FENTIAE 
 
 POS 
 
 by 
 
 KATHRENE 
 
 PINKERTON
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS AHGBLES
 
 "Phil did not doubt for a minute that Solomon Moses was 
 dead he had been literally torn to pieces."
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 BY 
 KATHRENE AND ROBERT PINKERTON 
 
 FRONTISPIECE 
 
 BY 
 RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQ20, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
 TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES- 
 INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. YOUTH 3 
 
 II. Two BARS ON THE MAGNET ... 19 
 
 III. PHIL GETS His POST 26 
 
 IV. THE CHALLENGE 40 
 
 V. PENITENTIARY POST 52 
 
 VI. THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE. . . 63 
 
 VII. THE WEETEEGO 79 
 
 VIII. THE BATTLE IN THE DARK. ... 92 
 
 IX. THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK . . 105 
 
 X. SOLOMON MOSES 121 
 
 XL THE SPLINTERED BONE 139 
 
 XII. PHIL REFUSES HELP 153 
 
 XIII. "SHE Dm THAT TO ME" . . . . 167 
 
 XIV. PHIL'S PLANS AND WICKSON . . . 183 
 XV. THE WHITE DESERT 193 
 
 XVI. SOLOMON'S TRAIL 205 
 
 XVII. WICKSON TELLS OF His LOVE. . . 215 
 
 XVIII. SOLOMON GETS His MEAT .... 232 
 
 2131933
 
 PENITENTIARY POST
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 YOUTH 
 
 PHILIP BOYNTON had seen two white 
 men in a year and a half. He had arrived 
 at the Split Falls post of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company on the last ice of the spring, hav- 
 ing been rushed in by a wise old district manager 
 who saw in Phil's apparently mutinous demeanour 
 merely the expression of a need of something 
 difficult to do. 
 
 That difficult task, the routing of a particularly 
 ingenious and energetic opposition, had kept Phil 
 from going out with the fur brigade in the summer. 
 He did not regret his non-attendance at the gather- 
 ing of the post-managers at district headquarters 
 because he was too actively engaged in the con- 
 summation of a plot born of the devilishness of his 
 own pent-up energy and enthusiasm. 
 
 As a result of this plot the too-ambitious Free- 
 trader had been glad to accept Phil's offer of pro- 
 tection from a mysteriously enraged band of 
 Indians and even more glad to get out of the 
 country at the Hudson's Bay Company's expense.
 
 4 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Phil charged the item to "extension of trade," 
 making a place for it in his report blank. He was 
 particularly pleased with himself, for he had given 
 a new twist to an old trick of fur land, that land 
 where two hundred years of precedent have devel- 
 oped a code of ethics entirely in keeping with the 
 harshness and the loneliness of the land itself. 
 
 This little business out of the way and the 
 Indians properly impressed with the reprehensible- 
 ness of their disaffection, Phil began to look for- 
 ward to the annual New Year's gathering of post- 
 managers. His was the most distant post of the 
 district and he would have to start December 
 first. The last week in November an epidemic of 
 hydrophobia wiped out all the dogs in his yard and 
 he was forced to settle down to an eventless and 
 mailless winter. 
 
 The winter passed, as those dark, cold, inter- 
 minable winters have passed with countless 
 managers of isolated Hudson's Bay Company 
 posts for more than two hundred years, and 
 summer brought with it the triumphant journey 
 of the fur-laden brigade. For Phil's three York 
 boats would be laden as never before in the history 
 of the post. 
 
 Only Phil did not go out with the brigade. The 
 Company's flag was not run to the top of the 
 flagpole to indicate the departure of the post- 
 manager. Instead, that ruler of a little wilderness 
 kingdom lay flat on his back in the dwelling house, 
 alternately listening to the excited chatter of the
 
 YOUTH 5 
 
 thirty Indian boatmen and cursing the broken leg 
 that lay motionless beneath the weight of a dun- 
 nage bag filled with sand. 
 
 It was fall when the brigade returned. Phil 
 was walking without even a limp, due to the skill 
 of his Indian servant, and was the first to greet 
 the boatmen and receive the precious bag with a 
 whole year's mail. He gave hurried, excited 
 directions for the unloading, dealt out a regale for 
 the crew with a scandalously reckless hand for so 
 distant a post, and then ran with a schoolboy's 
 skip and jump to his office to read the package of 
 letters. 
 
 It was not so imposing a bundle as one might 
 expect. Few of us receive more personal letters 
 than we write, and when mail days are usually six 
 months apart our correspondence decreases pro- 
 portionately. The first few years of separation 
 are exceptions, but Phil had seen a dozen North- 
 country winters, and the world had grown very far 
 away. 
 
 Nevertheless, he tossed aside impatiently the 
 long, official envelopes of the Company, tearing 
 open only those with the postmark of a small 
 English city. He glanced hastily at each, com- 
 menting excitedly as he did so. 
 
 "Mother's all over her attack of the grippe." 
 
 (Mother had fully recovered eighteen months 
 before.) 
 
 "Well, think of that! Little Sis to be married!" 
 
 (Sis was already the mother of a boy.)
 
 6 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "The governor's bought a motor-car. Getting 
 to be a regular sport." 
 
 (The governor had forgotten that car com- 
 pletely, in the possession of a new marvel.) 
 
 "Uncle Philip's still alive. Some folks never 
 die." 
 
 (Uncle Philip's unaccountable will, by which he 
 had left his relatives only a pound each, had been 
 in court a year.) 
 
 After Phil had skimmed the cream from the 
 news, he began systematically to read the letters 
 from home. It was dark when he had finished and 
 at last became aware of his housekeeper's insistent 
 calls to supper. After he had eaten he was busy 
 in the trading-shop until late, paying off the boat- 
 men, dealing out goods to them and arranging with 
 the Indian hunters for their annual fall debt. 
 
 The next day and the next it was the same. All 
 the Indians had gathered at the post to wait for the 
 York boats and were eager to be off to their hunt- 
 ing-grounds. At the end of the third day the last 
 was gone and Phil remembered the official mail 
 for the first time. 
 
 There wasn't much of it, and some of it was old. 
 He glanced through it rapidly, scorning the sug- 
 gestions contained, eager for some word of com- 
 mendation because of his triumph over the 
 Freetrader the year before. The signature of the 
 second letter brought him up with a start. The 
 wise old district manager was no longer in charge. 
 His successor was a stranger.
 
 YOUTH 7 
 
 Phil read more carefully, returning to a letter he 
 had only glanced at. The kindly, almost paternal, 
 note of the former district manager was lacking. 
 He had understood men, the peculiar type of men 
 bred by the isolation and the work and the distort- 
 ing influences of loneliness. He made a personal 
 matter of a purely business communication, and he 
 was loved for it. 
 
 If his successor understood the North country 
 and its people he did not show it. Because Phil 
 had never heard of him he jumped at the con- 
 clusion that the new incumbent was an upstart, 
 officious, conscious of his position, unreasonable 
 in his demands. As a matter of fact, it was a 
 simple business communication, a letter of instruc- 
 tion untempered by a note of friendliness. It was 
 the letter of a stranger to a stranger, not of a man 
 to a man, and Phil's indignation increased rapidly 
 as he ran through three more of the same sort. 
 
