And the only 
 man on earth who could prove his inno 
 cence was Kirkstone, the man who was 
 gloating like a Shylock over his pound 
 of flesh. Conniston, if you had known 
 these things and had been in my shoes, 
 what would you have done?" 
 
 Conniston, lighting another taper over 
 the oil flame, hesitated and answered: "I 
 don t know yet, old chap. What did you 
 do?" 
 
 " I fairly got down on my knees to the 
 scoundrel," resumed Keith. " If ever a 
 man begged for another man s life, I 
 begged for my father s for the few words 
 from Kirkstone that would set him free. 
 I offered everything I had in the world, 
 even my body and soul. God, I ll never 
 forget that night! He sat there, fat and 
 oily, two big rings on his stubby fingers 
 a monstrous toad in human form and he 
 chuckled and laughed at me in his joy, as 
 
12 THE RIVER S END 
 
 though I were a mountebank playing 
 amusing tricks for him and there my soul 
 was bleeding itself out before his eyes! 
 And his son came in, fat and oily and ac 
 cursed like his father, and he laughed at 
 me. I didn t know that such hatred could 
 exist in the world, or that vengeance could 
 bring such hellish joy. I could still hear 
 their gloating laughter when I stumbled 
 out into the night. It haunted me. I 
 heard it in the trees. It came in the wind. 
 My brain was filled with it and suddenly 
 I turned back, and I went into that house 
 again without knocking, and I faced the 
 two of them alone once more in that room. 
 And this time, Conniston, I went back to 
 get justice or to kill. Thus far it was 
 premeditated, but I went with my naked 
 hands. There was a key in the door, and 
 I locked it. Then I made my demand. I 
 wasted no words " 
 
 Keith rose from the table and began to 
 pace back and forth. The wind had died 
 again. They could hear the yapping of the 
 foxes and the low thunder of the ice. 
 
 " The son began it," said Keith. " He 
 
THE RIVER S END 13 
 
 sprang at me. I struck him. We grap 
 pled, and then the beast himself leaped at 
 me with some sort of wtapon in his hand. 
 I couldn t see what it was, but it was heavy. 
 The first blow almost broke my shoulder. 
 In the scuffle I wrenched it from his hand, 
 and then I found it was a long, rectangular 
 bar of copper made for a paper-weight. 
 In that same instant I saw the son snatch 
 up a similar object from the table, and in 
 the act he smashed the table light. In 
 darkness we fought. I did not feel that I 
 was fighting men. They were monsters 
 and gave me the horrible sensation of be 
 ing in darkness with crawling serpents. 
 Yes, I struck hard. And the son was 
 striking, and neither of us could see. I felt 
 my weapon hit, and it was then that Kirk- 
 stone crumpled down with a blubbery 
 wheeze. You know what happened after 
 that. The next morning only one copper 
 weight was found in that room. The son 
 had done away with the other. And the 
 one that was left was covered with Kirk- 
 stone s blood and hair. There was no 
 chance for me. So I got away. Six 
 
14 THE RIVER S END 
 
 months later my father died in prison, and 
 for three years I ve been hunted as a fox 
 is hunted by the hounds. That s all, Con- 
 niston. Did I kill Judge Kirkstone? 
 And, if I killed him, do you think I m 
 sorry for it, even though I hang? " 
 
 "Sit down!" 
 
 The Englishman s voice was command 
 ing. Keith dropped back to his seat, 
 breathing hard. He saw a strange light 
 in the steely blue eyes of Conniston. 
 
 " Keith, when a man knows he s going 
 to live, he is blind to a lot of things. But 
 when he knows he s going to die, it s dif 
 ferent. If you had told me that story a 
 month ago, I d have taken you down to 
 the hangman just the same. It would have 
 been my duty, you know, and I might have 
 argued you were lying. But you can t lie 
 to me now. Kirkstone deserved to die. 
 And so I ve made up my mind what you re 
 going to do. You re not going back to 
 Coronation Gulf. You re going south. 
 You re going back into God s country 
 again. And you re not going as John 
 Keith, the murderer, but as Derwent Con 
 niston of His Majesty s Royal Northwest 
 
THE RIVER S END 15 
 
 Mounted Police! Do you get me, Keith? 
 Do you understand? " 
 
 Keith simply stared. The Englishman 
 twisted a mustache, a half-humorous gleam 
 in his eyes. He had been thinking of this 
 plan of his for some time, and he had 
 foreseen just how it would take Keith off 
 his feet. 
 
 " Quite a scheme, don t you think, old 
 chap? I like you. I don t mind saying 
 I think a lot of you, and there isn t any 
 reason on earth why you shouldn t go on 
 living in my shoes. There s no moral ob 
 jection. No one will miss me. I was the 
 black sheep back in England younger 
 brother and all that and when I had to 
 choose between Africa and Canada, I chose 
 Canada. An Englishman s pride is the 
 biggest fool thing on earth, Keith, and I 
 suppose all of them over there think I m 
 dead. They haven t heard from me in six 
 or seven years. I m forgotten. And the 
 beautiful thing about this scheme is that 
 we look so deucedly alike, you know. 
 Trim that mustache and beard of yours a 
 little, add a bit of a scar over your right 
 eye, and you can walk in on old McDowell 
 
16 THE RIVER S END 
 
 himself, and I ll wager he ll jump up and 
 say, Bless my heart, if it isn t Conniston! 
 That s all I ve got to leave you, Keith, a 
 dead man s clothes and name. But you re 
 welcome. They ll be of no more use to me 
 after tomorrow." 
 
 " Impossible! " gasped Keith. " Connis 
 ton, do you know what you are saying? " 
 
 " Positively, old chap. I count every 
 word, because it hurts when I talk. So 
 you won t argue with me, please. It s the 
 biggest sporting thing that s ever come my 
 way. I ll be dead. You can bury me 
 under this floor, where the foxes can t 
 get at me. But my name will go on living 
 and you ll wear my clothes back to civi 
 lization and tell McDowell how you got 
 your man and how he died up here with 
 a frosted lung. As proof of it you ll lug 
 your own clothes down in a bundle along 
 with any other little identifying things you 
 may have, and there s a sergeancy waiting. 
 McDowell promised it to you if you got 
 your man. Understand? And McDowell 
 hasn t seen me for two years and three 
 months, so if I might look a bit different 
 to him, it would be natural, for you and I 
 
THE RIVER S END 17 
 
 have been on the rough edge of the world 
 all that time. The jolly good part of it 
 all is that we look so much alike. I say 
 the idea is splendid! " 
 
 Conniston rose above the presence of 
 death in the thrill of the great gamble he 
 was projecting. And Keith, whose heart 
 was pounding like an excited fist, saw in a 
 flash the amazing audacity of the thing 
 that was in Conniston s mind, and felt the 
 responsive thrill of its possibilities. No 
 one down there would recognize in him 
 the John Keith of four years ago. Then 
 he was smooth-faced, with shoulders that 
 stooped a little and a body that was not 
 too strong. Now he was an animal! A 
 four years fight with the raw things of 
 life had made him that, and inch for inch 
 he measured up with Conniston. And 
 Conniston, sitting opposite him, looked 
 enough like him to be a twin brother. He 
 seemed to read the thought in Keith s 
 mind. There was an amused glitter in his 
 eyes. 
 
 " I suppose it s largely because of the 
 hair on our faces," he said. " You know 
 a beard can cover a multitude of physical 
 
i8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 sins and differences, old chap. I wore 
 mine two years before I started out after 
 you, vandyked rather carefully, you under 
 stand, so you d better not use a razor. 
 Physically you won t run a ghost of a 
 chance of being caught. You ll look the 
 part. The real fun is coming in other 
 ways. In the next twenty-four hours 
 you ve got to learn by heart the history of 
 Derwent Conniston from the day he 
 joined the Royal Mounted. We won t go 
 back further than that, for it wouldn t 
 interest you, and ancient history won t 
 turn up to trouble you. Your biggest 
 danger will be with McDowell, command 
 ing F Division at Prince Albert. He s a 
 human fox of the old military school, mus 
 taches and all, and he can see through 
 boiler-plate. But he s got a big heart. 
 He has been a good friend of mine, so 
 along with Derwent Conniston s story 
 you ve got to load up with a lot about 
 McDowell, too. There are many things 
 
 oh, God " 
 
 He flung a hand to his chest. Grim 
 horror settled in the little cabin as the 
 cough convulsed him. And over it the 
 
THE RIVER S END 19 
 
 wind shrieked again, swallowing up the 
 yapping of the foxes and the rumble of 
 the ice. 
 
 That night, in the yellow sputter of the 
 seal-oil lamp, the fight began. Grim-faced 
 one realizing the nearness of death and 
 struggling to hold it back, the other pray 
 ing for time two men went through the 
 amazing process of trading their identities. 
 From the beginning it was Conniston s 
 fight. And Keith, looking at him, knew 
 that in this last mighty effort to die game 
 the Englishman was narrowing the slight 
 margin of hours ahead of him. Keith had 
 loved but one man, his father. In this 
 fight he learned to love another, Connis- 
 ton. And once he cried out bitterly that 
 it was unfair, that Conniston should live 
 and he should die. The dying Englishman 
 smiled and laid a hand on his, and Keith 
 felt that the hand was damp with a cold 
 sweat. 
 
 Through the terrible hours that fol 
 lowed Keith felt the strength and courage 
 of the dying man becoming slowly a part 
 of himself. The thing was epic. Con 
 niston, throttling his own agony, was mag- 
 
20 THE RIVER S END 
 
 nificent. And Keith felt his warped and 
 despairing soul swelling with a new life 
 and a new hope, and he w r as thrilled by 
 the thought of what he must do to live up 
 to the mark of the Englishman. Connis- 
 ton s story was of the important things 
 first. It began with his acquaintance with 
 McDowell. And then, between the 
 paroxysms that stained his lips red, he 
 filled in with incident and smiled wanly as 
 he told how McDowell had sworn him to 
 secrecy once in the matter of an incident 
 which the chief did not want the barracks 
 to know and laugh over. A very sensi 
 tive man in some ways was McDowell! 
 At the end of the first hour Keith stood up 
 in the middle of the floor, and with his 
 arms resting on the table and his shoulders 
 sagging Conniston put him through the 
 drill. After that he gave Keith his worn 
 Service Manual and commanded him to 
 study while he rested. Keith helped him 
 to his bunk, and for a time after that tried 
 to read the Service book. But his eyes 
 blurred, and his brain refused to obey. 
 The agony in the Englishman s low breath 
 ing oppressed him with a physical pain. 
 
THE RIVER S END 21 
 
 Keith felt himself choking and rose at last 
 from the table and went out into the gray, 
 ghostly twilight of the night. 
 
 His lungs drank in the ice-tanged air. 
 But it was not cold. Kwaske-hoo the 
 change had come. The air was filled 
 with the tumult of the last fight of winter 
 against the invasion of spring, and the 
 forces of winter were crumbling. The 
 earth under Keith s feet trembled in the 
 mighty throes of their dissolution. He 
 could hear more clearly the roar and snarl 
 and rending thunder of the great fields of 
 ice as they swept down with the arctic 
 current into Hudson s Bay. Over him 
 hovered a strange night. It was not black 
 but a weird and wraith-like gray, and out 
 of this sepulchral chaos came strange 
 sounds and the moaning of a wind high 
 up. A little while longer, Keith thought, 
 and the thing would have driven him mad. 
 Even now he fancied he heard the scream 
 ing and wailing of voices far up under the 
 hidden stars. More than once in the past 
 months he had listened to the sobbing of 
 little children, the agony of weeping 
 women, and the taunting of wind voices 
 
22 THE RIVER S END 
 
 that were either tormenting or crying out 
 in a ghoulish triumph; and more than once 
 in those months he had seen Eskimos 
 born in that hell but driven mad in the 
 torture of its long night rend the clothes 
 from their bodies and plunge naked out 
 into the pitiless gloom and cold to die. 
 Conniston would never know how near the 
 final breakdown his brain had been in that 
 hour when he made him a prisoner. And 
 Keith had not told him. The man-hunter 
 had saved him from going mad. But 
 Keith had kept that secret to himself. 
 
 Even now he shrank down as a blast of 
 wind shot out of the chaos above and 
 smote the cabin with a shriek that had in 
 it a peculiarly penetrating note. And then 
 he squared his shoulders and laughed, and 
 the yapping of the foxes no longer filled 
 him with a shuddering torment. Beyond 
 them he was seeing home. God s country! 
 Green forests and waters spattered with 
 golden sun things he had almost forgot 
 ten; once more the faces of women who 
 were white. And with those faces he 
 heard the voice of his people and the song 
 of birds and felt under his feet the velvety 
 
THE RIVER S END 23 
 
 touch of earth that was bathed in the aroma 
 of flowers. Yes, he had almost forgotten 
 those things. Yesterday they had been 
 with him only as moldering skeletons 
 phantasmal dream-things because he was 
 going mad, but now they were real, they 
 were just off there to the south, and he was 
 going to them. He stretched up his arms, 
 and a cry rose out of his throat. It was 
 of triumph, of final exaltation. Three 
 years of that and he had lived through 
 it! Three years of dodging from burrow 
 to burrow, just as Conniston had said, like 
 a hunted fox; three years of starvation, of 
 freezing, of loneliness so great that his soul 
 had broken and now he was going home! 
 
 He turned again to the cabin, and when 
 he entered the pale face of the dying Eng 
 lishman greeted him from the dim glow 
 of the yellow light at the table. And Con 
 niston was smiling in a quizzical, distressed 
 sort of way, with a hand at his chest. His 
 open watch on the table pointed to the 
 hour of midnight when the lesson went on. 
 
 Still later he heated the muzzle of his 
 revolver in the flame of the seal-oil. 
 
 " It will hurt, old chap putting this 
 
24 THE RIVER S END 
 
 scar over your eye. But it s got to be done. 
 I say, won t it be a ripping joke on Mc 
 Dowell?" Softly he repeated it, smiling 
 into Keith s eyes. "A ripping joke on 
 McDowell I" " 
 
"REMEMBER, OLD CHAP, YOU WIN OR LOSE THE MOMENT 
 
 MCDOWELL FIRST SETS HIS EYES ON YOU?" 
 
 Page 25 
 
Ill 
 
 DAWN the dusk of another night 
 and Keith raised his haggard face 
 from Conniston s bedside with a woman s 
 sob on his lips. The Englishman had died 
 as he knew that he would die, game to the 
 last threadbare breath that came out of his 
 body. For with this last breath he whis 
 pered the words which he had repeated a 
 dozen times before, " Remember, old chap, 
 you win or lose the moment McDowell 
 first sets his eyes on you! " And then, with 
 a strange kind of sob in his chest, he was 
 gone, and Keith s eyes were blinded by the 
 miracle of a hot flood of tears, and there 
 rose in him a mighty pride in the name of 
 Derwent Conniston. 
 
 It was his name now. John Keith was 
 dead. It was Derwent Conniston who was 
 living. And as he looked down into the 
 cold, still face of the heroic Englishman, 
 the thing did not seem so strange to him 
 
26 THE RIVER S END 
 
 after all. It would not be difficult to bear 
 Conniston s name; the difficulty would be 
 in living up to the Conniston code. 
 
 That night the rumble of the ice fields 
 was clearer because there was no wind to 
 deaden their tumult. The sky was cloud 
 less, and the stars were like glaring, yellow 
 eyes peering through holes in a vast, over 
 hanging curtain of jet black. Keith, out 
 to fill his lungs with air, looked up at the 
 phenomenon of the polar night and shud 
 dered. The stars were like living things, 
 and they were looking at him. Under 
 their sinister glow the foxes were holding 
 high carnival. It seemed to Keith that 
 they had drawn a closer circle about the 
 cabin and that there was a different note 
 in their yapping now, a note that was more 
 persistent, more horrible. Conniston had 
 foreseen that closing-in of the little white 
 beasts of the night, and Keith, reentering 
 the cabin, set about the fulfillment of his 
 promise. Ghostly dawn found his task 
 completed. 
 
 Half an hour later he stood in the edge 
 of the scrub timber that rimmed in the 
 arctic plain, and looked for the last time 
 
THE RIVER S END 27 
 
 upon the little cabin under the floor of 
 which the Englishman was buried. It 
 stood there splendidly unafraid in its ter 
 rible loneliness, a proud monument to a 
 dead man s courage and a dead man s 
 soul. Within its four walls it treasured a 
 thing which gave to it at last a reason for 
 being, a reason for fighting against disso 
 lution as long as one log could hold upon 
 another. Conniston s spirit had become a 
 living part of it, and the foxes might yap 
 everlastingly, and the winds howl, and 
 winter follow winter, and long night fol 
 low long night and it would stand there 
 in its pride fighting to the last, a memorial 
 to Derwent Conniston, the Englishman. 
 
 Looking back at it, Keith bared his head 
 in the raw dawn. " God bless you, Con 
 niston," he whispered, and turned slowly 
 away and into the south. 
 
 Ahead of him was eight hundred miles 
 of wilderness eight hundred miles be 
 tween him and the little town on the Sas 
 katchewan where McDowell commanded 
 F Division of the Royal Mounted. The 
 thought of distance did not appal him. 
 Four years at the top of the earth had ae- 
 
28 THE RIVER S END 
 
 customed him to the illimitable and had 
 inured him to the lack of things. That 
 winter Conniston had followed him with 
 the tenacity of a ferret for a thousand miles 
 along the rim of the Arctic, and it had 
 been a miracle that he had not killed the 
 Englishman. A score of times he might 
 have ended the exciting chase without 
 staining his own hands. His Eskimo 
 friends would have performed the deed at 
 a word. But he had let the Englishman 
 live, and Conniston, dead, was sending him 
 back home. Eight hundred miles was but 
 the step between. 
 
 He had no dogs or sledge. His own 
 team had given up the ghost long ago, and 
 a treacherous Kogmollock from the Roes 
 Welcome had stolen the Englishman s out 
 fit in the last lap of their race down from 
 Fullerton s Point. What he carried was 
 Conniston s, with the exception of his rifle 
 and his own parka and hood. He even 
 wore Conniston s watch. His pack was 
 light. The chief articles it contained were 
 a little flour, a three-pound tent, a sleep 
 ing-bag, and certain articles of identifica 
 tion to prove the death of John Keith, the 
 
THE RIVER S END 29 
 
 outlaw. Hour after hour of that first day 
 the zip, zip, zip of his snowshoes beat with 
 deadly monotony upon his brain. He 
 could not think. Time and again it 
 seemed to him that something was pulling 
 him back, and always he was hearing Con- 
 niston s voice and seeing Conniston s face 
 in the gray gloom of the day about him. 
 He passed through the slim finger of scrub 
 timber that a strange freak of nature had 
 flung across the plain, and once more was a 
 moving speck in a wide and wind-swept 
 barren. In the afternoon he made out a 
 dark rim on the southern horizon and 
 knew it was timber, real timber, the first 
 he had seen since that day, a year and a 
 half ago, when the last of the Mackenzie 
 River forest had faded away behind him! 
 It gave him, at last, something tangible to 
 grip. It was a thing beckoning to him, a 
 sentient, living wall beyond which was his 
 other world. The eight hundred miles 
 meant less to him than the space between 
 himself and that growing, black rim on the 
 horizon. 
 
 He reached it as the twilight of the day 
 was dissolving into the deeper dusk of the 
 
30 THE RIVER S END 
 
 night, and put up his tent in the shelter 
 of a clump of gnarled and storm-beaten 
 spruce. Then he gathered wood and built 
 himself a fire. He did not count the sticks 
 as he had counted them for eighteen 
 months. He was wasteful, prodigal. He 
 had traveled forty miles since morning but 
 he felt no exhaustion. He gathered wood 
 until he had a great pile of it, and the 
 flames of his fire leaped higher and higher 
 until the spruce needles crackled and 
 hissed over his head. He boiled a pot of 
 weak tea and made a supper of caribou 
 meat and a bit of bannock. Then he sat 
 with his back to a tree and stared into 
 the flames. 
 
 The fire leaping and crackling before 
 his eyes was like a powerful medicine. It 
 stirred things that had lain dormant within 
 him. It consumed the heavy dross of four 
 years of stupefying torture and brought 
 back to him vividly the happenings of a 
 yesterday that had dragged itself on like 
 a century. All at once he seemed un 
 burdened of shackles that had weighted 
 him down to the point of madness. Every 
 fiber in his body responded to that glorious 
 
THE RIVER S END 31 
 
 roar of the fire ; a thing seemed to snap in 
 his head, freeing it of an oppressive bond 
 age, and in the heart of the flames he saw 
 home, and hope, and life the things 
 familiar and precious long ago, which the 
 scourge of the north had almost beaten 
 dead in his memory. He saw the broad 
 Saskatchewan shimmering its way through 
 the yellow plains, banked in by the foot 
 hills and the golden mists of morning 
 dawn; he saw his home town clinging to 
 its shore on one side and with its back 
 against the purple wilderness on the other; 
 he heard the rhythmic chug, chug, chug 
 of the old gold dredge and the rattle of 
 its chains as it devoured its tons of sand 
 for a few grains of treasure; over him 
 there were lacy clouds in a blue heaven 
 again, he heard the sound of voices, the 
 tread of feet, laughter life. His soul 
 reborn, he rose to his feet and stretched 
 his arms until the muscles snapped. No, 
 they would not know him back there 
 now! He laughed softly as he thought 
 of the old John Keith " Johnny " they 
 used to call him up and down the few 
 balsam-scented streets his father s right- 
 
32 THE RIVER S END 
 
 hand man mentally but a little off feed, as 
 his chum, Reddy McTabb, used to say, 
 when it came to the matter of muscle and 
 brawn. He could look back on things 
 without excitement now. Even hatred 
 had burned itself out, and he found him 
 self wondering if old Judge Kirkstone s 
 house looked the same on the top of the 
 hill, and if Miriam Kirkstone had come 
 back to live there after that terrible night 
 when he had returned to avenge his father. 
 Four years! It was not so very long, 
 though the years had seemed like a life 
 time to him. There would not be many 
 changes. Everything would be the same 
 everything except the old home. That 
 home he and his father had planned, and 
 they had overseen the building of it, a 
 chateau of logs a little distance from the 
 town, with the Saskatchewan sweeping be 
 low it and the forest at its doors. Master- 
 less, it must have seen changes in those 
 four years. 
 
 Fumbling in his pocket, his fingers 
 touched Conniston s watch. He drew it 
 out and let the firelight play on the open 
 dial. It was ten o clock. In the back of 
 
THE RIVER S END 33 
 
 the premier half of the case Conniston had 
 at some time or another pasted a picture. 
 It must have been a long time ago, for the 
 face was faded and indistinct. The eyes 
 alone were undimmed, and in the flash of 
 the fire they took on a living glow as they 
 looked at Keith. It was the face of a 
 young girl a schoolgirl, Keith thought, of 
 ten or twelve. Yet the eyes seemed older; 
 they seemed pleading with someone, speak 
 ing a message that had come spontaneously 
 out of the soul of the child. Keith closed 
 the watch. Its tick, tick, tick rose louder 
 to his ears. He dropped it in his pocket. 
 He could still hear it. 
 
 A pitch-filled spruce knot exploded with 
 the startling vividness of a star bomb, and 
 with it came a dull sort of mental shock to 
 Keith. He was sure that for an instant 
 he had seen Conniston s face and that the 
 Englishman s eyes were looking at him as 
 the eyes had looked at him out of the face 
 in the watch. The deceptio visus was so 
 real that it sent him back a step, staring, 
 and then, his eyes striving to catch the il 
 lusion again, there fell upon him a realiza 
 tion of the tremendous strain he had been 
 
34 THE RIVER S END 
 
 under for many hours. It had been days 
 since he had slept soundly. Yet he was 
 not sleepy now; he scarcely felt fatigue. 
 The instinct of self-preservation made him 
 arrange his sleeping-bag on a carpet of 
 spruce boughs in the tent and go to 
 bed. 
 
 Even then, for a long time, he lay in 
 the grip of a harrowing wakefulness. He 
 closed his eyes, but it was impossible for 
 him to hold them closed. The sounds of 
 the night came to him with painful dis 
 tinctness the crackling of the fire, the ser 
 pent-like hiss of the flaming pitch, the 
 whispering of the tree tops, and the steady 
 tick, tick, tick of Conniston s watch. And 
 out on the barren, through the rim of shel 
 tering trees, the wind \vas beginning to 
 moan its everlasting whimper and sob of 
 loneliness. In spite of his clenched hands 
 and his fighting determination to hold it 
 off, Keith fancied that he heard again 
 riding strangely in that wind the sound 
 of Conniston s voice. And suddenly he 
 asked himself: What did it mean? What 
 was it that Conniston had forgotten? 
 What was it that Conniston had been try- 
 
THE RIVER S END 35 
 
 ing to tell him all that day, when he had 
 felt the presence of him in the gloom of 
 the Barrens? Was it that Conniston 
 wanted him to come back? 
 
 He tried to rid himself of the depress 
 ing insistence of that thought. And yet 
 he was certain that in the last half-hour 
 before death entered the cabin the Eng 
 lishman had wanted to tell him something 
 and had crucified the desire. There was 
 the triumph of an iron courage in those 
 last words, " Remember, old chap, you win 
 or lose the moment McDowell first sets his 
 eyes on you ! " but in the next instant, as 
 death sent home its thrust, Keith had 
 caught a glimpse of Conniston s naked 
 soul, and in that final moment when speech 
 was gone forever, he knew that Conniston 
 was fighting to make his lips utter words 
 which he had left unspoken until too late. 
 And Keith, listening to the moaning of 
 the wind and the crackling of the fire, 
 found himself repeating over and over 
 again, " What was it he wanted to say? " 
 
 In a lull in the wind Conniston s watch 
 seemed to beat like a heart in its case, and 
 swiftly its tick, tick, ticked to his ears an 
 
36 THE RIVER S END 
 
 answer, " Come back, come back, come 
 back!" 
 
 With a cry at his own pitiable weakness, 
 Keith thrust the thing far under his sleep 
 ing-bag, and there its sound was smothered. 
 At last sleep overcame him like a restless 
 anesthesia. 
 
 With the break of another day he came 
 out of his tent and stirred the fire. There 
 were still bits of burning ember, and these 
 he fanned into life and added to their 
 flame fresh fuel. He could not easily for 
 get last night s torture, but its significance 
 was gone. He laughed at his own folly 
 and wondered what Conniston himself 
 would have thought of his nervousness. 
 For the first time in years he thought of 
 the old days down at college where, among 
 other things, he had made a mark for 
 himself in psychology. He had considered 
 himself an expert in the discussion and 
 understanding of phenomena of the mind. 
 Afterward he had lived up to the mark 
 and had profited by his beliefs, and the 
 fact that a simple relaxation of his mental 
 machinery had so disturbed him last night 
 amused him now. The solution was easy. 
 
THE RIVER S END 37 
 
 It was liiis mind struggling to equilibrium 
 after four years of brain-fag. And he felt 
 better. His brain was clearer. He lis 
 tened to the watch and found its ticking 
 natural. He braced himself to another 
 effort and whistled as he prepared his 
 breakfast. 
 
 After that he packed his dunnage and 
 continued south. He wondered if Con- 
 niston ever knew his Manual as he learned 
 it now. At the end of the sixth day he 
 could repeat it from cover to cover. Every 
 hour he made it a practice to stop short 
 and salute the trees about him. McDowell 
 would not catch him there. 
 
 " I am Derwent Conniston," he kept tell 
 ing himself. " John Keith is dead dead. 
 I buried him back there under the cabin, 
 the cabin built by Sergeant Trossy and his 
 patrol in nineteen hundred and eight. My 
 name is Conniston Derwent Conniston." 
 
 In his years of aloneness he had grown 
 into the habit of talking to himself or 
 with himself to keep up his courage and 
 sanity. " Keith, old boy, weVe got to fight 
 it out," he would say. Now it was, " Con 
 niston, old chap, we ll win or die." After 
 
38 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the third day, he never spoke bf John 
 Keith except as a man who was detd. And 
 over the dead John Keith he spread Con- 
 niston^s mantle. " John Keith died game, 
 sir," he said to McDowell, who -vas a tree. 
 " He was the finest chap I eve/ knew." 
 
 On this sixth day came the miracle. For 
 the first time in many months John Keith 
 saw the sun. He had seen the murky glow 
 of it before this, fighting to break through 
 the pall of fog and haze that hung over 
 the Barrens, but this sixth day it was the 
 sun, the real sun, bursting in all its glory 
 for a short space over the northern world. 
 Each day after this the sun was nearer and 
 warmer, as the arctic vapor clouds and 
 frost smoke were left farther behind, and 
 not until he had passed beyond the ice fogs 
 entirely did Keith swing westward. He 
 did not hurry, for now that he was out of 
 his prison, he wanted time in which to feel 
 the first exhilarating thrill of his freedom. 
 And more than all else he knew that he 
 must measure and test himself for the tre 
 mendous fight ahead of him. 
 
 Now that the sun and the blue sky had 
 cleared his brain, he saw the hundred pit- 
 
THE RIVER S END 39 
 
 falls in his way, the hundred little slips 
 that might be made, the hundred traps 
 waiting for any chance blunder on his 
 part. Deliberately he was on his way to 
 the hangman. Down there every day of 
 his life he would rub elbows with him as 
 he passed his fellow men in the street. He 
 would never completely feel himself out 
 of the presence of death. Day and night 
 he must watch himself and guard himself, 
 his tongue, his feet, his thoughts, never 
 knowing in what hour the eyes of the law 
 would pierce the veneer of his disguise and 
 deliver his life as the forfeit. There were 
 times when the contemplation of these 
 things appalled him, and his mind turned 
 to other channels of escape. And then 
 always he heard Conniston s cool, fight 
 ing voice, and the red blood fired up in 
 his veins, and he faced home. 
 
 He was Derwent Conniston. And never 
 for an hour could he put out of his mind 
 the one great mystifying question in this 
 adventure of life and death, who was Der 
 went Conniston? Shred by shred he 
 pieced together what little he knew, and 
 .always he arrived at the same futile end. 
 
40 THE RIVER S END 
 
 An Englishman, dead to his family if he 
 had one, an outcast or an expatriate and 
 the finest, bravest gentleman he had ever 
 known. It was the ivhyfore of these things 
 that stirred within him an emotion which 
 he had never experienced before. The 
 Englishman had grimly and determinedly 
 taken his secret to the grave with him. To 
 him, John Keith who was now Derwent 
 Conniston he had left an heritage of deep 
 mystery and the mission, if he so chose, of 
 discovering who he was, whence he had 
 come and why. Often he looked at the 
 young girl s picture in the watch, and 
 always he saw in her eyes something which 
 made him think of Conniston as he lay in 
 the last hour of his life. Undoubtedly the 
 girl had grown into a woman now. 
 
 Days grew into weeks, and under Keith s 
 feet the wet, sweet-smelling earth rose up 
 through the last of the slush snow. Three 
 hundred miles below the Barrens, he was 
 in the Reindeer Lake country early in 
 May. For a week he rested at a trapper s 
 cabin on the Burntwood, and after that set 
 out for Cumberland House. Ten days 
 later he arrived at the post, and in the 
 
THE RIVER S END 41 
 
 sunlit glow of the second evening after 
 ward he built his camp-fire on the shore of 
 the yellow Saskatchewan. 
 
 The mighty river, beloved from the days 
 of his boyhood, sang to him again, that 
 night, the wonderful things that time and 
 grief had dimmed in his heart. The moon 
 rose over it, a warm wind drifted out of 
 the south, and Keith, smoking his pipe, 
 sat for a long time listening to the soft 
 murmur of it as it rolled past at his feet. 
 For him it had always been more than the 
 river. He had grown up with it, and 
 it had become a part of him; it had 
 mothered his earliest dreams and ambi 
 tions; on it he had sought his first adven 
 tures; it had been his chum, his friend, 
 and his comrade, and the fancy struck him 
 that in the murmuring voice of it tonight 
 there was a gladness, a welcome, an exulta 
 tion in his return. He looked out on its 
 silvery bars shimmering in the moonlight, 
 and a flood of memories swept upon him. 
 Thirty years was not so long ago that he 
 could not remember the beautiful mother 
 who had told him stories as the sun went 
 down and bedtime drew near. And 
 
42 THE RIVER S END 
 
 vividly there stood out the wonderful tales 
 of Kistachiwun, the river; how it was born 
 away over in the mystery of the western 
 mountains, away from the eyes and feet of 
 men; how it came down from the moun 
 tains into the hills, and through the hills 
 into the plains, broadening and deepening 
 and growing mightier with every mile, 
 until at last it swept past their door, bear 
 ing with it the golden grains of sand that 
 made men rich. His father had pointed 
 out the deep-beaten trails of buffalo to him 
 ;and had told him stories of the Indians 
 and of the land before white men came, so 
 that between father and mother the river 
 became his book of fables, his wonderland, 
 the never-ending source of his treasured 
 tales of childhood. And tonight the river 
 was the one thing left to him. It was the 
 one friend he could claim again, the one 
 comrade he could open his arms to with 
 out fear of betrayal. And with the grief 
 for things that once had lived and were 
 now dead, there came over him a strange 
 sort of happiness, the spirit of the great 
 river itself giving him consolation. 
 
 Stretching out his arms, he cried: " My 
 
THE RIVER S END 43 
 
 old river it s me Johnny Keith! I ve 
 come back! " 
 
 And the river, whispering, seemed to 
 answer him: "It s Johnny Keith! And 
 he s come back! He s come backl " 
 
IV 
 
 FOR a week John Keith followed up the 
 shores of the Saskatchewan. It was a 
 hundred and forty miles from the Hudson s 
 Bay Company s post of Cumberland House 
 to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, 
 but Keith did not travel a homing line. 
 Only now and then did he take advantage 
 of a portage trail. Clinging to the river, 
 his journey was lengthened by some sixty 
 miles. Now that the hour for which Con- 
 niston had prepared him was so close at 
 hand, he felt the need of this mighty, 
 tongueless friend that had played such an 
 intimate part in his life. It gave to him 
 both courage and confidence, and in its 
 company he could think more clearly. 
 Nights he camped on its golden-yellow 
 bars with the open stars over his head 
 when he slept; his ears drank in the 
 familiar sounds of long ago, for which he 
 had yearned to the point of madness in his 
 
 44 
 
THE RIVER S END 45 
 
 exile the soft cries of the birds that 
 hunted and mated in the glow of the moon, 
 the friendly twit, twit, twit of the low- 
 flying sand-pipers, the hoot of the owls, 
 and the splash and sleepy voice of wild 
 fowl already on their way up from the 
 south. Out of that south, where in places 
 the plains swept the forest back almost to 
 the river s edge, he heard now and then the 
 doglike barking of his little yellow friends 
 of many an exciting horseback chase, the 
 coyotes, and on the wilderness side, deep 
 in the forest, the sinister howling of 
 wolves. He was traveling, literally, the 
 narrow pathway between two worlds. The 
 river was that pathway. On the one hand, 
 not so very far away, were the rolling 
 prairies, green fields of grain, settlements 
 and towns and the homes of men; on the 
 other the wilderness lay to the water s 
 edge with its doors still open to him. The 
 seventh day a new sound came to his ears 
 at dawn. It was the whistle of a train at 
 Prince Albert. 
 
 There was no change in that whistle, 
 and every nerve-string in his body re 
 sponded to it with a crying thrill. It was 
 
4 6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the first voice to greet his home-coming, 
 and the sound of it rolled the yesterdays 
 back upon him in a deluge. He knew 
 where he was now; he recalled exactly 
 what he would find at the next turn in the 
 river. A few minutes later he heard the 
 wheezy chug, chug, chug of the old gold 
 dredge at McCoffin s Bend. It would be 
 the Betty M., of course, with old Andy 
 Duggan at the windlass, his black pipe in 
 mouth, still scooping up the shifting sands 
 as he had scooped them up for more than 
 twenty years. He could see Andy sitting 
 at his post, clouded in a halo of tobacco 
 smoke, a red-bearded, shaggy-headed giant 
 of a man whom the town affectionately 
 called the River Pirate. All his life Andy 
 had spent in digging gold out of the moun 
 tains or the river, and like grim death he 
 had hung to the bars above and below 
 McCoffin s Bend. Keith smiled as he 
 remembered old Andy s passion for bacon. 
 One could always find the perfume of 
 bacon about the Betty M., and when 
 Duggan went to town, there were those 
 who swore they could smell it in his 
 whiskers. 
 
THE RIVER S END 47 
 
 Keith left the river trail now for the 
 old logging road. In spite of his long 
 fight to steel himself for what Conniston 
 had called the " psychological moment," 
 he felt himself in the grip of an uncom 
 fortable mental excitement. At last he was 
 face to face with the great gamble. In a 
 few hours he would play his one card. If 
 he won, there was life ahead of him again, 
 if he lost death. The old question which 
 he had struggled to down surged upon 
 him. Was it worth the chance? Was it in 
 an hour of madness that he and Conniston 
 had pledged themselves to this amazing 
 adventure? The forest was still with him. 
 He could turn back. The game had not 
 yet gone so far that he could not with 
 draw his hand and for a space a power 
 ful impulse moved him. And then, com 
 ing suddenly to the edge of the clearing at 
 McCoffin s Bend, he saw the dredge close 
 inshore, and striding up from the beach 
 Andy Duggan himself! In another mo 
 ment Keith had stepped forth and was 
 holding up a hand in greeting. 
 
 He felt his heart thumping in an un 
 familiar way as Duggan came on. Was it 
 
48 THE RIVER S END 
 
 conceivable that the riverman would not 
 recognize him? He forgot his beard, for 
 got the great change that four years had 
 wrought in him. He remembered only 
 that Duggan had been his friend, that a 
 hundred times they had sat together in the 
 quiet glow of long evenings, telling tales 
 of the great river they both loved. And 
 always Duggan s stories had been of that 
 mystic paradise hidden away in the west 
 ern mountains the river s end, the para 
 dise of golden lure, where the Saskatche 
 wan was born amid towering peaks, and 
 where Duggan a long time ago had 
 quested for the treasure which he knew 
 was hidden somewhere there. Four years 
 had not changed Duggan. If anything his 
 beard was redder and thicker and his hair 
 shaggier than when Keith had last seen 
 him. And then, following him from the 
 Betsy M., Keith caught the everlasting 
 scent of bacon. He devoured it in deep 
 breaths. His soul cried out for it. Once 
 he had grown tired of Duggan s bacon, but 
 now he felt that he could go on eating it 
 forever. As Duggan advanced, he was 
 moved by a tremendous desire to stretch 
 
THE RIVER S END 49 
 
 out his hand and say: "I m John Keith. 
 Don t you know me, Duggan?" Instead, 
 he choked back his desire and said, " Fine 
 morningl " 
 
 Duggan nodded uncertainly. He was 
 evidently puzzled at not being able to 
 place his man. " It s always fine on the 
 river, rain r shine. Anybody who says it 
 ain t is a God A mighty liar! " 
 
 He was still the old Duggan, ready to 
 fight for his river at the drop of a hat! 
 Keith wanted to hug him. He shifted his 
 pack and said: 
 
 " I ve slept with it for a week just to 
 have it for company on the way down 
 from Cumberland House. Seems good to 
 get back!" He took off his hat and met 
 the riverman s eyes squarely. " Do you 
 happen to know if McDowell is at bar 
 racks? " he asked. 
 
 " He is," said Duggan. 
 
 That was all. He was looking at Keith 
 with a curious directness. Keith held his 
 breath. He would have given a good deal 
 to have seen behind Duggan s beard. 
 There was a hard note in the riverman s 
 voice, too. It puzzled him. And there 
 
50 THE RIVER S END 
 
 was a flash of sullen fire in his eyes at the 
 mention of McDowell s name. 
 
 " The Inspector s there sittin tight," 
 he added, and to Keith s amazement 
 brushed past him without another word 
 and disappeared into the bush. 
 
 This, at least, was not like the good- 
 humored Duggan of four years ago. 
 Keith replaced his hat and went on. At 
 the farther side of the clearing he turned 
 and looked back. Duggan stood in the 
 open roadway, his hands thrust deep in 
 his pockets, staring after him. Keith 
 waved his hand, but Duggan did not re 
 spond. He stood like a sphinx, his big 
 red beard glowing in the early sun, and 
 watched Keith until he was gone. 
 
 To Keith this first experiment in the 
 matter of testing an identity was a dis 
 appointment. It was not only disappoint 
 ing but filled him with apprehension. It 
 was true that Duggan had not recognized 
 him as John Keith, but neither had he 
 recognized him as Derwent Conniston! 
 And Duggan was not a man to forget in 
 three or four years or half a lifetime, for 
 that matter. He saw himself facing a new 
 
THE RIVER S END 51 
 
 and unexpected situation. What if Mc 
 Dowell, like Duggan, saw in him nothing 
 more than a stranger? The Englishman s 
 last words pounded in his head again like 
 little fists beating home a truth, " You win 
 or lose the moment McDowell first sets his 
 eyes on you." They pressed upon him now 
 with a deadly significance. For the first 
 time he understood all that Conniston had 
 meant. His danger was not alone in the 
 possibility of being recognized as John 
 Keith; it lay also in the hazard of not be 
 ing recognized as Derwent Conniston. 
 
 If the thought had come to him to turn 
 back, if the voice of fear and a premoni 
 tion of impending evil had urged him to 
 seek freedom in another direction, their 
 whispered cautions were futile in the thrill 
 of the greater excitement that possessed 
 him now. That there was a third hand 
 playing in this game of chance in which 
 Conniston had already lost his life, and in 
 which he was now staking his own, was 
 something which gave to Keith a new and 
 entirely unlooked-for desire to see the end 
 of the adventure. The mental vision of his 
 own certain fate, should he lose, dissolved 
 
52 THE RIVER S END 
 
 into a nebulous presence that no longer op 
 pressed nor appalled him. Physical in 
 stinct to fight against odds, the inspiration 
 that presages the uncertainty of battle, fired 
 his blood with an exhilarating eagerness. 
 He was anxious to stand face to face with 
 McDowell. Not until then would the real 
 fight begin. For the first time the fact 
 seized upon him that the Englishman was 
 wrong he would not win or lose in the 
 first moment of the Inspector s scrutiny. 
 In that moment he could lose 
 McDowell s cleverly trained eyes might 
 detect the fraud; but to win, if the game 
 was not lost at the first shot, meant an 
 exciting struggle. Today might be his 
 Armageddon, but it could not possess the 
 hour of his final triumph. 
 
 He felt himself now like a warrior held 
 in leash within sound of the enemy s guns 
 and the smell of his powder. He held his 
 old world to be his enemy, for civilization 
 meant people, and the people were the law 
 and the law wanted his life. Never had 
 he possessed a deeper hatred for the old 
 code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
 a tooth than in this hour when he saw up 
 
THE RIVER S END 53 
 
 the valley a gray mist of smoke rising 
 over the roofs of his home town. He 
 had never conceded within himself that 
 he was a criminal. He believed that in 
 killing Kirkstone he had killed a serpent 
 who had deserved to die, and a hundred 
 times he had told himself that the job 
 would have been much more satisfactory 
 from the view-point of human sanitation 
 if he had sent the son in the father s foot 
 steps. He had rid the people of a man 
 not fit to live and the people wanted to 
 kill him for it. Therefore the men and 
 women in that town he had once loved, and 
 still loved, were his enemies, and to find 
 friends among them again he was com 
 pelled to perpetrate a clever fraud. 
 
 He remembered an unboarded path 
 from this side of the town, which entered 
 an inconspicuous little street at the end of 
 which was a barber shop. It was the 
 barber shop which he must reach first. 
 He was glad that it was early in the day 
 when he came to the street an hour later, 
 for he would meet few people. The street 
 had changed considerably. Long, open 
 spaces had filled in with houses, and he 
 
54 THE RIVER S END 
 
 wondered if the anticipated boom of four 
 years ago had come. He smiled grimly as 
 the humor of the situation struck him. 
 His father and he had staked their future 
 in accumulating a lot of " outside " prop 
 erty. If the boom had materialized, that 
 property was " inside " now and worth a 
 great deal. Before he reached the barber 
 shop he realized that the dream of the 
 Prince Albertites had come true. Pros 
 perity had advanced upon them in mighty 
 leaps. The population of the place had 
 trebled. He was a rich man! And also, 
 it occurred to him, he was a dead one 
 or would be when he reported officially to 
 McDowell. What a merry scrap there 
 would be among the heirs of John Keith, 
 deceased! 
 
 The old shop still clung to its corner, 
 which was valuable as " business footage " 
 now. But it possessed a new barber. He 
 was alone. Keith gave his instructions in 
 definite detail and showed him Conniston s 
 photograph in his identification book. 
 The beard and mustache must be just so, 
 very smart, decidedly English, and of mili 
 tary neatness, his hair cut not too short 
 
THE RIVER S END 55 
 
 and brushed smoothly back. When the 
 operation was over, he congratulated the 
 barber and himself. Bronzed to the color 
 of an Indian by wind and smoke, straight 
 as an arrow, his muscles swelling with the 
 brute strength of the wilderness, he smiled 
 at himself in the mirror when he compared 
 the old John Keith with this new Derwent 
 Conniston! Before he went out he tight 
 ened his belt a notch. Then he headed 
 straight for the barracks of His Majesty s 
 Royal Northwest Mounted Police. 
 
 His way took him up the main street, 
 past the rows of shops that had been there 
 four years ago, past the Saskatchewan 
 Hotel and the little Board of Trade build 
 ing which, like the old barber shop, still 
 hung to its original perch at the edge of 
 the high bank which ran precipitously 
 down to the river. And there, as sure as 
 fate, was Percival Clary, the little English 
 Secretary! But what a different Percy! 
 He had broadened out and straightened 
 up. He had grown a mustache, which was 
 immaculately waxed. His trousers were 
 immaculately creased, his shoes were shin 
 ing, and he stood before the door of his 
 
56 THE RIVER S END 
 
 now important office resting lightly on a 
 cane. Keith grinned as he witnessed how 
 prosperity had bolstered up Percival along 
 with the town. His eyes quested for 
 familiar faces as he went along. Here 
 and there he saw one, but for the most 
 part he encountered strangers, lively look 
 ing men who were hustling as if they had 
 a mission in hand. Glaring real estate 
 signs greeted him from every place of 
 prominence, and automobiles began to hum 
 up and down the main street that stretched 
 along the river twenty where there had 
 been one not so long ago. 
 
 Keith found himself fighting to keep his 
 eyes straight ahead when he met a girl 
 or a woman. Never had he believed fully 
 and utterly in the angelhood of the 
 feminine until now. He passed perhaps a 
 dozen on the way to barracks, and he was 
 overwhelmed with the desire to stop and 
 feast his eyes upon each one of them. 
 He had never been a lover of women; he 
 admired them, he believed them to be the 
 Better part of man, he had worshiped his 
 mother, but his heart had been neither 
 glorified nor broken by a passion for the 
 
THE RIVER S END 57 
 
 opposite sex. Now, to the bottom of his 
 soul, he worshiped that dozen! Some of 
 them were homely, some of them were 
 plain, two or three of them were pretty, 
 but to Keith their present physical qualifi 
 cations made no difference. They were 
 white women, and they were glorious, 
 every one of them! The plainest of them 
 was lovely. He wanted to throw up his 
 hat and shout in sheer joy. Four years 
 and now he was back in angel land! For 
 a space he forgot McDowell. 
 
 His head was in a whirl when he came 
 to barracks. Life was good, after all. It 
 was worth fighting for, and he was bound 
 to fight. He went straight to McDowell s 
 office. A moment after his knock on the 
 door the Inspector s secretary appea r ed. 
 
 " The Inspector is busy, sir," he said in 
 response to Keith s inquiry. " I ll tell 
 him " 
 
 " That I am here on a very important 
 matter," advised Keith. " He will admit 
 me when you tell him that I bring infor 
 mation regarding a certain John Keith." 
 
 The secretary disappeared through an 
 inner door. It seemed not more than ten 
 
$8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 seconds before he was back. " The In 
 spector will see you, sir." 
 
 Keith drew a deep breath to quiet the 
 violent beating of his heart. In spite of 
 all his courage he felt upon him the clutch 
 of a cold and foreboding hand, a hand 
 that seemed struggling to drag him back. 
 And again he heard Conniston s dying 
 voice whispering to him, "Remember, old 
 chap, you win or lose the moment 
 McDowell first sets his: eyes on you! " 
 
 Was Conniston right? 
 
 Win or lose, he would play the game as 
 the Englishman would have played it. 
 Squaring his shoulders he entered to face 
 McDowell, the cleverest man-hunter in the 
 Northwest. 
 
KEITH S first vision, as he entered the 
 office of the Inspector of Police, was 
 not of McDowell, but of a girl. She sat 
 directly facing him as he advanced 
 through the door, the light from a window 
 throwing into strong relief her face and 
 hair. The effect was unusual. She was 
 strikingly handsome. The sun, giving to 
 the room a soft radiance, lit up her hair 
 with shimmering gold; her eyes, Keith 
 saw, were a clear and wonderful gray 
 and they stared at him as he entered, while 
 the poise of her body and the tenseness of 
 her face gave evidence of sudden and un 
 usual emotion. These things Keith ob 
 served in a flash; then he turned toward 
 McDowell. 
 
 The Inspector sat behind a table covered 
 with maps and papers, and instantly Keith 
 was conscious of the penetrating inquisi 
 tion of his gaze. He felt, for an instant, 
 
 59 
 
60 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the disquieting tremor of the criminal. 
 Then he met McDowell s eyes squarely. 
 They were, as Conniston had warned him, 
 eyes that could see through boiler-plate. 
 Of an indefinable color and deep set be 
 hind shaggy, gray eyebrows, they pierced 
 him through at the first glance. Keith 
 took in the carefully waxed gray mus 
 taches, the close-cropped gray hair, the 
 rigidly set muscles of the man s face, and 
 saluted. 
 
 He felt creeping over him a slow chill. 
 There was no greeting in that iron-like 
 countenance, for full a quarter-minute no 
 sign of recognition. And then, as the sun 
 had played in the girl s hair, a new emo 
 tion passed over McDowell s face, and 
 Keith saw for the first time the man whom 
 Derwent Conniston had known as a friend 
 as well as a superior. He rose from his 
 chair, and leaning over the table said in a 
 voice in which were mingled both amaze 
 ment and pleasure: 
 
 "We were just talking about the devil 
 and here you are, sir! Conniston, how 
 are you? " 
 
 For a few moments Keith did not see. 
 
THE RIVER S END 6r 
 
 He had won! The blood pounded through 
 his heart so violently that it confused his 
 vision and his senses. He felt the grip of 
 McDowell s hand; he heard his voice; a 
 vision swam before his eyes and it was 
 the vision of Derwent Conniston s trium 
 phant face. He was standing erect, his 
 head was up, he was meeting McDowell 
 shoulder to shoulder, even smiling, but in 
 that swift surge of exultation he did not 
 know. McDowell, still gripping his hand 
 and with his other hand on his arm, was 
 wheeling him about, and he found the girl 
 on her feet, staring at him as if he had 
 newly risen from the dead. 
 
 McDowell s military voice was snapping 
 vibrantly, " Conniston, meet Miss Miriam 
 Kirkstone, daughter of Judge Kirkstonel" 
 
 He bowed and held for a moment in his 
 own the hand of the girl whose father he 
 had killed. It was lifeless and cold. Her 
 lips moved, merely speaking his name. 
 His own were mute. McDowell was say 
 ing something about the glory of the serv 
 ice and the sovereignty of the law. And 
 then, breaking in like the beat of a drum 
 on the introduction, his voice demanded, 
 
62 THE RIVER S END 
 
 " Conniston did you get your man?" 
 The question brought Keith to his senses. 
 He inclined his head slightly and said, " I 
 beg to report that John Keith is dead, 
 
 sir." 
 
 He saw Miriam Kirkstone give a visible 
 start, as if his words had carried a stab. 
 She was apparently making a strong effort 
 to hide her agitation as she turned swiftly 
 away from him, speaking to McDowell. 
 
 " You have been very kind, Inspector 
 McDowell. I hope very soon to have the 
 pleasure of talking with Mr. Conniston 
 about John Keith." 
 
 She left them, nodding slightly to Keith. 
 
 When she was gone, a puzzled look 
 filled the Inspector s eyes. " She has been 
 like that for the last six months," he ex 
 plained. " Tremendously interested in this 
 man Keith and his fate. I don t believe 
 that I have watched for your return more 
 anxiously than she has, Conniston. And 
 the curious part of it is she seemed to 
 have no interest in the matter at all until 
 six months ago. Sometimes I am afraid 
 that brooding over her father s death has 
 unsettled her a little. A mighty pretty 
 
THE RIVER S END 63 
 
 girl, Conniston. A mighty pretty girl, 
 indeed! And her brother is a skunk. 
 Pst! You haven t forgotten him?" 
 
 He drew a chair up close to his own and 
 motioned Keith to be seated. " You re 
 changed, Conniston!" 
 
 The words came out of him like a shot. 
 So unexpected were they that Keith felt 
 the effect of them in every nerve of his 
 body. He sensed instantly what McDowell 
 meant. He was not like the Englishman; 
 he lacked his mannerisms, his cool and 
 superior suavity, the inimitable quality of 
 his nerve and sportsmanship. Even as he 
 met the disquieting directness of the In 
 spector s eyes, he could see Conniston sit 
 ting in his place, rolling his mustache be 
 tween his forefinger and thumb, and smil 
 ing as though he had gone into the north 
 but yesterday and had returned today. 
 That was what McDowell \vas missing in 
 him, the soul of Conniston himself Con 
 niston, the ne plus ultra of presence and 
 amiable condescension, the man who could 
 look the Inspector or the High Commis 
 sioner himself between the eyes, and, 
 serenely indifferent to Service regulations, 
 
64 THE RIVER S END 
 
 say, " Fine morning, old top! " Keith was 
 not without his own sense of humor. How 
 the Englishman s ghost must be raging 
 if it was in the room at the present 
 moment! He grinned and shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " Were you ever up there through the 
 Long Night alone?" he asked. "Ever 
 been through six months of living torture 
 with the stars leering at you and the foxes 
 barking at you all the time, fighting to 
 keep yourself from going mad? I went 
 through that twice to get John Keith, and 
 I guess you re right. I m changed. I don t 
 think I ll ever be the same again. Some 
 thing has gone. I can t tell what it is, 
 but I feel it. I guess only half of me 
 pulled through. It killed John Keith. 
 Rotten, isn t it? " 
 
 He felt that he had made a lucky stroke. 
 McDowell pulled out a drawer from 
 under the table and thrust a box of fat 
 cigars under his nose. 
 
 " Light up, Derry light up and tell us 
 what happened. Bless my soul, you re not 
 half dead! A week in the old town will 
 straighten you out." 
 
THE RIVER S END 65 
 
 He struck a match and held it to the 
 tip of Keith s cigar. 
 
 For an hour thereafter Keith told the 
 story of the man-hunt. It was his Iliad. 
 He could feel the presence of Conniston 
 as words fell from his lips; he forgot the 
 presence of the stern-faced man who was 
 watching him and listening to him; he 
 could see once more only the long months 
 and years of that epic drama of one against 
 one, of pursuit and flight, of hunger and 
 cold, of the Long Nights filled with the 
 desolation of madness and despair. He 
 triumphed over himself, and it was Con 
 niston who spoke from within him. It 
 was the Englishman who told how terribly 
 John Keith had been punished, and when 
 he came to the final days in the lonely little 
 cabin in the edge of the Barrens, Keith 
 finished with a choking in his throat, and 
 the words, 
 
 " And that was how John Keith died > 
 a gentleman and a man! " 
 
 He was thinking of the Englishman, of 
 the calm and fearless smile in his eyes as 
 he died, of his last words, the last friendly 
 grip of his hand, and McDowell saw the 
 
66 THE RIVER S END 
 
 \ 
 
 thing as though he had faced it himself. 
 He brushed a hand over his face as if to 
 wipe away a film. For some moments 
 after Keith had finished, he stood with his 
 back to the man who he thought was Con- 
 niston, and his mind w r as swiftly adding 
 twos and twos and fours and fours as he 
 looked away into the green valley of the 
 Saskatchewan. He was the iron man when 
 he turned to Keith again, the law itself, 
 merciless and potent, by some miracle 
 turned into the form of human flesh. 
 
 " After two and a half years of that 
 even a murderer must have seemed like a 
 saint to you, Conniston. You have done 
 your work splendidly. The whole story 
 shall go to the Department, and if it 
 doesn t bring you a commission, I ll 
 resign. But we must continue to re 
 gret that John Keith did not live to be 
 hanged." 
 
 " He has paid the price," said Keith 
 dully. 
 
 " No, he has not paid the price, not in 
 full. He merely died. It could have been 
 paid only at the end of a rope. His crime 
 was atrociously brutal, the culmination of 
 
THE RIVER S END 67 
 
 a fiend s desire for revenge. We will wipe 
 off his name. But I can not wipe away 
 the regret. I would sacrifice a year of my 
 life if he were in this room with you now. 
 It would be worth it. God, what a 
 thing for the Service to have brought 
 John Keith back to justice after four 
 years! " 
 
 He was rubbing his hands and smiling at 
 Keith even as he spoke. His eyes had 
 taken on a filmy glitter. The law! It 
 stood there, without heart or soul, coveting 
 the life that had escaped it. A feeling of 
 revulsion swept over Keith. 
 
 A knock came at the door. 
 
 McDowell s voice gave permission, and 
 the door slowly opened. Cruze, the young 
 secretary, thrust in his head. 
 
 " Shan Tung is waiting, sir," he said. 
 
 An invisible hand reached up suddenly 
 and gripped at Keith s throat. He turned 
 aside to conceal what his face might have 
 betrayed. Shan Tung! He knew what it 
 was now that had pulled him back, he 
 knew why Conniston s troubled face had 
 traveled with him over the Barrens, and 
 there surged over him with a sickening 
 
68 THE RIVER S END 
 
 foreboding, a realization of what it was 
 that Conniston had remembered and 
 wanted to tell him when it was too late. 
 They had forgotten Shan Tung, the China 
 man! 
 
VI 
 
 IN the hall beyond the secretary s room 
 Shan Tung waited. As McDowell was 
 the iron and steel embodiment of the law, 
 so Shan Tung was the flesh and blood 
 spirit of the mysticism and immutability 
 of his race. His face was the face of an 
 image made of an unemotional living tissue 
 in place of wood or stone, dispassionate, 
 tolerant, patient. What passed in the brain 
 behind his yellow-tinged eyes only Shan 
 Tung knew. It was his secret. And 
 McDowell had ceased to analyze or at 
 tempt to understand him. The law, baf 
 fled in its curiosity, had come to accept 
 him as a weird and wonderful mechanism 
 a thing more than a man possessed 
 of an unholy power. This power was the 
 oriental s marvelous ability to remember 
 faces. Once Shan Tung looked at a face, 
 it was photographed in his memory for 
 years. Time and change could not make 
 him forget and the law made use of him. 
 
 69 
 
TO THE RIVER S END 
 
 Briefly McDowell had classified him 
 at Headquarters. " Either an exiled prime 
 minister of China or the devil in a yellow 
 skin," he had written to the Commissioner. 
 " Correct age unknown and past history a 
 mystery. Dropped into Prince Albert in 
 1908 wearing diamonds and patent leather 
 shoes. A stranger then and a stranger now. 
 Proprietor and owner of the Shan Tung 
 Cafe. Educated, soft-spoken, womanish, 
 but the one man on earth I d hate to be 
 in a dark room with, knives drawn. I 
 use him, mistrust him, watch him, and 
 would fear him under certain conditions. 
 As far as we can discover, he is harmless 
 and law-abiding. But such a ferret must 
 surely have played his game somewhere, at 
 some time." 
 
 This was the man whom Conniston had 
 forgotten and Keith now dreaded to meet. 
 For many minutes Shan Tung had stood at 
 a window looking out upon the sunlit drill- 
 ground and the broad sweep of green be 
 yond. He was toying with his slim hands 
 caressingly. Half a smile was on his lips. 
 No man had ever seen more than that 
 half smile illuminate Shan Tung s face. 
 
THE RIVER S END 71 
 
 His black hair was sleek and carefully 
 trimmed. His dress was immaculate. His 
 slimness, as McDowell had noted, was the 
 slimness of a young girl. 
 
 When Cruze came to announce that 
 McDowell would see him, Shan Tung was 
 still visioning the golden-headed figure of 
 Miriam Kirkstone as he had seen her pass 
 ing through the sunshine. There was 
 something like a purr in his breath as he 
 stood interlacing his tapering fingers. The 
 instant he heard the secretary s footsteps 
 the finger play stopped, the purr died, the 
 half smile was gone. He turned softly. 
 Cruze did not speak. He simply made 
 a movement of his head, and Shan Tung s 
 feet fell noiselessly. Only the slight sound 
 made by the opening and closing of a door 
 gave evidence of his entrance into the In 
 spector s room. Shan Tung and no other 
 could open and close a door like that. 
 Cruze shivered. He always shivered when 
 Shan Tung passed him, and always he 
 swore that he could smell something in 
 the air, like a poison left behind. 
 
 Keith, facing the window, was waiting. 
 The moment the door was opened, he felt 
 
72 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Shan Tung s presence. Every nerve in his 
 body was keyed to an uncomfortable ten 
 sion. The thought that his grip on him 
 self was weakening, and because of a 
 Chinaman, maddened him. And he must 
 turn. Not to face Shan Tung now would 
 be but a postponement of the ordeal and 
 a confession of cowardice. 
 
 Forcing his hand into Conniston s little 
 trick of twisting a mustache, he turned 
 slowly, leveling his eyes squarely to meet 
 Shan Tung s. 
 
 To his surprise Shan Tung seemed ut 
 terly oblivious of his presence. He had 
 not, apparently, taken more than a casual 
 glance in his direction. In a voice which 
 one beyond the door might have mis 
 taken for a woman s, he was saying to 
 McDowell: 
 
 " I have seen the man you sent me to 
 see, Mr. McDowell. It is Larsen. He has 
 changed much in eight years. He has 
 grown a beard. He has lost an eye. His 
 hair has whitened. But it is Larsen." 
 
 The faultlessness of his speech and the 
 unemotional but perfect inflection of his 
 words made Keith, like the young secre- 
 
THE RIVER S END 73 
 
 tary, shiver where he stood. In McDow 
 ell s face he saw a flash of exultation. 
 
 " He had no suspicion of you, Shan 
 Tung? " 
 
 " He did not see me to suspect. He will 
 
 be there when " Slowly he faced 
 
 Keith. " When Mr. Conniston goes to 
 arrest him," he finished. 
 
 He inclined his head as he backed noise 
 lessly toward the door. His yellow eyes 
 did not leave Keith s face. In them Keith 
 fancied that he caught a sinister gleam. 
 There was the faintest inflection of a new 
 note in his voice, and his fingers were play 
 ing again, but not as when he had looked 
 out through the window at Miriam Kirk- 
 stone. And then in a flash, it seemed to 
 Keith the Chinaman s eyes closed to nar 
 row slits, and the pupils became points of 
 flame no larger than the sharpened ends of 
 a pair of pencils. The last that Keith was 
 conscious of seeing of Shan Tung was the 
 oriental s eyes. They had seemed to drag 
 his soul half out of his body. 
 
 "A queer devil," said McDowell. 
 " After he is gone, I always feel as if a 
 snake had been in the room. He still hates 
 
74 THE RIVER S END 
 
 you, Conniston. Three years have made no 
 difference. He hates you like poison. I 
 believe he would kill you, if he had a 
 chance to do it and get away with the 
 business. And you you blooming idiot 
 simply twiddle your mustache and laugh 
 at him! I d feel differently if I were ift 
 your boots." 
 
 Inwardly Keith was asking himself why 
 it was that Shan Tung had hated Con 
 niston. 
 
 McDowell added nothing to enlighten 
 him. He was gathering up a number of 
 papers scattered on his desk, smiling with 
 a grim satisfaction. " It s Larsen all right 
 if Shan Tung says so," he told Keith. 
 And then, as if he had only thought of the 
 matter, he said, " You re going to reenlist, 
 aren t you, Conniston? " 
 
 " I still owe the Service a month or so 
 before my term expires, don t I? After 
 that yes I believe I shall reenlist." 
 
 "Good!" approved the Inspector. 
 " I ll have you a sergeancy within a month. 
 Meanwhile you re off duty and may do 
 anything you please. You know Brady, 
 the Company agent? He s up the Macken- 
 
THE RIVER S END 75 
 
 zie on a trip, and here s the key to his 
 shack. I know you ll appreciate getting 
 under a real roof again, and Brady won t 
 object as long as I collect his thirty dollars 
 a month rent. Of course Barracks is open 
 to you, but it just occurred to me you 
 might prefer this place while on furlough. 
 Everything is there from a bathtub to nut 
 crackers, and I know a little Jap in town 
 who is hunting a job as a cook. What do 
 you say? " 
 
 " Splendid!" cried Keith. " I ll go up 
 at once, and if you ll hustle the Jap along, 
 I ll appreciate it. You might tell him to 
 bring up stuff for dinner," he added. 
 
 McDowell gave him a key. Ten min 
 utes later he was out of sight of barracks 
 and climbing a green slope that led to 
 Brady s bungalow. 
 
 In spite of the fact that he had not 
 played his part brilliantly, he believed that 
 he had scored a triumph. Andy Duggan 
 had not recognized him, and the riverman 
 had been one of his most intimate friends. 
 McDowell had accepted him apparently 
 without a suspicion. And Shan Tung 
 
 It was Shan Tung who weighed heavily 
 
76 THE RIVER S END 
 
 upon his mind, even as his nerves tingled 
 with the thrill of success. He could not 
 get away from the vision of the Chinaman 
 as he had backed through the Inspector s 
 door, the flaming needle-points of his eyes 
 piercing him as he went. It was not 
 hatred he had seen in Shan Tung s face. 
 He was sure of that. It was no emotion 
 that he could describe. It was as if a pair 
 of mechanical eyes fixed in the head of 
 an amazingly efficient mechanical monster 
 had focused themselves on him in those 
 few instants. It made him think of an 
 X-ray machine. But Shan Tung was 
 human. And he was clever. Given an 
 other skin, one would not have taken him 
 for what he was. The immaculateness of 
 his speech and manners was more than un 
 usual; it was positively irritating, some 
 thing which no Chinaman should right 
 fully possess. So argued Keith as he went 
 up to Brady s bungalow. 
 
 He tried to throw off the oppression of 
 the thing that was creeping over him, the 
 growing suspicion that he had not passed 
 safely under the battery of Shan Tung s 
 eyes. With physical things he endeavored 
 
THE RIVER S END 77 
 
 to thrust his mental uneasiness into the 
 background. He lighted one of the half- 
 dozen cigars McDowell had dropped into 
 his pocket, It was good to feel a cigar 
 between his teeth again and taste its flavor. 
 At the crest of the slope on which Brady s 
 bungalow stood, he stopped and looked 
 about him. Instinctively his eyes turned 
 first to the west. In that direction half of 
 the town lay under him, and beyond its 
 edge swept the timbered slopes, the river, 
 and the green pathways of the plains. 
 His heart beat a little faster as he looked. 
 Half a mile away was a tiny, parklike 
 patch of timber, and sheltered there, with 
 the river running under it, was the old 
 home. The building w r as hidden, but 
 through a break in the trees he could see 
 the top of the old red brick chimney 
 glowing in the sun, as if beckoning a wel 
 come to him over the tree tops. He for 
 got Shan Tung; he forgot McDowell; he 
 forgot that he was John Keith, the mur 
 derer, in the overwhelming sea of loneli 
 ness that swept over him. He looked out 
 into the world that had once been his, 
 and all that he saw was that red brick 
 
78 THE RIVER S END 
 
 chimney glowing in the sun, and the chim 
 ney changed until at last it seemed to him 
 like a tombstone rising over the graves of 
 the dead. He turned to the door of the 
 bungalow with a thickening in his throat 
 and his eyes filmed by a mist through 
 which for a few moments it was difficult 
 for him to see. 
 
 The bungalow was darkened by drawn 
 curtains when he entered. One after an 
 other he let them up, and the sun poured 
 in. Brady had left his place in order, and 
 Keith felt about him an atmosphere of 
 cheer that was a mighty urge to his flag 
 ging spirits. Brady was a home man with 
 out a wife. The Company s agent had 
 called his place " The Shack " because it 
 was built entirely of logs, and a woman 
 could not have made it more comfortable. 
 Keith stood in the big living-room. At 
 one end was a strong fireplace in which 
 kindlings and birch were already laid, 
 waiting the touch of a match. Brady s 
 reading table and his easy chair were 
 drawn up close; his lounging moccasins 
 were on a footstool; pipes, tobacco, books 
 and magazines littered the table; and out 
 
THE RIVER S END 79 
 
 of this cheering disorder rose triumphantly 
 the amber shoulder of a half-filled bottle 
 of Old Rye. 
 
 Keith found himself chuckling. His 
 grin met the lifeless stare of a pair of 
 glass eyes in the huge head of an old bull 
 moose over the mantel, and after that his 
 gaze rambled over the walls ornamented 
 with mounted heads, pictures, snowshoes, 
 gun-racks and the things which went to 
 make up the comradeship and business of 
 Brady s picturesque life. Keith could look 
 through into the little dining-room, and 
 beyond that was the kitchen. He made an 
 inventory of both and found that Mc 
 Dowell was right. There were nutcrackers 
 in Brady s establishment. And he found 
 the bathroom. It was not much larger 
 than a piano box, but the tub was man s 
 size, and Keith raised a window and poked 
 his head out to find that it was connected 
 with a rainwater tank built by a genius, 
 just high enough to give weight sufficient 
 for a water system and low enough to 
 gather the rain as it fell from the eaves. 
 He laughed outright, the sort of laugh 
 that comes out of a man s soul not whea 
 
8o THE RIVER S END 
 
 he is amused but when he is pleased. By 
 the time he had investigated the two bed 
 rooms, he felt a real affection for Brady. 
 He selected the agent s room for his own. 
 Here, too, were pipes and tobacco and 
 books and magazines, and ^ reading lamp 
 on a table close to the bedside. Not until 
 he had made a closer inspection of the 
 living-room did he discover that the Shack 
 also had a telephone. 
 
 By that time he noted that the sun had 
 gone out. Driving up from the west was 
 a mass of storm clouds. He unlocked a 
 door from which he could look up the 
 river, and the wind that was riding softly 
 in advance of the storm ruffled his hair 
 and cooled his face. In it he caught again 
 the old fancy the smells of the vast 
 reaches of unpeopled prairie beyond the 
 rim of the forest, and the luring chill of 
 the distant mountain tops. Always storm 
 that came down with the river brought to 
 him voice from the river s end. It came 
 to him from the great mountains that were 
 a passion with him; it seemed to thunder 
 to him the old stories of the mightiest fast 
 nesses of the Rockies and stirred in him 
 
THE RIVER S END 81 
 
 the child-bred yearning to follow up his 
 beloved river until he came at last to the 
 mystery of its birthplace in the cradle of 
 the western ranges. And now, as he faced 
 the storm, the grip of that desire held him 
 like a strong hand. 
 
 The sky blackened swiftly, and with the 
 rumbling of far-away thunder he saw the 
 lightning slitting the dark heaven like bay 
 onets, and the fire of the electrical charges 
 galloped to him and filled his veins. His 
 heart all at once cried out words that his 
 lips did not utter. Why should he not 
 answer the call that had come to him 
 through all the years? Now was the 
 time and why should he not go? Why 
 tempt fate in the hazard of a great ad 
 venture where home and friends and even 
 hope were dead to him, when off there 
 beyond the storm was the place of his 
 dreams? He threw out his arms. His 
 voice broke at last in a cry of strange 
 ecstasy. Not everything was gone! Not 
 everything was dead! Over the graveyard 
 of his past there was sweeping a mighty 
 force that called him, something that was 
 no longer merely an urge and a demand 
 
82 THE RIVER S END 
 
 but a thing that was irresistible. He 
 would go! Tomorrow today tonight 
 he would begin making plans! 
 
 He watched the deluge as it came on 
 with a roar of wind, a beating, hissing wall 
 under which the tree tops down in the 
 edge of the plain bent their heads like a 
 multitude of people in prayer. He saw it 
 sweeping up the slope in a mass of gray 
 dragoons. It caught him before he had 
 closed the door, and his face dripped with 
 wet as he forced the last inch of it against 
 the wind with his shoulder. It was the 
 sort of storm Keith liked. The thunder 
 was the rumble of a million giant cart 
 wheels rolling overhead. 
 
 Inside the bungalow it was growing 
 dark as though evening had come. He 
 dropped on his knees before the pile of 
 dry fuel in the fireplace and struck a 
 match. For a space the blaze smoldered; 
 then the birch fired up like oil-soaked 
 tinder, and a yellow flame crackled and 
 roared up the flue. Keith was sensitive in 
 the matter of smoking other people s pipes, 
 so he drew out his own and filled it with 
 Brady s tobacco. It was an English mix* 
 
THE RIVER S END 83 
 
 ture, rich and aromatic, and as the fire 
 burned brighter and the scent of the 
 tobacco filled the room, he dropped into 
 Brady s big lounging chair and stretched 
 out his legs with a deep breath of satis 
 faction. His thoughts wandered to the 
 clash of the storm. He would have a place 
 like this off there in the mystery of the 
 trackless mountains, where the Saskatche 
 wan was born. He would build it like 
 Brady s place, even to the rain-water tank 
 midway between the roof and the ground. 
 And after a few years no one would re 
 member that a man named John Keith 
 had ever lived. 
 
 Something brought him suddenly to 
 his feet. It was the ringing of the tele 
 phone. After four years the sound was one 
 that roused with an uncomfortable jump 
 every nerve in his body. Probably it was 
 McDowell calling up about the Jap or to 
 ask how he liked the place. Probably 
 it was that. He . repeated the thought 
 aloud as he laid his pipe on the table. 
 And yet as his hand came in contact with 
 the telephone, he felt an inclination to 
 draw back. A subtle voice whispered him 
 
84 THE RIVER S END 
 
 not to answer, to leave while the storm was 
 dark, to go back into the wilderness, to 
 fight his way to the western mountains. 
 
 With a jerk he unhooked the receiver 
 and put it to his ear. 
 
 It was not McDowell who answered 
 him. It was not Shan Tung. To his 
 amazement, coming to him through the 
 tumult of the storm, he recognized the 
 voice of Miriam Kirkstone! 
 
VII 
 
 WHY should Miriam Kirkstone call 
 him up in an hour when the sky 
 was livid with the flash of lightning and 
 the earth trembled with the roil of thun 
 der? This was the question that filled 
 Keith s mind as he listened to the voice 
 at the other end of the wire. It was 
 pitched to a high treble as if uncon 
 sciously the speaker feared that the storm 
 might break in upon her words. She 
 was telling him that she had telephoned 
 McDowell but had been too late to catch 
 him before he left for Brady s bungalow; 
 she was asking him to pardon her for in 
 truding upon his time so soon after his 
 return, but she was sure that he would 
 understand her. She wanted him to come 
 up to see her that evening at eight o clock. 
 It was important to her. Would he 
 come? 
 
 Before Keith had taken a moment to 
 consult with himself he had replied that 
 
 85 
 
86 THE RIVER S END 
 
 he would. He heard her " thank you," 
 her " good-by," and hung up the receiver, 
 stunned. So far as he could remember, 
 he had spoken no more than seven words. 
 The beautiful young woman up at the 
 Kirkstone mansion had clearly betrayed 
 her fear of the lightning by winding up 
 her business with him at the earliest pos 
 sible moment. Why, then, had she not 
 waited until the storm was over? 
 