 "Unbusinesslike conduct of posts!" he ex- 
 claimed when he had finished. "And I've just 
 sent in more fur than this post ever sent before." 
 
 He picked out another irritating clause. 
 
 "'Unsystematic nature of the reports'! What 
 more does he want ? I told everything in the re- 
 ports a man could tell. And he got the fur and he 
 knows how much goods I received." 
 
 Then a new one caught his eye. 
 
 There has been a failure to observe certain well- 
 known regulations and to heed more recent requests
 
 8 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 as to the nature of reports desired. More strict ad- 
 herence to business methods is expected in the future. 
 
 Phil stared at the letter in open-mouth astonish- 
 ment. But he did not explode again. Instead 
 came a sullen resentment, a sombre acerbity, that 
 grew as the days passed and he read and reread the 
 obnoxious communications. 
 
 There was no one at Split Falls post with whom 
 Phil could discuss what he considered a legitimate 
 cause for righteous indignation. That was the 
 trouble. For a year and a half there had been no 
 one with whom he could discuss anything of impor- 
 tance. In those eighteen months he had seen 
 only two white men, the Freetrader whose de- 
 parture had been so hurried, and a geological 
 survey man who had seen no reason why he should 
 neglect science to entertain a lonely representative 
 of the Hudson's Bay Company. The mere fact 
 that Phil had saved him from starvation did not 
 obligate geology. 
 
 The quick winter came and found the post- 
 manager moody and irritable. Had he not 
 wiped out the opposition that had threatened to 
 ruin the Company's business in that region ? Had 
 he not done so after two others had failed to stay 
 the downward trend of the fur receipts? Had he 
 not just sent out the largest shipment of fur the 
 post had ever known? Then why should he be 
 censured, picked out as an object of castigation ? 
 Why should his success be ignored and fault found
 
 YOUTH 9 
 
 with a lot of rot to which no one had ever paid any 
 attention ? 
 
 The first of November Phil's indignation cul- 
 minated in a sudden resolve. He would go down 
 to the district office and ask this upstart what he 
 meant by writing him such a letter. He would 
 show this officious superior that Phil Boynton at 
 least would not submit to unmerited criticism. 
 He'd run down and tell him to his face what he 
 thought of him. 
 
 And Phil did run down. With one dog team to 
 haul him, another for the supplies, and two Indians 
 to break trail, drive, make camp, and cook, he left 
 his fort to the care of an Indian servant and set off 
 through five hundred miles of wilderness to have 
 five minutes of satisfactory conversation. 
 
 The journey was difficult, even for the North 
 country. There were days when they made only 
 ten miles, and there were other days when they 
 sat huddled about a small fire while the blizzard 
 roared through the stunted spruce that offered 
 only a semblance of protection. Snow seemed to 
 fall continually, and the work of breaking trail was 
 so difficult that even the Indians remarked upon it. 
 
 But at last Phil arrived at the fort which was the 
 headquarters of his district. As the dogs, now on a 
 hard trail, raced across the ice toward the distant 
 building, Phil forgot the object of his journey in 
 the prospect of again communing with his fellows. 
 Old times at the fort, where he had served the 
 first two years of his apprenticeship, were recalled,
 
 io PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 and as he dashed up to the office he became again 
 the careless, happy, companionable chap who had 
 made himself a favourite throughout a district as 
 large as all Europe. 
 
 Perhaps it was the absence of familiar faces as he 
 stepped out of the cariole that brought back to him 
 the real reason for his journey. The indignation 
 of months returned, and he strode into the office, 
 black and grimy from the smoke of many camp- 
 fires, still dressed in his skins and furs, his hair 
 about his shoulders and his face long unshaven. 
 
 At first Phil believed the office was empty. 
 Then he saw a head appear above a roll-top desk 
 in a corner and the next instant a man stepped out 
 into the middle of the room. He wore well- 
 pressed clothes, a linen collar and shirt, a neatly 
 knotted tie, and on his feet were shoes that were 
 actually polished. 
 
 These things alone did not confirm Phil in his 
 hatred for one whom he knew instantly to be the 
 new district manager. Many of the Company's 
 men at the larger posts dress as men do in cities, 
 and in some places the formalities of a court are 
 maintained. But this man's cool, businesslike 
 appearance stamped him at once as someone alien 
 to the North country. He belonged a thou- 
 sand miles farther south was all Phil thought as he 
 slipped the otter-trimmed hood of his skin coat 
 back from his head. 
 
 "I'm Boynton, from Split Falls," he said. "I 
 want to see Mr. Borthwick."
 
 YOUTH ii 
 
 "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Boynton," was the 
 reply. "I'm Mr. Borthwick." 
 
 Phil ignored the outstretched hand, but before 
 he could speak Borthwick continued : 
 
 "New Year's is three weeks off. Some trouble 
 at Split Rock post?" 
 
 "Split Rock post was never in better shape," 
 replied Phil, hotly. "And I know New Year's is 
 three weeks off. Here's why I came down," and 
 he shoved a soiled and crumpled letter toward the 
 district manager. 
 
 Borthwick shot a quick, questioning look at him 
 and then coolly unfolded the letter. He glanced 
 at it an instant. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well!" repeated Phil, "Isn't that enough?" 
 
 "I hardly understand," and Borthwick again 
 glanced at the letter. "Perhaps there is some 
 mistake. This is only one of my letters to you." 
 
 "Of course it's only one of your letters to me. 
 But I want to know what you mean by it." 
 
 For the third time Borthwick looked over the 
 letter, this time reading it from end to end. 
 
 "I still fail to see," he finally said, "why this 
 should necessitate a trip of a thousand miles at the 
 Company's expense when the regular channels of 
 communication are still open." 
 
 "You don't!" 
 
 "Certainly not. In this letter I have merely 
 made certain suggestions and called your attention 
 to certain things. All are matters of routine,
 
 12 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 things pertaining to the Company's business. 
 There is absolutely no excuse for your putting the 
 Company to the expense of a trip down here on so 
 trivial a matter." 
 
 "Trivial!" 
 
 Phil, his indignation culminating in a blind rage, 
 could only repeat the word and stare at the cool, 
 precise individual before him. His hands were 
 clenched and he raised himself on to his toes several 
 times as though preparing for a spring. 
 
 And then suddenly he realized that Borthwick 
 never could understand, that he was not of the 
 North country, that he did not know North 
 country men, never could know them. To him the 
 effort and work of a year alone, the isolation and the 
 lonesomeness, the total absence of the things that 
 go to make up the normal life of a man, all meant 
 nothing. To this man he, Phil Boynton, was not a 
 human being but merely the manager of Split Rock 
 post, the bloodless, nerveless, soulless automaton 
 sent there to transact the Company's business. 
 
 Phil contrasted him with the wise old district 
 manager he had succeeded, the man who knew men 
 and their limitations, who had been one of them 
 and one of the Company, working for its interests, 
 loyal to it and its spirit and its precedents, putting 
 it first but, like the Company, not necessarily 
 leaving them out of consideration. 
 
 Phil became suddenly cool and collected. 
 
 "You are the new manager of this district?" 
 he asked, quietly.
 
 YOUTH 13 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "All right. I'm through. I quit. I've worked 
 for the Company more than ten years, ever since I 
 was a kid. I've always given it the best I had, 
 and I've always felt that the Company did the 
 same with me. But if you are district manager, 
 if they are going to bring penny-counters from the 
 shops in Winnipeg and put them in charge up here, 
 I'm through." 
 