 A pounding at the door interrupted his 
 thought. He went to it and admitted an 
 individual who, in spite of his water- 
 soaked condition, was smiling all over. 
 It was Wallie, the Jap. He was no larger 
 than a boy of sixteen, and from eyes, ears, 
 nose, and hair he was dripping streams, 
 while his coat bulged with packages which 
 he had struggled to protect from the tor 
 rent through which he had forced his way 
 up the hill. Keith liked him on the in 
 stant. He found himself powerless to 
 resist the infection of Wallie s grin, and as 
 Wallie hustled into the kitchen like a wet 
 spaniel, he followed and helped him un 
 load. By the time the little Jap had dis 
 gorged his last package, he had assured 
 
THE RIVER S END 87 
 
 Keith that the rain was nice, that his name 
 was Wallie, that he expected five dollars 
 a week and could cook " like heaven." 
 Keith laughed outright, and Wallie was so 
 delighted with the general outlook that 
 he fairly kicked his heels together. There 
 after for an hour or so he was left alone 
 in possession of the kitchen, and shortly 
 Keith began to hear certain sounds and 
 catch occasional odoriferous whiffs which 
 assured him that Wallie was losing no time 
 in demonstrating his divine efficiency in 
 the matter of cooking. 
 
 Wallie s coming gave him an excuse to 
 call up McDowell. He confessed to a dis 
 quieting desire to hear the inspector s voice 
 again. In the back of his head was the 
 fear of Shan Tung, and the hope that 
 McDowell might throw some light on 
 Miriam Kirkstone s unusual request to 
 see her that night. The storm had settled 
 down into a steady drizzle when he got in 
 touch with him, and he was relieved to find 
 there was no change in the friendliness of 
 the voice that came over the telephone. If 
 Shan Tung had a suspicion, he had kept 
 it to himself. 
 
88 THE RIVER S END 
 
 To Keith s surprise it was McDowell 
 who spoke first of Miss Kirkstone. 
 
 " She seemed unusually anxious to get 
 in touch with you," he said. " I am 
 frankly disturbed over a certain matter, 
 Conniston, and I should like to talk with 
 you before you go up tonight." 
 
 Keith sniffed the air. " Wallie is going 
 to ring the dinner bell within half an hour. 
 Why not slip on a raincoat and join me up 
 here? I think it s going to be pretty 
 good." 
 
 " I ll come," said McDowell. " Expect 
 me any moment." 
 
 Fifteen minutes later Keith was helping 
 him off with his wet slicker. He had ex 
 pected McDowell to make some observa 
 tion on the cheerfulness of the birch fire 
 and the agreeable aromas that were leak 
 ing from Wallie s kitchen, but the in 
 spector disappointed him. He stood for a 
 few moments with his back to the fire, 
 thumbing down the tobacco in his pipe, 
 and he made no effort to conceal the fact 
 that there was something in his mind more 
 important than dinner and the cheer of a 
 grate. 
 
THE RIVER S END 89 
 
 His eyes fell on the telephone, and he 
 nodded toward it. " Seemed very anxious 
 to see you, didn t she, Conniston? I mean 
 Miss Kirkstone." 
 
 " Rather." 
 
 McDowell seated himself and lighted a 
 match. " Seemed a little nervous per 
 haps," he suggested between puffs. " As 
 though something had happened or was 
 going to happen. Don t mind my ques 
 tioning you, do you, Derry? " 
 
 "Not a bit," said Keith. "You see, I 
 thought perhaps you might explain " 
 
 There was a disquieting gleam in 
 McDowell s eyes. " It was odd that she 
 should call you up so soon and in the 
 storm wasn t it? She expected to find 
 you at my office. I could fairly hear the 
 lightning hissing along the wires. She 
 must have been under some unusual im 
 pulse." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 McDowell was silent for a space, look 
 ing steadily at Keith, as if measuring him 
 up to something. 
 
 " I don t mind telling you that I am very 
 deeply interested in Miss Kirkstone," he 
 
90 THE RIVER S END 
 
 said. " You didn t see her when the Judge 
 was killed. She was away at school, and 
 you were on John Keith s trail when she 
 returned. I have never been much of a 
 woman s man, Conniston, but I tell you 
 frankly that up until six or eight months 
 ago Miriam was one of the most beautiful 
 girls I have ever seen. I would give a good 
 deal to know the exact hour and date 
 when the change in her began. I might 
 be able to trace some event to that date. 
 It was six months ago that she began to 
 take an interest in the fate of John Keith. 
 Since then the change in her has alarmed 
 me, Conniston. I don t understand. She 
 has betrayed nothing. But I have seen 
 her dying by inches under my eyes. She 
 is only a pale and drooping flower com 
 pared with what she was. I am positive 
 it is not a sickness unless it is mental. I 
 have a suspicion. It is almost too terrible 
 to put into words. You will be going up 
 there tonight you will be alone with her, 
 will talk with her, may learn a great deal 
 if you understand what it is that is eating 
 like a canker in my mind. Will you help 
 me to discover her secret? ", 
 
THE RIVER S END 91 
 
 He leaned toward Keith. He was no 
 longer the man of iron. There was some 
 thing intensely human in his face. 
 
 " There is no other man on earth I 
 would confide this matter to," he went on 
 slowly. " It will take a gentleman to 
 handle it, someone who is big enough to 
 forget if my suspicion is untrue, and who 
 will understand fully what sacrilege means 
 should it prove true. It is extremely deli 
 cate. I hesitate. And yet I am waiting, 
 Conniston. Is it necessary to ask you to 
 pledge secrecy in the matter? " 
 
 Keith held out a hand. McDowell 
 gripped it tight. 
 
 " It is Shan Tung," he said, a peculiar 
 hiss in his voice. " Shan Tung and 
 Miriam Kirkstone! Do you understand, 
 Conniston? Does the horror of it get hold 
 of you? Can you make yourself believe 
 that it is possible? Am I mad to allow 
 such a suspicion to creep into my brain? 
 Shan Tung Miriam Kirkstone! And she 
 sees herself standing now at the very edge 
 of the pit of hell, and it is killing 
 her." 
 
 Keith felt his blood running cold as he 
 
pt THE RIVER S END 
 
 saw in the inspector s face the thing which 
 he did not put more plainly in words. He 
 was shocked. He drew his hand from 
 McDowell s grip almost fiercely. 
 
 " Impossible! " he cried. " Yes, you are 
 mad. Such a thing would be inconceiv 
 able!" 
 
 " And yet I have told myself that it is 
 possible," said McDowell. His face was 
 returning into its iron-like mask. His two 
 hands gripped the arms of his chair, and 
 he stared at Keith again as if he were 
 looking through him at something else, 
 and to that something else he seemed to 
 speak, slowly, weighing and measuring 
 each word before it passed his lips. 
 
 " I am not superstitious. It has always 
 been a law with me to have conviction 
 forced upon me. I do not believe unusual 
 things until investigation proves them. I 
 am making an exception in the case of 
 Shan Tung. I have never regarded him 
 as a man, like you and me, but as a sort 
 of superphysical human machine possessed 
 of a certain psychological power that is 
 at times almost deadly. Do you begin to 
 understand me? I believe that he has 
 
THE RIVER S END 93 
 
 exerted the whole force of that influence 
 upon Miriam Kirkstone and she has sur 
 rendered to it. I believe and yet I am 
 not positive." 
 
 " And you have watched them for six 
 months? " 
 
 " No. The suspicion came less than a 
 month ago. No one that I know has ever 
 had the opportunity of looking into Shan 
 Tung s private life. The quarters behind 
 his cafe are a mystery. I suppose they can 
 be entered from the cafe and also from a 
 little stairway at the rear. One night 
 very late I saw Miriam Kirkstone come 
 down that stairway. Twice in the last 
 month she has visited Shan Tung at a 
 late hour. Twice that I know of, you 
 understand. And that is not all quite." 
 
 Keith saw the distended veins in Mc 
 Dowell s clenched hands, and he knew that 
 he was speaking under a tremendous strain. 
 
 " I watched the Kirkstone home per 
 sonally. Three times in that same month 
 Shan Tung visited her there. The third 
 time I entered boldly with a fraud mes 
 sage for the girl. I remained with her for 
 an hour. In that time I saw nothing and 
 
H THE RIVER S END 
 
 heard nothing of Shan Tung. He was 
 hiding or got out as I came in." 
 
 Keith was visioning Miriam Kirkstone 
 as he had seen her in the inspector s office. 
 He recalled vividly the slim, golden beauty 
 of her, the wonderful gray of her eyes, and 
 the shimmer of her hair as she stood in the 
 light of the window and then he saw 
 Shan Tung, effeminate, with his sly, creep 
 ing hands and his narrowed eyes, and the 
 thing which McDowell had suggested rose 
 up before him a monstrous impossibility. 
 
 " Why don t you demand an explanation 
 of Miss Kirkstone?" he asked. 
 
 " I have, and she denies it all absolutely, 
 except that Shan Tung came to her house 
 once to see her brother. She says that she 
 was never on the little stairway back of 
 Shan Tung s place." 
 
 "And you do not believe her?" 
 
 " Assuredly not. I saw her. To speak 
 the cold truth, Conniston, she is lying mag 
 nificently to cover up something which she 
 does not want any other person on earth 
 to know." 
 
 Keith leaned forward suddenly. "And 
 why is it that John Keith, dead and buried, 
 
THE RIVER S END 95 
 
 should have anything to do with this? " he 
 demanded. " Why did this intense inter 
 est you speak of in John Keith begin at 
 about the same time your suspicions began 
 to include Shan Tung? " 
 
 McDowell shook his head. " It may be 
 that her interest was not so much in John 
 Keith as in you, Conniston. That is for 
 you to discover tonight. It is an inter 
 esting situation. It has tragic possibilities. 
 The instant you substantiate my suspicions 
 we ll deal directly with Shan Tung. Just 
 now there s Wallie behind you grinning 
 like a Cheshire cat. His dinner must be a 
 success." 
 
 The diminutive Jap had noiselessly 
 opened the door of the little dining-room 
 in which the table was set for two. 
 
 Keith smiled as he sat down opposite the 
 man who would have sent him to the 
 executioner had he known the truth. 
 After all, it was but a step from comedy 
 to tragedy. And just now he was con 
 scious of a bit of grisly humor in the 
 situation. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE storm had settled into a steady 
 drizzle when McDowell left the 
 Shack at two o clock. Keith watched the 
 iron man, as his tall, gray figure faded 
 away into the mist down the slope, with a 
 curious undercurrent of emotion. Before 
 the inspector had come up as his guest he 
 had, he thought, definitely decided his 
 future action. He would go west on his 
 furlough, write McDowell that he had de 
 cided not to reenlist, and bury himself in 
 the British Columbia mountains before an 
 answer could get back to him, leaving the 
 impression that he was going on to Aus 
 tralia or Japan. He was not so sure of 
 himself now. He found himself looking 
 ahead to the night, when he would see 
 Miriam Kirkstone, and he no longer feared 
 Shan Tung as he had feared him a few 
 hours before. McDowell himself had 
 given him new weapons. He was unof 
 ficially on Shan Tung s trail. McDowell 
 9 6 
 
THE RIVER S END 97 
 
 Had frankly placed the affair of Miriam 
 Kirkstone in his hands. That it all had 
 in some mysterious way something to do 
 with himself John Keith urged him on 
 to the adventure. 
 
 He waited impatiently for the evening. 
 Wallie, smothered in a great raincoat, he 
 sent forth on a general foraging expedition 
 and to bring up some of Conniston s 
 clothes. It was a quarter of eight when he 
 left for Miriam Kirkstone s home. 
 
 Even at that early hour the night lay 
 about him heavy and dark and saturated 
 with a heavy mist. From the summit of 
 the hill he could no longer make out the 
 valley of the Saskatchewan. He walked 
 down into a pit in which the scattered 
 lights of the town burned dully like distant 
 stars. It was a little after eight when he 
 came to the Kirkstone house. It was set 
 well back in an iron-fenced area thick with 
 trees and shrubbery, and he saw that the 
 porch light was burning to show him the 
 way. Curtains were drawn, but a glow of 
 warm light lay behind them. 
 
 He was sure that Miriam Kirkstone 
 must have heard the crunch of his feet on 
 
98 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the gravel walk, for he had scarcely 
 touched the old-fashioned knocker on the 
 door when the door itself was opened. It 
 was Miriam who greeted him. Again he 
 held her hand for a moment in his own. 
 It was not cold, as it had been in 
 McDowell s office. It was almost fever 
 ishly hot, and the pupils of the girl s eyes 
 were big, and dark, and filled with a 
 luminous fire. Keith might have thought 
 that coming in out of the dark night he 
 had startled her. But it was not that. 
 She was repressing something that had 
 preceded him. He thought that he heard 
 the almost noiseless closing of a door at 
 the end of the long hall, and his nostrils 
 caught the faint aroma of a strange per 
 fume. Between him and the light hung a 
 filmy veil of smoke. He knew that it had 
 come from a cigarette. There was an un 
 easy note in Miss Kirkstone s voice as she 
 invited him to hang his coat and hat on an 
 old-fashioned rack near the door. He took 
 his time, trying to recall where he had 
 detected that perfume before. He remem 
 bered, with a sort of shock. It was after 
 Shan Tung had left McDowell s office. 
 
THE RIVER S END C9 
 
 She was smiling when he turned, and 
 apologizing again for making her unusual 
 request that day. 
 
 " It was quite unconventional. But 
 I felt that you would understand, Mr. 
 Conniston. I guess I didn t stop to think. 
 And I am afraid of lightning, too. But I 
 wanted to see you. I didn t want to wait 
 until tomorrow to hear about what hap 
 pened up there. Is it so strange? " 
 
 Afterward he could not remember just 
 what sort of answer he made. She turned, 
 and he followed her through the big, 
 square-cut door leading out of the hall. 
 It was the same door with the great, slid 
 ing panel he had locked on that fateful 
 night, years ago, when he had fought with 
 her father and brother. In it, for a mo 
 ment, her slim figure was profiled in a 
 frame of vivid light. Her mother must 
 have been beautiful. That was the thought 
 that flashed upon him as the room and its 
 tragic memory lay before him. Every 
 thing came back to him vividly, and he 
 was astonished at the few changes in it. 
 There was the big chair with its leather 
 arms, in which the overfatted creature who 
 
ioo THE RIVER S END 
 
 had been her father was sitting when he 
 came in. It was the same table, too, and 
 it seemed to him that the same odds and 
 ends were on the mantel over the cobble 
 stone fireplace. And there was somebody s 
 picture of the Madonna still hanging be 
 tween two windows. The Madonna, like 
 the master of the house, had been too fat 
 to be beautiful. The son, an ogreish pat 
 tern of his father, had stood with his back 
 to the Madonna, whose overfat arms had 
 seemed to rest on his shoulders. He re 
 membered that. 
 
 The girl was watching him closely when 
 he turned toward her. He had frankly 
 looked the room over, without concealing 
 his intention. She was breathing a little 
 unsteadily, and her hair was shimmering 
 gloriously in the light of an overhead 
 chandelier. She sat down with that light 
 over her, motioning him to be seated op 
 posite her across the same table from 
 which he had snatched the copper weight 
 that had killed Kirkstone. He had never 
 seen anything quite so steady, quite so 
 beautiful as her eyes when they looked 
 across at him. He thought of McDowell s 
 
THE RIVER S END 101 
 
 suspicion and of Sha!n Tuhg and gripped 
 himself hard. The same strange -perfume 
 hung subtly on the air he was breathing. 
 On a small silver tray at his elbow lay the 
 ends of three freshly burned cigarettes. 
 
 "Of course you remember this room?" 
 
 He nodded. " Yes. It was night when 
 I came, like this. The next day I went 
 after John Keith." 
 
 She leaned toward him, her hands 
 clasped in front of her on the table. " You 
 will tell me the truth about John Keith?" 
 she asked in a low, tense voice. " You 
 swear that it will be the truth? " 
 
 " I will keep nothing back from you that 
 I have told Inspector McDowell," he 
 answered, fighting to meet her eyes 
 steadily. " I almost believe I may tell you 
 
 more." 
 
 " Then did you speak the truth when 
 you reported to Inspector McDowell? Is 
 John Keith dead?" 
 
 Could Shan Tung meet those wonderful 
 eyes as he was meeting them now, he won 
 dered? Could he face them and master 
 them, as McDowell had hinted? To Mc 
 Dowell the lie had come easily to his 
 
102 THE RIVER S END 
 
 tongue. It stuck in his throat now. With 
 out .giving: him time to prepare himself 
 the girl had shot straight for the bull s-eye, 
 straight to the heart of the thing that 
 meant life or death to him, and for a 
 moment he found no answer. Clearly he 
 was facing suspicion. She could not have 
 driven the shaft intuitively. The unex 
 pectedness of the thing astonished him and 
 then thrilled him, and in the thrill of it 
 he found himself more than ever master of 
 himself. 
 
 " Would you like to hear how utterly 
 John Keith is dead and how he died? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes. That is what I must know." 
 
 He noticed that her hands had closed. 
 Her slender fingers were clenched tight. 
 
 " I hesitate, because I have almost prom 
 ised to tell you even more than I told 
 McDowell," he went on. " And that will 
 not be pleasant for you to hear. He killed 
 your father. There can be no sympathy 
 m your heart for John Keith. It will not 
 be pleasant for you to hear that I liked 
 the man, and that I am sorry he is dead." 
 
 " Go on please." 
 
THE RIVER S END 103 
 
 Her hands unclasped. Her fingers lay 
 limp. Something faded slowly out of her 
 face. It was as if she had hoped for 
 something, and that hope was dying. 
 Could it be possible that she had hoped 
 he would say that John Keith was 
 alive? 
 
 " Did you know this man? " he asked. 
 "This John Keith?" 
 
 She shook her head. " No. I was away 
 at school for many years. I don t remem 
 ber him." 
 
 " But he knew you that is, he had seen 
 you," said Keith. " He used to talk to 
 me about you in those days when he was 
 helpless and dying. He said that he was 
 sorry for you, and that only because of you 
 did he ever regret the justice he brought 
 upon your father. You see I speak his 
 words. He called it justice. He never 
 weakened on that point. You have prob 
 ably never heard his part of the story." 
 
 " No." 
 
 The one word forced itself from her 
 lips. She was expecting him to go on, and 
 waited, her eyes never for an instant leav 
 ing his face. 
 
io 4 THE RIVER S END 
 
 He did not repeat the story exactly as 
 he had told it to McDowell. The facts 
 were the same, but the living fire of his 
 own sympathy and his own conviction were 
 in them now. He told it purely from 
 Keith s point of view, and Miriam Kirk- 
 stone s face grew whiter, and her hands 
 grew tense again, as she listened for the 
 first time to Keith s own version of the 
 tragedy of the room in which they were 
 sitting. And then he followed Keith up 
 into that land of ice and snow and gibber 
 ing Eskimos, and from that moment he 
 was no longer Keith but spoke with the 
 lips of Conniston. He described the sun 
 less weeks and months of madness until 
 the girl s eyes seemed to catch fire, and 
 when at last he came to the little cabin in 
 which Conniston had died, he was again 
 John Keith. He could not have talked 
 about himself as he did about the English 
 man. And when he came to the point 
 where he buried Conniston under the floor, 
 a dry, broken sob broke in upon him from 
 across the table. But there were no tears 
 in the girl s eyes. Tears, perhaps, would 
 have hidden from him the desolation he 
 
THE RIVER S END 105 
 
 saw there. But she did not give in. Her 
 white throat twitched. She tried to draw 
 her breath steadily. And then she said: 
 
 "And that was John Keith!" 
 
 He bowed his head in confirmation of 
 the lie, and, thinking of Conniston, he said: 
 " He was the finest gentleman I ever knew. 
 And I am sorry he is dead." 
 
 " And I, too, am sorry." 
 
 She was reaching a hand across the table 
 to him, slowly, hesitatingly. He stared at 
 her. 
 
 " You mean that? " 
 
 " Yes, I am sorry." 
 
 He took her hand. For a moment her 
 fingers tightened about his own. Then 
 they relaxed and drew gently away from 
 him. In that moment he saw a sudden 
 change come into her face. She was look 
 ing beyond him, over his right shoulder. 
 Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated under 
 his gaze, and she held her breath. With 
 the swift caution of the man-hunted he 
 turned. The room was empty behind him. 
 There was nothing but a window at his 
 back. The rain was drizzling against it, 
 and he noticed that the curtain was not 
 
io6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 drawn, as they were drawn at the other 
 windows. Even as he looked, the girl 
 went to it and pulled down the shade. 
 He knew that she had seen something, 
 something that had startled her for a 
 moment, but he did not question her. In 
 stead, as if he had noticed nothing, he 
 asked if he might light a cigar. 
 
 " I see someone smokes," he excused 
 himself, nodding at the cigarette butts. 
 
 He was watching her closely and would 
 have recalled the words in the next breath. 
 He had caught her. Her brother was out 
 of town. And there was a distinctly un- 
 American perfume in the smoke that some 
 one had left in the room. He saw the bit 
 of red creeping up her throat into her 
 cheeks, and his conscience shamed him. It 
 was difficult for him not to believe Mc 
 Dowell now. Shan Tung had been there. 
 It was Shan Tung who had left the hall as 
 he entered. Probably it was Shan Tung 
 whose face she had seen at the window. 
 
 What she said amazed him. " Yes, it is 
 a shocking habit of mine, Mr. Conniston. 
 I learned to smoke in the East. Is it so 
 very bad, do yuu think? " 
 
THE RIVER S END 107 
 
 He fairly shook himself. He wanted to 
 say, " You beautiful little liar, I d like to 
 call your bluff right now, but I won t, be 
 cause I m sorry for you!" Instead, he 
 nipped off the end of his cigar, and said: 
 
 " In England, you know, the ladies 
 smoke a great deal. Personally I may be 
 a little prejudiced. I don t know that it is 
 sinful, especially when one uses such good 
 judgment in orientals." And then he was 
 powerless to hold himself back. He smiled 
 at her frankly, unafraid. " I don t believe 
 you smoke," he added. 
 
 He rose to his feet, still smiling across 
 at her, like a big brother waiting for her 
 confidence. She was not alarmed at the 
 directness with which he had guessed the 
 truth. She was no longer embarrassed. 
 She seemed for a moment to be looking 
 through him and into him, a strange and 
 yearning desire glowing dully in her eyes. 
 He saw her throat twitching again, and he 
 was filled with an infinite compassion for 
 this daughter of the man he had killed. 
 But he kept it within himself. He had 
 gone far enough. It was for her to speak. 
 At the door she gave him her hand again, 
 
io8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 bidding him good-night. She looked 
 pathetically helpless, and he thought that 
 someone ought to be there with the right 
 to take her in his arms and comfort her. 
 
 " You will come again? " she whispered. 
 
 " Yes, I am coming again," he said. 
 " Good-night." 
 
 He passed out into the drizzle. The 
 door closed behind him, but not before 
 there came to him once more that choking 
 sob from the throat of Miriam Kirkstonc. 
 
IX 
 
 KEITH S hand was on the butt of his 
 revolver as he made his way through 
 the black night. He could not see the gravel 
 path under his feet but could only feel it. 
 Something that was more than a guess 
 made him feel that Shan Tung was not 
 far away, and he wondered if it was a pre 
 monition, and what it meant. With the 
 keen instinct of a hound he was scenting 
 for a personal danger. He passed through 
 the gate and began the downward slope 
 toward town, and not until then did he 
 begin adding things together and analyz 
 ing the situation as it had transformed 
 itself since he had stood in the door of 
 the Shack, welcoming the storm from the 
 western mountains. He thought that he 
 had definitely made up his mind then; now 
 it was chaotic. He could not leave Prince 
 Albert immediately, as the inspiration had 
 moved him a few hours before. Mc 
 Dowell had practically given him an as- 
 109 
 
i io THE RIVER S END 
 
 signment. And Miss Kirkstone was hold 
 ing him. Also Shan Tung. He felt 
 within himself the sensation of one who 
 was traveling on very thin ice, yet he 
 could not tell just where or why it was 
 thin. 
 
 " Just a fool hunch," he assured himself. 
 " Why the deuce should I let a confounded 
 Chinaman and a pretty girl get on my 
 nerves at this stage of the game? If it 
 wasn t for McDowell " 
 
 And there he stopped. He had fought 
 too long at the raw edge of things to allow 
 himself to be persuaded by delusions, and 
 he confessed that it was John Keith who 
 was holding him, that in some inexplicable 
 way John Keith, though officially dead and 
 buried, was mixed up in a mysterious af 
 fair in which Miriam Kirkstone and Shan 
 Tung were the moving factors. And inas 
 much as he was now Derwent Conniston 
 and no longer John Keith, he took the 
 logical point of arguing that the affair was 
 none of his business, and that he could go 
 on to the mountains if he pleased. Only in 
 that direction could he see ice of a sane 
 and perfect thickness, to carry out the 
 
THE RIVER S END n* 
 
 metaphor in his head. He could report 
 indifferently to McDowell, forget Miss 
 Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace 
 of Shan Tung s eyes. John Keith, he re 
 peated, would be officially dead, and being 
 dead, the law would have no further inter 
 est in him. 
 
 He prodded himself on with this 
 thought as he fumbled his way through 
 darkness down into town. Miriam Kirk- 
 stone in hei golden way was alluring; the 
 mystery that shadowed the big house on 
 the hill was fascinating to his hunting in 
 stincts; he had the desire, growing fast, to 
 come at grips with Shan Tung. But he 
 had not foreseen these things, and neither 
 had Conniston foreseen them. They had 
 planned only for the salvation of John 
 Keith s precious neck, and tonight he had 
 almost forgotten the existence of that un 
 pleasant reality, the hangman. Truth set 
 tled upon him with depressing effect, and 
 an infinite loneliness turned his mind again 
 to the mountains of his dreams. 
 
 The town was empty of life. Lights 
 glowed here and there through the mist; 
 now and then a door opened; down near 
 
ii2 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the river a dog howled forlornly. Every 
 thing was shut against him. There were 
 no longer homes where he might call and 
 be greeted with a cheery " Good evening, 
 Keith. Glad to see you. Come in out of 
 the wet." He could not even go to Dug- 
 gan, his old river friend. He realized now 
 that his old friends were the very ones he 
 must avoid most carefully to escape self- 
 betrayal. Friendship no longer existed for 
 him; the town was a desert without an 
 oasis where he might reclaim some of the 
 things he had lost Memories he had 
 treasured gave place to bitter ones. His 
 own townfolk, of all people, were his 
 readiest enemies, and his loneliness 
 clutched him tighter, until the air itself 
 seemed thick and difficult to breathe. For 
 the time Derwent Conniston was utterly 
 submerged in the overwhelming yearnings 
 of John Keith. 
 
 He dropped into a dimly lighted shop 
 to purchase a box of cigars. It was de 
 serted except for the proprietor. His 
 elbow bumped into a telephone. He 
 would call up Wallie and tell him to 
 have a good fire waiting for him, and in 
 
THE RIVER S END 1113 
 
 the company of that fire he would do a 
 lot of thinking before getting into com 
 munication with McDowell. 
 
 It was not Wallie who answered him, 
 and he was about to apologize for getting 
 the wrong number when the voice at the 
 other end asked, 
 
 " Is that you, Conniston?" 
 
 It was McDowell. The discovery gave 
 him a distinct shock. What could the In 
 spector be doing up at the Shack in his 
 absence? Besides, there was an imperative 
 demand in the question that shot at him 
 over the wire. McDowell had half 
 shouted it. 
 
 "Yes, it s I," he said rather feebly. 
 " I m down-town, stocking up on some 
 cigars. What s the excitement? " 
 
 " Don t ask questions but hustle up 
 here," McDowell fired back. "I ve got 
 the surprise of your life waiting for you! " 
 
 Keith heard the receiver at the other end 
 go up with a bang. Something had hap 
 pened at the Shack, and McDowell was 
 excited. He went out puzzled. For some 
 reason he was in no great hurry to reach 
 the top of the hill. He was beginning to 
 
THE RIVER S END 
 
 expect things to happen too many things 
 and in the stress of the moment he felt 
 the incongruity of the friendly box of 
 cigars tucked under his arm. The hard 
 est luck he had ever run up against had 
 never quite killed his sense of humor, and 
 he chuckled. His fortunes were indeed at 
 a low ebb when he found a bit of comfort 
 in hugging a box of cigars still closer. 
 
 He could see that every room in the 
 Shack was lighted, when he came to the 
 crest of the slope, but the shades were 
 drawn. He wondered if Wallie had 
 pulled down the curtains, or if it was a 
 caution on McDowell s part against pos 
 sible espionage. Suspicion made him 
 transfer the box of cigars to his left arm 
 so that his right was free. Somewhere in 
 the darkness Conniston s voice was urging 
 him, as it had urged him up in the cabin 
 on the Barren: " Don t walk into a noose. 
 If it comes to a fight, fight!" 
 
 And then something happened that 
 brought his heart to a dead stop. He was 
 close to the door. His ear was against 
 it. And he was listening to a voice. It 
 was not Wallie s, and it was not the iron 
 
THE RIVER S END 115 
 
 man s. It was a woman s voice, or a 
 girl s. 
 
 He opened the door and entered, taking 
 swiftly the two or three steps that carried 
 him across the tiny vestibule to the big 
 room. His entrance was so sudden that 
 the tableau in front of him was unbroken 
 for a moment. Birch logs were blazing in 
 the fireplace. In the big chair sat 
 McDowell, partly turned, a smoking cigar 
 poised in his fingers, staring at him. 
 Seated on a footstool, with her chin in the 
 cup of her hands, was a girl. At first, 
 blinded a little by the light, Keith thought 
 she was a child, a remarkably pretty child 
 with wide-open, half-startled eyes and a 
 wonderful crown of glowing, brown hair 
 in which he could still see the shimmer of 
 wet. He took off his hat and brushed the 
 water from his eyes. McDowell did not 
 move. Slowly the girl rose to her feet. 
 It was then that Keith saw she was not a 
 child. Perhaps she was eighteen, a slim, 
 tired-looking, little thing, wonderfully 
 pretty, and either on the verge of laughing 
 or crying. Perhaps it was halfway be 
 tween. To his growing discomfiture she 
 
ii6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 came slowly toward him with a strange 
 and wonderful look in her face. And 
 McDowell still sat there staring. 
 
 His heart thumped with an emotion he 
 had no time to question. In those wide- 
 open, shining eyes of the girl he sensed 
 unspeakable tragedy for him. And then 
 the girl s arms were reaching out to him, 
 and she was crying in that voice that 
 trembled and broke between sobs and 
 laughter: 
 
 " Derry, don t you know me? Don t you 
 know me? " 
 
 He stood like one upon whom had fallen 
 the curse of the dumb. She was within 
 arm s reach of him, her face white as a 
 cameo, her eyes glowing like newly-fired 
 stars, her slim throat quivering, and her 
 arms reaching toward him. 
 
 " Derry, don t you know me? Don t you 
 know me? " 
 
 It was a sob, a cry. McDowell had 
 risen. Overwhelmingly there swept upon 
 Keith an impulse that rocked him to the 
 depth of his soul. He opened his arms, 
 and in an instant the girl was in them. 
 Quivering, and sobbing, and laughing she 
 
THE RIVER S END 117 
 
 was on his breast. He felt the crush of her 
 soft hair against his face, her arms were 
 about his neck, and she was pulling his 
 head down and kissing him not once or 
 twice, but again and again, passionately 
 and without shame. His own arms 
 tightened. He heard McDowell s voice 
 a distant and non-essential voice it seemed 
 to him now- saying that he would leave 
 them alone and that he would see them 
 again tomorrow. He heard the door open 
 and close. McDowell was gone. And 
 the soft little arms were still tight about 
 his neck. The sweet crush of hair smoth 
 ered his face, and on his breast she was 
 crying now like a baby. He held her 
 closer. A wild exultation seized upon him, 
 and every fiber in his body responded to 
 its thrill, as tautly-stretched wires respond 
 to an electrical storm. It passed swiftly, 
 burning itself out, and his heart was left 
 dead. He heard a sound made by Wallie 
 out in the kitchen. He saw the walls of 
 the room again, the chair in which Mc 
 Dowell had sat, the blazing fire. His arms 
 relaxed. The girl raised her head and put 
 her two hands to his face, looking at him 
 
n8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 with eyes which Keith no longer failed to 
 recognize. They were the eyes that had 
 looked at him out of the faded picture in 
 Conniston s watch. 
 
 "Kiss me, Deny!" 
 
 It was impossible not to obey. Her lips 
 clung to him. There was love, adoration, 
 in their caress. 
 
 And then she was crying again, with her 
 arms around him tight and her face hidden 
 against him, and he picked her up as he 
 would have lifted a child, and carried her 
 to the big chair in front of the fire. He 
 put her in it and stood before her, trying 
 to smile. Her hair had loosened, and the 
 shining mass of it had fallen about her 
 face and to her shoulders. She was more 
 than ever like a little girl as she looked 
 up at him, her eyes worshiping him, her 
 lips trying to smile, and one little hand 
 dabbing her eyes with a tiny handkerchief 
 that was already wet and crushed. 
 
 " You you don t seem very glad to see 
 me, Derry." 
 
 " I I m just stunned," he managed to 
 say. " You see " 
 
 " It is a shocking surprise, Derry. I 
 
THE RIVER S END 119 
 
 meant it to be. I ve been planning it for 
 years and years and years! Please take off 
 your coat it s dripping wet! and sit 
 down near me, on that stool! " 
 
 Again he obeyed. He was big for the 
 stool. 
 
 "You are glad to see me, aren t you, 
 Deny?" 
 
 She was leaning over the edge of the big 
 chair, and one of her hands went to his 
 damp hair, brushing it back. It was a 
 wonderful touch. He had never felt any 
 thing like it before in his life, and involun 
 tarily he bent his head a little. In a 
 moment she had hugged it up close to her. 
 
 " You are glad, aren t you, Derry? Say 
 1 yes. " 
 
 " Yes," he whispered. 
 
 He could feel the swift, excited beating 
 of her heart. 
 
 " And I m never going back again to 
 them! he heard her say, something sud 
 denly low and fierce in her voice. 
 "Never! I m going to stay with you 
 always, Derry. Always ! " 
 
 She put her lips close to his ear and 
 whispered mysteriously. " They don t 
 
120 THE RIVER S END 
 
 know where I am. Maybe they think I m 
 dead. But Colonel Reppington knows. I 
 told him I was coming if I had to walk 
 round the world to get here. He said he d 
 keep my secret, and gave me letters to some 
 awfully nice people over here. IVe been 
 over six months. And when I saw your 
 name in one of those dry-looking, blue- 
 covered, paper books the Mounted Police 
 get out, I just dropped down on my knees 
 and thanked the good Lord, Derry. I 
 knew I d find you somewhere sometime. 
 I haven t slept two winks since leaving 
 Montreal! And I guess I really fright 
 ened that big man with the terrible mus 
 taches, for when I rushed in on him to 
 night, dripping wet, and said, I m Miss 
 Mary Josephine Conniston, and I want my 
 brother, his eyes grew bigger and bigger 
 until I thought they were surely going to 
 pop out at me. And then he swore. He 
 said, * My Gawd, I didn t know he had a 
 sister!" 7 
 
 Keith s heart was choking him. So this 
 wonderful little creature was Derwent 
 Conniston s sister! And she was claiming 
 him. She thought he was her brother! 
 
THE RIVER S END 121 
 
 " And I love him because he treated 
 me so nicely," she was saying. " He really 
 hugged me, Derry. I guess he didn t think 
 I was away past eighteen. And he 
 wrapped me up in a big oilskin, and we 
 came up here. And O Derry, Derry 
 why did you do it? Why didn t you let 
 me know? Don t you want me here? " 
 
 He heard, but his mind had swept be 
 yond her to the little cabin in the edge of 
 the Great Barren where Derwent Connis- 
 ton lay dead. He heard the wind moan 
 ing, as it had moaned that night the Eng 
 lishman died, and he saw again that last 
 and unspoken yearning in Conniston s eyes. 
 And he knew now why Conniston s face 
 had followed him through the gray gloom 
 and why he had felt the mysterious pres 
 ence of him long after he had gone. Some 
 thing that was Conniston entered into him 
 now. In the throbbing chaos of his brain 
 a voice was whispering, " She is yours, she 
 is yours." 
 
 Hie arms tightened about her, and a 
 voice that was not unlike John Keith s 
 voice said: "Yes, I want you! I want 
 you!" 
 
FOR a space Keith did not raise his 
 head. The girl s arms were about 
 him close, and he could feel the warm 
 pressure of her cheek against his hair. 
 The realization of his crime was already 
 weighing his soul like a piece of lead, yet 
 out of that soul had come the cry, " I 
 want you I want you!" and it still beat 
 with the voice of that immeasurable yearn 
 ing even as his lips grew tight and he saw 
 himself the monstrous fraud he was. This 
 strange little, wonderful creature had come 
 to him from out of a dead world, and her 
 lips, and her arms, and the soft caress of 
 her hands had sent his own world reeling 
 about his head so swiftly that he had been 
 drawn into a maelstrom to which he could 
 find no bottom. Before McDowell she 
 had claimed him. And before McDowell 
 he had accepted her. He had lived the 
 great lie as he had strengthened himself 
 to live it, but success was no longer a 
 
 122 
 
THE RIVER S END 123 
 
 triumph. There rushed into his brain like 
 a consuming flame the desire to confess the 
 truth, to tell this girl whose arms were 
 about him that he was not Derwent Con- 
 niston, her brother, but John Keith, the 
 murderer. Something drove it back, some 
 thing that was still more potent, more de 
 manding, the overwhelming urge of that 
 fighting force in every man which calls for 
 self-preservation. 
 
 Slowly he drew himself away from her, 
 knowing that for this night at least his 
 back was to the wall. She was smiling at 
 him from out of the big chair, and in spite 
 of himself he smiled back at her. 
 
 u I must send you to bed now, Mary 
 Josephine, and tomorrow we will talk 
 everything over," he said. " You re so 
 tired you re ready to fall asleep in a 
 minute." 
 
 Tiny, puckery lines came into her pretty 
 forehead. It was a trick he loved at first 
 sight. 
 
 " Do you know, Derry, I almost believe 
 you ve changed a lot. You used to call 
 me Juddy. But now that I m grown up, 
 I think I like Mary Josephine better, 
 
124 THE RIVER S END 
 
 though you oughtn t to be quite so stiff 
 about it. Deny, tell me honest are you 
 afraid of me? " 
 
 " Afraid of you!" 
 
 " Yes, because I m grown up. Don t 
 you like me as well as you did one, two, 
 three, seven years ago? If you did, you 
 wouldn t tell me to go to bed just a few 
 minutes after you ve seen me for the first 
 
 time in all those those Derry, I m 
 
 going to cry! I am!" 
 
 " Don t," he pleaded. " Please don t! " 
 
 He felt like a hundred-horned bull in a 
 very small china shop. Mary Josephine 
 herself saved the day for him by jumping 
 suddenly from the big chair, forcing him 
 into it, and snuggling herself on his 
 knees. 
 
 "There!" She looked at a tiny watch 
 on her wrist. " We re going to bed in two 
 hours. We ve got a lot to talk about that 
 won t wait until tomorrow, Derry. You 
 understand what I mean. I couldn t sleep 
 until you ve told me. And you must tell 
 me the truth. I ll love you just the same, 
 no matter what it is. Derry, Derry, why 
 did you do it? " 
 
THE RIVER S END 125 
 
 " Do what? " he asked stupidly. 
 
 The delicious softness went out of the 
 slim little body on his knees. It grew 
 rigid. He looked hopelessly into the fire, 
 but he could feel the burning inquiry in 
 the girl s eyes. He sensed a swift change 
 passing through her. She seemed scarcely 
 to breathe, and he knew that his answer 
 had been more than inadequate. It either 
 confessed or feigned an ignorance of some 
 thing which it would have been impossible 
 for him to forget had he been Conniston. 
 He looked up at her at last. The joyous 
 flush had gone out of her face. It was a 
 little drawn. Her hand, which had been 
 snuggling his neck caressingly, slipped 
 down from his shoulder. 
 
 " I guess you d rather I hadn t come, 
 Derry," she said, fighting to keep a break 
 out of her voice. " And I ll go back, if 
 you want to send me. But I ve always 
 dreamed of your promise, that some day 
 you d send for me or come and get me, 
 and I d like to know why before you tell 
 me to go. Why have you hidden away 
 from me all these years, leaving me among 
 those who you knew hated me as they 
 
ia6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 hated you? Was it because you didn t 
 
 care? Or was it because because " 
 
 She bent her head and whispered strangely, 
 "Was it because you were afraid? " 
 
 " Afraid?" he repeated slowly, staring 
 
 again into the fire. " Afraid " He 
 
 was going to add " Of what? " but caught 
 the words and held them back. 
 
 The birch fire leaped up with a sudden 
 roar into the chimney, and from the heart 
 of the flame he caught again that strange 
 and all-pervading thrill, the sensation of 
 Derwent Conniston s presence very near 
 to him. It seemed to him that for an 
 instant he caught a flash of Conniston s 
 face, and somewhere within him was a 
 whispering which was Conniston s voice. 
 He was possessed by a weird and master 
 ful force that swept over him and con 
 quered him, a thing that was more than 
 intuition and greater than physical desire. 
 It was inspiration. He knew that the 
 Englishman would have him play the 
 game as he was about to play it now. 
 
 The girl was waiting for him to answer. 
 Her lips had grown a little more tense. 
 His hesitation, the restraint in his welcome 
 
THE RIVER S END 127 
 
 of her, and his apparent desire to evade 
 that mysterious something which seemed 
 to mean so much to her had brought a 
 shining pain into her eyes. He had seen 
 such a look in the eyes of creatures 
 physically hurt. He reached out with his 
 hands and brushed back the thick, soft 
 hair from about her face. His fingers 
 buried themselves in the silken disarray, 
 and he looked for a moment straight into 
 her eyes before he spoke. 
 
 " Little girl, will you tell me the truth? " 
 he asked. " Do I look like the old Der- 
 went Conniston, your Derwent Conniston? 
 Do I?" 
 
 Her voice was small and troubled, yet 
 the pain was slowly fading out of her eyes 
 as she felt the passionate embrace of his 
 fingers in her hair. " No. You are 
 changed." 
 
 "Yes, I am changed. A part of Der 
 went Conniston died seven years ago. 
 That part of him was dead until he came 
 through that door tonight and saw you. 
 And then it flickered back into life. It is 
 returning slowly, slowly. That which was 
 dead is beginning to rouse itself, beginning 
 
128 THE RIVER S END 
 
 to remember. See, little Mary Josephine. 
 It was this! " 
 
 He drew a hand to his forehead and 
 placed a finger on the scar. " I got that 
 seven years ago. It killed a half of Der- 
 went Conniston, the part that should have 
 lived. Do you understand? Until to 
 night " 
 
 Her eyes startled him, they were grow 
 ing so big and dark and staring, living 
 fires of understanding and horror. It was 
 hard for him to go on with the lie. " For 
 many weeks I was dead," he struggled on. 
 " And when I came to life physically, I 
 had forgotten a great deal. I had my 
 name, my identity, but only ghastly 
 dreams and visions of what had gone be 
 fore. I remembered you, but it was in a 
 dream, a strange and haunting dream that 
 was with me always. It seems to me that 
 for an age I have been seeking for a face, 
 a voice, something I loved above all else 
 on earth, something which was always 
 near and yet was never found. It was 
 you, Mary Josephine, you! " 
 
 Was it the real Derwent Conniston 
 speaking now? He felt again that over- 
 
THE RIVER S END 129 
 
 whelming force from within which was not 
 his own. The thing that had begun as a 
 lie struck him now as a thing that was 
 truth. It was he, John Keith, who had 
 been questing and yearning and hoping. 
 It was John Keith, and not Conniston, who 
 had returned into a world filled with a 
 desolation of loneliness, and it was to John 
 Keith that a beneficent God had sent this 
 wonderful creature in an hour that was 
 blackest in its despair. He was not lying 
 now. He was fighting. He was fighting 
 to keep for himself the one atom of human 
 ity that meant more to him than all the 
 rest of the human race, fighting to keep a 
 great love that had come to him out of a 
 world in which he no longer had a friend 
 or a home, and to that fight his soul went 
 out as a drowning man grips at a spar on 
 a sea. As the girl s hands came to his face 
 and he heard the yearning, grief-filled cry 
 of his name on her lips, he no longer 
 sensed the things he was saying, but held 
 her close in his arms, kissing her mouth, 
 and her eyes, and her hair, and repeating 
 over and over again that now he had found 
 her he would never give her up. Her 
 
130 THE RIVER S END 
 
 arms clung to him. They were like two 
 children brought together after a long 
 separation, and Keith knew that Connis- 
 ton s love for this girl who was his sister 
 must have been a splendid thing. And his 
 lie had saved Conniston as well as himself. 
 There had been no time to question the 
 reason for the Englishman s neglect for 
 his apparent desertion of the girl who had 
 come across the sea to find him. Tonight 
 it was sufficient that he was Conniston, and 
 that to him the girl had fallen as a 
 precious heritage. 
 
 He stood up with her at last, holding her 
 away from him a little so that he could 
 look into her face wet with tears and shin 
 ing with happiness. She reached up a 
 hand to his face, so that it touched the 
 scar, and in her eyes he saw an infinite 
 pity, a luminously tender glow of love and 
 sympathy and understanding that no meas 
 urements could compass. Gently her hand 
 stroked his scarred forehead. He felt his 
 old world slipping away from under his 
 feet, and with his triumph there surged 
 over him a thankfulness for that inde 
 finable something that had come to him 
 
THE RIVER S END 131 
 
 in time to give him the strength and the 
 courage to lie. For she believed him, 
 utterly and without the shadow of a sus 
 picion she believed him. 
 
 " Tomorrow you will help me to remem 
 ber a great many things," he said. " And 
 now will you let me send you to bed, Mary 
 Josephine? " 
 
 She was looking at the scar. " And all 
 those years I didn t know," she whispered. 
 " I didn t know. They told me you were 
 dead, but I knew it was a lie. It was 
 Colonel Reppington " She saw some 
 thing in his face that stopped her. 
 " Derry, don t you remember? " 
 
 " I shall tomorrow. But tonight I can 
 see nothing and think of nothing but you. 
 Tomorrow " 
 
 She drew his head down swiftly and 
 kissed the brand made by the heated barrel 
 of the Englishman s pistol. " Yes, yes, we 
 must go to bed now, Derry," she cried 
 quickly. " You must not think too much. 
 Tonight it must just be of me. Tomorrow 
 everything will come out right, everything. 
 And now you may send me to bed. Do 
 you remember " 
 
132 THE RIVER S END 
 
 She caught herself, biting her lip to 
 keep back the word. 
 
 " Tell me," he urged. " Do I remember 
 what? " 
 
 " How you used to come in at the very 
 last and tuck me in at night, Derry? And 
 how we used to whisper to ourselves there 
 in the darkness, and at last you would kiss 
 me good-night? It was the kiss that 
 always made me go to sleep." 
 
 He nodded. "Yes, I remember," he 
 said. 
 
 He led her to the spare room, and 
 brought in her two travel-worn bags, and 
 turned on the light. It was a man s room, 
 but Mary Josephine stood for a moment 
 surveying it with delight. 
 
 " It s home, Derry, real home," she 
 whispered. 
 
 He did not explain to her that it was a 
 borrowed home and that this was his first 
 night in it. Such unimportant details 
 would rest until tomorrow. He showed 
 her the bath and its water system and then 
 explained to Wallie that his sister was in 
 the house and he would have to bunk in 
 the kitchen. At the last he knew what he 
 
THE RIVER S END 133 
 
 was expected to do, what he mu$t do. 
 He kissed Mary Josephine good night. 
 He kissed her twice. And Mary Josephine 
 kissed him and gave him a hug the like of 
 which he had never experienced until this 
 night. It sent him back to the fire with 
 blood that danced like a drunken man s. 
 He turned the lights out and for an hour 
 sat in the dying glow of the birch. For 
 the first time since he had come from 
 Miriam Kirkstone s he had the oppor 
 tunity to think, and in thinking he found 
 his brain crowded with cold and unemo 
 tional fact. He saw his lie in all its naked 
 immensity. Yet he was not sorry that he 
 had lied. He had saved Conniston. He 
 had saved himself. And he had saved 
 Conniston s sister, to love, to fight for, to 
 protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a 
 lie with his heart and his soul and all the 
 manhood in him behind it. To have told 
 the truth would have made him his own 
 executioner, it would have betrayed the 
 dead Englishman who had given to him 
 his name and all that he possessed, and it 
 would have dragged to a pitiless grief the 
 heart of a girl for whom the sun still con- 
 
i 3 4 THE RIVER S END 
 
 tinued to shine. No regret rose before 
 him now. He felt no shame. All that he 
 saw was the fight, the tremendous fight, 
 ahead of him, his fight to make good as 
 Conniston, his fight to play the game as 
 Conniston would have him play it. The 
 inspiration that had come to him as he 
 stood facing the storm from the western 
 mountains possessed him again. He would 
 go to the river s end as he had planned to 
 go before McDowell told him of Shan 
 Tung and Miriam Kirkstone. And he 
 would not go alone. Mary Josephine 
 would go with him. 
 
 It was midnight when he rose from the 
 big chair and went to his room. The door 
 was closed. He opened it and entered. 
 Even as his hand groped for the switch 
 on the wall, his nostrils caught the scent 
 of something which was familiar and yet 
 which should not have been there. It 
 filled the room, just as it had filled the big 
 hall at the Kirkstone house, the almost 
 sickening fragrance of agallochum burned 
 in a cigarette. It hung like a heavy 
 incense. 
 
 Keith s eyes glared as he scanned the 
 
THE RIVER S END 135 
 
 room under the lights, half expecting to 
 set Shan Tung sitting there waiting for 
 him. It was empty. His eyes leaped to 
 the two windows. The shade was drawn 
 at one, the other was up, and the window 
 itself was open an inch or two above the 
 sill. Keith s hand gripped his pistol as he 
 went to it and drew the curtain. Then he 
 turned to the table on which were the 
 reading lamp and Brady s pipes and to 
 bacco and magazines. On an ash-tray lay 
 the stub of a freshly burned cigarette. 
 Shan Tung had come secretly, but he had 
 made no effort to cover his presence. 
 
 It was then that Keith saw something 
 on the table which had not been there 
 before. It was a small, rectangular, teak- 
 wood box no larger than a half of the 
 palm of his hand. He had noticed Miriam 
 Kirkstone s nervous fingers toying with just 
 such a box earlier in the evening. They 
 were identical in appearance. Both were 
 covered with an exquisite fabric of oriental 
 carving, and the wood was stained and 
 polished until it shone with the dark luster 
 of ebony. Instantly it flashed upon him 
 that this was the same box he had seen at 
 
136 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Miriam s. She had sent it to him, and 
 Shan Tung had been her messenger. The 
 absurd thought was in his head as he took 
 up a small white square of card that lay 
 on top of the box. The upper side of this 
 card was blank; on the other side, in a 
 script as exquisite in its delicacy as the 
 carving itself, were the words : 
 
 " WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF SHAN TUNG." 
 
 In another moment Keith had opened 
 the box. Inside was a carefully folded slip 
 of paper, and on this paper was written 
 a single line. Keith s heart stopped beat 
 ing, and his blood ran cold as he read what 
 it held for him, a message of doom from 
 Shan Tung in nine words : 
 
 " WHAT HAPPENED TO DERWENT CONNIS- 
 TON? DID YOU KILL HIM?" 
 
XI 
 
 STUNNED by a shock that for a few 
 moments paralyzed every nerve center 
 in his body, John Keith stood with the slip 
 of white paper in his hands. He was dis 
 covered! That was the one thought that 
 pounded like a hammer in his brain. He 
 was discovered in the very hour of his 
 triumph and exaltation, in that hour when 
 the world had opened its portals of joy 
 and hope for him again and when life it 
 self, after four years of hell, was once 
 more worth the living. Had the shock 
 come a few hours before, he would have 
 taken it differently. He was expecting it 
 then. He had expected it when he en 
 tered McDowell s office the first time. He 
 was prepared for it afterward. Discovery, 
 failure, and death were possibilities of the 
 hazardous game he was playing, and he 
 was unafraid, because he had only his life 
 to lose, a life that was not much more 
 
 137 
 
138 THE RIVER S END 
 
 than a hopeless derelict at most. Now it 
 was different. Mary Josephine had come 
 like some rare and wonderful alchemy to 
 transmute for him all leaden things into 
 gold. In a few minutes she had upset the 
 world. She had literally torn aside for 
 him the hopeless chaos in which he saw 
 himself struggling, flooding him with the 
 warm radiance of a great love and a still 
 greater desire. On his lips he could feel 
 the soft thrill of her good-night kiss and 
 about his neck the embrace of her soft 
 arms, v She had not gone to sleep yet 
 Across in the other room she was thinking 
 of him, loving him; perhaps she was on 
 her knees praying for him, even as he 
 held in his fingers Shan Tung s mysterious 
 forewarning of his doom. 
 
 The first impulse that crowded in upon 
 him was that of flight, the selfish impulse 
 of personal salvation. He could get away. 
 The night would swallow him up. A mo 
 ment later he was mentally castigating 
 himself for the treachery of that impulse 
 to Mary Josephine. His floundering senses 
 began to readjust themselves. 
 
 Why had Shan Tung given him this 
 
THE RIVER S END 139 
 
 warning? Why had he not gone straight 
 to Inspector McDowell with the astound 
 ing disclosure of the fact that the man 
 supposed to be Derwent Conniston was not 
 Derwent Conniston, but John Keith, the 
 murderer of Miriam Kirkstone s father? 
 
 The questions brought to Keith a new 
 thrill. He read the note again. It was a 
 definite thing stating a certainty and not a 
 guess. Shan Tung had not shot at ran 
 dom. He knew. He knew that he was 
 not Derwent Conniston but John Keith. 
 And he believed that he had killed the 
 Englishman to steal his identity. In the 
 face of these things he had not gone to 
 McDowell! Keith s eyes fell upon the 
 card again. "With the compliments of 
 Shan Tung." What did the words mean? 
 Why had Shan Tung written them unless 
 with his compliments he was giving 
 him a warning and the chance to save 
 himself? 
 
 His immediate alarm grew less. The 
 longer he contemplated the slip of paper 
 in his hand, the more he became convinced 
 that the inscrutable Shan Tung was the 
 last individual in the world to stage a bit 
 
1 40 THE RIVER S END 
 
 of melodrama without some good reason 
 for it. There was but one conclusion he 
 could arrive at. The Chinaman was play 
 ing a game of his own, and Ee had taken 
 this unusual way of advising Keith to 
 make a getaway while the going was good. 
 It was evident that his intention had been 
 to avoid the possibility of a personal dis 
 cussion of the situation. That, at least, was 
 Keith s first impression. 
 
 He turned to examine the window. 
 There was no doubt that Shan Tung had 
 come in that way. Both the sill and cur 
 tain bore stains of water and mud, and 
 there was wet dirt on the floor. For once 
 the immaculate oriental had paid no at 
 tention to his feet. At the door leading 
 into the big room Keith saw where he had 
 stood for some time, listening, probably 
 when McDowell and Mary Josephine 
 were in the outer room waiting for him. 
 Suddenly his eyes riveted themselves on 
 the middle panel of the door. Brady had 
 intended his color scheme to be old ivory 
 the panel itself was nearly white and 
 on it Shan Tung had written heavily with 
 a lead pencil the hour of his presence, 
 
THE RIVER S END 141 
 
 " 10.45 P.M." Keith s amazement found 
 voice in a low exclamation. He looked at 
 his watch. It was a quarter-hour after 
 twelve. He had returned to the Shack 
 before ten, and the clever Shan Tung was 
 letting him know in this cryptic fashion 
 that for more than three-quarters of an 
 hour he had listened at the door and spied 
 upon him and Mary Josephine through the 
 keyhole. 
 
 Had even such an insignificant person 
 as Wallie been guilty of that act, Keith 
 would have felt like thrashing him. It 
 surprised himself that he experienced no 
 personal feeling of outrage at Shan Tung s 
 frank confession of eavesdropping. A 
 subtle significance began to attach itself 
 more and more to the story his room was 
 telling him. He knew that Shan Tung 
 had left none of the marks of his presence 
 out of bravado, but with a definite pur 
 pose. Keith s psychological mind was at 
 all times acutely ready to seize upon pos 
 sibilities, and just as his positiveness of 
 Conniston s spiritual presence had inspired 
 him to act his lie with Mary Josephine, 
 so did the conviction possess him now that 
 
H2 THE RIVER S END 
 
 his room held for him a message of the 
 most vital importance. 
 
 In such an emergency Keith employed 
 his own method. He sat down, lighted his 
 pipe again, and centered the full resource 
 of his mind on Shan Tung, dissociating 
 himself from the room and the adventure 
 of the night as much as possible in his ob 
 jective analysis of the man. Four distinct 
 emotional factors entered into that analysis 
 fear, distrust, hatred, personal enmity. 
 To his surprise he found himself drifting 
 steadily into an unusual and unexpected 
 mental attitude. From the time he had 
 faced Shan Tung in the inspector s office, 
 he had regarded him as the chief enemy 
 of his freedom, his one great menace. 
 Now he felt neither personal enmity nor 
 hatred for him. Fear and distrust re 
 mained, but the fear was impersonal and 
 the dis.rust that of one who watches a 
 clever opponent in a game or a fight. His 
 conception of Shan Tung changed. He 
 found his occidental mind running paral 
 lel with the oriental, bridging the spaces 
 which otherwise it never would have 
 crossed, and at the end it seized upon the 
 
THE RIVER S END 143 
 
 key. It proved to him that his first im 
 pulse had been wrong. Shan Tung had 
 not expected him to seek safety in flight. 
 He had given the white man credit for a 
 larger understanding than that. His de 
 sire, first of all, had been to let Keith 
 know that he was not the only one who 
 was playing for big stakes, and that an 
 other, Shan Tung himself, was gambling 
 a hazard of his own, and that the fraudu 
 lent Derwent Conniston was a trump card 
 in that game. 
 
 To impress this upon Keith he had, first 
 of all, acquainted him with the fact that 
 he had seen through his deception and that 
 he knew he was John Keith and not Der 
 went Conniston. He had also let him 
 know that he believed he had killed the 
 Englishman, a logical supposition under 
 the circumstances. This information he 
 had left for Keith was not in the form of 
 an intimidation. There was, indeed, some 
 thing very near apologetic courtesy in the 
 presence of the card bearing Shan Tung s 
 compliments. The penciling of the hour 
 on the panel of the door, without other 
 notation, was a polite and suggestive hint. 
 
144 THE RIVER S END 
 
 He wanted Keith to know that he under 
 stood his peculiar situation up until that 
 particular time, that he had heard and pos 
 sibly seen much that had passed between 
 him and Mary Josephine. The partly 
 opened window, the mud and wet on cur 
 tains and floor, and the cigarette stubs 
 were all to call Keith s attention to the 
 box on the table. 
 
 Keith could not but feel a certain sort of 
 admiration for the Chinaman. The two 
 questions he must answer now were, What 
 was Shan Tung s game? and What did 
 Shan Tung expect him to do? 
 
 Instantly Miriam Kirkstone flashed 
 upon him as the possible motive for Shan 
 Tung s visit. He recalled her unexpected 
 and embarrassing question of that evening, 
 in which she had expressed a suspicion 
 and a doubt as to John Keith s death. 
 He had gone to Miriam s at eight. It must 
 have been very soon after that, and after 
 she had caught a glimpse of the face at 
 the window, that Shan Tung had hurried 
 to the Shack. 
 
 Slowly but surely the tangled threads of 
 the night s adventure were unraveling 
 
THE RIVER S END 145 
 
 themselves for Keith. The main facts 
 pressed upon him, no longer smothered in 
 a chaos of theory and supposition. If 
 there had been no Miriam Kirkstone in 
 the big house on the hill, Shan Tung 
 would have gone to McDowell, and he 
 would have been in irons at the present 
 moment. McDowell had been right after 
 all. Miriam Kirkstone was fighting for 
 something that was more than her exist 
 ence. The thought of that " something " 
 made Keith writhe and his hands clench. 
 Shan Tung had triumphed but not utterly. 
 A part of the fruit of his triumph was 
 still just out of his reach, and the two 
 beautiful Miss Kirkstone and the deadly 
 Shan Tung were locked in a final 
 struggle for its possession. In some mys 
 terious way he, John Keith, was to play 
 the winning hand. How or when he could 
 not understand. But of one thing he wa? 
 convinced; in exchange for whatever win 
 ning card he held Shan Tung had offered 
 him his life. Tomorrow he would expect 
 an answer. 
 
 That tomorrow had already dawned. It 
 was one o clock when Keith again looked 
 
146 THE RIVER S END 
 
 at his watch. Twenty hours ago he had 
 cooked his last camp-fire breakfast. It 
 was only eighteen hours ago that he had 
 filled himself with the smell of Andy 
 Duggan s bacon, and still more recently 
 that he had sat in the little barber shop on 
 the corner wondering what his fate would 
 be when he faced McDowell. It struck 
 him as incongruous and impossible that 
 only fifteen hours had passed since then. 
 If he possessed a doubt of the reality of 
 it all, the bed waf there to help convince 
 him. It was a real bed, and he had not 
 slept in a real bed for a number of years. 
 Wallie had made it ready for him. Its 
 sheets were snow-white. There was a 
 counterpane with a fringe on it and pillows 
 puffed up with billowy invitation, as if 
 they were on the point of floating away. 
 Had they risen before his eyes, Keith 
 would have regarded the phenomenon 
 rather casually. After the swift piling 
 up of the amazing events of those fifteen 
 hours, a floating pillow would have seemed 
 quite in the natural orbit of things. But 
 they did not float. They remained where 
 they were, their white breasts bared to him, 
 
THE RIVER S END 147 
 
 urging upon him a common-sense perspec 
 tive of the situation. He wasn t going to 
 run away. He couldn t sit up all night. 
 Therefore why not come to them and 
 sleep? 
 
 There was something directly personal 
 in the appeal of the pillows and the bed. 
 It was not general; it was for him. And 
 Keith responded. 
 
 He made another note of the time, a 
 half-hour after one, when he turned in. 
 He allotted himself four hours of sleep, for 
 it was his intention to be up with the sun. 
 
XII 
 
 NECESSITY had made of Keith a 
 fairly accurate human chronometer. 
 In the second year of his fugitivism he had 
 lost his watch. At first it was like losing 
 an arm, a part of his brain, a living friend. 
 From that time until he came into pos 
 session of Conniston s timepiece he was his 
 own hour-glass and his own alarm clock. 
 He became proficient. 
 
 Brady s bed and the Circe-breasted pil 
 lows that supported his head were his un 
 doing. The morning after Shan Tung s 
 visit he awoke to find the sun flooding in 
 through the eastern window of his room. 
 The warmth of it as it fell full in his 
 face, setting his eyes blinking, told him 
 it was too late. He guessed it was eight 
 o clock. When he fumbled his watch out 
 from under his pillow and looked at it, 
 he found it was a quarter past. He got 
 up quietly, his mind swiftly aligning itself 
 to the happenings of yesterday. He 
 
THE RIVER S END 149 
 
 stretched himself until his muscles 
 snapped, and his chest expanded with 
 deep breaths of air from the windows he 
 had left open when he went to bed. He 
 was fit. He was ready for Shan Tung, for 
 McDowell. And over this physical readi 
 ness there surged the thrill of a glorious 
 anticipation. It fairly staggered him to 
 discover how badly he wanted to see Mary 
 Josephine again. 
 
 He wondered if she was still asleep and 
 answered that there was little possibility 
 of her being awake even at eight o clock. 
 Probably she would sleep until noon, the 
 poor, tired, little thing! He smiled affec 
 tionately into the mirror over Brady s 
 dressing-table. And then the unmistakable 
 sound of voices in the outer room took him 
 curiously to the door. They were subdued 
 voices. He listened hard, and his heart 
 pumped faster. One of them was Waliie s 
 voice; the other was Mary Josephine s. 
 
 He was amused with himself at the ex 
 treme care with which he proceeded to 
 dress. It was an entirely new sensation. 
 Wallic had provided him with the neces 
 saries for a cold sponge and in some mys- 
 
150 THE RIVER S END 
 
 terious interim since their arrival had 
 brushed and pressed the most important of 
 Conniston s things. With the English 
 man s wordrobe he had brought up from 
 barracks a small chest which was still 
 locked. Until this morning Keith had 
 not noticed it. It was less than half as 
 large as a steamer trunk and had the ap 
 pearance of being intended as a strong 
 box rather than a traveling receptacle. It 
 was ribbed by four heavy bands of copper, 
 and the corners and edges were reinforced 
 with the same metal. The leek itself 
 seemed to be impregnable to one without 
 a key. Conniston s name was heavily en 
 graved on a copper tablet just above the 
 lock. 
 
 Keith regarded the chest with swiftly 
 growing speculation. It was not a thing one 
 would ordinarily possess. It was an object 
 which, on the face of it, was intended to 
 be inviolate except to its master key, a 
 holder of treasure, a guardian of mystery 
 and of precious secrets. In the little cabin 
 up on the Barren Conniston had said 
 rather indifferently, " You may find some 
 thing among my things down there that 
 
THE RIVER S END i$i s 
 
 will help you out." The words flashed 
 back to Keith. Had the Englishman, in 
 that casual and uncommunicative way of 
 his, referred to the contents of this chest? 
 Was it not possible that it held for him 
 a solution to the mystery that was facing 
 him in the presence of Mary Josephine? 
 A sense of conviction began to possess him. 
 He examined the lock more closely and 
 found that with proper tools it could be 
 broken. 
 
 He finished dressing and completed his 
 toilet by brushing his beard. On account 
 of Mary Josephine he found himself re 
 garding this hirsute tragedy with a grow 
 ing feeling of disgust, in spite of the fact 
 that it gave him an appearance rather dis 
 tinguished and military. He wanted it 
 off. Its chief crime was that it made him 
 look older. Besides, it was inclined to be 
 reddish. And it must tickle and prick like 
 the deuce when 
 
 He brought himself suddenly to salute 
 with an appreciative grin. " You re there, 
 and you ve got to stick," he chuckled. 
 After all, he was a likable-looking chap, 
 even with that handicap. He was glad. 
 
152 THE RIVER S END 
 
 He opened his door so quietly that 
 Mary Josephine did not see him at first. 
 Her back was toward him as she bent over 
 the dining-table. Her slim little figure 
 was dressed in some soft stuff all crinkly 
 from packing. Her hair, brown and soft, 
 was piled up in shining coils on the top 
 of her head. For the life of him Keith 
 couldn t keep his eyes from traveling from 
 the top of that glowing head to the little 
 high-heeled feet on the floor. They were 
 adorable, slim little, aristocratic feet with 
 dainty ankles! He stood looking at her 
 until she turned and caught him. 
 
 There was a change since last night. 
 She was older. He could see it now, the 
 utter impropriety of his cuddling her up 
 like a baby in the big chair the impossi 
 bility, almost. 
 
 Mary Josephine settled his doubt. With 
 a happy little cry she ran to him, and Keith 
 found her arms about him again and her 
 lovely mouth held up to be kissed. He 
 hesitated for perhaps the tenth part of 
 a second, if hesitation could be counted in 
 that space. Then his arms closed about 
 her, and he kissed her. He felt the 
 
THE RIVER S END 153 
 
 snuggle of her face against his breast 
 again, the crush and sweetness of her hair 
 against his lips and cheek. He kissed her 
 again uninvited. Before he could stop the 
 habit, he had kissed her a third time. 
 
 Then her hands were at his face, and he 
 saw again that look in her eyes, a deep 
 and anxious questioning behind the shim 
 mer of love in them, something mute and 
 understanding and wonderfully sympa 
 thetic, a mothering soul looking at him 
 and praying as it looked. If his life had 
 paid the forfeit the next instant, he could 
 not have helped kissing her a fourth time. 
 
 If Mary Josephine had gone to bed with 
 a doubt of his brotherly interest last night, 
 the doubt was removed now. Her cheeks 
 flushed^ Her eyes shone. She was palpi- 
 tantly, excitedly happy. " It s you, 
 Derry," she cried. " Oh, it s you as you 
 used to be!" 
 
 She seized his hand and drew him 
 toward the table. Wallie thrust in his 
 head from the kitchenette, grinning, and 
 Mary Josephine flashed him back a mean 
 ing smile. Keith saw in an instant that 
 Wallie had turned from his heathen gods 
 
154 THE RIVER S END 
 
 to the worship of something infinitely more 
 beautiful. He no longer looked to Keith 
 for instructions. 
 
 Mary Josephine sat down opposite Keith 
 at the table. She was telling him, with 
 that warm laughter and happiness in her 
 eyrs, how the sun had wakened her, and 
 how she had helped Wallie get breakfast. 
 For the first time Keith was looking at her 
 from a point of vantage; there was just 
 so much distance between them, no more 
 and no less, and the light was right. She 
 was, to him, exquisite. The little puckery 
 lines came into her smooth forehead when 
 he apologized for his tardiness by explain 
 ing that he had not gone to bed until one 
 o clock. Her concern wa j delightful. She 
 scolded him while Wall>; brought in the 
 breakfast, and inwardly he swelled with 
 the irrepressible exultation of a great pos 
 sessor. He had never had anyone to scold 
 him like that before. It was a scolding 
 which expressed Mary Josephine s im 
 mediate proprietorship of him, and he 
 wondered if the pleasure of it made him 
 look as silly as Wallie. His plans were 
 all gone. He had intended to play the 
 
THE RIVER S END 
 
 idiotic part of one who had partly lost 
 his memory, but throughout the breakfast 
 he exhibited no sign that he was anything 
 but healthfully normal. Mary Josephine s 
 delight at the improvement of his condi 
 tion since last night shone in her face and 
 eyes, and he could see that she was strictly, 
 but with apparent unconsciousness, guard 
 ing herself against saying anything that 
 might bring up the dread shadow between 
 them. She had already begun to fight her 
 own fight for him, and the thing was so 
 beautiful that he wanted to go round to 
 her, and get down on his knees, and put 
 his head in her lap, and tell her the truth. 
 It was in the moment of that thought 
 that the look came into his face which 
 brought the questioning little lines into her 
 forehead again. In that instant she caught 
 a glimpse of the hunted man, of the soul 
 that had traded itself, of desire beaten into 
 helplessness by a thing she would never 
 understand. It was gone swiftly, but she 
 had caught it. And for her the scar just 
 under his hair stood for its meaning. The 
 responsive throb in her breast was electric. 
 He felt it, saw it, sensed it to the depth of 
 
156 THE RIVER S END 
 
 his soul, and his faith in himself stood 
 challenged. She believed. And he was 
 a liar. Yet what a wonderful thing to lie 
 for! 
 
 " He called me up over the telephone, 
 and when I told him to be quiet, that you 
 were still asleep, I think he must have 
 sworn it sounded like it, but I couldn t 
 hear distinctly and then he fairly roared 
 at me to wake you up and tell you that you 
 didn t half deserve such a lovely little 
 sister as I am. Wasn t that nice, Derry? " 
 
 " You you re talking about Mc 
 Dowell?" 
 
 " To be sure I am talking about Mr. 
 McDowell! And when I told him your 
 injury troubled you more than usual, and 
 tKat I was glad you were resting, I think 
 I heard him swallow hard. He thinks a 
 lot of you, Derry. And then he asked me 
 which injury it was that hurt you, and I 
 told him the one in the head. What did 
 he mean? Were you hurt somewhere else, 
 Derry? " 
 
 Keith swallowed hard, too. "Not to 
 speak of," he said. " You see, Mary Jose 
 phine, I ve got a tremendous surprise for 
 
THE RIVER S END 157 
 
 you, if you ll promise it won t spoil your 
 appetite. Last night was the first night 
 I ve spent in a real bed for three years." 
 
 And then, without waiting for her ques 
 tions, he began to tell her the epic story of 
 John Keith. With her sitting opposite 
 him, her beautiful, wide-open, gray eyes 
 looking at him with amazement as she 
 sensed the marvelous coincidence of their 
 meeting, he told it as he had not told it to 
 McDowell or even to Miriam Kirkstone. 
 A third time the facts were the same. But 
 it was John Keith now who was telling 
 John Keith s story through the lips of an 
 unreal and negative Conniston. He for 
 got his own breakfast, and a look of gloom 
 settled on Wallie s face when he peered in 
 through the door and saw that their coffee 
 and toast were growing cold. Mary Jose 
 phine leaned a little over the table. Not 
 once did she interrupt Keith. Never had 
 he dreamed of a glory that might reflect 
 his emotions as did her eyes. As he 
 swept from pathos to storm, from the mad 
 ness of long, black nights to starvation and 
 cold, as he told of flight, of pursuit, of 
 the merciless struggle that ended at last 
 
i.58 THE RIVER S END 
 
 in the capture of John Keith, as he gave 
 to these things words and life pulsing with 
 the beat of his own heart, he saw them 
 revisioned in those wonderful gray eyes, 
 cold at times with fear, warm and glow 
 ing at other times with sympathy, and 
 again shining softly with a glory of pride 
 and love that was meant for him alone. 
 With him she was present in the little 
 cabin up in the big Barren. Until he told 
 of those days and nights of hopeless deso 
 lation, of racking cough and the nearness 
 of death, and of the comradeship of 
 brothers that had come as a final benedic 
 tion to the hunter and the hunted, until in 
 her soul she was understanding and living 
 those terrible hours as they two had lived 
 them, he did not know how deep and dark 
 and immeasurably tender that gray mys 
 tery of beauty in her eyes could be. From 
 that hour he worshiped them as he wor 
 shiped no other part of her. 
 
 " And from all that you came back the 
 same day I came," she said in a low, awed 
 voice. " You came back from that/" 
 
 He remembered the part he must play. 
 "Yes, three years of it. If I could only 
 
THE RIVER S END 159 
 
 remember as well, only half as well, things 
 
 that happened before this " He raised 
 
 a hand to his forehead, to the scar. 
 
 " You will," she whispered swiftly. 
 " Derry, darling, you will! " 
 
 Wallie sidled in and, with an adoring 
 grin at Mary Josephine, suggested that he 
 had more coffee and toast ready to serve, 
 piping hot. Keith was relieved. The day 
 had begun auspiciously, and over the bacon 
 and eggs, done to a ravishing brown by 
 the little Jap, he told Mary Josephine of 
 some of his bills of fare in the north and 
 how yesterday he had filled up on bacon 
 smell at Andy Duggan s. Steak from the 
 cheek of a walrus, he told her, was equal 
 to porterhouse; seal meat wasn t bad, but 
 one grew tired of it quickly unless he was 
 an Eskimo; polar bear meat was filling but 
 tough and strong. He liked whale meat, 
 especially the tail-steaks of narwhal, and 
 cold boiled blubber was good in the winter, 
 only it was impossible to cook it because 
 of lack of fuel, unless one was aboard ship 
 or had an alcohol stove in his outfit. The 
 tidbit of the Eskimo was birds -eggs, gath 
 ered by the ton in summer-time, rotten be- 
 
160 THE RIVER S END 
 
 fore cold weather came, and frozen solid 
 as chunks of ice in winter. Through one 
 starvation period of three weeks he had 
 lived on them himself, crunching them raw 
 in his mouth as one worries away with a 
 piece of rock candy. The little lines gath 
 ered in Mary Josephine s forehead at this, 
 but they smoothed away into laughter 
 when he humorously described the joy of 
 living on nothing at all but air. And he 
 added to this by telling her how the glut 
 tonous Eskimo at feast-time would lie out 
 flat on their backs so that their women 
 folk could feed them by dropping chunks 
 of flesh into their open maws until their 
 stomachs swelled up like the crops of birds 
 overstuffed with grain. 
 
 It was a successful breakfast. When it 
 was over, Keith felt that he had achieved 
 a great deal. Before they rose from the 
 table, he startled Mary Josephine by order 
 ing Wallie to bring him a cold chisel and 
 a hammer from Brady s tool-chest. 
 
 " I ve lost the key that opens my chest, 
 and I ve got to break in," he explained to 
 her. 
 
 Mary Josephine s little laugh was deli- 
 
THE RIVER S END 161 
 
 clous. " After what you told me about 
 frozen eggs, I thought perhaps you were 
 going to eat some," she said. 
 
 She linked her arm in his as they walked 
 into the big room, snuggling her head 
 against his shoulder so that, leaning over, 
 his lips were buried in one of the soft, 
 shining coils of her hair. And she was 
 making plans, enumerating them on the 
 tips of her fingers. If he had business out 
 side, she was going with him. Wherever 
 he went she was going. There was no 
 doubt in her mind about that. She called 
 his attention to a trunk that had arrived 
 while he slept, and assured him she would 
 be ready for outdoors by the time he had 
 opened his chest. She had a little blue 
 suit she was going to wear. And her hair? 
 Did it look good enough for his friends to 
 see? She had put it up in a hurry. 
 