 "You mean you have deserted your post and 
 come down here on a mythical pretext." 
 
 "Not another word out of you!" roared Phil. 
 "You're lucky to get off with no more than I've 
 given you. If the Company is making district 
 managers out of men like you, I'm through with 
 the Company." 
 
 He turned and walked out of the door before 
 Borthwick could reply. His Indians had already 
 put their teams in the dog yard and were eating 
 supper. Phil made his way across to Bachelors' 
 Hall, only to be disappointed again by rinding its 
 sole occupants were two apprentice clerks fresh 
 from Scotland. A few inquiries revealed that 
 there was no one at the post whom he had ever 
 seen. 
 
 In complete disgust he prepared for supper. He 
 could look forward only to a second meeting with 
 Borthwick at meal time. As he changed his 
 clothes he thought of cutting things to say, of re- 
 marks about the fort as it had been in the good old 
 days.
 
 14 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 But at the table Borthwick was uncommunica- 
 tive, though polite. He seemed clothed in an air 
 so impersonal that Phil, though boiling inwardly, 
 found no opening, even for the subtle comments 
 to which alone he had recourse because of the 
 presence of Mrs. Borthwick. The apprentice 
 clerks seemed to be afraid to talk. Mrs. Borth- 
 wick had a lofty idea of the position she occupied 
 as mistress of the district and under the suffocating 
 weight of the formality she imposed, Phil worried 
 through his first really civilized meal in a year and 
 a half. 
 
 He was glad to escape at the end and rushed 
 immediately to the employees' quarters. As a 
 result of five minutes of voluble Cree he was in a 
 cariole hours before daylight the next morning 
 and when Borthwick awakened was on his way to 
 Winnipeg, one team hauling him as he lay back 
 comfortably in his robes, while another followed 
 with the provisions for the journey. 
 
 It was five hundred miles to Winnipeg, and Phil 
 covered the distance in only slightly less time than 
 that from Split Rock to the headquarters post. He 
 went at once to the Company's offices, turned in 
 his written resignation and drew his accumulated 
 salary, seven hundred and fifty dollars. Neither 
 the commissioner nor the assistant commissioner 
 was there and Phil left at once without an explana- 
 tion of why, after a dozen years, he chose to leave 
 the service of the Company of Gentlemen Ad- 
 venturers Trading into Hudson Bay.
 
 YOUTH 15 
 
 That night, in clean, well-pressed clothes, his 
 hair cut, and his face shaved, Phil Boynton thrust 
 his legs beneath a hotel table for the first time in 
 five years. He had been in Winnipeg before, on 
 his first and only leave of absence, and, though he 
 was a complete stranger, he felt as if he were at 
 home. The lights, the music, the smart linen and 
 silverware on the table, the chatter throughout 
 the big room, the odours of food and drink, all were 
 as wine to unaccustomed lips. Merely being there 
 intoxicated him. The long years of loneliness were 
 forgotten, the hatred for Borthwick was as if 
 it had never been, and he abandoned himself to the 
 present. 
 
 Consequently, when a man was seated at his 
 table five minutes later, the attention of the 
 entire dining room was attracted by Phil's out- 
 burst. 
 
 "Jerry McGill!" he cried in a voice heard in the 
 lobby. "Sit down. Stand up and shake again. 
 Have a drink. This meal's on me. Where'd you 
 come from? What Providence sent you here? I 
 thought you were way down the Mackenzie." 
 
 McGill was no less boisterous in his greetings 
 and it was five minutes before they became joint 
 possessors of the information that Philip Boynton, 
 late of the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
 and Jerry McGill, corporal of the Royal Northwest 
 Mounted, were really sitting together at a table in 
 Winnipeg, tasting of the delights of civilization 
 after long absence; that each was having dinner
 
 16 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 on the other and that they were to make a night of 
 it. 
 
 The number of years a man has lived counts for 
 nothing after a long stay in the wilderness. The 
 return of civilization levels ages, brings all down to 
 the exuberant period of youth. The sailor after a 
 long voyage, the cowboy after months on the 
 range, the lumberjack after a winter in the woods, 
 each on his return to town becomes a boy, a wild, 
 heedless, shouting, intoxicated boy. 
 
 Phil Boynton and Jerry McGill, freed of the 
 fetters of interminable distances, celebrated their 
 reunion as only men of the Northland can cele- 
 brate. What happened would be difficult to say. 
 Phil himself could not remember when he wakened 
 in the middle of the next forenoon. He was in his 
 room in the hotel. Beside him, fully dressed, lay 
 Corporal McGill. It was all unfamiliar, but this 
 strange bedfellow brought back dim recollections, 
 the second or third of which caused Phil to spring 
 from bed with utter disregard for his head. 
 
 A quick search of his pockets revealed one roll of 
 bills. He counted these anxiously, and then again. 
 There was only four hundred and fifty dollars 
 when there should have been seven hundred and 
 fifty dollars, less what little he had probably spent 
 the night before. 
 
 "Jerry!" he cried, shaking the policeman. 
 "Jerry! Wake up! Where's my money ? I didn't 
 spend all of that!" 
 
 But Jerry refused to waken and Phil again
 
 YOUTH 17 
 
 searched his pockets. This time he found in the 
 inside breast-pocket of his coat a long white en- 
 velope. In bewilderment he opened it and drew 
 out a piece of green paper which unfolded with 
 queer little jerks like a child's toy until it stretched 
 to the floor. 
 
 Still bewildered, Phil examined it. 
 
 "Winnipeg to St. Paul." 
 
 "St. Paul to Chicago." 
 
 "Chicago to Montreal." 
 
 "Montreal to Liverpool." 
 And then it began reading backward. 
 
 "Liverpool to Montreal." 
 
 "Montreal to Chicago." 
 
 He did not have to go farther. He knew what 
 he had done. He was now the possessor of a 
 round-trip ticket home, which had cost something 
 more than two hundred dollars. 
 
 Still stunned by his discovery, Phil sat down on 
 the edge of the bed. Home! Mother! The 
 governor and his new motor-car! It was twelve 
 years since he had seen them. He had been a boy, 
 eighteen years old, when he had said good-bye and, 
 despite their protests, sailed away to British 
 America. He would like to see them. 
 
 He shaved, dressed, packed his bag and then 
 turned to the bed. 
 
 "Wake up!" he called as he shook the snoring 
 man. "Wake up, Jerry!" 
 
 The policeman turned over and stared with 
 puzzled eyes.
 
 i8 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "I'm going home!" Phil cried, excitedly. "So 
 long!" 
 
 McGill swung his feet to the floor and stared at 
 the other. 
 
 "Where?" he asked, suspiciously. 
 
 "Home. England." 
 
 "Oh!" and he rolled on to the bed again. 
 "You'll be back soon. I went once. They're 
 sending me up to the Bay and I'll see you there 
 inside of a year."
 
 TWO BARS ON THE MAGNET 
 
 PHIL did go back. For a month his visit 
 home was pure delight. He was the re- 
 turned wanderer, the eldest son, and he 
 reveled in the adoration of mother and sister, the 
 unbending of his father, and the unaccustomed 
 creature comforts of civilization. 
 