 " It is beautiful, glorious," he said. 
 
 Her face pinked under the ardency of 
 his gaze. She put a finger to the tip of 
 his nose, laughing at him. " Why, Deny, 
 if you weren t my brother I d think you 
 were my lover! You said that as though 
 you meant it terribly much. Do you? " 
 
THE RIVER S END 
 
 He felt a sudden dull stab of pain. 
 " Yes, I mean it. It s glorious. And so 
 are you, Mary Josephine, every bit of 
 you." 
 
 On tiptoe she gave him the warm sweet 
 ness of her lips again. And then she ran 
 away from him, joy and laughter in her 
 face, and disappeared into her room. 
 " You must hurry or I shall beat you," 
 she called back to him. 
 
XIII 
 
 IN his own room, with the door closed 
 and locked, Keith felt again that dull, 
 strange pain that made his heart sick and 
 the air about him difficult to breathe. 
 "If you weren t my brother." 
 The words beat in his brain. They were 
 pounding at his heart until it was smoth 
 ered, laughing at him and taunting him 
 and triumphing over him just as, many 
 times before, the raving voices of the 
 weird wind-devils had scourged him from 
 out of black night and arctic storm. Her 
 brother! His hand clenched until the nails 
 bit into his flesh. No, he hadn t thought 
 of that part of the fight! And now it 
 swept upon him in a deluge. If he lost in 
 the fight that was ahead of him, his life 
 would pay the forfeit. The law would 
 take him, and he would hang. And if he 
 won she would be his sister forever and 
 to the end of ail time! Just that, and no 
 
 163 
 
<i6 4 THE RIVER S END 
 
 more. His sister! And the agony of 
 truth gripped him that it was not as a 
 brother that he saw the glory in her hair, 
 the glory in her eyes and face, and the 
 glory in her slim little, beautiful body 
 but as the lover. A merciless preordina 
 tion had stacked the cards against him 
 again. He was Conniston, and she was 
 Conniston s sister. 
 
 A strong man, a man in whom blood ran 
 red, there leaped up in him for a moment a 
 sudden and unreasoning rage at that thing 
 which he had called fate. He saw the un 
 fairness of it all, the hopelessness of it, 
 the cowardly subterfuge and trickery of 
 life itself as it had played against him, and 
 with tightly set lips and clenched hands he 
 called mutely on God Almighty to play the 
 game square. Give him a chance! Give 
 him just one square deal, only one; let him 
 see a way, let him fight a man s fight with 
 a ray of hope ahead! In these red mo 
 ments hope emblazoned itself before his 
 eyes as a monstrous lie. Bitterness rose in 
 him until he was drunk with it, and 
 blasphemy filled his heart. Whichever 
 way he turned, however hard he fought, 
 
THE RIVER S END 165 
 
 there was no chance of winning. From 
 the day he killed Kirkstone the cards had 
 been stacked against him, and they were 
 stacked now and would be stacked until 
 the end. He had believed in God, he had 
 believed in the inevitable ethics of the 
 final reckoning of things, and he had 
 believed strongly that an impersonal Some 
 thing more powerful than man-made will 
 was behind him in his struggles. These 
 beliefs were smashed now. Toward them 
 he felt the impulse of a maddened beast 
 trampling hated things under foot. They 
 stood for lies treachery cheating yes, 
 contemptible cheating! It was impossible 
 for him to win. However he played, 
 whichever way he turned, he must lose. 
 For he was Conniston, and she was Coa- 
 niston s sister, and must be to the end of 
 time. 
 
 Faintly, beyond the door, he heard Mary 
 Josephine singing. Like a bit of steel 
 drawn to a tension his normal self snapped 
 back into place. His readjustment came 
 with a lurch, a subtle sort of shock. His 
 hands unclenched, the tense lines in his 
 face relaxed, and because that God Al- 
 
166 THE RIVER S END 
 
 mighty he had challenged had given to 
 him an unquenchable humor, he saw an 
 other thing where only smirking ghouls 
 and hypocrites had rent his brain with 
 their fiendish exultations a moment before. 
 It was Conniston s face, suave, smiling, 
 dying, triumphant over life, and Connis- 
 ton was saying, just as he had said up there 
 in the cabin on the Barren, with death 
 reaching out a hand for him, " It s queer, 
 old top, devilish queer and funny!" 
 
 Yes, it was funny if one looked at it 
 right, and Keith found himself swinging 
 back into his old view-point. It was the 
 hugest joke life had ever played on him. 
 His sister! He could fancy Conniston 
 twisting his mustaches, his cool eyes glim 
 mering with silent laughter, looking on his 
 predicament, and he could fancy Connis 
 ton saying, " It s funny, old top, devilish 
 funny but it ll be funnier still when some 
 other man comes along and carries her 
 off!" 
 
 And he, John Keith, would have to 
 grin and bear it because he was her 
 brother! 
 
 Mary Josephine was tapping at his door. 
 
THE RIVER S END 167 
 
 " Derwent Conniston," she called frigidly, 
 " there s a female person on the telephone 
 asking for you. What shall I say? " 
 
 " Er why tell her you re my sister, 
 Mary Josephine, and if it s Miss Kirkstone, 
 be nice to her and say I m not able to 
 come to the phone, and that you re looking 
 forward to meeting her, and that we ll be 
 up to see her some time today." 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" 
 
 "You see," said Keith, his mouth close 
 to the door, " you see, this Miss Kirk- 
 stone " 
 
 But Mary Josephine was gone. 
 
 Keith grinned. His illimitable optimism 
 was returning. Sufficient for the day that 
 she was there, that she loved him, that she 
 belonged to him, that just now he was the 
 arbiter of her destiny! Far off in the 
 mountains he dreamed of, alone, just they 
 two, what might not happen? Some 
 day 
 
 With the cold chisel and the hammer he 
 went to the chest. His task was one that 
 numbed his hands before the last of the 
 three locks was broken. He dragged the 
 chest more into the light and opened it. 
 
168 THE RIVER S END 
 
 He was disappointed. At first glance he 
 could not understand why Conniston had 
 locked it at all. It was almost empty, so 
 nearly empty that he could see the bottom 
 of it, and the first object that met his eyes 
 was an insult to his expectations an old 
 sock with a huge hole in the toe of it. 
 Under the sock was an old fur cap not of 
 the kind worn north of Montreal. There 
 was a chain with a dog-collar attached to 
 it, a hip-pocket pistol and a huge forty- 
 five, and not less than a hundred cartridges 
 of indiscriminate calibers scattered loosely 
 about. At one end, bundled in carelessly, 
 was a pair of riding-breeches, and under 
 the breeches a pair of white shoes with 
 rubber soles. There was neither sentiment 
 nor reason to the collection in the chest. 
 It was junk. Even the big forty-five had a 
 broken hammer, and the pistol, Keith 
 thought, might have stunned a fly at close 
 range. He pawed the things over with 
 the cold chisel, and the last thing he came 
 upon buried under what looked like a 
 cast-off sport shirt was a pasteboard shoe 
 box. He raised the cover. The box was 
 full of papers. 
 
THE RIVER S END 169 
 
 Here was promise. He transported the 
 box to Brady s table and sat down. He 
 examined the larger papers first There 
 were a couple of old game licenses for 
 Manitoba, half a dozen pencil-marked 
 maps, chiefly of the Peace River country, 
 and a number of letters from the secre 
 taries of Boards of Trade pointing out the 
 incomparable possibilities their respective 
 districts held for the homesteader and the 
 buyer of land. Last of all came a number 
 of newspaper clippings and a packet of 
 letters. 
 
 Because they were loose he seized upon 
 the clippings first, and as his eyes fell upon 
 the first paragraph of the first clipping his 
 body became suddenly tensed in the shock 
 of unexpected discovery and amazed inter 
 est. There were six of the clippings, all 
 from English papers, English in their 
 terseness, brief as stock exchange reports, 
 and equally to the point. He read the six 
 in three minutes. 
 
 They simply stated that Derwent Con- 
 niston, of the Connistons of Darlington, 
 was wanted for burglary and that up to 
 date he had not been found. 
 
170 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Keith gave a gasp of incredulity. He 
 looked again to see that his eyes were not 
 tricking him. And it was there in cold, 
 implacable print. 
 
 Derwent Conniston that phoenix among 
 men, by whom he had come to measure all 
 other men, that Crichton of nerve, of calm 
 and audacious courage, of splendid poise 
 a burglar! It was cheap, farcical, an 
 impossible absurdity. Had it been murder, 
 high treason, defiance of some great law, a 
 great crime inspired by a great passion or 
 a great ideal, but it was burglary, brigan 
 dage of the cheapest and most common 
 place variety, a sneaking night-coward s 
 plagiarism of real adventure and real 
 crime. It was impossible. Keith gritted 
 the words aloud. He might have accepted 
 Conniston as a Dick Turpin, a Claude 
 Duval or a Macheath, but not as a Jeremy 
 Diddler or a Bill Sykes. The printed lines 
 were lies. They must be. Derwent Con 
 niston might have killed a dozen men, but 
 he had never cracked a safe. To think it 
 was to think the inconceivable. 
 
 He turned to the letters. They were 
 postmarked Darlington, England. His 
 
THE RIVER S END 171 
 
 fingers tingled as he opened the first. It 
 was as he had expected, as he had hoped. 
 They were from Mary Josephine. He ar 
 ranged them nine in all in the sequence 
 of their dates, which ran back nearly eight 
 years. All of them had been written 
 within a period of eleven months. They 
 were as legible as print. And as he passed 
 from the first to the second, and from the 
 second to the third, and then read on 
 into the others, he forgot there was such 
 a thing as time and that Mary Josephine 
 was waiting for him. The clippings had 
 told him one thing; here, like bits of 
 driftage to be put together, a line in this 
 place and half a dozen in that, in para 
 graphs that enlightened and in others that 
 puzzled, was the other side of the story, a 
 growing thing that rose up out of mystery 
 and doubt in segments and fractions of 
 segments adding themselves together piece 
 meal, welding the whole into form and 
 substance, until there rode through Keith s 
 veins a wild thrill of exultation and 
 triumph. 
 
 And then he came to the ninth and 
 last letter. It was in a different hand- 
 
172 THE RIVER S END 
 
 writing, brief, with a deadly specificness 
 about it that gripped Keith as he read. 
 
 This ninth letter he held in his hand as 
 he rose from the table, and out of his 
 mouth there fell, unconsciously, Connis- 
 ton s own words, " It s devilish queer, old 
 top and funny! " 
 
 There was no humor in the way he 
 spoke them. His voice was hard, his eyes 
 dully ablaze. He was looking back into 
 that swirling, unutterable loneliness of the 
 northland, and he was seeing Conniston 
 again. 
 
 Fiercely he caught up the clippings, 
 struck a match, and with a grim smile 
 watched them as they curled up into 
 flame and crumbled into ash. What a lie 
 was life, what a malformed thing was 
 justice, what a monster of iniquity the 
 man-fabricated thing called law! 
 
 And again he found himself speaking, 
 as if the dead Englishman himself were 
 repeating the words, " It s devilish queer, 
 old top and funny!" 
 
XIV 
 
 A QUARTER of an hour later, with 
 Mary Josephine at his side, he was 
 walking down the green slope toward the 
 Saskatchewan. In that direction lay the 
 rims of timber, the shimmering valley, and 
 the broad pathways that opened into the 
 plains beyond. 
 
 The town was at their backs, and Keith 
 wanted it there. He wanted to keep 
 McDowell, and Shan Tung, and Miriam 
 Kirkstone as far away as possible, until his 
 mind rode more smoothly in the new orbit 
 in which it was still whirling a bit un 
 steadily. More than all else he wanted 
 to be alone with Mary Josephine, to make 
 sure of her, to convince himself utterly 
 that she was his to go on fighting for. 
 He sensed the nearness and the magnitude 
 of the impending drama. He knew that 
 today he must face Shan Tung, that again 
 he must go under the battery of Mc 
 Dowell s eyes and brain, and that like a 
 
 173 
 
174 THE RIVER S END 
 
 fish in treacherous waters he must swim 
 cleverly to avoid the nets that would en 
 tangle and destroy him. Today was the 
 day the stage was set, the curtain about 
 to be lifted, the play ready to be enacted. 
 But before it was the prologue. And the 
 prologue was Mary Josephine s. 
 
 At the crest of a dip halfway down the 
 slope they had paused, and in this pause he 
 stood a half-step behind her so that he 
 could look at her for a moment without 
 being observed. She was bareheaded, and 
 it came upon him all at once how wonder 
 ful was a woman s hair, how beautiful be 
 yond all other things beautiful and de 
 sirable. In twisted, glowing seductiveness 
 it was piled up on Mary Josephine s head, 
 transformed into brown and gold glories 
 by the sun. He wanted to put forth his 
 hand to it, and bury his fingers in it, and 
 feel the thrill and the warmth and the 
 crush of the palpitant life of it against his 
 own flesh. And then, bending a little for 
 ward, he saw under her long lashes the 
 sheer joy of life shining in her eyes as she 
 drank in the wonderful panorama that 
 lay below them to the west. Last night s 
 
THE RIVER S END 175 
 
 rain had freshened it, the sun glorified it 
 now, and the fragrance of earthy smells 
 that rose up to them from it was the unde- 
 filed breath of a thing living and awake. 
 Even to Keith the river had never looked 
 more beautiful, and never had his yearn 
 ings gone out to it more strongly than in 
 this moment, to the river and beyond and 
 to the back of beyond, where the moun 
 tains rose up to meet the blue sky and the 
 river itself was born. And he heard Mary 
 Josephine s voice, joyously suppressed, ex 
 claiming softly, 
 
 "Oh, Deny!" 
 
 His heart was filled with gladness. She, 
 too, was seeing what his eyes saw in that 
 wonderland. And she was feeling it. Her 
 hand, seeking his hand, crept into his palm, 
 and the fingers of it clung to his fingers. 
 He could feel the thrill of the miracle 
 passing through her, the miracle of the 
 open spaces, the miracle of the forests ris 
 ing billow on billow to the purple mists 
 of the horizon, the miracle of the golden 
 Saskatchewan rolling slowly and peace 
 fully in its slumbering sheen out of that 
 mighty mysteryland that reached to the 
 
176 THE RIVER S END 
 
 lap of the setting sun. He spoke to her 
 of that land as she looked, wide-eyed, 
 quick-breathing, her fingers closing still 
 more tightly about his. This was but the 
 beginning of the glory of the west and the 
 north, he told her. Beyond that low hori 
 zon, where the tree tops touched the sky 
 were the prairies not the tiresome monot 
 ony which she had seen from the car 
 windows, but the wide, glorious, God-given 
 country of the Northwest with its thou 
 sands of lakes and rivers and its tens of 
 thousands of square miles of forests; and 
 beyond those things, still farther, were the 
 foothills, and beyond the foothills the 
 mountains. And in those mountains the 
 river down there had its beginning. 
 
 She looked up swiftly, her eyes brim 
 ming with the golden flash of the sun. 
 "It is wonderful! And just over there 
 is the town ! " 
 
 " Yes, and beyond the town are the 
 cities." 
 
 " And off there " 
 
 " God s country," said Keith devoutly. 
 
 Mary Josephine drew a deep breath. 
 "And people still live in towns and 
 
THE RIVER S END 177 
 
 cities!" she exclaimed in wondering 
 credulity. " I ve dreamed of over here, 
 Derry, but I never dreamed that. And 
 youVe had it for years and years, while 
 I oh, Derry!" 
 
 And again those two words filled his 
 heart with gladness, words of loving re 
 proach, atremble with the mysterious whis 
 per of a great desire. For she was looking 
 into the west. And her eyes and her heart 
 and her soul were in the west, and sud 
 denly Keith saw his way as though lighted 
 by a flaming torch. He came near to for 
 getting that he was Conniston. He spoke 
 of his dream, his desire, and told her that 
 last night before she came he had made 
 up his mind to go. She had come to him 
 just in time. A little later and he would 
 have been gone, buried utterly away from 
 the world in the wonderland of the moun 
 tains. And now they would go together. 
 They would go as he had planned to go, 
 quietly, unobtrusively; they would slip 
 away and disappear. There was a reason 
 why no one should know, not even Mc 
 Dowell. It must be their secret. Some 
 day he would tell her why. Her heart 
 
178 THE RIVER S END 
 
 thumped excitedly as he went on like a 
 boy planning a wonderful day. He could 
 see the swifter beat of it in the flush that 
 rose into her face and the joy glowing 
 tremulously in her eyes as she looked at 
 him. They would get ready quietly. 
 They might go tomorrow, the next day, 
 any time. It would be a glorious adven 
 ture, just they two, with all the vastness of 
 that mountain paradise ahead of them. 
 
 "We ll be pals," he said. "Just you 
 and me, Mary Josephine. We re all that s 
 left." 
 
 It was his first experiment, his first refer 
 ence to the information he had gained in 
 the letters, and swift as a flash Mary Jose 
 phine s eyes turned up to him. He nodded, 
 smiling. He understood their quick ques 
 tioning, and he held her hand closer and 
 began to walk with her down the slope. 
 
 " A lot of it came back last night and 
 this morning, a lot of it," he explained. 
 " It s queer what miracles small things can 
 work sometimes, isn t it? Think what a 
 grain of sand can do to a watch! This 
 was one of the small things." He was 
 still smiling as he touched the scar on 
 
THE RIVER S END 179 
 
 his forehead. " And you, you were the 
 other miracle. And I m remembering. It 
 doesn t seem like seven or eight years, but 
 only yesterday, that the grain of sand got 
 mixed up somewhere in the machinery in 
 my head. And I guess there was another 
 reason for my going wrong. You ll under 
 stand, when I tell you." 
 
 Had he been Conniston it could not have 
 come from him more naturally, more sin 
 cerely. He was living the great lie, and 
 yet to him it was no longer a lie. He did 
 not hesitate, as shame and conscience might 
 have made him hesitate. He was fighting 
 that something beautiful might be raised 
 up out of chaos and despair and be made 
 to exist; he was fighting for life in place 
 of death, for happiness in place of grief, 
 for light in place of darkness fighting to 
 save where others would destroy. There 
 fore the great lie was not a lie but a thing 
 without venom or hurt, an instrument for 
 happiness and for all the things good and 
 beautiful that went to make happiness. It 
 was his one great weapon. Without it he 
 would fail, and failure meant desolation. 
 So he spoke convincingly, for what he 
 
i8o THE RIVER S END 
 
 said eame straight from the heart though 
 it was born in the shadow of that one 
 master-falsehood. His wonder was that 
 Mary Josephine believed him so utterly 
 that not for an instant was there a ques 
 tioning doubt in her eyes or on her lips. 
 
 He told her how much he " remem 
 bered," which was no more and no less 
 t han he had learned from the letters and 
 the clippings. The story did not appeal 
 to him as particularly unusual or dramatic. 
 He had passed through too many tragic 
 happenings in the last four years to regard 
 it in that way. It was simply an unfor 
 tunate affair beginning in misfortune, and 
 with its necessary whirlwind of hurt and 
 sorrow. The one thing of shame he would 
 not keep out of his mind was that he, 
 Derwent Conniston, must have been a poor 
 type of big brother in those days of nine 
 or ten years ago, even though little Mary 
 Josephine had worshiped him. He was 
 well along in his twenties then. The Con- 
 nistons of Darlington were his uncle and 
 aunt, and his uncle was a more or less 
 prominent figure in ship-building interests 
 on the Clyde. With these people the three 
 
THE RIVER S END 181 
 
 himself, Mary Josephine, and his 
 brother Egbert had lived, " farmed out " 
 to a hard-necked, flinty-hearted pair of 
 relatives because of a brother s stipulation 
 and a certain English law. With them 
 they had existed in mutual discontent and 
 dislike. Derwent, when he became old 
 enough, had stepped over the traces. All 
 this Keith had gathered from the letters, 
 but there was a great deal that was miss 
 ing. Egbert, he gathered, must have been 
 a scapegrace. He was a cripple of some 
 sort and seven or eight years his junior. 
 In the letters Mary Josephine had spoken 
 of him as " poor Egbert," pitying instead 
 of condemning him, though it was Egbert 
 who had brought tragedy and separation 
 upon them. One night Egbert had broken 
 open the Conniston safe and in the dark 
 ness had had a fight and a narrow escape 
 from his uncle, who laid the crime upon 
 Derwent. And Derwent, in whom Egbert 
 must have confided, had fled to America 
 that the cripple might be saved, with the 
 promise that some day he would send for 
 Mary Josephine. He was followed by the 
 uncle s threat that if he ever returned to 
 
1 82 THE RIVER S END 
 
 England, he would be jailed. Not long 
 afterward " poor Egbert " was found dead 
 in bed, fearfully contorted. Keith guessed 
 there had been something mentally as well 
 as physically wrong with him. 
 
 " And I was going to send for you," 
 he said, as they came to the level of the 
 valley. " My plans were made, and I was 
 going to send for you, when this came." 
 
 He stopped, and in a few tense, breath 
 less moments Mary Josephine read the 
 ninth and last letter he had taken from the 
 Englishman s chest. 
 
 It was from her uncle. In a dozen lines 
 it stated that she, Mary Josephine, was 
 dead, and it reiterated the threat against 
 Derwent Conniston should he ever dare to 
 return to England. 
 
 A choking cry came to her lips. " And 
 that that was it? " 
 
 " Yes, that and the hurt in my head," 
 he said, remembering the part he must 
 play. " They came at about the same time, 
 and the two of them must have put the 
 grain of sand in my brain." 
 
 It was hard to lie now, looking straight 
 into her face that had gone suddenly white, 
 
THE RIVER S END i8j 
 
 and with her wonderful eyes burning deep 
 into his soul. 
 
 She did not seem, for an instant, to hear 
 his voice or sense his words. " I under 
 stand now," she was saying, the letter 
 crumpling in her fingers. " I was sick for 
 almost a year, Derry. They thought I was 
 going to die. He must have written it 
 then, and they destroyed my letters to you, 
 and when I was better they told me you 
 were dead, and then I didn t write any 
 more. And I wanted to die. And then, 
 almost a year ago, Colonel Reppington 
 came to me, and his dear old voice was so 
 excited that it trembled, and he told me 
 that he believed you were alive. A friend 
 of his had just returned from British 
 Columbia, and this friend told him that 
 three years before, while on a grizzly 
 shooting trip, he had met a man named 
 Conniston, an Englishman. We wrote a 
 hundred letters up there and found the 
 man, Jack Otto, who was in the moun 
 tains with you, and then I knew you were 
 alive. But we couldn t find you after that, 
 and so I came " 
 
 He would have wagered that she was 
 
i 84 THE RIVER S END 
 
 going to cry, but she fought the tears back, 
 smiling. 
 
 "And and I ve found you!" she fin 
 ished triumphantly. 
 
 She snuggled close to him, and he 
 slipped an arm about her waist, and they 
 walked on. She told him about her ar 
 rival in Halifax, how Colonel Reppington 
 had given her letters to nice people in 
 Montreal and Winnipeg, and how it hap 
 pened one day that she found his name in 
 one of the Mounted Police blue books, and 
 after that came on as fast as she could to 
 surprise him at Prince Albert. When she 
 came to that point, Keith pointed once 
 more into the west and said: 
 
 " And there is our new world. Let us 
 forget the old. Shall we, Mary Jose 
 phine?" 
 
 " Yes," she whispered, and her hand 
 sought his again and crept into it, warm 
 and confident. 
 
" JOHN KEITH TOLD ME JUST WHAT I D FIND HERE, 
 
 HE SAID. 
 Page 189 
 
XV 
 
 THEY went on through the golden 
 morning, the earth damp under their 
 feet, the air filled with its sweet incense, 
 on past scattered clumps of balsams and 
 cedars until they came to the river and 
 looked down on its yellow sand-bars glis 
 tening in the sun. The town was hidden. 
 They heard no sound from it. And look 
 ing up the great Saskatchewan, the river 
 of mystery, of romance, of glamour, they 
 saw before them, where the spruce walls 
 seemed to meet, the wide-open door through 
 which they might pass into the western 
 land beyond. Keith pointed it out. And 
 he pointed out the yellow bars, the glisten 
 ing shores of sand, and told her how 
 even as far as this, a thousand miles by 
 river those sands brought gold with them 
 from the mountains, the gold whose 
 treasure-house no man had ever found, and 
 which must be hidden up there somewhere 
 near the river s end. His dream, like 
 185 
 
1 86 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Duggan s, had been to find it. Now they 
 would search for it together. 
 
 Slowly he was picking his way so that 
 at last they came to the bit of cleared 
 timber in which was his old home. His 
 heart choked him as they drew near. 
 There was an uncomfortable tightness in 
 his breath. The timber was no longer 
 " clear." In four years younger genera 
 tions of life had sprung up among the 
 trees, and the place was jungle-ridden. 
 They were within a few yards of the 
 house before Mary Josephine saw it, and 
 then she stopped suddenly with a little 
 gasp. For this that she faced was not 
 desertion, was not mere neglect. It was 
 tragedy. She saw in an instant that there 
 was no life in this place, and yet it stood 
 as if tenanted. It was a log chateau with 
 a great, red chimney rising at one end. 
 Curtains and shades still hung at the 
 windows. There were three chairs on the 
 broad veranda that looked riverward. But 
 two of the windows were broken, and the 
 chairs were falling into ruin. There was 
 no life. They were facing only the ghosts 
 of life. 
 
THE RIVER S END 187 
 
 A swift glance into Keith s face told her 
 this was so. His lips were set tight. There 
 was a strange look in his face. Hand in 
 hand they had come up, and her fingers 
 pressed his tighter now. 
 
 " What is it? " she asked. 
 
 " It is John Keith s home as he left it 
 four years ago," he replied. 
 
 The suspicious break in his voice drew 
 her eyes from the chateau to his own again. 
 She could see him fighting. There was a 
 twitching in his throat. His hand was 
 gripping hers until it hurt. 
 
 "John Keith?" she whispered softly. 
 
 " Yes, John Keith." 
 
 She inclined her head so that it rested 
 lightly and affectionately against his arm. 
 " You must have thought a great deal of 
 him, Derry." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He freed her hand, and his fists clenched 
 convulsively. She could feel the cording 
 of the muscles in his arm, his face was 
 white, and in his eyes was a fixed stare 
 that startled her. He fumbled in a pocket 
 and drew out a key. 
 
 " I promised, when he died, that I 
 
1 88 THE RIVER S END 
 
 would go in and take a last look for him," 
 he said. " He loved this place. Do you 
 want to go with me? " 
 
 She drew a deep breath. " Yes." 
 The key opened the door that entered on 
 the veranda. As it swung back, grating on 
 its rusty hinges, they found themselves fac 
 ing the chill of a cold and lifeless air. 
 Keith stepped inside. A glance told him 
 that nothing was changed everything was 
 there in that room with the big fireplace, 
 even as he had left it the night he set out 
 to force justice from Judge Kirkstone. 
 One thing startled him. On the dust- 
 covered table was a bowl and a spoon. He 
 remembered vividly how he had eaten his 
 supper that night of bread and milk. It 
 was the littleness of the thing, the sim 
 plicity of it, that shocked him. The bowl 
 and spoon were still there after four years. 
 He did not reflect that they were as im 
 perishable as all the other things about; 
 the miracle was that they were there on 
 the table, as though he had used them only 
 yesterday. The most trivial things in the 
 room struck him deepest, and he found 
 
THE RIVER S END 189 
 
 himself fighting hard, for a moment, to 
 keep his nerve. 
 
 " He told me about the bowl and the 
 spoon, John Keith did, 3 he said, nodding 
 toward them. " He told me just what I d 
 find here, even to that. You see, he loved 
 the place greatly and everything that was 
 in it. It was impossible for him to forget 
 even the bowl and the spoon and where he 
 had left them." 
 
 It was easier after that. The old home 
 was whispering back its memories to him, 
 and he told them to Mary Josephine as 
 they went slowly from room to room, until 
 John Keith was living there before her 
 again, the John Keith whom Derwent 
 Conniston had run to his death. It was 
 this thing that gripped her, and at last 
 what was in her rnind found voice. 
 
 <4 It wasn t you who made him die, was 
 it, Derry? It wasn t you? " 
 
 " No. It was the law. He died, as I 
 told you, of a frosted lung. At the last I 
 would have shared my life with him had it 
 been possible. McDowell must never 
 know that. You must never speak of 
 John Keith before him." 
 
190 THE RIVER S END 
 
 i " I I understand, Deny." 
 
 "And he must not know that we came 
 here. To him John Keith was a murderer 
 whom it was his duty to hang." 
 
 She was looking at him strangely. 
 Never had he seen her look at him in that 
 way. 
 
 " Derry," she whispered. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Derry, is John Keith alive?" 
 
 He started. The shock of the question 
 was in his face. He caught himself, but 
 it was too late. And in an instant her hand 
 was at his mouth, and she was whispering 
 eagerly, almost fiercely: 
 
 "No, no, no don t answer me, Derry! 
 Don t answer me! I know, and I under 
 stand, and I m glad, glad, glad! He s 
 alive, and it was you who let him live, 
 the big, glorious brother I m proud of I 
 And everyone else thinks he s dead. But 
 don t answer me, Derry, don t answer 
 me!" 
 
 She was trembling against him. His 
 arms closed about her, and he held her 
 nearer to his heart, and longer, than he 
 had ever held her before. He kissed her 
 
THE RIVER S END 191 
 
 hair many times, and her lips once, and 
 up about his neck her arms twined softly, 
 and a great brightness was in her eyes. 
 
 " I understand," she whispered again. 
 " I understand." 
 
 " And I I must answer you," he said. 
 " I must answer you, because I love you, 
 and because you must know. Yes, John 
 Keith is alive!" 
 
XVI 
 
 A "NT hour later, alone and heading for 
 the inspector s office, Keith feit in 
 battle trim. His head was fairly singing 
 with the success of the morning. Since the 
 opening of Conniston s chest many things 
 had happened, and he was no longer fac 
 ing a blank wall of mystery. His chief 
 cause of exhilaration was Mary Josephine. 
 She wanted to go away with him. She 
 wanted to go with him anywhere, every 
 where, as long as they were together. 
 When she had learned that his term of 
 enlistment was about to expire and that if 
 he remained in the Service he would be 
 away from her a great deal, she had 
 pleaded with him not to reenlist. She did 
 not question him when he told her \hat it 
 might be necessary to go away very sud 
 denly, without letting another soul know 
 of their movements, not even Wallie. In 
 tuitively she guessed that the reason had 
 something to do with John Keith, for he 
 
 192 
 
THE RIVER S END 93 
 
 had let the fear grow in her that Mc 
 Dowell might discover he had been a 
 traitor to the Service, in which event the 
 Law itself would take him away from her 
 for a considerable number of years. And 
 with that fear she was more than ever 
 eager for the adventure, and planned with 
 him for its consummation. 
 
 Another thing cheered Keith. He was 
 no longer the absolute liar of yesterday, for 
 by a fortunate chance he had been able to 
 tell her that John Keith was alive. This 
 most important of all truths he had con 
 fided to her, and the confession had 
 roused in her a comradeship that had 
 proclaimed itself ready to fight for him 
 or run away with him. Not for an in 
 stant had she regretted the action he had 
 taken in giving Keith his freedom. He 
 was peculiarly happy because of that. She 
 was glad John Keith was alive. 
 
 And now that she knew the story of the 
 old home down in the clump of timber and 
 of the man who had lived there, she was 
 anxious to meet Miriam Kirkstone, daugh 
 ter of the man he had killed. Keith had 
 promised her they would go up that after- 
 
194 THE RIVER S END 
 
 noon. Within himself he knew that he was 
 not sure of keeping the promise. There was 
 much to do in the next few hours, and 
 much might happen. In fact there was 
 but little speculation about it. This was 
 the big day. Just what it held for him he 
 could not be sure until he saw Shan Tung. 
 Any instant might see him put to the final 
 test. 
 
 Cruze was pacing slow r ly up and down 
 the hall when Keith entered the building 
 in which McDowell had his offices. The 
 young secretary s face bore a perplexed 
 and rather anxious expression. His hands 
 were buried deep in his trousers pockets, 
 and he was puffing a cigarette. At Keith s 
 appearance he brightened up a bit. 
 
 " Don t know what to make of the 
 governor this morning, by Jove I don t!" 
 he explained, nodding toward the closed 
 doors. " I ve got instructions to let no one 
 near him except you. You may go in." 
 
 "What seems to be the matter?" Keith 
 felt out cautiously. 
 
 Cruze shrugged his thin shoulders, 
 flipped the ash from his cigarette, and 
 with a grimace said, " Shan Tung." 
 
THE RIVER S END 195 
 
 " Shan Tung? " Keith spoke the name in 
 a sibilant whisper. Every nerve in him 
 had jumped, and for an instant he thought 
 he had betrayed himself. Shan Tung had 
 been there early. And now McDowell 
 was waiting for him and had given in 
 structions that no other should be ad 
 mitted. If the Chinaman had exposed 
 him, why hadn t McDowell sent officers up 
 to the Shack? That was the first question 
 that jumped into his head. The answer 
 came as quickly McDowell had not sent 
 officers because, hating Shan Tung, he had 
 not believed his story. But he was wait 
 ing there to investigate. A chill crept over 
 Keith. 
 
 Cruze was looking at him intently. 
 " There s something to this Shan Tung 
 business," he said. " It s even getting on 
 the old man s nerves. And he s very 
 anxious to see you, Mr. Conniston. I ve 
 called you up half a dozen times in the 
 last hour. 7 
 
 He flipped away his cigarette, turned 
 alertly, and moved toward the inspector s 
 door. Keith wanted to call him back, to 
 leap upon him, if necessary, and drag him 
 
196 THE RIVER S END 
 
 away from that deadly door. But he 
 neither moved nor spoke until it was too 
 late. The door opened, he heard Cruze 
 announce his presence, and it seemed to 
 him the words were scarcely out of the 
 secretary s mouth when McDowell himself 
 stood in the door. 
 
 " Come in, Conniston," he said quietly. 
 " Come in." 
 
 It was not McDowell s voice. It was 
 restrained, terrible. It was the voice of a 
 man speaking softly to cover a terrific fire 
 raging within. Keith felt himself doomed. 
 Even as he entered, his mind was swiftly 
 gathering itself for the last play, the play 
 he had set for himself if the crisis came. 
 He would cover McDowell, bind and gag 
 him even as Cruze sauntered in the hall, 
 escape through a window, and with Mary 
 Josephine bury himself in the forests be 
 fore pursuit could overtake them. There 
 fore his amazement was unbounded when 
 McDowell, closing the door, seized his 
 hand in a grip that made him wince, and 
 shook it with unfeigned gladness and 
 relief. 
 
 " I m not condemning you, of course,** 
 
THE RIVER S END 197 
 
 He said. " It was rather beastly of me 
 to annoy your sister before you were up 
 this morning. She flatly refused to rouse 
 you, and by George, the way she said it 
 made me turn the business of getting into 
 touch with you over to Cruze. Sit down, 
 Conniston. I m going to explode a mine 
 under you" 
 
 He flung himself into his swivel chair 
 and twisted one of his fierce mustaches, 
 while his eyes blazed at Keith. Keith 
 waited. He saw the other was like an 
 animal ready to spring and anxious to 
 spring, the one evident stricture on his 
 desire being that there was nothing to 
 spring at unless it was himself. 
 
 " What happened last night? " he asked. 
 
 Keith s mind was already working 
 swiftly. McDowell s question gave him 
 the opportunity of making the first play 
 against Shan Tung. 
 
 " Enough to convince me that I am 
 going to see Shan Tung today," he said. 
 
 He noticed the slow clenching and un 
 clenching of McDowell s fingers about the 
 arms of his chair. 
 
 " Then I was right? " 
 
198 THE RIVER S END 
 
 " I have every reason to believe you 
 were up to a certain point. I shall know 
 positively when I have talked with Shan 
 Tung." " 
 
 He smiled grimly. McDowell s eyes 
 were no harder than his own. The iron 
 man drew a deep breath and relaxed a bit 
 in his chair. 
 
 " If anything should happen," he said, 
 looking away from Keith, as though the 
 speech were merely casual, " if he attacks 
 you " 
 
 " It might be necessary to kill him in 
 self-defense," finished Keith. 
 
 McDowell made no sign to show that 
 he had heard, yet Keith thrilled with the 
 conviction that he had struck home. He 
 went on telling briefly what had happened 
 at Miriam Kirkstone s house the preceding 
 night. McDowell s face was purple when 
 he described the evidences of Shan Tung s 
 presence at the house on the hill, but with 
 a mighty effort he restrained his passion. 
 
 " That s it, that s it," he exclaimed, 
 choking back his wrath. " I knew he was 
 there! And this morning both of them lie 
 about it both of them, do you understand! 
 
THE RIVER S END 199 
 
 She lied, looking me straight in the eyes. 
 And he lied, and for the first time in his 
 life he laughed at me, curse me if he 
 didn t! It was like the gurgle of oil. I 
 didn t know a human could laugh that 
 way. And on top of that he told me 
 something that I wont believe, so help me 
 God, I won t!" 
 
 He jumped to his feet and began pacing 
 back and forth, his hands clenched behind 
 him. Suddenly he whirled on Keith. 
 
 " Why in heaven s name didn t you bring 
 Keith back with you or, if not Keith, at 
 least a written confession, signed by him? " 
 he demanded. 
 
 This was a blow from behind for Keith. 
 "What what has Keith got to do with 
 this?" he stumbled. 
 
 " More than I dare tell you, Conniston. 
 But why didn t you bring back a signed 
 confession from him? A dying man is 
 usually willing to make that." 
 
 " If he is guilty, yes," agreed Keith. 
 " But this man was a different sort. If 
 he killed Judge Kirkstone, he had no 
 regret. He did not consider himself a 
 criminal. He felt that he had dealt out 
 
200 THE RIVER S END 
 
 justice in his own way, and therefore, 
 even when he was dying, he would not sign 
 anything or state anything definitely." 
 