 Then the change came. After the excitement 
 of his return had vanished he saw that he was no 
 longer an Englishman, that he no longer was in 
 accord with venerable English ideas. Thrown 
 into a strange environment when at a plastic age, 
 he had shed English thoughts and habits for those 
 of a wide, raw land. As a result, he was a stranger 
 to his family, and his family to him. He was bored. 
 They were scandalized. Conditions became 
 strained. He wished he hadn't come. 
 
 One day Phil suddenly realized the cause of an 
 insidious restlessness. It was the North country, 
 the only thing he cared about, the only place he 
 knew, and where he in turn could be understood. 
 He took a train to London and dropped in at the 
 offices of the Hudson's Bay Company. 
 
 There is no other corporation in the world like it. 
 Its servants, as they are still called in the con- 
 
 19
 
 20 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 tracts, are its children, and no mother was ever 
 more forgiving of errant or vagrant offspring. 
 Phil was welcomed with open arms, reemployed, 
 and sent out on the first ship of the summer. His 
 joy was so great he could even laugh at the relief 
 with which his father and mother greeted his an- 
 nouncement that he was returning to Canada. 
 
 Captain Hargraft had commanded the ship on 
 Phil's previous voyage. He remembered him, as 
 he remembered all the young English and Scotch 
 boys he had taken into Hudson Bay, and Phil re- 
 ceived a cordial greeting. 
 
 "We have a lady passenger this trip," said the 
 captain after they had talked for a while on the 
 bridge. "Company is sending her over to be 
 governess for some post-manager's children near 
 the Bay." 
 
 " English giri?" asked Phil. 
 
 "Yes, and a beauty. One of the big, tall, 
 blonde kind. I'll fix you at the first table." 
 
 "Captain, let me mess with the crew. Serve 
 my meals in my room. Starve me, if necessary. 
 But don't put me at the same table with an Eng- 
 lish girl. I'm fed up on them. I haven't seen 
 anything else for months. If there's a breed girl 
 from Norway House on board, all right. I'd like 
 to talk to one. But not the English kind." 
 
 "Wait," was all the captain said. 
 
 Even Phil's first voyage, when he had hardly 
 slept nights, so impatient was he to see the land 
 of his dreams, failed to compare with the ecstasy
 
 TWO BARS ON THE MAGNET 21 
 
 of his second in company with Joyce Plummer. 
 It was not that he had been starved by his twelve 
 years in the wilderness. It was not that he turned 
 in relief to this thoroughly delightful young woman 
 after the boredom of his family's friends. It was 
 because she was in reality the girl he had dreamed 
 of at solitary posts. 
 
 Joyce Plummer so nearly fitted his picture that 
 Phil could not look at her for several days without a 
 somewhat superstitious feeling of awe. From the 
 first meal he worshipped, generally silently, always 
 with a conscious effort to conceal what he felt 
 must be a most evident adoration. 
 
 It was inevitable that Joyce Plummer had been 
 worshipped thus before. Perhaps that was the 
 reason she appeared to be so unconscious of Phil's 
 attitude toward her, a fact which, unknown to him, 
 added to her charm. She had that faculty of 
 ignoring the differences of sex, of understanding 
 things wholly within men's sphere. She not only 
 showed interest in men's activities but could talk 
 intelligently about them. 
 
 But the real bond between them, the common 
 ground upon which they met from the beginning, 
 was her almost masculine appreciation of the 
 romantic aspects of life in the country to which 
 she was going. 
 
 "How did you happen to enter the Hudson's 
 Bay service?" she asked him that first afternoon. 
 
 " Ballantyne," he answered, and instantly her 
 face lit up.
 
 22 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Me, too!" she cried. "'Ungava,' 'Hudson 
 Bay,' 'The Young Fur Traders.' I've read every 
 word of them several times." 
 
 "They've started more young fellows in the 
 service than any other one thing." 
 
 "And are you disappointed afterward?" 
 
 "In a way, but you don't think of that. Some- 
 thing else takes its place, I guess. It's just as you 
 would expect, after reading Ballantyne, and yet 
 it's altogether different. I don't think any one 
 can tell exactly what it is about the North country 
 that draws him so. The Lord knows there are 
 enough things about it to drive a man away. And 
 yet they don't. He sticks, or he goes back, and 
 he's always unhappy when he's away and always 
 glad to get back again." 
 
 "That's just as I knew it would be," she ex- 
 claimed. "I knew some things would be different. 
 But I knew that the real things, the love for the 
 land, would come." 
 
 "It's strange your knowing that before you go. 
 I didn't know it and yet it is what will really come 
 true." 
 
 "But perhaps that's because you didn't come 
 from a Hudson's Bay family," answered the girl, 
 quickly. "It must be that the love of the land 
 was born in me. All my life it has been there. 
 My father and my uncle were Hudson's Bay men. 
 Only my father could not stay in the country. 
 My mother was not strong enough to go there and 
 so he had to come back to England. And always
 
 TWO BARS ON THE MAGNET 23 
 
 for her sake he hid his wish to return. But as a 
 child I realized it. And when we were alone we 
 used to talk of the country. I think his longing 
 was born in me. That is why, when my mother 
 died and there was no one to keep me in England, 
 I was so glad to go out there as a governess. It 
 seems almost that I must live that life for both 
 father and myself." 
 
 Joyce's words explained to Phil her surprising 
 knowledge of the Company, its methods and the 
 lives of its servants. For, while her understanding 
 enthusiasm for the purely masculine activities of 
 the Hudson's Bay Company had charmed him, it 
 had also puzzled. He would have been quick to 
 feel a forced interest or a desire for the bizarre. 
 He would have been repelled by either pretense or 
 hoydenism. But the naturalness and sincerity 
 of her ardour compelled acceptance and won him 
 completely. 
 
 Phil was so thoroughly entranced that he gave 
 no thought to anything else. Had his captivation 
 been less complete he would have given some con- 
 sideration to the future, would have wondered at 
 least into what the present was leading him. But 
 never a thought of it entered his head until 
 he was suddenly brought face to face with reality 
 by an entirely innocent question from Miss 
 Plummer. 
 
 "What will you do when you get to the Bay?'* 
 
 "Whatever they have for me to do," he said 
 when he recovered from the shock. "Sent out to
 
 24 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 some post if there is a vacancy. There probably 
 is one or the London office wouldn't have sent me 
 to the Savant Lake district." 
 
 "And will your resignation and return to the 
 service result in your being given an unimportant 
 post? Sort of a punishment for running away?" 
 
 "They do punish that way sometimes. But the 
 chances are that the Savant Lake district manager 
 will not know anything about that, or care. He'll 
 put me where he needs me, or where he wants to 
 put me." 
 
 " But he will surely know what you did at Split 
 Falls before you left, of how you drove out the 
 opposition." 
 
 Phil flushed at this interpretation of a story 
 he had told with an entirely different purpose. 
 To him the flight of the Freetrader had been only 
 amusing in the retrospect. 
 
 "A man's reputation does help, at times, but 
 mine's rather mixed, I'm afraid," he laughed. 
 
 His face instantly became serious. A thought 
 had come to him that sobered him completely. 
 Joyce saw the quick change in his expression. 
 
 "What is it?" she asked. 
 