 McDowell subsided into his chair. 
 " And the curse of it is I haven t a thing 
 on Shan Tung," he gritted. " Not a thing. 
 Miriam Kirkstone is her own mistress, and 
 in the eyes of the law he is as innocent 
 of crime as I am. If she is voluntarily 
 giving herself as a victim to this devil, it 
 is her own business legally, you under 
 stand. Morally " 
 
 He stopped, his savagely gleaming eyes 
 boring Keith to the marrow. 
 
 " He hates you as a snake hates fire 
 water. It is possible, if he thought the 
 opportunity had come to him " 
 
 Again he paused, cryptic, waiting for 
 the other to gather the thing he had not 
 spoken. Keith, simulating two of Con- 
 niston s tricks at the same time, shrugged a 
 shoulder and twisted a mustache as he rose 
 to his feet. He smiled coolly down at the 
 iron man. For once he gave a passable 
 imitation of the Englishman. 
 
 " And he s going to have the opportunity 
 Jtoday," he said understandingly. " I think, 
 
THE RIVER S END 201 
 
 old chap, I d better be going. I m rather 
 anxious to see Shan Tung before dinner." 
 
 McDowell followed him to the door. 
 His face had undergone a change. There 
 was a tense expectancy, almost an eager 
 ness there. Again he gripped Keith s 
 hand, and before the door opened he said, 
 
 " If trouble comes between you let it 
 be in the open, Conniston in the open 
 and not on Shan Tung s premises." 
 
 Keith went out, his pulse quickening to 
 the significance of the iron man s words, 
 and wondering what the " mine " was that 
 McDowell had promised to explode, but 
 which he had not. 
 
XVII 
 
 KEITH lost no time in heading for Shan 
 Tung s. He was like a man playing 
 chess, and the moves were becoming so 
 swift and so intricate that his mind had no 
 rest. Each hour brought forth its fresh 
 necessities and its new alternatives. It wag 
 McDowell who had given him his last cue, 
 perhaps the surest and safest method of 
 all for winning his game. The iron man, 
 that disciple of the Law who was merciless 
 in his demand of an eye for an eye and a 
 tooth for a tooth, had let him understand 
 that the world would be better off without 
 Shan Tung. This man, who never in his 
 life had found an excuse for the killer, now 
 maneuvered subtly the suggestion for a 
 killing. 
 
 Keith was both shocked and amazed, 
 " If anything happens, let it be in the open 
 and not on Shan Tung s premises," he had 
 warned him. That implied in McDowell s 
 mind a cool and calculating premeditation, 
 
 202 
 
THE RIVER S END 203 
 
 the assumption that if Shan Tung was 
 killed it would be in self-defense. And 
 Keith s blood leaped to the thrill of it. 
 He had not only found the depths of Mc 
 Dowell s personal interest in Miriam Kirk- 
 stone, but a last weapon had been placed 
 in his hands, a weapon which he could use 
 this day if it became necessary. Cornered, 
 with no other hope of saving himself, he 
 could as a last resort kill Shan Tung and 
 McDowell would stand behind him! 
 
 He went directly to Shan Tung s cafe 
 and sauntered in. There were large 
 changes in it since four years ago. The 
 moment he passed through its screened 
 vestibule, he felt its oriental exclusiveness, 
 the sleek and mysterious quietness of it. 
 One might have found such a place cater 
 ing to the elite of a big city. It spoke 
 sumptuously of a large expenditure of 
 money, yet there was nothing bizarre or 
 irritating to the senses. Its heavily-carved 
 tables were almost oppressive in their 
 solidity. Linen and silver, like Shan Tung 
 himself, were immaculate. Magnificently 
 embroidered screens were so cleverly ar 
 ranged that one saw not all of the place at 
 
204 THE RIVER S END 
 
 once, but caught vistas of it The, few 
 voices that Keith heard in this pre-lunch 
 hour were subdued, and the speakers were 
 concealed by screens. Two orientals, as 
 immaculate as the silver and linen, were 
 moving about with the silence of velvet- 
 padded lynxes. A third, far in the rear, 
 stood motionless as one of the carven 
 tables, smoking a cigarette and watchful 
 as a ferret. This was Li King, Shan 
 Tung s right-hand man. 
 
 Keith approached him. When he was 
 near enough, Li King gave the slightest 
 inclination to his head and took the ciga 
 rette from his mouth. Without movement 
 or speech he registered the question, 
 " What do you want? " 
 
 Keith knew this to be a bit of oriental 
 guile. In his mind there was no doubt that 
 Li King had been fully instructed by his 
 master and that he had been expecting 
 him, even watching for him. Convinced 
 of this, he gave him one of Conniston s 
 cards and said, 
 
 "Take this to Shan Tung. He is ex 
 pecting me." 
 
 Li King looked at the card, studied it 
 
THE RIVER S END 205 
 
 for a moment with apparent stupidity, and 
 shock his head. " Shan Tung no home. 
 Gone away." 
 
 That was all. Where he had gone or 
 when he would return Keith could not dis 
 cover from Li King. Of all other matters 
 except that he had gone away the manager 
 of Shan Tung s affairs was ignorant. 
 Keith felt like taking the yellow-skinned 
 hypocrite by the throat and choking some 
 thing out of him, but he realized that Li 
 King was studying and watching him, and 
 that he would report to Shan Tung every 
 expression that had passed over his face. 
 So he looked at his watch, bought a cigar 
 at the glass case near the cash register, and 
 departed with a cheerful nod, saying that 
 he would call again. 
 
 Ten minutes later he determined on a 
 bold stroke. There was no time for in 
 decision or compromise. He must find 
 Shan Tung and find him quickly. And he 
 believed that Miriam Kirkstone could give 
 him a pretty good tip as to his where 
 abouts. He steeled himself to the demand 
 he was about to make as he strode up to 
 the house on the hill. He was disap- 
 
ao6 THE RIVER S END 
 
 pointed again. Miss Kirkstone was not at 
 home. If she was, she did not answer to 
 his knocking and bell ringing. 
 
 He went to the depot. No one he ques 
 tioned had seen Shan Tung at the west 
 bound train, the only train that had gone 
 out that morning, and the agent emphati 
 cally disclaimed selling him a ticket. 
 Therefore he had not gone far. Suspicion 
 leaped red in Keith s brain. His imagina 
 tion pictured Shan Tung at that moment 
 with Miriam Kirkstone, and at the thought 
 his disgust went out against them both. In 
 this humor he returned to McDowell s of 
 fice. He stood before his chief, leaning 
 toward him over the desk table. This time 
 he was the inquisitor. 
 
 " Plainly speaking, this liaison is their 
 business," he declared. " Because he is 
 yellow and she is white doesn t make it 
 ours. I ve just had a hunch. And I be 
 lieve in following hunches, especially when 
 one hits you good and hard, and this one 
 has given me a jolt that means something. 
 Where is that big fat brother of hers? n 
 
 McDowell hesitated. "It isn t a 
 
THE RIVER S END 207 
 
 liaison/ he temporized. *< It s one-sided 
 a crime against " 
 
 " Where is that big fat brother? " With 
 each word Keith emphasized his demand 
 with a thud of his fist on the table. 
 "Where is he? " 
 
 McDowell was deeply perturbed. Keith 
 could see it and waited. 
 
 After a moment of silence the iron man 
 rose from the swivel chair, walked to the 
 window, gazed out for another moment, 
 and walked back again, twisting one of 
 his big gray mustaches in a way that be 
 trayed the stress of his emotion. " Con 
 found it, Conniston, you ve got a mind for 
 seeking out the trivialities, and little things 
 are sometimes the most embarrassing." 
 
 " And somethimes most important/ 1 
 added Keith. " For instance, it strikes me 
 as mighty important that we should know 
 where Peter Kirkstone is and why he is 
 not here fighting for his sister s salvation. 
 Where is he?" 
 
 " I don t know. He disappeared from 
 town a month ago. Miriam says he is 
 somewhere in British Columbia looking 
 
208 THE RIVER S END 
 
 over some old mining properties. She 
 doesn t know just where." 
 
 "And you believe her?" 
 
 The eyes of the two men met. There 
 was no longer excuse for equivocation. 
 Both understood. 
 
 McDowell smiled in recognition of the 
 fact. " No. I think, Conniston, that she 
 is the most wonderful little liar that lives. 
 And the beautiful part of it is, she is lying 
 for a purpose. Imagine Peter Kirkstone, 
 who isn t worth the powder to blow him 
 to Hades, interested in old mines or any 
 thing else that promises industry or pro 
 duction! And the most inconceivable 
 thing about the whole mess is that Miriam 
 worships that fat and worthless pig of a 
 brother. IVe tried to find him in British 
 Columbia. Failed, of course. Another 
 proof that this affair between Miriam and 
 Shan Tung isn t a voluntary liaison on her 
 part. She s lying. She s walking on a 
 pavement of lies. If she told the 
 truth " 
 
 " There are some truths which one can 
 not tell about oneself," interrupted Keith. 
 " They must be discovered or buried. And 
 
THE RIVER S END 209 
 
 I m going deeper into this prospecting and 
 undertaking business this afternoon. IVe 
 got another hunch. I think I ll have some 
 thing interesting to report before night." 
 Ten minutes later, on his way to the 
 Shack, he was discussing with himself the 
 modus operandi of that " hunch." It had 
 come to him in an instant, a flash of in 
 spiration. That afternoon he would see 
 Miriam Kirkstone and question her about 
 Peter. Then he would return to Mc 
 Dowell, lay stress on the importance of 
 the brother, tell him that he had a clew 
 which he wanted to follow, and suggest 
 finally a swift trip to British Columbia. 
 He would take Mary Josephine, lie low 
 until his term of service expired, and then 
 report by letter to McDowell that he had 
 failed and that he had made up his mind 
 not to reenlist but to try his fortunes with 
 Mary Josephine in Australia. Before 
 McDowell received that letter, they could 
 be on their way into the mountains. The 
 " hunch " offered an opportunity for a 
 clean getaway, and in his jubilation 
 Miriam Kirkstone and her affairs were 
 important only as a means to an end. He 
 
aio THE RIVER S END 
 
 was John Keith now, fighting for John 
 Keith s life and Derwent Conniston s 
 sister. 
 
 Mary Josephine herself put the first shot 
 into the fabric of his plans. She must 
 have been watching for him, for when 
 halfway up the slope he saw her coming 
 to meet him. She scolded him for being 
 away from her, as he had expected her to 
 do. Then she pulled his arm about her 
 slim little waist and held the hand thus 
 engaged in both her own as they walked 
 up the winding path. He noticed the little 
 wrinkles in her adorable forehead. 
 
 " Derry, is it the right thing for young 
 ladies to call on their gentlemen friends 
 over here? " she asked suddenly. 
 
 " Why er that depends, Mary Jose 
 phine. You mean " 
 
 "Yes, I do, Derwent Conniston! She s 
 pretty, and I don t blame you, but I can t 
 help feeling that I don t like it! " 
 
 His arm tightened about her until she 
 gasped. The fragile softness of her waist 
 was a joy to him. 
 
 "Derry!" she remonstrated. "If you 
 do that again, I ll break 1 " 
 
THE RIVER S END EII 
 
 " I couldn t help it," he pleaded. " I 
 couldn t, dear. The way you said it just 
 made my arm close up tight. I m glad you 
 didn t like it. I can love only one at a 
 time, and I m loving you, and I m going 
 on loving you all my life." 
 
 " I wasn t jealous," she protested, blush 
 ing. " But she called twice on the tele 
 phone and then came up. And she s 
 pretty." 
 
 " I suppose you mean Miss Kirkstone?" 
 
 " Yes. She was frightfully anxious to 
 see you, Derry." 
 
 " And what did you think of her, dear? " 
 
 She cast a swift look up into his face. 
 "Why, I like her. She s sweet and pretty, 
 and I fell in love with her hair. But 
 something was troubling her this morning. 
 I m quite sure of it, though she tried to 
 keep it back." 
 
 " She was nervous, you mean, and pale, 
 with sometimes a frightened look in her 
 eyes. Was that it? " 
 
 " You seem to know, Derry. I think it 
 was all that." 
 
 He nodded. He saw his horizon aglow 
 with the smile of fortune. Everything 
 
212 THE RIVER S END 
 
 was coming propitiously for him, even this 
 unexpected visit of Miriam Kirkstone. 
 He did not trouble himself to speculate 
 as to the object of her visit, for he was 
 grappling now with his own opportunity, 
 his chance to get away, to win out for 
 himself in one last master-stroke, and his 
 mind was concentrated in that direction. 
 The time was ripe to tell these things to 
 Mary Josephine. She must be prepared. 
 
 On the flat table of the hill where Brady 
 had built his bungalow were scattered 
 clumps of golden birch, and in the shelter 
 of one of the nearer clumps was a bench, 
 to which Keith drew Mary Josephine. 
 Thereafter for many minutes he spoke 
 his plans. Mary Josephine s cheeks grew 
 flushed. Her eyes shone with excitement 
 and eagerness. She thrilled to the story 
 he told her of what they would do in those 
 wonderful mountains of gold and mystery, 
 just they two alone. He made her under 
 stand even more definitely that his safety 
 and their mutual happiness depended upon 
 the secrecy of their final project, that in a 
 way they were conspirators and must act 
 as such. They might start for the west 
 
THE RIVER S END 213 
 
 tonight or tomorrow, and she must get 
 ready. 
 
 There he should have stopped. But 
 with Mary Josephine s warm little hand 
 clinging to his and her beautiful eyes shin 
 ing at him like liquid stars, he felt within 
 him an overwhelming faith and desire, and 
 he went on, making a clean breast of the 
 situation that was giving them the oppor 
 tunity to get away. He felt no prick of 
 conscience at thought of Miriam Kirk- 
 stone s affairs. Her destiny must be, as 
 he had told McDowell, largely a matter 
 of her own choosing. Besides, she had 
 McDowell to fight for her. And the big 
 fat brother, too. So without fear of its 
 effect he told Mary Josephine of the mys 
 terious liaison between Miriam Kirkstone 
 and Shan Tung, of McDowell s suspicions, 
 of his own beliefs, and how it was all 
 working out for their own good. 
 
 Not until then did he begin to see the 
 changing lights in her eyes. Not until he 
 had finished did he notice that most of that 
 vivid flush of joy had gone from her face 
 and that she was looking at him in a 
 strained, tense way. He felt then the re- 
 
214 THE RIVER S END 
 
 action. She was not looking at the thing 
 as he was looking at it. He had offered 
 to her another woman s tragedy as their 
 opportunity, and her own woman s heart 
 had responded in the way that has been 
 woman s since the dawn of life. A sense 
 of shame which he fought and tried to 
 crush took possession of him. He was 
 right. He must be right, for it was his 
 life that was hanging in the balance. Yet 
 Mary Josephine could not know that. 
 
 Her fingers had tightened about his, and 
 she was looking away from him. He saw 
 now that the color had almost gone from 
 her face. There was the flash of a new 
 fire in her eyes. 
 
 " And that was why she was nervous 
 and pale, with sometimes a frightened look 
 in her eyes," she spoke softly, repeating his 
 words. " It was because of this Chinese 
 monster, Shan Tung because he has some 
 sort of power over her, you say be 
 cause " 
 
 She snatched her hand from his with a 
 suddenness that startled him. Her eyes, so 
 beautiful and soft a few minutes before, 
 
THE RIVER S END 215 
 
 scintillated fire. " Derry, if you don t fix 
 this heathen devil / wiltt " 
 
 She stood up before him, breathing 
 quickly, and he beheld in her not the soft, 
 slim-vvaisted little goddess of half an hour 
 ago, but the fiercest fighter of all the fight 
 ing ages, a woman roused. And no longer 
 fear, but a glory swept over him. She was 
 Conniston s sister, and she was Connlston. 
 Even as he saw his plans falling about him, 
 he opened his arms and held them out to 
 her, and with the swiftness of love she ran 
 into them, putting her hands to his face 
 while he held her close and kissed her lips. 
 
 "You bet we ll fix that heathen devil 
 before we go," he said. " You bet we will 
 sweetheart.*" 
 
WALLIE, suffering the outrage of one 
 who sees his dinner growing cold, 
 found Keith and Mary Josephine in the 
 edge of the golden birch and implored 
 them to come and eat. It was a marvel of 
 a dinner. Over Mary Josephine s coffee 
 and Keith s cigar they discussed their final 
 plans. Keith made the big promise that he 
 would " fix Shan Tung " in a hurry, per 
 haps that very afternoon. In the glow of 
 Mary Josephine s proud eyes he felt no 
 task too large for him, and he was eager 
 to be at it. But when his cigar was half 
 done, Mary Josephine came around and 
 perched herself on the arm of his chair, 
 and began running her fingers through his 
 hair. All desire to go after Shan Tung 
 left him. He would have remained there 
 forever. Twice she bent down and 
 touched his forehead lightly with her lips. 
 Again his arm was round her soft little 
 waist, and his heart was pumping like a 
 216 
 
THE RIVER S END 217 
 
 thing overworked. It was Mary Josephine, 
 finally, who sent him on his mission, but 
 not before she stood on tiptoe, her hand? 
 on his shoulders, giving him her mouth to 
 kiss. 
 
 An army at his back could not have 
 strengthened Keith with a vaster deter 
 mination than that kiss. There would be 
 no more quibbling. His mind was made 
 up definitely on the point. And his first 
 move was to head straight for the Kirk- 
 stone house on the hill. 
 
 He did not get as far as the door this 
 time. He caught a vision of Miriam Kirk- 
 stone in the shrubbery, bareheaded, her 
 hair glowing radiantly in the sun. It oc 
 curred to him suddenly that it was her 
 hair that roused the venom in him when 
 he thought of her as the property of Shan 
 Tung. If it had been black or even brown, 
 the thought might not have emphasized 
 itself so unpleasantly in his mind. But 
 that vivid gold cried out against the crime, 
 even against the girl herself. She saw him 
 almost in the instant his eyes fell upon her, 
 and came forward quickly to meet him. 
 There was an eagerness in her face that 
 
ai8 THE RIVER S END 
 
 told him his coming relieved her of a ter 
 rific suspense. 
 
 " I m sorry I wasn t at the Shack when 
 you came, Miss Kirkstone," he said, taking 
 for a moment the hand she offered him. 
 " I fancy you were up there to see me 
 about Shan Tung." 
 
 He sent the shot bluntly, straight home. 
 In the tone of his voice there was no 
 apology. He saw her grow cold, her eyes 
 fixed on him staringly, as though she not 
 only heard his words but saw what was in 
 his mind. 
 
 "Wasn t that it, Miss Kirkstone?" 
 
 She nodded affirmatively, but her lips 
 did not move. 
 
 "Shan Tung," he repeated. "Miss 
 Kirkstone, what is the trouble? Why don t 
 you confide in someone, in McDowell, in 
 me, in " 
 
 He was going to say " your brother," but 
 the suddenness with which she caught his 
 arm cut the words short. 
 
 " Shan Tung has been to see him . 
 McDowell?" she questioned excitedly. 
 "He has been there today? And he 
 told him " She stopped, breathing 
 
THE RIVER S END 219 
 
 quickly, her fingers tightening on his arm. 
 
 " I don t know what passed between 
 them," said Keith. " But McDowell was 
 tremendously worked up about you. So 
 am I. We might as well be frank, Miss 
 Kirkstone. There s something rotten in 
 Denmark when two people like you and 
 Shan Tung mix up. And you are mixed; 
 you can t deny it. You have been to see 
 Shan Tung late at night. He was in the 
 house with you the first night I saw you. 
 More than that he is in your house 
 now! " 
 
 She shrank back as if he had struck at 
 her. " No, no, no," she cried. " He isn t 
 there. I tell you, he isn t!" 
 
 " How am I to believe you? " demanded 
 Keith. "You have not told the truth to 
 McDowell. You are fighting to cover up 
 the truth. And we know it is because of 
 Shan Tung. Why? I am here to fight for 
 you, to help you. And McDowell, too. 
 That is why we must know. Miss Kirk- 
 stone, do you love the Chinaman?" 
 
 He knew the words were an insult. He 
 had guessed their effect. As if struck there 
 suddenly by a painter s brush, two vivid 
 
220 THE RIVER S END 
 
 spots appeared in the girl s pale cheeks. 
 She shrank back from him another step. 
 Her eyes blazed. Slowly, without turning 
 their flame from his face, she pointed to 
 the edge of the shrubbery a few feet from 
 where they were standing. He looked. 
 Twisted and partly coiled on the mold, 
 where it had been clubbed to death, was a 
 little green grass snake. 
 
 " I hate him like that! " she said. 
 
 His eyes came back to her. " Then for 
 some reason known only to you and Shan 
 Tung you have sold or are intending to 
 sell yourself to him! " 
 
 It was not a question. It was an accusa 
 tion. He saw the flush of anger fading 
 out of her cheeks. Her body relaxed, her 
 head dropped, and slowly she nodded in 
 confirmation. 
 
 " Yes, I am going to sell myself to him." 
 
 The astounding confession held him 
 mute for a space. In the interval it was 
 the girl who became self-possessed. What 
 she said next amazed him still more. 
 
 " I have confessed so much because I 
 am positive that you will not betray me. 
 And I went up to the Shack to find you, 
 
THE RIVER S END 221 
 
 because I want you to help me find a 
 story to tell McDowell. You said you 
 would help me. Will you? " 
 
 He still did not speak, and she went on. 
 
 " I am accepting that promise as 
 granted, too. McDowell mistrusts, but he 
 must not know. You must help me there. 
 You must help me for two or three weeks. 
 At the end of that time something may 
 happen. He must be made to have faith in 
 me again. Do you understand?" 
 
 " Partly/ said Keith. " You ask me to 
 do this blindly, without knowing why I 
 am doing it, without any explanation what 
 ever on your part except that for some 
 unknown and mysterious price you are 
 going to sell yourself to Shan Tung. You 
 want me to cover and abet this monstrous 
 deal by hoodwinking the man whose sus 
 picions threaten its consummation. If 
 there was not in my own mind a sus 
 picion that you are insane, I should say 
 your proposition is as ludicrous as it is im 
 possible. Having that suspicion, it is a 
 bit tragic. Also it is impossible. It is 
 necessary for you first to tell me why you 
 are going to sell yourself to Shan Tung." 
 
2*2 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Her face was coldly white and calm 
 again. But her hands trembled. He saw 
 her try to hide them, and pitied her. 
 
 " Then I won t trouble you any more, 
 for that, too, is impossible," she said. 
 " May I trust you to keep in confidence 
 what I have told you? Perhaps I have 
 had too much faith in you for a reason 
 which has no reason, because you were 
 with John Keith. John Keith was the one 
 other man who might have helped me." 
 
 " And why John Keith? How could he 
 have helped you? " 
 
 She shook her head. " If I told you 
 that, I should be answering the question 
 which is impossible." 
 
 He saw himself facing a checkmate. To 
 plead, to argue with her, he knew would 
 profit him nothing. A new thought came 
 to him, swift and imperative. The end 
 would justify the means. He clenched his 
 hands. He forced into his face a look that 
 was black and vengeful. And he turned 
 it on her. 
 
 " Listen to me," he cried. " You are 
 playing a game, and so am I. Possibly we 
 are selfish, both of us, looking each to his 
 
THE RIVER S END 223 
 
 own interests with no thought of the other. 
 Will you help me, if I help you?" 
 
 Again he pitied her as he saw with what 
 eager swiftness she caught at his bait. 
 
 " Yes," she nodded, catching her breath. 
 " Yes, I will help you." 
 
 His face grew blacker. He raised his 
 clenched hands so she could see them, and 
 advanced a step toward her. 
 
 " Then tell me this would you care if 
 something happened to Shan Tung? 
 Would you care if he died, if he was 
 killed, if " 
 
 Her breath was coming faster and faster. 
 Again the red spots blazed in her cheeks. 
 
 " Would you care?" he demanded. 
 
 " No no I wouldn t care. He de 
 serves to die." 
 
 " Then tell me where Shan Tung is. 
 For my game is with him. And I believe 
 it is a bigger game than your game, for it 
 is a game of life and death. That is why 
 I am interested in your affair. It is be 
 cause I am selfish, because I have my own 
 score to settle, and because you can help 
 me. I shall ask you no more questions 
 about yourself. And I shall keep your 
 
224 THE RIVER S END 
 
 secret and help you with McDowell if you 
 will keep mine and help me. First, where 
 is Shan Tung? " 
 
 She hesitated for barely an instant. " He 
 has gone out of town. He will be away 
 for ten days." 
 
 " But he bought no ticket; no one saw 
 him leave by train." 
 
 " No, he walked up the river. An auto 
 was waiting for him. He will pass 
 through tonight on the eastbound train on 
 his way to Winnipeg." 
 
 " Will you tell me why he is going to 
 Winnipeg? " 
 
 " No, I cannot." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. " It is 
 scarcely necessary to ask. I can guess. It 
 is to see your brother." 
 
 Again he knew he had struck home. 
 And yet she said, 
 
 " No, it is not to see my brother." 
 
 He held out his hand to her. "Miss 
 Kirkstone, I am going to keep my promise. 
 I am going to help you with McDowell. 
 Of course I demand my price. Will you 
 swear on your word of honor to let me 
 know the moment Shan Tung returns?" 
 
THE RIVER S END 225 
 
 * I will let you know." 
 
 Their hands clasped. Looking into her 
 eyes, Keith saw what told him his was not 
 the greatest cross to bear. Miriam Kirk- 
 stone also was fighting for her life, and as 
 he turned to leave her, he said: 
 
 " While there is life there is hope. In 
 settling my score with Shan Tung I believe 
 that I shall also settle yours. It is a 
 strong hunch, Miss Kirkstone, and it s 
 holding me tight Ten days, Shan Tung, 
 and then " 
 
 He left her, smiling. Miriam Kirkstone 
 watched him go, her slim hands clutched 
 at her breast, her eyes aglow with a new 
 thought, a new hope; and as he heard the 
 gate slam behind him, a sobbing cry rose in 
 her throat, and she reached out her hands 
 as if to call him back, for something was 
 telling her that through this man lay the 
 way to her salvation. 
 
 And her lips were moaning softly, " Ten 
 days ten days and then what? " 
 
XIX 
 
 IN those ten days all the wonders of 
 June came up out of the south. Life 
 pulsed with a new and vibrant force. The 
 crimson fire-flowers, first of wild blooms to 
 come after snow and frost, splashed the 
 green spaces with red. The forests took 
 on new colors, the blue of the sky grew 
 nearer, and in men s veins the blood ran 
 with new vigor and anticipations. To 
 Keith they were all this and more. Four 
 years along the rim of the Arctic had 
 made it possible for him to drink to the 
 full the glory of early summer along the 
 Saskatchewan. And to Mary Josephine it 
 was all new. Never had she seen a sum 
 mer like this that was dawning, that most 
 wonderful of all the summers in the world, 
 which comes in June along the southern 
 edge of the Northland. 
 
 Keith had played his promised part. 
 It was not difficult for him to wipe away 
 226 
 
THE RIVER S END 227 
 
 the worst of McDowell s suspicions re 
 garding Miss Kirkstone, for McDowell 
 was eager to believe. When Keith told 
 him that Miriam was on the verge of a 
 nervous breakdown simply because of cer 
 tain trouble into which Shan Tung had 
 inveigled her brother, and that everything 
 would be straightened out the moment 
 Shan Tung returned from Winnipeg, the 
 iron man seized his hands in a sudden 
 burst of relief and gratitude. 
 
 " But why didn t she confide in me, 
 Conniston? " he complained. " Why didn t 
 she confide in me?" The anxiety in his 
 voice, its note of disappointment, were 
 almost boyish. 
 
 Keith was prepared. " Because " 
 
 He hesitated, as if projecting the thing 
 in his mind. " McDowell, I m in a deli 
 cate position. You must understand with 
 out forcing me to say too much. You are 
 the last man in the world Miss Kirkstone 
 wants to know about her trouble until she 
 has triumphed, and it is over. Delicacy, 
 perhaps; a woman s desire to keep some 
 thing she is ashamed of from the one man 
 she looks up to above all other men to 
 
228 THE RIVER S END 
 
 keep it away from him until she has 
 cleared herself so that there is no suspicion. 
 McDowell, if I were you, I d be proud of 
 her for that." 
 
 McDowell turned away, and for a space 
 Keith saw the muscles in the back of his 
 neck twitching. 
 
 " Derwent, maybe you ve guessed, may 
 be you understand," he said after a moment 
 with his face still turned to the window. 
 " Of course she will never know. I m too 
 old, old enough to be her father. But 
 I ve got the right to watch over her, and 
 if any man ever injures her " 
 
 His fists grew knotted, and softly Keith 
 said behind him: 
 
 " You d possibly do what John Keith 
 did to the man who wronged his father. 
 And because the Law is not always omni 
 scient, it is also possible that Shan Tung 
 may have to answer in some such way. 
 Until then, until she comes to you of her 
 own free will and with gladness in her eyes 
 tells you her own secret and why she kept 
 it from you until she does that, I say, 
 it is your part to treat her as if you had 
 seen nothing, guessed nothing, suspected 
 
THE RIVER S END 229 
 
 nothing. Do that, McDowell, and leave 
 the rest to me." 
 
 He went out, leaving the iron man still 
 with his face to the window. 
 
 With Mary Josephine there was no 
 subterfuge. His mind was still centered 
 in his own happiness. He could not wipe 
 out of his brain the conviction that if he 
 waited for Shan Tung he was waiting just 
 so long under the sword of Damocles, 
 with a hair between him and doom. He 
 hoped that Miriam Kirkstone s refusal 
 to confide in him and her reluctance to 
 furnish him with the smallest facts in the 
 matter would turn Mary Josephine s sym 
 pathy into a feeling of indifference if not 
 of actual resentment. He was disap 
 pointed. Mary Josephine insisted on hav 
 ing Miss Kirkstone over for dinner the 
 next day, and from that hour something 
 grew between the two girls which Keith 
 knew he was powerless to overcome. 
 Thereafter he bowed his head to fate. 
 He must wait for Shan Tung. 
 
 " If it wasn t for your promise not to 
 fall in love, I d be afraid," Mary Jose 
 phine confided to him that night, perched 
 

 
 230 THE RIVER S END 
 
 on the arm of his big chair. " At times I 
 was afraid today, Derry. She s lovely. 
 And you like pretty hair and hers is 
 wonderful! " 
 
 " I don t remember," said Keith quietly, 
 " that I promised you I wouldn t fall in 
 love. I m desperately in love, and with 
 you, Mary Josephine. And as for Miss 
 Kirkstone s lovely hair I wouldn t trade 
 one of yours for all she has on her head." 
 
 At that, with a riotous little laugh of 
 joy, Mary Josephine swiftly unbound her 
 hair and let it smother about his face and 
 shoulders. " Sometimes I have a terribly 
 funny thought, Derry," she whispered. 
 " If we hadn t always been sweethearts, 
 back there at home, and if you hadn t 
 always liked my hair, and kissed me, and 
 told me I was pretty, I d almost think you 
 weren t my brother! " 
 
 Keith laughed and was glad that her 
 hair covered his face. 
 
 During those wonderful first days of the 
 summer they were inseparable, except 
 when matters of business took Keith away. 
 During these times he prepared for even 
 tualities. The Keith properties in Prince 
 
THE RIVER S END 231 
 
 Albert, he estimated, were worth at least 
 a hundred thousand dollars, and he learned 
 from McDowell that they would soon go 
 through a process of law before being 
 turned over to his fortunate inheritors. 
 Before that time, however, he knew that 
 his own fate would be sealed one way or 
 the other, and now that he had Mary 
 Josephine to look after, he made a will, 
 leaving everything to her, and signing him 
 self John Keith. This will he carried in 
 an envelope pinned inside his shirt. As 
 Derwent Conniston he collected one thou 
 sand two hundred and sixty dollars for 
 three and a half years back wage in the 
 Service. Two hundred and sixty of this he 
 kept in his own pocket. The remaining 
 thousand he counted out in new hundred- 
 dollar bills under Mary Josephine s eyes, 
 sealed the bills in another envelope, and 
 gave the envelope to her. 
 
 " It s safer with you than with me," he 
 excused himself. " Fasten it inside your 
 dress. It s our grub-stake into the moun 
 tains." 
 
 Mary Josephine accepted the treasure 
 the repressed delight of one upon 
 
232 THE RIVER S END 
 
 whose fair shoulders had been placed a 
 tremendous responsibility. 
 
 They were days of both joy and pain for 
 Keith. For even in the fullest hour? of 
 his happiness there was a thing eating at 
 his heart, a thing that was eating deeper 
 and deeper until at times it was like a 
 destroying flame within him. One night 
 he dreamed; he dreamed that Conniston 
 came to his bedside and wakened him, and 
 that after wakening him he taunted him 
 in ghoulish glee and told him that in be 
 queathing him a sister he had given unto 
 him forever and forever the curse of the 
 daughters of Achelous. And Keith, wak 
 ing in the dark hour of night, knew in his 
 despair that it was so. For all time, even 
 though he won this fight he was fighting, 
 Mary Josephine would be the unattainable. 
 A sister and he loved her with the love 
 of a man! 
 
 It was the next day after the dream 
 that they wandered again into the grove 
 that sheltered Keith s old home, and again 
 they entered it and went through the cold 
 and empty rooms. In one of these rooms 
 he sought among the titles of dusty rows 
 
AS KEITH I IAD DREAMED OF THOSE MOUNTAINS IN BOYHOOD, SO 
 NOW HE DREAMED HIS DREAMS ONCE AGAIN WITH 
 
 MARY JOSEPHINE. Page 233 
 
THE RIVER S END 233 
 
 of books until he came to one and opened 
 it. And there he found what had been 
 in the corner of his mind when the sun 
 rose to give him courage after the night of 
 his dream. The daughters of Achelous 
 had lost in the end. Ulysses had tricked 
 them. Ulysses had won. And in this day 
 and age it was up to him, John Keith, to 
 win, and win he would! 
 
 Always he felt this mastering certainty 
 of the future when alone with Mary 
 Josephine in the open day. With her at 
 his side, her hand in his, and his arm about 
 her waist, he told himself that all life was 
 a lie that there was no earth, no sun, no 
 song or gladness in all the world, if that 
 world held no hope for him. It was there. 
 It was beyond the rim of forest. It was 
 beyond the yellow plains, beyond the far 
 thest timber of the farthest prairie, be* 
 yond the foothills; in the heart of the 
 mountains was its abiding place. As he 
 had dreamed of those mountains in boy 
 hood and youth, so now he dreamed his 
 dreams over again with Mary Josephine. 
 For her he painted his pictures of them, 
 as they wandered mile after mile up the 
 
234 THE RIVER S END 
 
 shore of the Saskatchewan the little world 
 they would make all for themselves, how 
 they would live, what they would do, the 
 mysteries they would seek out, the triumphs 
 they would achieve, the glory of that world 
 ju?t for two. And Mary Josephine 
 planned and dreamed with him. 
 
 In a week they lived what might have 
 been encompassed in a year. So it seemed 
 to Keith, who had known her only so long. 
 With Mary Josephine the view-point was 
 different. There had been a long separa 
 tion, a separation filled with a heartbreak 
 which she would never forget, but it had 
 not served to weaken the bonds between 
 her and this loved one, who, she thought, 
 had always been her own. To her their 
 comradeship was more complete now than 
 it ever had been, even back in the old 
 days, for they were alone in a land that 
 was strange to her, and one was all that the 
 world held for the other. So her posses- 
 sorship of Keith was a thing which again 
 in the dark and brooding hours of night 
 sometimes made him writhe in an agony of 
 shame. Hers was a shameless love, a love 
 which had not even the lover s reason for 
 
THE RIVER S END 235 
 
 embarrassment, a love unreserved and open 
 as the day. It was her trick, nights, to 
 nestle herself in the big armchair with 
 him, and it was her fun to smother his 
 face in her hair and tumble it about him, 
 piling it over his mouth and nose until she 
 made him plead for air. Again she would 
 fit herself comfortably in the hollow of his 
 arm and sit the evening out with her head 
 on his shoulder, while they planned their 
 future, and twice in that week she fell 
 asleep there. Each morning she greeted 
 him with a kiss, and each night she came 
 to him to be kissed, and when it was her 
 pleasure she kissed him or made him kiss 
 her when they were on their long walks. 
 It was bitter-sweet to Keith, and more fre 
 quently came the hours of crushing deso 
 lation for him, those hours in the still, 
 dark night when his hypocrisy and his 
 crime stood out stark and hideous in his 
 troubled brain. 
 
 As this thing grew in him, a black and 
 foreboding thunderstorm on the horizon 
 of his dreams, an impulse which he did 
 not resist dragged him more and more fre 
 quently down to the old home, and Mary 
 
236 THE RIVER S END 
 
 Josephine was always with him. They let 
 no one know of these visits. And they 
 talked about John Keith, and in Mary 
 Josephine s eyes he saw more than once 
 a soft and starry glow of understanding. 
 She loved the memory of this man because 
 he, her brother, had loved him. And after 
 these hours came the nights when truth, 
 smiling at him, flung aside its mask and 
 stood a grinning specter, and he measured 
 to the depths the falseness of his triumph. 
 His comfort was the thought that she knew. 
 Whatever happened, she would know what 
 John Keith had been. For he, John Keith, 
 had told her. So much of the truth had 
 he lived. 
 
 He fought against the new strain that 
 was descending upon him slowly and stead 
 ily as the days passed. He could not but 
 see the new light that had grown in Mir 
 iam Kirkstone s eyes. At times it was more 
 than a dawn of hope. It was almost cer 
 tainty. She had faith in him, faith in his 
 promise to her, in his power to fight, his 
 strength to win. Her growing friendship 
 with Mary Josephine accentuated this, in 
 spiring her at times almost to a point of 
 
THE RIVER S END 237 
 
 conviction, for Mary Josephine s confi 
 dence in him was a passion. Even Mc 
 Dowell, primarily a fighter of his own 
 battles, cautious and suspicious, had faith 
 in him while he w r aited for Shan Tung. 
 It was this blind belief in him that de 
 pressed him more than all else, for he 
 knew that victory for himself must be 
 based more or less on deceit and treachery. 
 For the first time he heard Miriam laugh 
 with Mary Josephine; he saw the gold and 
 the brown head together out in the sun; 
 he saw her face shining with a light that 
 he had never seen there before, and then, 
 when he came upon them, their faces were 
 turned to him, and his heart bled even as 
 he smiled and held out his hands to Mary 
 Josephine. They trusted him, and he was 
 a liar, a hypocrite, a Pharisee. 
 
 On the ninth day he had finished supper 
 with Mary Josephine when the telephone 
 rang. He rose to answer it. It was 
 Miriam Kirkstone. 
 
 " He has returned," she said. 
 
 That was all. The words were in a 
 choking voice. He answered and hung up 
 the receiver. He knew a change had come 
 
238 THE RIVER S END 
 
 into his face when he turned to Mary 
 Josephine. He steeled himself to a com 
 posure that drew a questioning tenseness 
 into her face. Gently he stroked her soft 
 hair, explaining that Shan Tung had re 
 turned and that he was going to see him. 
 In his bedroom he strapped his Service 
 automatic under his coat. 
 
 At the door, ready to go, he paused. 
 Mary Josephine came to him and put her 
 hands to his shoulders. A strange unrest 
 was in her eyes, a question which she did 
 not ask. 
 
 Something whispered to him that it was 
 the last time. Whatever happened now, 
 tonight must leave him clean. His arms 
 went around her, he drew her close against 
 his breast, and for a space he held her 
 there, looking into her eyes. 
 
 "You love me?" he asked softly. 
 
 " More than anything else in the world," 
 she whispered. 
 
 " Kiss me, Mary Josephine." 
 
 Her lips pressed to his. 
 
 He released her from his arms, slowly, 
 lingeringly. 
 
 After that she stood in the lighted door- 
 
THE RIVER S END 239 
 
 way, watching him, until he disappeared in 
 the gloom of the slope. She called good- 
 by, and he answered her. The door closed. 
 And he went down into the valley, a hand 
 of foreboding gripping at his heart. 
 
XX 
 
 WITH a face out of which all color 
 had fled, and eyes rilled with the 
 ghosts of a new horror, Miriam Kirkstone 
 stood before Keith in the big room in the 
 house on the hill. 
 
 " He was here ten minutes," she said, 
 and her voice was as if she was forcing it 
 out of a part of her that was dead and 
 cold. It was lifeless, emotionless, a living 
 voice and yet strange with the chill of 
 death. " In those ten minutes he told me 
 that! If you fail " 
 
 It was her throat that held him, fas 
 cinated him. White, slim, beautiful her 
 heart seemed pulsing there. And he could 
 see that heart choke back the words she 
 was about to speak. 
 
 " If I fail " he repeated the words 
 
 slowly after her, watching that white, beat 
 ing throat. 
 
 " There is only the one thing left for me 
 to do. You you understand?" 
 
 240 
 
THE RIVER S END 241 
 
 " Yes, I understand. Therefore I shall 
 not fail." 
 
 He backed away from her toward the 
 door, and still he could not take his eyes 
 from the white throat with its beating 
 heart. " I shall not fail," he repeated. 
 " And when the telephone rings, you will 
 be here to answer? " 
 
 " Yes, here," she replied huskily. 
 
 He went out. Under his feet the 
 gravelly path ran through a flood of moon 
 light. Over him the sky was agleam with 
 stars. It was a white night, one of those 
 wonderful gold-white nights in the land of 
 the Saskatchewan. Under that sky the 
 world was alive. The little city lay in a 
 golden glimmer of lights. Out of it rose 
 a murmur, a rippling stream of sound, 
 the voice of its life, softened by the little 
 valley between. Into it Keith descended. 
 He passed men and women, laughing, talk 
 ing) g av - He heard music. The main 
 street was a moving throng. On a corner 
 the Salvation Army, a young woman, a 
 young man, a crippled boy, two young 
 girls, and an old man, were singing 
 "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Opposite 
 
242 THE RIVER S END 
 
 the Board of Trade building on the edge 
 of the river a street medicine-fakir had 
 drawn a crowd to his wagon. To the beat 
 of the Salvation Army s tambourine rose 
 the thrum of a made-up negro s banjo. 
 
 Through these things Keith passed, his 
 eyes open, his ears listening, but he passed 
 swiftly. What he saw and what he heard 
 pressed upon him with the chilling thrill 
 of that last swan-song, the swan-song of 
 Ecla, of Kobat, of Ty, who had heard 
 their doom chanted from the mountain- 
 tops. It was the city rising up about his 
 ears in rejoicing and triumph. And it 
 put in his heart a cold, impassive anger. 
 He sensed an impending doom, and yet he 
 was not afraid. He was no longer chained 
 by dreams, no more restrained by self. 
 Before his eyes, beating, beating, beating, 
 he saw that tremulous heart in Miriam 
 Kirkstone s soft, white throat. 
 
 He came to Shan Tung s. Beyond the 
 softly curtained windows it was a yellow 
 glare of light. He entered and met the 
 flow of life, the murmur of voices and 
 laughter, the tinkle of glasses, the scent 
 of cigarette smoke, and the fainter perfume 
 
THE RIVER S END 243 
 
 of incense. And where he had seen him 
 last, as though he had not moved since that 
 hour nine days ago, still with his ciga 
 rette, still sphinx-like, narrow-eyed, watch 
 ful, stood Li King. 
 
 Keith walked straight to him. And this 
 time, as he approached, Li King greeted 
 him with a quick and subtle smile. He 
 flipped his cigarette to the tiled floor. He 
 was bowing, gracious. Tonight he was not 
 stupid. 
 
 " I have come to see Shan Tung," said 
 Keith. 
 
 He had half expected to be refused, in 
 which event he was prepared to use his 
 prerogative as an officer of the law to gain 
 his point. But Li King did not hesitate. 
 He was almost eager. And Keith knew 
 that Shan Tung was expecting him. 
 
 They passed behind one of the screens 
 and then behind another, until it seemed to 
 Keith their way was a sinuous twisting 
 among screens. They paused before a 
 panel in the wall, and Li King pressed the 
 black throat of a long-legged, swan-necked 
 bird with huge wings and the panel opened 
 and swung toward them. It was dark in- 
 
244 THE RIVER S END 
 
 side, but Li King turned on a light. 
 Through a narrow hallway ten feet in 
 length he led the way, unlocked a second 
 door, and held it open, smiling at Keith. 
 
 " Up there," he said. 
 
 A flight of steps led upward and as 
 Keith began to mount them the door closed 
 softly behind him. Li King accompanied 
 him no further. 
 
 He mounted the steps, treading softly. 
 At the top was another door, and this he 
 opened as quietly as Li King had closed 
 the one below him. Again the omnipresent 
 screens, and then his eyes looked out upon 
 a scene which made him pause in astonish 
 ment. It was a great room, a room fifty 
 feet long by thirty in width, and never 
 before had he beheld such luxury as it con 
 tained. His feet sank into velvet carpets, 
 the walls were hung richly with the golds 
 and browns and crimsons of priceless tapes 
 tries, and carven tables and divans of deep 
 plush and oriental chairs filled the space 
 before him. At the far end was a raised 
 dais, and before this, illumined in candle- 
 glow, was a kneeling figure. He noticed 
 then that there were many candles burning, 
 
THE RIVER S END 245 
 
 that the room was lighted by candles, and 
 that in their illumination the figure did not 
 move. He caught the glint of armors 
 standing up, warrior like, against the 
 tapestries, and he wondered for a moment 
 if the kneeling figure was a heathen god 
 made of wood. It was then that he 
 smelled the odor of frankincense; it crept 
 subtly into his nostrils and his mouth, 
 sweetened his breath, and made him 
 cough. 
 
 At the far end, before the dais, the 
 kneeling figure began to move. Its arms 
 extended slowly, they swept backward, 
 then out again, and three times the figure 
 bowed itself and straightened, and with 
 the movement came a low, human mono 
 tone. It was over quickly. Probably two 
 full minutes had not passed since Keith 
 had entered when the kneeling figure 
 sprang to its feet with the quickness of a 
 cat, faced about, and stood there, smiling 
 and bowing and extending its hand. 
 
 "Good evening, John Keith!" It was 
 Shan Tung. An oriental gown fell about 
 him, draping him like a woman. It was 
 a crimson gown, grotesquely ornamented 
 
246 THE RIVER S END 
 
 with embroidered peacocks, and it flowed 
 and swept about him in graceful undula 
 tions as he advanced, his footfalls making 
 not the sound of a mouse on the velvet 
 floors. 
 
 " Good evening, John Keith! " He was 
 close, smiling, his eyes glowing, his hand 
 still outstretched, friendliness in his voice 
 and manner. And yet in that voice there 
 was a purr, the purr of a cat watching its 
 prey, and in his eyes a glow that was the 
 soft rejoicing of a triumph. 
 
 Keith did not take the hand. He made 
 as if he did not see it. He was looking 
 into those glowing, confident eyes of the 
 Chinaman. A Chinaman! Was it pos 
 sible? Could a Chinaman possess that 
 voice, whose very perfection shamed him? 
 
 Shan Tung seemed to read his thoughts, 
 And what he found amused him, and he 
 bowed again, still smiling. " I am Shan 
 Tung," he said with the slightest inflection 
 of irony. " Here in my home I am dif 
 ferent. Do you not recognize me? " 
 
 He waved gracefully a hand toward a 
 table on eithe^ side of which was a chain 
 He seated himself, not waiting for Keith. 
 
THE RIVER S END 247 
 
 Keith sat down opposite him. Again he 
 must have read what was in Keith s heart, 
 the desire and the intent to kill, for sud 
 denly he clapped his hands, not loudly, 
 once twice 
 
 " You will join me in tea? " he asked. 
 
 Scarcely had he spoken when about 
 them, on all sides of them it seemed to 
 Keith, there was a rustle of life. He saw 
 tapestries move. Before his eyes a panel 
 became a door. There was a clicking, a 
 stir as of gowns, soft footsteps, a movement 
 in the air. Out of the panel doorway came 
 a Chinaman with a cloth, napkins, and 
 chinaware. Behind him followed a second 
 with tea-urn and a bowl, and with the 
 suddenness of an apparition, without sound 
 or movement, a third was standing at 
 Keith s side. And still there was rustling 
 behind, still there was the whispering beat 
 of life, and Keith knew that there were 
 others. He did not flinch, but smiled back 
 at Shan Tung. A minute, no more, and 
 the soft-footed yellow men had performed 
 their errands and were gone. 
 
 " Quick service," he acknowledged. 
 "Very quick service, Shan Tung! But I 
 
248 THE RIVER S END 
 
 have my hand on something that is 
 quicker! " 
 
 Suddenly Shan Tung leaned over the 
 table. " John Keith, you are a fool if you 
 came here with murder in your heart," he 
 said. " Let us be friends. It is best. Let 
 us be friends." 
 
XXI 
 
 IT was as if with a swiftness invisible to 
 the eye a mask had dropped from Shan 
 Tung s face. Keith, preparing to fight, 
 urging himself on to the step which he 
 believed he must ta&e, was amazed. Shan 
 Tung was earnest. There was more than 
 earnestness in his eyes, an anxiety, a 
 frankly revealed hope that Keith would 
 meet him halfway. But he did not offer 
 his hand again. He seemed to sense, in 
 that instant, the vast gulf between yellow 
 and white. He felt Keith s contempt, the 
 spurning contumely that was in the other s 
 mind. Under the pallid texture of his skin 
 there began to burn a slow and growing 
 flush. 
 
 "Wait!" he said softly. In his flowing 
 gown he seemed to glide to a carven desk 
 near at hand. He was back in a moment 
 with a roll of parchment in his hand. He 
 sat down again and met Keith s eyes 
 
 249 
 
THE RIVER S END 
 
 quarely and in silence for a moment 
 "We are both men, John Keith." His 
 voice was soft and calm. His tapering 
 fingers with their carefully manicured 
 nails fondled the roll of parchment, and 
 then unrolled it, and held it so the other 
 could read. 
 
 It was a university diploma. Keith 
 stared. A strange name was scrolled upon 
 it, Kao Lung, Prince of Shantung. His 
 mind leaped to the truth. He looked at 
 the other. 
 
 The man he had known as Shan Tung 
 met his eyes with a quiet, strange smile, a 
 smile in which there was pride, a flash of 
 sovereignty, of a thing greater than skins 
 that were white. " I am Prince Kao," he 
 said. " That is my diploma. I am a 
 graduate of Yale." 
 
 Keith s effort to speak was merely a 
 grunt. He could find no words. And 
 Kao, rolling up the parchment and for 
 getting the urn of tea that was growing 
 cold, leaned a little over the table again. 
 And then it was, deep in his narrowed, 
 smoldering eyes, that Keith saw a devil, 
 a living, burning thing of passion, Kao s 
 
THE RIVER S END 251 
 
 soul itself. And Rao s voice was quiet, 
 deadly. 
 
 " I recognized you in McDowell s of 
 fice," he said. " I saw, first, that you were 
 not Derwent Conniston. And then it was 
 easy, so easy. Perhaps you killed Connis 
 ton. I am not asking, for I hated Con 
 niston. Some day I should have killed 
 him, if he had come back. John Keith, 
 from that first time we met, you were a 
 dead man. Why didn t I turn you over to 
 the hangman? Why did I warn you in 
 such a way that I knew you would come 
 to see me? Why did I save your life 
 which was in the hollow of my hand? 
 Can you guess? " 
 
 " Partly," replied Keith. " But go OR. 
 I am waiting." Not for an instant did it 
 enter his mind to deny that he was John 
 Keith. Denial was folly, a waste of time, 
 and just now he felt that nothing in the 
 world was more precious to him than time. 
 
 Kao s quick mind, scheming and treach 
 erous though it was, caught his view-point, 
 and he nodded appreciatively. " Good, 
 John Keith. It is easily guessed. Your 
 life is mine. I can save it. I can destroy 
 
2|2 THE RIVER S END 
 
 it And you, in turn, can be of service 
 to me. You help me, and I save you. It 
 is a profitable arrangement. And we both 
 are happy, for you keep Derwent Connis- 
 ton s sister and I I get my golden- 
 headed goddess, Miriam Kirkstone!" 
 
 " That much I have guessed," said 
 Keith. "Go on!" For a moment Kao 
 seemed to hesitate, to study the cold, gray 
 passiveness of the other s face. " You 
 love Derwent Conniston s sister," he con 
 tinued in a voice still lower and softer. 
 " And I I love my golden-headed god 
 dess. See! Up there on the dais I have 
 her picture and a tress of her golden hair, 
 and I worship them." 
 
 Colder and grayer was Keith s face as he 
 saw the slumbering passion burn fiercer in 
 Kao s eyes. It turned him sick. It was 
 a terrible thing which could not be called 
 love. It was a madness. But Kao, the 
 man himself, was not mad. He was a 
 monster. And while the eyes burned like 
 two devils, his voice was still soft and low. 
 
 " I know what you are thinking ; I see 
 what you are seeing," he said. " You are 
 thinking yellow, and you are seeing yellow. 
 
THE RIVER S END 253 
 
 My skin! My birthright! My " He 
 
 smiled, and his voice was almost caressing. 
 "John Keith, in Pe-Chi-Li is the great 
 city of Pekin, and Pe-Chi-Li is the greatest 
 province in all China. And second only 
 to that is the province of Shantung, which 
 borders Pe-Chi-Li, the home of our Em 
 perors for more centuries than you have 
 years. And for so many generations that 
 we cannot remember my forefathers have 
 been rulers of Shantung. My grandfather 
 was a Mandarin with the insignia of the 
 Eighth Order, and my father was Ninth 
 and highest of all Orders, with his palace 
 at Tsi-Nan, on the Yellow Sea. And I, 
 Prince Kao, eldest of his sons, came to 
 America to learn American law and Ameri 
 can ways. And I learned them, John Keith. 
 I returned, and with my knowledge I 
 undermined a government. For a time I 
 was in power, and then this thing you call 
 the god of luck turned against me, and I 
 fled for my life. But the blood is still 
 here " he put his hand softly to his breast, 
 " the blood of a hundred generations of 
 rulers. I tell you this because you d? r e 
 not betray me, you dare not tell them who 
 
54 THE RIVER S END 
 
 I am, though even that truth could not 
 harm me. I prefer to be known as Shan 
 Tung. Only you and Miriam Kirkstone 
 have heard as much." 
 
 Keith s blood was like fire, but his voice 
 was cold as ice. " Go on!" 
 
 This time there could be no mistake. 
 That cold gray of his passionless face, the 
 steely glitter in his eyes, were read cor 
 rectly by Kao. His eyes narrowed. For 
 the first time a dull flame leaped into his 
 colorless cheeks. 
 
 " Ah, I told you this because I thought 
 we would work together, friends," he 
 cried. " But it is not so. You, like my 
 golden-headed goddess, hate me! You 
 hate me because of my yellow skin. You 
 say to yourself that I have a yellow heart. 
 And she hates me, and she says that but 
 she is mine, mine!" He sprang suddenly 
 to his fe^i and swept about him with his 
 flowing arms. " See what I have prepared 
 for her! It is here she will come, here 
 she will live until I take her away. There, 
 on that dais, she will give up her soul and 
 her beautiful body to me and you can- 
 mot help it, she cannot help it, all the 
 
THE RIVER S END 254 
 
 world cannot help it and she is coming H 
 me tonight!" 
 
 " Tonight! gasped John Keith. 
 
 He, too, leaped to his feet. His face was 
 ghastly. And Kao, in his silken gown, was 
 sweeping his arms about him. 
 
 " See! The candles are lighted for her. 
 They are waiting. And tonight, w r hen the 
 town is asleep, she will come. And it is 
 you <who will make her come, John 
 Keith!" 
 
 Facing the devils in Kao s eyes, within 
 striking distance of a creature who was no 
 longer a man but a monster, Keith mar 
 veled at the coolness that held him back. 
 
 " Yes, it is you who will at last give her 
 soul and her beautiful body to me," he 
 repeated. " Come. I will show you how 
 and why! " 
 
 He glided toward the dais. His hand 
 touched a panel. It opened and in the 
 opening he turned about and waited for 
 Keith. 
 
 "Come!" he said. 
 
 Keith, drawing a deep breath, his soul 
 ready for the shock, his body ready for 
 action, followed him. 
 
XXII 
 
 INTO a narrow corridor, through a 
 second door that seemed made of 
 padded wool, and then into a dimly lighted 
 room John Keith followed Kao, the China 
 man. Out of this room there was no other 
 exit; it was almost square, its ceiling was 
 low, its walls darkly somber, and that life 
 was there Keith knew by the heaviness of 
 cigarette smoke in the air. For a moment 
 his eyes did not discern the physical evi 
 dence of that life. And then, staring at 
 him out of the yellow glow, he saw a face. 
 It was a haunting, terrible face, a face 
 heavy and deeply lined by sagging flesh 
 and with eyes sunken and staring. They 
 were more than staring. They greeted 
 Keith like living coals. Under the face 
 was a human form, a big, fat, sagging form 
 that leaned outward from its seat in a 
 chair. 
 
 ,Kao, bowing, sweeping his flowing rai- 
 256 
 
THE RIVER S END 257 
 
 mcnt with his arms, said, "John Keith, 
 allow me to introduce you to Peter Kirk- 
 
 stone." 
 
 For the first time amazement, shock, 
 came to Keith s lips in an audible cry. He 
 advanced a step. Yes, in that pitiable 
 wreck of a man he recognized Peter Kirk- 
 stone, the fat creature who had stood under 
 the picture of the Madonna that fateful 
 night, Miriam Kirkstone s brother! 
 
 And as he stood, speechless, Kao said: 
 " Peter Kirkstone, you know why I have 
 brought this man to you tonight. You 
 know that he is not Derwent Conniston. 
 t You know that he is John Keith, the 
 murderer of your father. Is it not so? " 
 
 The thick lips moved. The voice was 
 husky" Yes." 
 
 " He does not believe. So I have 
 brought him that he may listen to you. 
 Peter Kirkstone, is it your desire that your 
 sister, Miriam, give herself to me, Prince 
 Kao, tonight? " 
 
 Again the thick lips moved. This time 
 Keith saw the effort. He shuddered. He 
 knew these questions and answers had been 
 prepared. A doomed man was speaking. 
 
258 THE RIVER S END 
 
 And the voice came, choking, " YesJ 
 "Why?" 
 
 The terrible face of Peter Kirkstonc 
 seemed to contort. He looked at Kao. 
 And Kao s eyes were shining in that dull 
 room like the eyes of a snake. 
 " Because it will save my life." 
 " And why will it save your life? " 
 Again that pause, again the sickly, chok 
 ing effort. " Because / have killed a 
 
 man." 
 
 Bowing, smiling, rustling, Kao turned to 
 the door. " That is all, Peter Kirkstone. 
 Good night. John Keith, will you follow 
 me?" 
 
 Dumbly Keith followed through the 
 dark corridor, into the big room mellow 
 with candle-glow, back to the table with 
 its mocking tea-urn and chinaware. He 
 felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. 
 He sat down. And Kao sat opposite him 
 again. 
 
 " That is the reason, John Keith. Peter 
 Kirkstone, her brother, is a murderer, a 
 cold-blooded murderer. And only Miriam 
 Kirkstone and your humble servant, Prince 
 Kao, know his secret. And to buy iny 
 
THE RIVER S END 259 
 
 secret, to save his life, the golden-headed 
 goddess is almost ready to give herself to 
 me almost, John Keith. She will decide 
 tonight, when you go to her. She will 
 come. Yes, she will come tonight. I do 
 not fear. I have prepared for her the 
 candles, the bridal dais, the nuptial supper. 
 Oh, she will come. For if she does not, if 
 she fails, with tomorrow s dawn Peter 
 Kirkstone and John Keith both go to the 
 hangman! " 
 
 Keith, in spite of the horror that had 
 come over him, felt no excitement. The 
 whole situation was clear to him now, and 
 there was nothing to be gained by argu 
 ment, no possibility of evasion. Kao held 
 the winning hand, the hand that put his 
 back to the wall in the face of impossible 
 alternatives. These alternatives flashed 
 upon him swiftly. There were two and 
 only two flight, and alone, without Mary 
 Josephine; and betrayal of Miriam Kirk- 
 stone. Just how Kao schemed that he 
 should accomplish that betrayal, he could 
 not guess. 
 
 His voice, like his face, was cold and 
 strange when it answered the Chinaman; 
 
26o THE RIVER S END 
 
 it lacked passion; there was no emphasis, 
 no inflection that gave to one word more 
 than to another. And Keith, listening to 
 his own voice, knew what it meant. He 
 was cold inside, cold as ice, and his eyes 
 were on the dais, the sacrificial altar that 
 Kao had prepared, waiting in the candle- 
 glow. On the floor of that dais was a great 
 splash of dull-gold altar cloth, and it made 
 him think of Miriam Kirkstone s unbound 
 and disheveled hair strewn in its outraged 
 glory over the thing Kao had prepared for 
 her. 
 
 " I see. It is a trade, Kao. You are 
 offering me my life in return for Miriam 
 Kirkstone." 
 
 " More than that, John Keith. Mine is 
 the small price. And yet it is great to me, 
 for it gives me the golden goddess. But is 
 she more to me than Derwent Conniston s 
 sister may be to you? Yes, I am giving 
 you her, and I am giving you your life, 
 and I am giving Peter Kirkstone his life 
 all for one" 
 
 " For one," repeated Keith. 
 
 " Yes, for one." 
 
 " And I, John Keith, in some mysterious 
 
THE RIVER S END 261 
 
 way unknown to me at present, am to de 
 liver Miriam Kirkstone to you?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And yet, if I should kill you, now 
 where you sit " 
 
 Kao shrugged his slim shoulders, and 
 Keith heard that soft, gurgling laugh that 
 McDowell had said was like the splutter of 
 oil. 
 
 " I have arranged. It is all in writing. 
 If anything should happen to me, there are 
 messengers who would carry it swiftly. 
 To harm me would be to seal your own 
 doom. Besides, you would not leave here 
 alive. I am not afraid." 
 
 " How am I to deliver Miriam Kirk- 
 stone to you? " 
 
 Kao leaned fonvard, his fingers interlac 
 ing eagerly. " Ah, now you have asked the 
 question, John Keith! And we shall be 
 friends, great friends, for you see with the 
 eyes of wisdom. It will be easy, so easy 
 that you will wonder at the cheapness of 
 the task. Ten days ago Miriam Kirkstone 
 was about to pay my price. And then you 
 came. From that moment she saw you in 
 McDowell s office, there was a sudden 
 
262 THE RIVER S END 
 
 change. Why? I don t know. Perhaps 
 because of that thing you call intuition but 
 to which we give a greater name. Perhaps 
 only because you were the man who had 
 run down her father s murderer. I saw 
 her that afternoon, before you went up at 
 night. Ah, yes, I could see, I could under 
 stand the spark that had begun to grow 
 in her, hope, a w r ild, impossible hope, and 
 I prepared for it by leaving you my mes 
 sage. I went away. I knew that in a few 
 days all that hope would be centered in 
 you, that it would live and die in you, 
 that in the end it would be your word 
 that would bring her to me. And that 
 word you must speak tonight. You must 
 go to her, hope-broken. You must tell her 
 that no power on earth can save her, and 
 that Kao w r aits to make her a princess, that 
 tomorrow will be too late, that tonight 
 must the bargain be closed. She will 
 come. She will save her brother from the 
 hangman, and you, in bringing her, will 
 save John Keith and keep Derwent Con- 
 niston s sister. Is it not a great reward 
 for the little I am asking? " 
 
 It was Keith who now smiled into the 
 
THE RIVER S END 263 
 
 eyes of the Chinaman, but it was a smile 
 that did not soften that gray and rock-like 
 hardness that had settled in his face. 
 " Kao, you are a devil. I suppose that is a 
 compliment to your dirty ears. You re 
 rotten to the core of the thing that beats in 
 you like a heart; you re a yellow snake 
 from the skin in. I came to see you be 
 cause I thought there might be a way out 
 of this mess. I had almost made up my 
 mind to kill you. But I won t do that. 
 There s a better way. In half an hour I ll 
 be with McDowell, and I ll beat you out 
 by telling him that I m John Keith. And 
 I ll tell him this story of Miriam Kirk- 
 stone from begining to end. I ll tell him 
 of that dais you ve built for her your 
 sacrificial altar! and tomorrow Prince 
 Albert will rise to a man to drag you out 
 of this hole and kill you as they would 
 kill a rat. That is my answer, you slit- 
 eyed, Yale-veneered yellow devil! I may 
 die, and Peter Kirkstone may die, but 
 you ll not get Miriam Kirkstone!" 
 
 He was on his feet when he finished, 
 amazed at the calmness of his own voice, 
 amazed that his hands were steady and his 
 
264 THE RIVER S END 
 
 brain was cool in this hour of his sacrifice. 
 And Kao was stunned. Before his eyes he 
 saw a white man throwing away his life. 
 Here, in the final play, was a master-stroke 
 he had not foreseen. A moment before the 
 victor, he was now the vanquished. About 
 him he saw his world falling, his power 
 gone, his own life suddenly hanging by a 
 thread. In Keith s face he read the truth. 
 This white man was not bluffing. He 
 would go to McDowell. He would tell 
 the truth. This man who had ventured so 
 much for his own life and freedom would 
 now sacrifice that life to save a girl, one 
 girl! He could not understand, and yet he 
 believed. For it \vas there before his eyes 
 in that gray, passionless face that was as 
 inexorable as the face of one of his own 
 stone gods. 
 
 As he uttered the words that smashed all 
 that Kao had planned for, Keith sensed 
 rather than saw the swift change of emo 
 tion sweeping through the yellow-visaged 
 Moloch staring up at him. For a space the 
 oriental s evil eyes had widened, exposing 
 wider rims of saffron white, betraying his 
 amazement, the shock of Keith s unex- 
 
THE RIVER S END 265 
 
 pected revolt, and then the lids closed 
 slowly, until only dark and menacing 
 gleams of fire shot between them, and 
 Keith thought of the eyes of a snake. 
 Swift as the strike of a rattler Kao was on 
 his feet, his gown thrown back, one claw 
 ing hand jerking a derringer from his 
 silken belt. In the same breath he raised 
 his voice in a sharp call. 
 
 Keith sprang back. The snake-like 
 threat in the Chinaman s eyes had pre 
 pared him, and his Service automatic 
 leaped from its holster with lightning 
 swiftness. Yet that movement was no 
 swifter than the response to Kao s cry. 
 The panel shot open, the screens moved, 
 tapestries billowed suddenly as if moved 
 by the wind, and Kao s servants sprang 
 forth and were at him like a pack of dogs. 
 Keith had no time to judge their number, 
 for his brain was centered in the race with 
 Kao s derringer. He saw its silver mount 
 ings flash in the candle-glow, saw its spurt 
 of smoke and fire. But its report was 
 drowned in the roar of his automatic as 
 it replied with a stream of lead and flame. 
 He saw the derringer fall and Kao 
 
266 THE RIVER S END 
 
 crumple up like a jackknife. His brain 
 turned red as he swung his weapon on the 
 others, and as he fired, he backed toward 
 the door. Then something caught him 
 from behind, twisting his head almost 
 from his shoulders, and he went down. 
 
 He lost his automatic. Weight of bodies 
 was upon him; yellow hands clutched for 
 his throat; he felt hot breaths and heard 
 throaty cries. A madness of horror pos 
 sessed him, a horror that was like the blind 
 madness of Laocoon struggling with his 
 sons in the coils of the giant serpent. In 
 these moments he was not fighting men. 
 They were monsters, yellow, foul-smelling, 
 unhuman, and he fought as Laocoon 
 fought. As if it had been a cane, he 
 snapped the bone of an arm whose hand 
 was throttling him; he twisted back a head 
 until it snapped between its shoulders; he 
 struck and broke with a blind fury and a 
 giant strength, until at last, torn and cov 
 ered with blood, he leaped free and 
 reached the door. As he opened it and 
 sprang through, he had the visual im 
 pression that only two of his assailants were 
 rising from the floor. 
 
THE RIVER S END 267 
 
 For the space of a second he hesitated 
 fn the little hallway. Down the stairs was 
 light and people. He knew that he was 
 bleeding and his clothes were torn, and 
 that flight in that direction was impossible. 
 At the opposite end of the hall was a cur 
 tain which he judged must cover a window. 
 With a swift movement he tore down this 
 curtain and found that he was right. In 
 another second he had crashed the window 
 outward with his shoulder, and felt the 
 cool air of the night in his face. The door 
 behind him was still closed when he 
 crawled out upon a narrow landing at the 
 top of a flight of steps leading down into 
 the alley. He paused long enough to con 
 vince himself that his enemies were mak 
 ing no effort to follow him, and as he went 
 down the steps, he caught himself grimly 
 chuckling. He had given them enough. 
 
 In the darkness of the alley he paused 
 again. A cool breeze fanned his cheeks, 
 and the effect of it was to free him of the 
 horror that had gripped him in his fight 
 with the yellow men. Again the calmness 
 with which he had faced Kao possessed 
 him. The Chinaman was dead. He was 
 
268 THE RIVER S END 
 
 sure of that. And for him there was not 
 a minute to lose. 
 
 After all, it was his fate. The game had 
 been played, and he had lost. There was 
 one thing left undone, one play Conniston 
 would still make, if he were there. And 
 he, too, \vould make it. It was no longer 
 necessary for him to give himself up to 
 McDowell, for Kao was dead, and Miriam 
 Kirkstone was saved. It was still right and 
 just for him to fight for his life. But 
 Mary Josephine must know from him. It 
 was the last square play he could make. 
 
 No one saw him as he made his way 
 through alleys to the outskirts of the town. 
 A quarter of an hour later he came up the 
 slope to the Shack. It was lighted, and 
 the curtains \vere raised to brighten his 
 way up the hill. Mary Josephine was 
 waiting for him. 
 
 Again there came over him the strange 
 and deadly calmness \vith which he had 
 met the tragedy of that night. He had 
 tried to wipe the blood from his face, but 
 it was still there when he entered and 
 faced Mary Josephine. The wounds made 
 by the razor-like nails of his assailants 
 
THE RIVER S END 269 
 
 were bleeding; he was hatless, his hair was 
 disheveled, and his throat and a part of 
 his chest were bare where his clothes had 
 been torn away. As Mary Josephine came 
 toward him, her arms reaching out to him, 
 her face dead white, he stretched out a 
 restraining hand, and said, 
 
 " Please wait, Mary Josephine! " 
 
 Something stopped her the strangeness 
 of his voice, the terrible hardness of his 
 face, gray and blood-stained, the something 
 appalling and commanding in the way he 
 had spoken. He passed her quickly on his 
 way to the telephone. Her lips moved; 
 she tried to speak; one of her hands went 
 to her throat. He was calling Miriam 
 Kirkstone s number! And now she saw 
 that his hands, too, were bleeding. There 
 came the murmur of a voice in the tele 
 phone. Someone answered. And then she 
 heard him say, 
 
 "Shan Tung is dead!" 
 
 That was all. He hung up the receiver 
 and turned toward her. With a little cry 
 she moved toward him. 
 
 " DerryDerry " 
 
 He evaded her and pointed to the big 
 
270 THE RIVER S END 
 
 chair in front of the fireplace. " Sit down, 
 Mary Josephine." 
 
 She obeyed him. Her face was whiter 
 than he had thought a living face could be. 
 And then, from the beginning to the end, 
 he told her everything. Mary Josephine 
 made no sound, and in the big chair she 
 seemed to crumple smaller and smaller as 
 he confessed the great lie to her, from the 
 hour Conniston and he had traded identi 
 ties in the little cabin on the Barren. Until 
 he died he knew she would haunt him as 
 he saw her there for the last time her 
 dead-white face, her great eyes, her voice 
 less lips, her two little hands clutched at 
 her breast as she listened to the story of the 
 great lie and his love for her. 
 
 Even when he had done, she did not 
 move or speak. He went into his room, 
 closed the door, and turned on the lights. 
 Quickly he put into his pack what he 
 needed. And when he was ready, he wrote 
 on a piece of paper: 
 
 " A thousand times I repeat, I love 
 you. Forgive me if you can. If you can 
 not forgive, you may tell McDowell, and 
 
THE RIVER S END 271 
 
 the Law will find me up at the place of 
 our dreams the river s end. 
 
 JOHN KEITH." 
 
 This last message he left on the table for 
 Mary Josephine. 
 
 For a moment he listened at the door. 
 Outside there was no movement, no sound. 
 Quietly, then, he raised the window 
 through which Kao had come into his 
 room. 
 
 A moment later he stood under the light 
 of the brilliant stars. Faintly there came 
 to him the sounds of the city, the sound of 
 life, of gayety, of laughter and of happi 
 ness, rising to him now from out of the 
 valley. 
 
 He faced the north. Down the side of 
 the hill and over the valley lay the forests. 
 And through the starlight he strode back 
 to them once more, back to their cloisters 
 and their heritage, the heritage of the 
 hunted and the outcast 
 
XXIII 
 
 A^L through the starlit hours of that 
 night John Keith trudged steadily 
 into the Northwest. For a long time his 
 direction took him through slashings, sec 
 ond-growth timber, and cleared lands; he 
 followed rough roads and worn trails and 
 passed cabins that were dark and without 
 life in the silence of midnight. Twice a 
 dog caught the stranger scent in the air 
 and howled ; once he heard a man s voice, 
 far away, raised in a shout. Then the 
 trails grew rougher. He came to a deep 
 wide swamp. He remembered that swamp, 
 and before he plunged into it, he struck a 
 match to look at his compass and his watch. 
 It took him two hours to make the other 
 side. He was in the deep and uncut timber 
 then, and a sense of relief swept over him. 
 The forest was again his only friend. 
 
 He did not rest. His brain and his body 
 demanded the action of steady progress, 
 though it was not through fear of what lajr 
 
 272 
 
THE RIVER S END 273 
 
 behind him. Fear had ceased to be a 
 stimulating part of him; it was even dead 
 within him. It was as if his energy was 
 engaged in fighting for a principle, and the 
 principle was his life; he was following a 
 duty, and this duty impelled him to make 
 his greatest effort. He saw clearly what 
 he had done and what was ahead of him. 
 He was twice a killer of men now, and 
 each time the killing had rid the earth of a 
 snake. This last time it had been an ex 
 ceedingly good job. Even McDowell 
 would concede that, and Miriam Kirk- 
 stone, on her knees, would thank God for 
 what he had done. But Canadian law 
 did not split hairs like its big neighbor on 
 the south. It wanted him at least for 
 Kirkstone s killing if not for that of Kao, 
 the Chinaman. No one, not even Mary 
 Josephine, would ever fully realize what 
 he had sacrificed for the daughter of the 
 man who had ruined his father. For Mary 
 Josephine would never understand how 
 deeply he had loved her. 
 
 It surprised him to find how naturally 
 he fell back into his old habit of discuss 
 ing things with himself, and how com- 
 
274 THE RIVER S END 
 
 pletely and calmly he accepted the fact 
 that his home-coming had been but a brief 
 and wonderful interlude to his fugitivism. 
 He did not know it at first, but this calm 
 ness was the calmness of a despair more 
 fatal than the menace of the hangman. 
 
 " They won t catch me," he encouraged 
 himself. " And she won t tell them where 
 I m going. No, she won t do that." 
 
 He found himself repeating that thought 
 over and over again. Mary Josephine 
 would not betray him. He repeated it, 
 not as a conviction, but to fight back and 
 hold down another thought that persisted 
 in forcing itself upon him. And this thing, 
 that at times was like a voice within him, 
 cried out in its moments of life, " She 
 hates you and she will tell where you are 
 going!" 
 
 With each hour it was harder for him to 
 keep that voice down; it persisted, it grew 
 stronger; in its intervals of triumph it 
 rose over and submerged all other thoughts 
 in him. It was not his fear of her be 
 trayal that stabbed him; it was the under 
 lying motive of it, the hatred that would 
 inspire it. He tried not to vision her a$ 
 
THE RIVER S END 275 
 
 he had seen her last, in the big chair, 
 crushed, shamed, outraged seeing in him 
 no longer the beloved brother, but an im 
 postor, a criminal, a man whom she might 
 suspect of killing that brother for his name 
 and his place in life. But the thing forced 
 itself on him. It was reasonable, and it 
 was justice. 
 
 " But she won t do it," he told himself, 
 " She won t do it." 
 