 "I just happened to think of the posts in the 
 district. I've never been in it, but of course I've 
 heard all about it and know of every post." 
 
 "And there is one that one that isn't popular?" 
 
 "Not popular' hardly expresses it." 
 
 He shivered and looked out over the sea. 
 
 "There is a little post I'd forgotten about," he
 
 TWO BARS ON THE MAGNET 25 
 
 said at last. "And maybe they'll send me there, 
 though I never did anything to deserve such a fate, 
 even by quitting. It's out of the world entirely. 
 It's way out past the rim of things, even for the 
 North country. It's the most desolate, horrible 
 spot you could imagine, more desolate and more 
 horrible than you can dream of until you have seen 
 a little of the land you're going to. Most posts are 
 lonely, but there is something about this one that 
 has given it a reputation from Rigolet to McPher- 
 son. It's called Penitentiary Post, and that is 
 what it has been, a prison for the man in charge, 
 a punishment worse than any one in the service has 
 ever deserved. I think they keep it open just for 
 that purpose." 
 
 Something in the tense tone of the fur trader 
 caused Joyce to look at him apprehensively. 
 
 "But they wouldn't send you there!" she 
 protested. 
 
 Phil smiled. Her confidence did relieve his 
 apprehension, but he knew that he was never 
 destined for Penitentiary Post. His talks in the 
 London office had given him an insight into his 
 value to the Company. The successful meeting of 
 competition, the adaptation to new conditions of 
 the fur trade, these demanded men other than 
 those of the old school, men not too thoroughly 
 steeped in the old methods of transacting a busi- 
 ness that is not like any other business in the world. 
 
 "No," he said with a confident smile, "I'll never 
 be sent to Penitentiary Post."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 
 
 THE journey of Joyce Plummer and Philip 
 Boynton did not end with the sea voyage. 
 Each was bound for Savant House, which 
 meant a canoe trip of four hundred miles together. 
 
 From the day the girl had landed from the ship, 
 which anchored many miles out from shore, she 
 had been enthralled with her surroundings, with 
 the things she saw and the many things she heard. 
 For the first time, too, Phil was denied what he had 
 come to consider his exclusive prerogative. There 
 were several men at the great depot on the bay 
 where the ship unloaded, men who had not seen a 
 white woman for so long that the fair beauty of 
 Joyce Plummer fairly stunned them. 
 
 But only for a moment. Post-managers and 
 district managers vied with each other for the 
 privilege of showing her about, of sitting next to 
 her at mealtimes, of answering the questions 
 with which she was so abundantly supplied. Phil 
 was simply shoved to one side by that irresistible 
 force that draws lonely men to a woman. He 
 had to be content with only those crumbs Joyce 
 managed to toss his way. 
 
 He was not entirely idle in the three days pre- 
 26
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 27 
 
 ceding their journey to Savant House, however. 
 There was much news of the North country to 
 listen to, news that told him of the past and of what 
 the future might bring. 
 
 First, he learned that his disaffection of the win- 
 ter before had not been an isolated case. Others 
 had been aroused by the cold, unfamiliarly busi- 
 nesslike letters of Borthwick and the entire district 
 had been in such a ferment that a new manager 
 was on his way to succeed him. 
 
 Secondly, the district to which Phil was going 
 was in charge of John Wickson. Claude Osborne 
 was post-manager at Savant House and it was his 
 children that were to be tutored by Miss Plummer. 
 
 Thirdly, Wickson would undoubtedly be glad to 
 know he was to have Phil in his district. He had 
 two vacancies, or would make one of them because 
 of the inroads of a company of Freetraders. 
 
 "Everybody knows what you did at Split 
 Rock," Phil was told, "and Wickson will shove 
 you out to try your hand with these other fellows 
 at Long Point. He's had two men in there in the 
 last two years and the fur receipts have kept on 
 falling. Old-timers, both of them, and they 
 couldn't make headway against the opposition. 
 And Wickson isn't the kind that stands for any 
 one else getting the fur. It's a good post, and 
 you'll like it there." 
 
 Consequently, when at last he and Joyce started 
 up-river by canoe, each paddled by two Indians, 
 Phil was once more in the seventh heaven of the
 
 28 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 sea voyage. Again he was alone with her, and he 
 was going to a good post, one not so far from 
 Savant House but that he could run down two or 
 three times a year. The future held only entranc- 
 ing dreams. 
 
 It was Phil's nature to live in the present, the 
 present and the immediate future. His North- 
 country training as well as the boyishness that had 
 persisted into manhood was responsible for this. 
 He liked his work. Despite his resignation of the 
 winter before, he had that loyalty to the Company 
 so characteristic of its servants. Men older in the 
 service than he, brooding through a long solitude, 
 had done similar things. It was only an instance 
 of the independence of post-managers fostered by 
 the Company itself to meet its peculiar conditions. 
 
 And it was in the present and the immediate 
 future that Phil lived on the canoe journey with 
 Joyce. On the ship she had been looking forward 
 to the things of which she had talked and dreamed. 
 No boy entering the service could have been more 
 enraptured over the prospect of seeing his first 
 post on the Bay, his first Indians, his first canoes 
 and York boats. Nor was there any of the 
 sightseer in her attitude. She wished rather to 
 become at once of the country, to take part in all 
 its activities. She was not content to sit in the 
 canoe and be paddled but insisted on plying a blade. 
 She amused the Indians by carrying a small pack 
 across portages. She even dabbled in the cooking 
 and marvelled at Phil's refusal to do anything at all.
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 29 
 
 "Why, it's jolly, this sort of thing!" she ex- 
 claimed one day. "I don't see how you can sit 
 and do nothing. I should think you would be 
 bored to death, lying back there on all those blank- 
 ets in the canoe." 
 
 "I always read when I'm travelling alone." 
 
 She looked at him rather scornfully. 
 
 "Don't you ever do anything?" 
 
 "Oh, I did at first. But one gets tired of it, 
 and then it's not quite the thing, you know." 
 
 Frankly she surveyed his big, husky body. 
 
 "You should do it to keep fit," she declared. 
 "And then it's such sport, far better than cricket 
 or tennis. Why isn't it the thing?" 
 
 "Well, you see," and Phil nodded toward the 
 Indians who were eating their noon meal nearer 
 the river bank, "we have to let these people think 
 that we're a little too good for work. They are the 
 workers. We are the masters, and we can't ever 
 let them forget it. It's always been the custom, 
 and it's policy to keep it up." 
 
 "I believe you're only lazy," she said. "But 
 I'm going to learn to paddle and showshoe and 
 drive dogs and do all the rest." 
 
 The memory of that journey never dimmed for 
 Phil. It seemed for a time that it would never end, 
 this floating side by side with the girl he loved in the 
 land he loved. It seemed to be too perfect, but he 
 never looked forward to the end, to the time, now 
 near, when he would be compelled to leave her for 
 six months of loneliness unbroken by even a letter.
 
 30 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Their complete isolation, that feeling of being in 
 a little world of their own, had its effect on Joyce, 
 too. Without speaking of it directly, without 
 voicing thoughts which had become common, they 
 drifted into a union which seemed sweeter because 
 it was wordless. They were, in reality, two 
 children in the wilderness, failing to comprehend 
 anything except the present, unable to understand 
 why all life should not be a pleasant drifting side by 
 side. 
 