 This was his fight, and its winning meant 
 more to him than freedom. It was Mary 
 Josephine who would live with him now, 
 and not Conniston. It was her spirit that 
 would abide with him, her voice he would 
 hear in the \vhispers of the night, her face 
 he would see in the glow of his lonely fires, 
 and she must remain with him always as 
 the Mary Josephine he had known. So he 
 crushed back the whispering voice, beat 
 it down with his hands clenched at his 
 side, fought it through the hours of that 
 night with the desperation of one who 
 fights for a thing greater than life. 
 
 Toward dawn the stars began to fade 
 out of the sky. He had been tireless, and 
 he was tireless now. He felt no exhaus- 
 
276 THE RIVER S END 
 
 tion. Through the gray gloom that came 
 before day he went on, and the first glow 
 of sun found him still traveling. Prince 
 Albert and the Saskatchewan were thirty 
 miles to the south and east of him. 
 
 He stopped at last on the edge of a 
 little lake and unburdened himself of his 
 pack for the first time. He was glad that 
 the premonition of just such a sudden 
 flight as this had urged him to fill his 
 emergency grub-sack yesterday morning. 
 "Won t do any harm for us to be pre 
 pared," he had laughed jokingly to Mary 
 Josephine, and Mary Josephine herself had 
 made him double the portion of bacon 
 because she \vas fond of it. It was hard 
 for him to slice that bacon without a lump 
 rising in his throat. Pork and love! He 
 wanted to laugh, and he wanted to cry, 
 and between the two it was a queer, half- 
 choked sound that came to his lips. He 
 ate a good breakfast, rested for a couple of 
 hours, and went on. At a more leisurely 
 pace he traveled through most of the day, 
 and at night he camped. 
 
 In the ten days following his flight from 
 Prince Albert he kept utterly out of sight 
 
THE RIVER S END 277 
 
 Pie avoided trappers shacks and trails and 
 occasional Indians. He rid himself of his 
 beard and shaved himself every other day. 
 Mary Josephine had never cared much for 
 the beard. It prickled. She had wanted 
 him smooth-faced, and now he was that. 
 He looked better, too. But the most strik 
 ing resemblance to Derwent Conniston was 
 gone. At the end of the ten days he was 
 at Turtle Lake, fifty miles east of Fort 
 Pitt. He believed that he could show him 
 self openly now, and on the tenth day 
 bartered with some Indians for fresh sup 
 plies. Then he struck south of Fort Pitt, 
 crossed the Saskatchewan, and hit between 
 the Blackfoot Hills and the Vermillion 
 River into the Buffalo Coulee country. In 
 the open country he came upon occasional 
 ranches, and at one of these he purchased a 
 pack-horse. At Buffalo Lake he bought 
 his supplies for the mountains, including 
 fifty steel traps, crossed the upper branch 
 of the Canadian Pacific at night, and the 
 next day saw in the far distance the purple 
 haze of the Rockies. 
 
 It was six weeks after the night in Kao s 
 place that he struck the Saskatchewan 
 
278 THE RIVER S END 
 
 again above the Brazeau. He did not 
 hurry now. Just ahead of him slumbered 
 the mountains; very close was the place 
 of his dreams. But he was no longer im 
 pelled by the mighty lure of the years that 
 were gone. Day by day something had 
 worn away that lure, as the ceaseless grind 
 of water wears away rock, and for two 
 weeks he wandered slowly and without 
 purpose in the green valleys that lay under 
 the snow-tipped peaks of the ranges. He 
 was gripped in the agony of an unutter 
 able loneliness, which fell upon and 
 scourged him like a disease. It was a 
 deeper and more bitter thing than a 
 yearning for companionship. He might 
 have found that. Twice he was near 
 camps. Three times he saw outfits coming 
 out, and purposely drew away from them. 
 He had no desire to meet men, no desire to 
 talk or to be troubled by talking. Day 
 and night his body and his soul cried out 
 for Mary Josephine, and in his despair 
 he cursed those who had taken her away 
 from him. It was a crisis which was 
 bound to come, and in his aloneness he 
 fought it out. Day after day he fought it, 
 
THE RIVER S END 279 
 
 until his face and his heart bore the scars 
 of it. It was as if a being on whom he 
 had set all his worship had died, only it 
 was worse than death. Dead, Mary Jose 
 phine would still have been his inspira 
 tion; in a way she would have belonged to 
 him. But living, hating him as she must, 
 his dreams of her were a sacrilege and his 
 love for her like the cut of a sword. 
 
 In the end he was like a man who had 
 triumphed over a malady that would 
 always leave its marks upon him. In the 
 beginning of the third week he knew that 
 he had conquered, just as he had tri 
 umphed in a similar way over death and 
 despair in the north. He would go into 
 the mountains, as he had planned. He 
 would build his cabin. And if the Law 
 came to get him, it was possible that again 
 he would fight. 
 
 On the second day of this third week 
 he saw advancing toward him a solitary 
 horseman. The stranger was possibly a 
 mile away when he discovered him, and 
 he was coming straight down the flat of 
 the valley. That he was not accompanied 
 by a pack-horse surprised Keith, for he 
 
280 THE RIVER S END 
 
 was bound out of the mountains and not 
 in. Then it occurred to him that he might 
 be a prospector whose supplies were ex 
 hausted, and that he was easing his jour 
 ney by using his pack as a mount. Who 
 ever and whatever he was, Keith was not 
 in any humor to meet him, and without 
 attempting to conceal himself he swung 
 away from the river, as if to climb the 
 slope of the mountain on his right. No 
 sooner had he clearly signified the new 
 direction he was taking, than the stranger 
 deliberately altered his course in a way 
 to cut him off. Keith was irritated. 
 Climbing up a narrow terrace of shale, 
 he headed straight up the slope, as if his 
 intention were to reach the higher terraces 
 of the mountain, and then he swung sud 
 denly down into a coulee, where he was 
 out of sight. Here he waited for ten 
 minutes, then struck deliberately and 
 openly back into the valley. 
 
 He chuckled when he saw how cleverly 
 his ruse had worked. The stranger was 
 a quarter of a mile up the mountain and 
 still climbing. 
 
 " Now what the devil is he taking 
 
THE RIVER S END 281 
 
 all that trouble for?" Keith asked him 
 self. 
 
 An instant later the stranger saw him 
 again. For perhaps a minute he halted, 
 and in that minute Keith fancied he was 
 getting a round cursing. Then the stran 
 ger headed for him, and this time there 
 was no escape, for the moment he struck 
 the shelving slope of the valley, he 
 prodded his horse into a canter, swiftly 
 diminishing the distance between them. 
 Keith unbuttoned the flap of his pistol 
 holster and maneuvered so that he would 
 be partly concealed by his pack when the 
 horseman rode up. The persistence of the 
 stranger suggested to him that Mary Jose 
 phine had lost no time in telling Mc 
 Dowell where the law would be most 
 likely to find him. 
 
 Then he looked over the neck of his 
 pack at the horseman, who was quite near, 
 and was convinced that he was not an 
 officer, He was still jogging at a canter 
 and riding atrociously. One leg was flap 
 ping as if it had lost its stirrup-hold; the 
 rider s arms were pumping, and his hat 
 was sailing behind at the end of a string. 
 
282 THE RIVER S END 
 
 "Whoa! "said Keith. 
 
 His heart stopped its action. He was 
 staring at a big red beard and a huge, 
 shaggy head. The horseman reined in, 
 floundered from his saddle, and swayed 
 forward as if seasick. 
 
 " Well, I ll be - " 
 
 Johnny Johnny Keith! 
 
XXIV 
 
 FOR a matter of ten seconds neither of 
 the two men moved. Keith was 
 stunned. Andy Duggan s eyes were fairly 
 popping out from under his bushy brows. 
 And then unmistakably Keith caught the 
 scent of bacon in the air. 
 
 "Andy Andy Duggan," he choked. 
 " You know me you know Johnny Keith 
 you know me you " 
 
 Duggan answered with an inarticulate 
 bellow and jumped at Keith as if to bear 
 him to the ground. He hugged him, and 
 Keith hugged, and then for a minute they 
 stood pumping hands until their faces were 
 red, and Duggan was growling over and 
 over: 
 
 " An you passed me there at McCoffin s 
 Bend an I didn t know you, I didn t 
 know you, I didn t know you! I thought 
 you was that cussed Conniston! I did. 
 I thought you was Conniston ! " He stood 
 back at last. " Johnny Johnny Keith! " 
 
 383 
 
284 THE RIVER S END 
 
 " Andy, you blessed old devil! " 
 
 They pumped hands again, pounded 
 shoulders until they were sore, and in 
 Keith s face blazed once more the love of 
 life. 
 
 Suddenly old Duggan grew rigid and 
 sniffed the air. "I smell bacon!" 
 
 " It s in the pack, Andy. But for 
 Heaven s sake don t notice the bacon until 
 you explain how you happen to be 
 here." 
 
 " Been waitin for you," replied Duggan 
 in an affectionate growl. " Knew you d 
 have to come down this valley to hit the 
 Little Fork. Been waitin six weeks." 
 
 Keith dug his fingers into Duggan s 
 arm. 
 
 " How did you know I was coming 
 here?" he demanded. "Who told you?" 
 
 " All come out in the wash, Johnny. 
 Pretty mess. Chinaman dead. Johnny 
 Keith, alias Conniston, alive an living 
 with Conniston s pretty sister. Johnny gone 
 skipped. No one knew where. I made 
 guesses. Knew the girl would know if 
 anyone did. I went to her, told her how 
 you n me had been pals, an she give me 
 
THE RIVER S END 285 
 
 the idee you was goin up to the river s 
 end. I resigned from the Betty M., that 
 night. Told her, though, that she was a 
 ninny if she thought you d go up there. 
 Made her believe the note was just a 
 blind." 
 
 "My God," breathed Keith hopelessly, 
 " I meant it." 
 
 " Sure you did, Johnny. I knew it. But 
 I didn t dare let her know it. If you could 
 ha seen that pretty mouth o hern curlin 
 up as if she d liked to have bit open your 
 throat, an her hands clenched, an that 
 murder in her eyes Man, I lied to her 
 then! I told her I was after you, an that 
 if she wouldn t put the police on you, I d 
 bring back your head to her, as they used 
 to do in the old times. An she bit. Yes, 
 sir, she said to me, If you ll do that, I 
 won t say a word to the police! An here 
 I am, Johnny. An if I keep my word 
 with that little tiger, I ve got to shoot you 
 right now. Haw! Haw! " 
 
 Keith had turned his face away. 
 
 Duggan, pulling him about by the 
 shoulders, opened his eyes wide in amaze 
 ment. " Johnny " 
 
286 THE RIVER S END 
 
 " Maybe you don t understand, Andy," 
 struggled Keith. " I m sorry she feels 
 like that." 
 
 For a moment Duggan was silent. Then 
 he exploded with a sudden curse. 
 "Sorry! What the devil you sorry for, 
 Johnny? You treated her square, an you 
 left her almost all of Conniston s money. 
 She ain t no kick comin , and she ain t no 
 reason for feelin like she does. Let er go 
 to the devil, I say. She s pretty an sweet 
 an all that but when anybody wants to 
 go clawin your heart out, don t be fool 
 enough to feel sorry about it. You lied to 
 her, but what s that? There s bigger lies 
 than yourn been told, Johnny, a whole 
 sight bigger! Don t you go worryin . I ve 
 been here waitin six weeks, an I ve done 
 a lot of thinkin , and all our plans are set 
 an hatched. An I ve got the nicest cabin 
 all built and waitin for us up the Little 
 Fork. Here we are. Let s be joyful, 
 son! " He laughed into Keith s tense, gray 
 face. "Let s be joyful!" 
 
 Keith forced a grin. Duggan didn t 
 know. He hadn t guessed what that " little 
 tiger who would have liked to have bit 
 
THE RIVER S END 287 
 
 open his throat" had been to him. The 
 thick-headed old hero, loyal to the bottom 
 of his soul, hadn t guessed. And it came 
 to Keith then that he would never tell 
 him. He would keep that secret. He 
 would bury it in his burned-out soul, and 
 he would be " joyful " if he could. Dug- 
 gan s blazing, happy face, half buried in 
 its great beard, was like the inspiration 
 and cheer of a sun rising on a dark world. 
 He was not alone. Duggan, the old Dug- 
 gan of years ago, the Duggan who had 
 planned and dreamed with him, his best 
 friend, was with him now, and the light 
 came back into his face as he looked 
 toward the mountains. Off there, only a 
 few miles distant, was the Little Fork, 
 winding into the heart of the Rockies, 
 seeking out its hidden valleys, its trailless 
 canons, its hidden mysteries. Life lay 
 ahead of him, life with its thrill and ad 
 venture, and at his side was the friend of 
 all friends to seek it with him. He thrust 
 out his hands. 
 
 " God bless you, Andy," he cried. 
 "You re the gamest pal that ever 
 lived!" 
 
288 THE RIVER S END 
 
 A moment later Duggan pointed to a 
 clump of timber half a mile ahead. " It s 
 past dinner-time," he said. " There s 
 wood. If you ve got any bacon aboard, I 
 move we eat." 
 
 An hour later Andy was demonstrating 
 that his appetite was as voracious as ever. 
 Before describing more of his own activi 
 ties, he insisted that Keith recite his ad 
 ventures from the night " he killed that old 
 skunk, Kirkstone." 
 
 It was two o clock when they resumed 
 their journey. An hour later they struck 
 the Little Fork and until seven traveled up 
 the stream. They were deep in the lap of 
 the mountains when they camped for the 
 night. After supper, smoking his pipe, 
 Duggan stretched himself out comfortably 
 with his back to a tree. 
 
 " Good thing you come along when you 
 did, Johnny," he said. " I been waitin 
 in that valley ten days, an the eats was 
 about gone when you hove in sight. Meant 
 to hike back to the cabin for supplies to 
 morrow or next day. Gawd, ain t this the 
 life! An we re goin to find gold, Johnny, 
 we re goin to find it!" 
 
THE RIVER S END 289 
 
 "We ve got all our lives to to find it 
 in," said Keith. 
 
 Duggan puffed out a huge cloud of 
 smoke and heaved a great sigh of pleas 
 ure. Then he grunted and chuckled. 
 " Lord, what a little firebrand that 
 sister of Conniston s is!" he exclaimed. 
 " Johnny, I bet if you d walk in on her 
 now, she d kill you with her own hands. 
 Don t see why she hates you so, just be 
 cause you tried to save your life. Of 
 course you must ha lied like the devil. 
 Couldn t help it. But a lie ain t nothin . 
 I ve told some whoppers, an no one ain t 
 never wanted to kill me for it. I ain t 
 afraid of McDowell. Everyone said the 
 Chink \vas a good riddance. It s the girl. 
 There won t be a minute all her life she 
 ain t thinkin of you, an she won t be 
 satisfied until she s got you. That is, she 
 thinks she won t. But we ll fool the little 
 devil, Johnny. We ll keep our eyes open 
 an fool her! 
 
 " Let s talk of pleasanter things," said 
 Keith. " I ve got fifty traps in the pack, 
 Andy. You remember how we used to 
 plan on trapping during the winter and 
 
290 THE RIVER S END 
 
 hunting for gold during the summer? * 
 
 Duggan rubbed his hands until they 
 made a rasping sound; he talked of lynx 
 signs he had seen, and of marten and fox. 
 He had panned " colors " at a dozen places 
 along the Little Fork and was ready to 
 make his affidavit that it was the same 
 gold he had dredged at McCoffin s Bend. 
 
 " If we don t find it this fall, we ll be 
 sittin on the mother lode next summer," 
 he declared, and from then until it was 
 time to turn in he talked of nothing but 
 the yellow treasure it had been his life 
 long dream to find. At the last, when 
 they had rolled in their blankets, he raised 
 himself on his elbow for a moment and 
 said to Keith: 
 
 " Johnny, don t you worry about that 
 Conniston girl. I forgot to tell you I ve 
 took time by the forelock. Two weeks 
 ago I wrote an told her I d learned you 
 was hittin into the Great Slave country, 
 an that I was about to hike after you. So 
 go to sleep an don t worry about that 
 pesky little rattlesnake." 
 
 " I m not worrying," said Keith. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later he heard Duggan 
 
THE RIVER S END 291 
 
 snoring. Quietly he unwrapped his blan 
 ket and sat up. There were still burning 
 embers in the fire, the night like that first 
 night of his flight w r as a glory of stars, 
 and the moon was rising. Their camp was 
 in a small, meadowy pocket in the center 
 of which was a shimmering little lake 
 across w r hich he could easily have thrown 
 a stone. On the far side of this was the 
 sheer w r all of a mountain, and the top of 
 this wall, thousands of feet up, caught the 
 glow of the moon first. Without awaken 
 ing his comrade, Keith walked to the lake. 
 He watched the golden illumination as it 
 fell swiftly lower over the face of the 
 mountain. He could see it move like a 
 great flood. And then, suddenly, his 
 shadow shot out ahead of him, and he 
 turned to find the moon itself glowing like 
 a monstrous ball between the low shoul 
 ders of a mountain to the east. The world 
 about him became all at once vividly and 
 wildly beautiful. It was as if a curtain 
 had lifted so swiftly the eye could not 
 follow it. Every tree and shrub and rock 
 stood out in a mellow spotlight; the lake 
 was transformed to a pool of molten 
 
292 THE RIVER S END 
 
 silver, and as far as he could see, where 
 shoulders and ridges did not cut him out, 
 the moonlight was playing on the moun 
 tains. In the air was a soft droning like low 
 music, and from a distant crag came the 
 rattle of loosened rocks. He fancied, for 
 a moment, that Mary Josephine was stand 
 ing at his side, and that together they were 
 drinking in the wonder of this dream at 
 last come true. Then a cry came to his 
 lips, a broken, gasping man-cry which he 
 could not keep back, and his heart was 
 filled with anguish. 
 
 With all its beauty, all its splendor of 
 quiet and peace, the night was a bitter 
 one for Keith, the bitterest of his life. He 
 had not believed the worst of Mary Jose 
 phine. He knew he had lost her and that 
 she might despise him, but that she would 
 actually hate him with the desire for a 
 personal vengeance he had not believed. 
 Was Duggan right? Was Mary Josephine 
 unfair? And should he in self defense 
 fight to poison his own thoughts against 
 her? His face set hard, and a joyless laugh 
 fell from his lips. He knew that he was 
 facing the inevitable. No matter what 
 
THE RIVER S END 293 
 
 had happened, he must go on loving 
 Mary Josephine. 
 
 All through that night he was awake. 
 Half a dozen times he went to his blanket, 
 but it was impossible for him to sleep. At 
 four o clock he built up the fire and at 
 five roused Duggan. The old river-man 
 sprang up with the enthusiasm of a boy. 
 He came back from the lake with his 
 beard and head dripping and his face 
 glowing. All the mountains held no 
 cheerier comrade than Duggan. 
 
 They were on the trail at six o clock and 
 hour after hour kept steadily up the Little 
 Fork. The trail grew rougher, narrower, 
 and more difficult to follow r , and at in 
 tervals Duggan halted to make sure of 
 the way. At one of these times he said 
 to Keith: 
 
 " Las night proved there ain t no danger 
 from her, Johnny. I had a dream, an 
 dreams goes by contraries an always have. 
 What you dream never comes true. It s 
 always the opposite. An I dreamed that 
 little she-devil come up on you when you 
 was asleep, took a big bread-knife, an cut 
 jour head plumb off! Yessir, I could see 
 
294 THE RIVER S END 
 
 her holdin up that head o yourn, an 
 the blood was drippin , an she was 
 a-laughin " 
 
 "Shut up!" Keith fairly yelled the 
 words. His eyes blazed. His face was 
 dead white. 
 
 With a shrug of his huge shoulders and 
 a sullen grunt Duggan went on. 
 
 An hour later the trail narrowed into a 
 short canon, and this canon, to Keith s sur 
 prise, opened suddenly into a beautiful 
 valley, a narrow oasis of green hugged in 
 between the two ranges. Scarcely had 
 they entered it, when Duggan raised his 
 voice in a series of wild yells and began 
 firing his rifle into the air. 
 
 " Home-coming," he explained to Keith, 
 after he was done. " Cabin s just over 
 that bulge. Be there in ten minutes." 
 
 In less than ten minutes Keith saw it, 
 sheltered in the edge of a thick growth 
 of cedar and spruce from which its 
 timbers had been taken. It was a larger 
 cabin than he had expected to see twice, 
 three times as large. 
 
 "How did you do it alone!" he ex 
 claimed in admiration. " It s a w r onder, 
 
THE RIVER S END 295 
 
 Andy. Big enough for for a whole 
 family!" 
 
 " Half a dozen Indians happened along, 
 an I hired em," explained Duggan. 
 " Thought I might as well make it big 
 enough, Johnny, seein I had plenty of 
 help. Sometimes I snore pretty loud, 
 
 an " 
 
 " There s smoke coming out of it," cried 
 Keith. 
 
 " Kept one of the Indians," chuckled 
 Duggan. " Fine cook, an a sassy-lookin 
 little squaw she is, Johnny! Her husband 
 died last winter, an she jumped at the 
 chance to stay, for her board an five bucks 
 a month. How s your Uncle Andy for a 
 schemer, eh, Johnny? " 
 
 A dozen rods from the cabin was a 
 creek. Duggan halted here to water his 
 horse and nodded for Keith to go on. 
 
 "Take a look, Johnny; go ahead an 
 take a look! I m sort of sot up over that 
 cabin." 
 
 Keith handed his reins to Duggan and 
 obeyed. The cabin door was open, and 
 he entered. One look assured him that 
 Duggan had good reason to be " sot up." 
 
296 THE RIVER S END 
 
 The first big room reminded him of the 
 Shack. Beyond that was another room 
 in which he heard someone moving and 
 the crackle of a fire in a stove. Outside 
 Duggan was whistling. He broke off 
 whistling to sing, and as Keith listened to 
 the river-man s bellowing voice chanting 
 the words of the song he had sung at Mc- 
 Coffin s Bend for twenty years, he grinned. 
 And then he heard the humming of a voice 
 in the kitchen. Even the squaw was 
 happy. 
 And then and then 
 
 " GREAT GOD IN HEAVEN " 
 
 In the doorway she stood, her arms 
 reaching out to him, love, glory, triumph 
 in her face Mary Josephine! 
 
 He swayed; he groped out; something 
 blinded him tears hot, blinding tears 
 that choked him, that came with a sob in 
 his throat. And then she was in his arms, 
 and her arms were around him, and she 
 was laughing and crying, and he heard her 
 say: "Why why didn t you come back 
 to me that night? Why why did you 
 go out through the window? I I was 
 
THE RIVER S END 297 
 
 waiting and I I d have gone with 
 
 you " 
 
 From the door behind them came Dug- 
 gan s voice, chuckling, exultant, booming 
 with triumph. " Johnny, didn t I tell you 
 there was lots bigger lies than yourn? 
 Didn t I? Eh?" 
 
XXV 
 
 IT was many minutes, after Keith s arms 
 had closed around Mary Josephine, be 
 fore he released her enough to hold her 
 out and look at her. She was there, every 
 bit of her, eyes glowing with a greater 
 glory and her face wildly aflush with a 
 thing that had never been there before; 
 and suddenly, as he devoured her in that 
 hungry look, she gave a little cry, and 
 hugged herself to his breast, and hid hei 
 face there. 
 
 And he was whispering again and again, 
 as though he could find no other word, 
 " Mary Mary Mary " 
 
 Duggan drew away from the door. The 
 two had paid no attention to his voice, and 
 the old river-man was one continuous 
 chuckle as he unpacked Keith s horse and 
 attended to his own, hobbling them both 
 and tying cow-bells to them. It was half 
 an hour before he ventured up out of the 
 grove along the creek and approached 
 
 293 * 
 
THE RIVER S END 299 
 
 the cabin again. Even then he halted, 
 fussing with a piece of harness, until he 
 saw Mary Josephine in the door. The sun 
 was shining on her. Her glorious hair 
 was down, and behind her w r as Keith, so 
 close that his shoulders were covered with 
 it. Like a bird Mary Josephine sped to 
 Duggan. Great red beard and all she 
 hugged him, and on the flaming red of his 
 bare cheek-bone she kissed him. 
 
 " Gosh," said Duggan, at a loss for some 
 thing better to say. " Gosh " 
 
 Then Keith had him by the hand. 
 "Andy, you ripsnorting old liar, if you 
 weren t old enough to be my father, I d 
 whale the daylights out of you! " he cried 
 joyously. " I would, just because I love 
 you so! You ve made this day the the 
 the " 
 
 " The most memorable of my life," 
 helped Mary Josephine. " Is that it 
 John?" 
 
 Timidly, for the first time, her cheek 
 against his shoulder, she spoke his name. 
 
 And before Duggan s eyes Keith kissed 
 her. 
 
 Hours later, in a world aglow with the 
 
ijoo THE RIVER S END 
 
 light of stars and a radiant moon, Keith 
 and Mary Josephine were alone out in the 
 heart of their little valley. To Keith it 
 was last night returned, only more won 
 derful. There was the same droning song 
 in the still air, the low rippling of run 
 ning water, the mysterious whisperings 
 of the mountains. All about them were 
 the guardian peaks of the snow-cappei 
 ranges, and under their feet was the soft 
 lush of grass and the sweet scent of 
 flowers. " Our valley of dreams," Mary 
 Josephine had named it, an infinite happi 
 ness trembling in her voice. " Our beau 
 tiful valley of dreams come true!" 
 
 " And you would have come with me 
 that night? " asked Keith wonderingly. 
 " That night I ran away? " 
 
 " Yes. I didn t hear you go. And at 
 last I went to your door and listened, and 
 then I knocked, and after that I called to 
 you, and when you didn t answer, I entered 
 your room." 
 
 "Dear heaven!" breathed Keith. 
 "After all that, you would have come 
 away with me, covered with blood, a a 
 murderer, they say a hunted man " 
 
THE RIVER S END 301 
 
 "John, dear." She took one of his 
 hands in both her own and held it tight. 
 "John, dear, I ve got something to tell 
 you." 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " I made Duggan promise not to tell 
 you I was here when he found you, and I 
 made him promise something else to keep 
 a secret I wanted to tell you myself. It 
 was wonderful of him. I don t see how 
 he did it." 
 
 She snuggled still closer to him, and 
 held his hand a little tighter. "You see, 
 John, there was a terrible time after you 
 killed Shan Tung. Only a little while 
 after you had gone, I saw the sky growing 
 red. It was Shan Tung s place afire. I 
 was terrified, and my heart was broken, 
 and I didn t move. I must have sat at the 
 window a long time, when the door burst 
 open suddenly and Miriam ran in, and 
 behind her came McDowell. Oh, I never 
 heard a man swear as McDowell swore 
 when he found you had gone, and Miriam 
 flung herself on the floor at my feet and 
 buried her head in my lap. 
 
 " McDowell tramped up and down, and 
 
302 THE RIVER S END 
 
 at last he turned to me as if he was going 
 to cat me, and he fairly shouted, l Do you 
 know that cursed fool didn t kill Judge 
 Kirkstone! " 
 
 There was a pause in which Keith s 
 brain reeled. And Mary Josephine went 
 on, as quietly as though she were talking 
 about that evening s sunset: 
 
 " Of course, I knew all along, from what, 
 you had told me about John Keith, that he 
 wasn t what you would call a murderer. 
 You see, John, I had learned to love Joha 
 Keith. It was the other thing that horri 
 fied me! In the fight, that night, Judge 
 Kirkstone wasn t badly hurt, just stunned. 
 Peter Kirkstone and his father were 
 always quarreling. Peter wanted money, 
 and his father wouldn t give it to him. It 
 seems impossible, what happened then. 
 But it s true. After you were gone Peter 
 Kirkstone killed his father that he might 
 inherit the estate! And then he laid the 
 crime on you! " 
 
 " My God ! " breathed Keith. " Mary- 
 Mary Josephine how do you know? " 
 
 " Peter Kirkstone was terribly burned in 
 the fire. He died that night, and before 
 
THE RIVER S END 303 
 
 fee died he confessed. That was the power 
 Shan Tung held over Miriam. He knew. 
 And Miriam was to pay the price that 
 would save her brother from the hang 
 
 man." 
 
 "And that," whispered Keith, as if to 
 himself, " was why she was so interested in 
 John Keith." 
 
 He looked away into the shimmering 
 distance of the night, and for a long time 
 both were silent. A woman had found 
 happiness. A man s soul had come out of 
 darkness into light. 
 
 THE END 
 
ZANE GREY S NOVELS 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap s list. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE FOREST 
 THE DESERT OF WHEAT; 
 THE U. P. TRAIL 
 WILDFIRE 
 
 THE BORDER LEGION 
 THE RAINBOW TRAIL 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT 
 RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE 
 THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS 
 THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN 
 THE LONE STAR RANGER 
 DESERT GOLD 
 BETTY ZANE 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS 
 
 The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody 
 Wetmore, with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey. 
 
 ZANE GREY S BOOKS FOR BOYS 
 
 KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE 
 THE YOUNG LION HUNTER 
 THE YOUNG FORESTER 
 THE YOUNG PITCHER 
 THE SHORT STOP 
 
 THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER 
 
 BASEBALL STORIES 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY 
 
 GENE STRATTON- PORTER 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosaet & Baatep s Bst ~" 
 MICHAEL Q HALLORANT Illustrated by Frances Rogers. 
 
 Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern 
 Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also as 
 sumes the responsibility of leading the entire rural community up 
 ward and onward, 
 
 LADDIE. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. 
 
 This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The 
 etory is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, 
 but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love 
 affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that 
 of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in 
 the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery. 
 THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs. 
 
 "The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and if the 
 book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would 
 be notable. But when the Girl comes to his " Medicine Woods," 
 there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality. 
 FRECKLES. Illustrated. 
 
 Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in 
 which he takes hold of life ; the nature friendships he forms in the 
 great Limberlost Swamp ; the manner in which everyone who meets 
 him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality ; and his 
 love-story with " The Angel " are full of real sentiment, 
 A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. ^Illustrated. 
 
 The story of a girl of the Michigan woods ; a buoyant, loveable 
 type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and 
 kindness towards all things ; her hope is never dimmed. And by 
 the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from \ 
 barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage. I 
 AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in Colors. 
 
 The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. 
 The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing I 
 love. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of 
 nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all. 
 THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL. Profusely illustrated. 
 
 A love ideal of the Cardinal bird and his mate, tokl with delicacy 
 and humor. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
BOOTH TARKINGTON S 
 NOVELS 
 
 May be had wherever books are so!d. Asktfor Grosset & Duntep s list 
 
 SEVENTEEN. Illustrated by Arthur William Brown. 
 
 No one but tho creator of Penrod could have portrayed 
 the immortal young people of this story. Its humor is irre 
 sistible and reminiscent of the tune when the reader wag 
 Seventeen. 
 
 PENROD. Illustrated by Gordon Grant. 
 
 This is a picture of a boy s heart, full of the lovable, hu 
 morous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older 
 folks. It is a finished, exquisite work. 
 
 PENRQD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Brehm. 
 
 Like " Penrod " and " Seventeen," this book contains 
 some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best 
 stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written. 
 
 THE TURMOIL. Illustrated by G. E. Chambers. 
 
 Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who re 
 volts against his father s plans for him to be a servitor of 
 big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb s life from 
 failure to success. 
 
 TEE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece. 
 
 A story of love and politics, more especially a picture of 
 a country editor s life in Indiana, but the charm of the book 
 lies in the love interest. 
 
 THE FLIRT. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. 
 
 The " Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl s 
 engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder 
 of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end 
 marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really 
 worthy one to marry her sister. 
 
 A*k for Complete free list of G. & D. Popalar Copyrighted FMton 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
THE NOVELS OF 
 
 MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset t Dunlap s list. 
 
 DANGEROUS DAYS. 
 
 A brilliant story of married life. A romance of fine purpose and 
 stirring appeal. 
 
 THE AMAZING INTERLUDE. 
 
 Illustrations by The Kinneys. 
 
 The story of a great love which cannot be pictured an interlude 
 amazing, romantic. 
 
 LOVE STORIES. 
 
 This book is exactly what its title indicates, a collection of lore 
 affairs sparkling with humor, tenderness and sweetness. 
 
 "K." Illustrated. 
 
 K. LeMoyne, famous surgeon, goes to live in a little town where 
 beautiful Sidney Page lives. She is in training to become a nurse. 
 The joys and troubles of their young love are told with keen and 
 sympathetic appreciation. 
 
 THE MAN IN LOWER TEN. 
 
 Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. 
 
 An absorbing detective story \v 
 of the " Man in Lower Ten." " 
 
 WHEN A MAN MARRIES. 
 
 Illustrated by Harrison Fisher and Mayo Bunker. 
 
 A young artist, whose wife had recently divorced him, finds that 
 his aunt is soon to visit him. The aunt, who contributes to the 
 family income, knows nothing of the domestic upheaval. How the 
 young man met the situation is entertainingly told. 
 
 THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE. Illustrated by Lester Ralph. 
 
 The occupants of "Sunny side" find the dead body of Arnold 
 Armstrong on the circular staircase. Following the murder a bank 
 failure is announced. Around these two events is woven a plot of 
 absorbing interest. 
 
 THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS. (Photoplay Edition.) 
 
 Harmony Wells, studying in Vienna to be a great violinist, sud. 
 denly realizes that her money is almost gone. She meets a young 
 ambitious doctor who offers her chivalry and sympathy, and together 
 with world-worn Dr. Anna and Jimmie, the waif, they share their 
 love and slender means. 
 
 An absorbing detective story woven around the mysterious death 
 of the " Man in Lower Ten." 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
ETHEL M. DELL S NOVELS 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Brosset & Dunlap s list 
 
 THE LAMP IN THE DESERT 
 
 The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and 
 tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through 
 all sorts of tribulations to final happiness. 
 
 GREATHEART 
 
 The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals 
 a noble soul. 
 
 THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE 
 
 A hero who worked to win even when there was only 
 a hundredth chance." 
 
 THE SWINDLER 
 
 The story of a "bad man s" soul revealed by a 
 woman s faith. 
 
 THE TIDAL WAVE 
 
 Tales of love and of women who learned to know the 
 true from the false. 
 
 THE SAFETY CURTAIN 
 
 A very vivid love story of India. The volume also 
 contains four other long stories of equal interest. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
FLORENCE L. BARCLAY S 
 NOVELS 
 
 May be had wherever"books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap sjllst.^ 
 
 THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER 
 
 A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she 
 had lost her lover, enters a convent He returns, and in 
 teresting developments follow. 
 
 THE UPAS TREE 
 
 A love story of rare charm. It dealfi with a successful 
 author and his wife. 
 
 THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE 
 
 The story of a seven day courtship, in which the dis 
 crepancy hi ages vanished into insignificance before the 
 convincing demonstration of abiding love. 
 
 THE ROSARY 
 
 The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty 
 above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through 
 an accident, gains life s greatest happiness. A rare story 
 of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of 
 love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward. 
 
 THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE 
 
 The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the 
 death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine, 
 clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall 
 deeply in love with each other. When he learns her real 
 identity a situation of singular power is developed. 
 
 THE BROKEN HALO 
 
 The story of a young man whose religious belief was 
 shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little 
 white lady, many years older than himself , to whom he is 
 passionately devoted. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR 
 
 The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for 
 Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her 
 fulfill the conditions of her uncle s will, and how they finally 
 come to love each other and are reunited after experiences 
 that soften and purify. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE BY 
 
 WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Srosset & Dunlap s Ust 
 
 MAVERICKS 
 
 A tale of the western frontier, where th " nutler " abounds. One of the sweetest 
 love stories ever told. 
 
 A TEXAS RANGER 
 
 How a member of the border police saved the life of an innocent man, followed a 
 .fugitive to Wyoming", and then passed through deadly peril to ultimate happiness. 
 
 WYOMING 
 
 In this vivid story the author bring* out the turbid life of the frontier with all its 
 engaging dash and vigor. 
 
 RIDGWAY OF MONTANA 
 
 The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, whew politics and mining: in- 
 dustrics are the religion ot the country. 
 
 BUCKY O CONNOR 
 
 Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the dashing 
 Spirit of the border. 
 
 CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT 
 
 A story of Arizona ; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws ; of a bitter feud be 
 tween cattle-men and sheep-herders. 
 
 BRAND BLOTTERS 
 
 A storjr of the turbid life of the frontier with a charming love interest running 
 through its pages, 
 
 STEVE YEAGER 
 
 A story brimful of excitement, with enough gan-plar ad advtmtnre to suit anyone. 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE DONS 
 
 A Western story of romance and adventure, comprising a vivacious and stirring 
 tale. 
 THE HIGH GRADER 
 
 A breezy, pleasant and amusing love story of Western mining life. 
 THE PIRATE OF PANAMA 
 
 A tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventur*. 
 THE YUKON TRAIL 
 
 A crisply entertaining love story in the knd where might makes right. 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 
 
 In which two cousins are contestants for the same prizes ; political honors and the 
 feftnd of a girl. 
 
 THE SHERIFF S SON 
 
 The hero finally conquers both himself and his enemies and wins the love of a 
 
 wonderful girl. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
KATHLEEN NORRIS STORIES 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap s list 
 
 SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street. 
 
 The California Redwoods furnish the background for this 
 beautiful story of sisterly devotion and sacrifice. 
 
 POOR, DEAR. MARGARET KIRBY. 
 Frontispiece by George Gibbs. 
 
 A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the 
 Years " and The Tide-Marsh. This story is now shown in 
 moving pictures. 
 
 JOSSELYN S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 
 
 The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for 
 happiness and love. 
 
 MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED. 
 
 Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers. 
 The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions. 
 
 THE HEART OF RACHAEL. 
 Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers. 
 
 An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come 
 with a second marriage. 
 
 THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. 
 
 Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 
 
 A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure 
 and lonely, for the happiness of life. 
 
 SATURDAY S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes. 
 
 \ Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through 
 sheer determination to the better things for which her soul 
 hungered ? 
 
 MOTHER. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 
 
 A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background 
 of every girl s life, and some dreams which came true. 
 
 Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL PINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 OCT 2R 1937 
 
 AUS 27 194! 
 
 LD 21-100m-7, 33 
 
YB 32489 
 
 9112713 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 CAPWELL S 
 
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