 All Savant House turned out to greet the new 
 governess. John Wickson's reception of Phil was 
 hardly less cordial, and though nothing was said, 
 the young man knew at once to what post he would 
 be sent. Unconsciously too, he had begun to 
 assume an air of proprietorship toward Joyce. 
 He could be magnanimous now when others de- 
 manded her attention. Secretly it pleased him, 
 and that first afternoon was spent in the office of 
 the district manager while the Osbornes monop- 
 olized Miss Plummer. 
 
 Wickson made no reference to Phil's resignation 
 and reenlistment in the service of the Company. 
 With just a mention of Split Rock post he let the 
 young man know that he had heard of his work 
 there. He emphasized too, the necessity of more 
 active methods in handling the opposition, gave 
 his views on the subject and drew some from Phil. 
 When supper-time came the best of relations had 
 been established between them and again Phil 
 thought of the pleasant year ahead of him.
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 31 
 
 He saw Joyce for a few minutes before supper. 
 
 For the first time her eyes were not laughing 
 or lighted by a boundless interest in the country 
 to which she had come. 
 
 "Did you hear about the poor fellow who was 
 brought in here last week?" she asked. 
 
 "No. Who was it?" 
 
 "The post-manager from Fort Dease. He was 
 taken out on the way to Winnipeg only yesterday." 
 
 "Hurt, was he?" 
 
 "No, so much worse than that. He's mad, 
 Phil, mad as a March hare." 
 
 "Couldn't stand the lonesomeness, eh?" 
 
 "That's what they say. Why, Phil, such a 
 thing must be terrible, being driven mad by the 
 solitude." 
 
 She looked at him apprehensively, but he only 
 laughed at the fear in her eyes. 
 
 "Something the matter with a man when he 
 can't stand a year of that sort of a thing," he 
 assured her. "Men have been doing it for more 
 than two hundred years, in these little out-of-the- 
 way posts." 
 
 "But, Phil, this man said it was something else; 
 spirits, evil spirits, a 'weeteego,' he called it." 
 
 Phil refused to consider the matter seriously. 
 
 "The 'weeteego' came afterward, I guess," he 
 said. "That's the Cree for 'evil spirit,' sort of a 
 cannibal affair with them. After he went off his 
 nut he probably thought he saw one." 
 
 "But when he was here he raved all the time
 
 32 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 about it. Mrs. Osborne says she doesn't think the 
 man was mad but that he was simply scared out 
 of his senses by something, though the men didn't 
 take any more stock in it than you do. But she 
 says he told about this 'weeteego' trying to get 
 into his room at night and of hearing all sorts of 
 strange sounds when he knew no one else was 
 within many miles of him. She said it made her 
 shiver, the stories he told her, and she says she is 
 sure that he is not insane and that there is some- 
 thing back of what he said." 
 
 "Just the loneliness," Phil insisted. "He 
 couldn't stand it, though the poor beggar probably 
 had a hard time of it at Fort Dease." 
 
 "Why Fort Dease more than any other post?" 
 
 " Don't you remember my telling you of it, way 
 out past the rim of things, the most desolate place 
 imaginable, off there on the Bay? And you got 
 some idea of how desolate a Bay post may be." 
 
 "Not Penitentiary Post!" 
 
 "That's the name it generally goes by, though 
 Fort Dease is the official name." 
 
 "And he was sent there, sent to be punished! 
 Why, Phil, such a thing is terrible." 
 
 "Oh, perhaps he was only an apprentice clerk 
 given his first tryout. Good thing he found out 
 early that he couldn't stand the life." 
 
 The call for supper came and the entire white 
 population of the fort gathered at the table. 
 Wickson, who had been busy with some mail Phil
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 33 
 
 had brought from the Bay, was seated opposite 
 Joyce Plummer. They had met in the afternoon 
 but only for a moment and the district manager 
 seemed to realize for the first time that she had 
 arrived. 
 
 He was fascinated from the start, and he made 
 no attempt to conceal the fact. He spoke to no 
 one else at the table, and he gave Joyce scant op- 
 portunity to divide her attention. At first the 
 girl was flattered by this tribute of the despot of an 
 empire. She found in it a promise of agreeable 
 companions through the year, for she had been won 
 at once by the Osborne family. 
 
 But Joyce Plummer had never before seen a man 
 like John Wickson. The men she had met had 
 become of the North. He had always been of that 
 land. Unlike so many of the Company's servants, 
 he had not been brought from England or Scot- 
 land to serve his five years as an apprentice 
 clerk and grow up in the service. His father and 
 his father's father had been Company men, had 
 died in its service in the North country. Wickson 
 had been brought up in it, had never known any- 
 thing else. 
 
 He had been born before confederation, just 
 before that time when the Hudson's Bay Company 
 had given up its ancient charter rights to the new 
 Dominion of Canada. He had been brought up in 
 the atmosphere of the old regime, among men 
 who had never known any power, any law, except 
 that of the Company. He came of the days when
 
 34 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 past-managers were still called factors or traders 
 from force of habit, and when district managers 
 were chief factors with the power of a Muscovite 
 ruler. 
 
 It was in those times with its supreme authority 
 over half a continent, with its semi-military system 
 of conducting its business, with its isolation and 
 its mystery and its aloofness, that the Company 
 established customs and precedents, bred a pecu- 
 liar type of men and still managed, with all its 
 autocracy, to give the world its first and greatest 
 example of industrial welfare work. 
 
 Wickson was thoroughly of the old days in 
 habits, training, thought, and actions. He was 
 big physically, about forty-two years old, thor- 
 oughly tanned, a cat on his feet despite his size. 
 He had lived completely in the North and of it, 
 knew the forest like an Indian, could out-drive a 
 half-breed with dogs, and wield as skilful a paddle 
 as a Cree. In this he was different from the men 
 imported from England. His vitality had been 
 too rampant to permit physical indolence, and his 
 skill and endurance had been great enough to win 
 from the Indians more respect than had he merely 
 posed as a ruler. 
 
 Naturally there was something untamed about 
 Wickson. He had been associated with men of 
 education and even culture. He had been known 1 
 through a great wilderness for his thirst for books, 
 and the long winters in many posts had given him 
 abundant time for study. He had investigated
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 35 
 
 with a scientific as well as a business interest the 
 various tribes of Indians with which he had come 
 in contact, and he had contributed several mono- 
 graphs to a London ethnological magazine. 
 
 Yet he continued to be much of a savage. Long 
 association with savage folk, a lifetime of ceaseless 
 struggle with a savage wilderness, these had their 
 first effect upon him and the deepest. He had 
 never known a restraining influence except his 
 devotion to the Company, and in his work his very 
 lack of restraint had brought success and promo- 
 tion. 
 
 Through it all Wickson had remained very much 
 aloof. He had few friends, no intimates. Men 
 feared him, were repelled by his coldness and his 
 hardness, by his singleness of purpose, by his blunt, 
 uncontrolled speech. He did not try to, or could 
 not, hide his contempt or his lack of interest in 
 them. To the people of the North who knew him, 
 Wickson had remained an enigma. He was re- 
 spected for what he had accomplished, feared for 
 what he might say, sometimes laughed at when 
 a thousand safe miles separated him from the 
 mockers. 
 
 Wickson had seen women before. He had seen 
 the wives of post-managers and district managers. 
 He had been "out" several times, once to England. 
 But for the first time in his life he found in a woman 
 something he had never known existed. 
 
 It was not Joyce Plummer's beauty alone. It 
 was not the lure of fair hair after a lifetime of the
 
 36 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Indian's black. It was not the tall, well-formed 
 figure that differed so strikingly from those of the 
 mothers of post children and from the squat, 
 broad-backed, straight-lined bodies of Indian 
 women. It was not alone the eyes which seemed 
 so alive and so eager. 
 
 It was, rather, the very soul of the girl herself 
 as it sought expression in every line, every feature, 
 every light in her eyes, every full tone of her rich 
 voice. It was rather that which was suggested 
 than that which was apparent, the potentiality of 
 a nature that had already broken the bounds of 
 home and precedent and tradition. Joyce Plum- 
 mer really stood at the threshold of a new life. 
 Perfectly genuine and sincere, eager for the un- 
 expected, unprepared for disillusionment, in love 
 with life and with this new phase of it to which she 
 had looked forward for so long, she was impatient 
 for the future. 
 
 Adding to her charm, and to her disarmament, 
 was her boyish enthusiasm for the life upon which 
 she was just entering. Like a boy, she had made 
 heroes of every servant of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company, from the lowliest trapper to the oldest 
 post-manager. Like a boy, she looked forward 
 to canoeing and shooting and to the long, cold 
 winter with its romantic dog-teams and skin-clad 
 people. 
 
 To Philip Boynton these things had come im- 
 perceptibly. Daily he had found something new 
 that appealed to him, and nightly he had pondered
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 37 
 
 over it. Yet at the end he was unable to describe 
 or explain one thing that drew him to her. 
 
 John Wickson was not half through his meal 
 before he understood her perfectly. Almost in- 
 stantly, though unfamiliar with women like her, he 
 had assayed and appraised and probed, and his 
 mind had done it coolly, calmly, thoroughly, while 
 the fire in his heart was mounting to a white heat. 
 
 But if he probed coolly he probed openly. 
 He did not seek to hide the new light that came to 
 his eyes, and when they arose at the end of the 
 meal every one at the table knew it except Joyce 
 herself. 
 
 To Mrs. Osborne alone did it bring alarm. 
 Knowing men of the North better, understanding 
 Wickson's type, and, more than anything else, 
 having read instantly the relation that already 
 existed between Joyce and Phil, she trembled at 
 the thought of what might happen. It was not that 
 she feared the sincerity of the district manager's 
 motives, but she did dread what the power and the 
 resistless energy and the very savagery of the man 
 might bring. To her it spelled only unhappiness. 
 
 Phil felt nothing of jealousy or resentment, 
 nothing of fear. Rather he was amused at this 
 spectacle of bruin and the beauty, for as such he 
 had instantly pictured them. In the weeks he had 
 spent with Joyce he had not only come to accept 
 the future but the loyalty of the girl. Though 
 the real relations between them had been wordless, 
 to him a bond had been signed.
 
 38 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Instinctively the two drew together as the 
 party rose from the table and went into the living 
 room. Their eyes met in a perfect understanding. 
 Their heads were bent and a whispered pleasantry 
 passed between them. 
 
 Mrs. Osborne directly in front, saw Wickson 
 stare for a moment. She saw the light in his 
 eyes, a light that flared to incandescence as he 
 turned swiftly and strode on. Straight across the 
 room he went until he was before his accustomed 
 seat in a big chair by the table. But he did not 
 sit down. For a moment he stood watching Phil 
 and Joyce as they chatted in the doorway. 
 
 "Boynton," the district manager broke in upon 
 them. "Come over to the office with me." 
 
 Phil, startled, turned from Joyce. Every one 
 was looking at him. Every one was silent, tense, 
 expectant. He saw for the first time the expres- 
 sion on Wickson's face. Just a little puzzled, 
 but a smile still parting his lips, he glanced again 
 about the room. 
 
 "Certainly," he answered. "Whenever you 
 say," and he turned to Joyce as she stood in the 
 doorway. 
 
 "Now!" snapped Wickson. 
 
 He walked quickly across the room and out into 
 the hall. Even the slamming of the outer door 
 did not arouse the group in the living room. Phil, 
 startled again by the district manager's tone, 
 glanced up to find Mr. and Mrs. Osborne and the 
 two apprentice clerks still looking at him.
 
 PHIL GETS HIS POST 39 
 
 If he grasped the situation he did not show it. 
 Quite pleasantly and naturally he excused himself 
 and went out. A minute later he found Wickson 
 seated at his desk in the office across the stockade. 
 
 "You're going to Fort Dease, Boynton," the 
 district manager began at once. "Be ready to 
 start to-morrow morning."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHALLENGE 
 
 THERE isn't any opposition there!" Phil 
 exclaimed. 
 He had been so confident of getting Long 
 Point post, of having an opportunity to show again 
 what he could do, his only explanation of this 
 action was that a rival had unexpectedly chosen 
 the isolated post for attack. 
 
 "No," Wickson replied, with ostensible signi- 
 ficance. "There is no opposition at Fort Dease." 
 
 There was defiance, a challenge, in his eyes and 
 bearing as he spoke. For a moment Phil returned 
 the stare. 
 
 "I see," he said, quietly. "It's still Peniten- 
 tiary Post." 
 
 "It's a post that needs a manager at once, and 
 you start to-morrow morning," snapped Wick- 
 son. 
 
 Phil did not reply. Quite coolly, a little con- 
 temptuously, he studied his superior. It irritated 
 Wickson, and again he burst out: 
 
 "No Split Rock business this winter, either, 
 Boynton! I won't have a post in my district left 
 without any one to handle it." 
 
 "I understand you perfectly," Phil said, quietly.
 
 THE CHALLENGE 41 
 
 "It would never do to leave Fort Dease unpro- 
 tected." 
 
 Because of the peculiar condition of affairs at 
 Fort Dease, it was seldom visited by the Indians 
 except in the summer, and it was known through- 
 out the fur land as the post where there was 
 practically no work to do for nine months in the 
 year. 
 
 But the irony of Phil's statement did not anger 
 Wickson further. The district manager realized 
 the mistake he had made in not hiding his real 
 reasons for sending an efficient man to an unim- 
 portant post. 
 
 "You'll have your hands full out there," he said 
 in his usual tone. "Some Indian or other started 
 conjuring or saw a weeteego. The whole band is 
 stirred up and needs calming down." 
 
 But he did not deceive Phil, nor was the story 
 of panicky Indians accepted as the truth. 
 
 "Very well," he said. "I'll be ready to start in 
 two days." 
 
 "You start to-morrow morning!" Wickson 
 commanded. 
 
 Still as cool as before, Phil stared straight into 
 his superior's eyes. 
 
 "I think we understand each other perfectly," 
 he said. "I'll be ready to start in two days." 
 
 He arose at once and walked out. Wickson 
 watched him go without a word. 
 
 The young man who left the office was not the 
 same who had entered it less than five minutes
 
 42 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 before. The careless, thoughtless, heedless boy- 
 ishness was gone. Adolescence had been shed as 
 if it had been what in reality it was a cloak long 
 outgrown but which still fitted admirably. 
 
 The garment which took its place was even more 
 comfortable, however. The big, tall, well-pro- 
 portioned body had a better swing, a more con- 
 fident carriage. The stride was quickened. The 
 shoulders were set purposefully. The chin was at 
 a new angle. A certain laughing light was gone 
 from the eyes. Tightened muscles at the back 
 of the jaw gave the cheeks an appearance of having 
 suddenly flattened. 
 
 Wickson, as he watched from his office window, 
 caught something of this, but not much. He only 
 smiled confidently as he saw Phil crossing to the 
 dwelling house and turned back to his desk. 
 Patience is one of the great lessons the Northland 
 teaches, and the district manager had learned them 
 all. What were two days, he thought, against 
 the three hundred and sixty-five to follow? 
 
 Joyce Plummer, however, read all that Wickson 
 had missed, and while it brought its first flash of 
 joy, she knew instantly that something serious, 
 possibly tragic, had caused the change. 
 
 She was alone in the living room when he en- 
 tered. Mrs. Osborne had dragged her husband 
 away to tell him what she had read where he had 
 been bewildered, and the two apprentice clerks, 
 oppressed by the suspense-charged air, had retired 
 to the bachelor quarters.
 
 THE CHALLENGE 43 
 
 "What is it?" Joyce demanded as Phil stood 
 smiling at her. 
 
 "Nothing at all," he insisted. 
 
 "But there is something. I know it. Every- 
 one knew it. What did he do?" 
 
 "'He wanted me to start for my post to-morrow 
 morning, and I merely told him I wouldn't be 
 ready for two days." 
 
 "But why should he be in such a hurry? Long 
 Point isn't far." 
 
 She flushed and then added, quickly: 
 
 "Mrs. Osborne told me." 
 
 "Long Point isn't my post, I'm afraid," Phil 
 said as lightly as he could. "Wickson has some- 
 one else for it." 
 
 "Not Long Point!" Joyce cried, in bewilderment. 
 "Why, he told Mr. Osborne he would send you 
 there, not an hour after we arrived to-day. They all 
 say you're j ust the man for it. Where will you go ? " 
 
 "Fort Dease." 
 
 "You! Penitentiary Post!" 
 
 She stared at him in growing terror. Not for an 
 instant did she doubt her senses. Things that had 
 passed unnoticed flashed back with their true 
 significance. Wickson's attentions at dinner, the 
 sudden, curt command at the end of the meal, the 
 strained silence that had followed the departure of 
 the two for the office, each suddenly revealed its 
 true signifiance. 
 
 "You! Penitentiary Post!" she repeated in a 
 whisper.
 
 44 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Phil laughed. He had to laugh. It was the 
 only thing he could do. In that short walk 
 across the stockade from the office he had steeled 
 himself not to speak to this girl of his love for her. 
 He had determined to go away without a word, 
 to wait until he had something besides a desolate 
 hovel in a desolate land to offer her. He had sud- 
 denly realized that his love must find expression 
 in success on his part before he could make it 
 known. He had been brought up with a jerk by 
 what he saw was his own unfitness. In such a 
 land, with such a girl, it must be a man who offers 
 himself, not a boy. 
 
 It was this thing that had changed Phil so com- 
 pletely, which had stiffened and hardened him, had 
 made him realize his manhood and what it entailed. 
 For the first time in his life he had found himself 
 confronted with a responsibility. For the first time 
 he knew that time is separated into three divisions 
 whereas he had recognized only one. The present 
 suddenly became dependent upon the future. 
 
 And so Phil laughed. Had he not laughed he 
 would have swept her into his arms. He would 
 have kissed the fear from her eyes. He would 
 have whispered endearments into the ears he had 
 just shocked with his announcement. 
 
 "It seems," he smiled, "that my services are not 
 quite so valuable as I had thought." 
 
 But Joyce's expression did not change. She 
 seemed not to have heard what he said. 
 
 "I can't forgive myself, Phil," she exclaimed.
 
 THE CHALLENGE 45 
 
 "I'm to blame for it all. It's my fault. I'd give 
 anything if I could undo it, and you could have 
 what you deserve." 
 
 Again he laughed, though this time there was a 
 strain of joy in it that he could not down. 
 
 "Nonsense!" he protested. "I'm being pun- 
 ished for my little huff at Split Rock. Wickson 
 and Borthwick are probably friends, and of course 
 Borthwick hasn't forgiven me as I started the 
 revolt that cost him his district." 
 
 "It's my fault," she repeated, dully. 
 
 "You're mistaken entirely," Phil declared, em- 
 phatically. "Wickson has just received word 
 that the Indians have been all worked up by some 
 conjuring business and may leave the district. He 
 wants me to get out there as soon as possible and 
 quiet them down." 
 
 "But Wickson doesn't believe those stories that 
 have come from Fort Dease. He told Mr. Osborne 
 so. He said this poor fellow had only become 
 deranged because he couldn't stand the solitude. 
 He doesn't think there is trouble there." 
 
 "Perhaps he has had later advices. I think so, 
 from what he said." 
 
 "But Mrs. Osborne told me no other word had 
 been received from Fort Dease since the first of 
 last winter." 
 
 "You're not accustomed to fort rumours and 
 don't know how to discount them," laughed 
 Phil. "People have nothing to do but let their 
 imaginations run riot."
 
 46 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 But Joyce was stubborn, stubborn with the 
 assurance that she was right. And she was face to 
 face with the North country, the land of terrific 
 distances, of wordless winters, of fear-breeding 
 uncertainty. She knew why Phil was being sent 
 to this distant, desolate spot. She knew there 
 would be no word from him for a year. The story 
 of the former manager, brought out a babbling 
 idiot, was still fresh and haunting. Her canoe 
 journey had given her a glimpse of the grim, for- 
 bidding nature of the North, of its silent, op- 
 pressive malevolence. 
 
 Fort Dease Penitentiary Post had become 
 the incarnation of all that was mysterious and re- 
 pellent in a land that mystified and repelled. To 
 Joyce it had come to typify the wide, lifeless, 
 sullen wastes, the dark, ominous, courage-gnawing 
 winters, the hunger and the cold and the loneli- 
 ness which only the North can cause. To her, 
 too, it was the fount of all that was dim and un- 
 certain and shadowy. It was the source of terrors 
 and terrifying things. 
 
 She was suddenly overwhelmed with the dread 
 of it. She forgot where she was, forgot that Phil 
 had never spoken a word of love, forgot everything 
 except the one fact that he was going to this place 
 where anything might happen. 
 
 "Phil, Phil!" she cried. "You can't go 
 there!" 
 
 She stepped closer, grasped his coat with both 
 hands, her face turned just beneath his. Her eyes
 
 THE CHALLENGE 47 
 
 pleaded, told of her fear, but they made known also 
 the love which prompted her action. 
 
 For a moment Phil stood resolute, fighting his 
 desire and the weakness that had seized him. 
 Then as a torrent that will not be denied by the 
 strongest barrier man can build, his longing over- 
 came all else, and he threw his arms around her. 
 
 "Sweetheart!" he whispered in a strange, husky 
 voice. 
 
 For a time they clung to each other. They 
 did not speak. They did not even think. Fort 
 Dease, the future, nothing mattered. Wickson 
 was forgotten, the separation they faced, the un- 
 certainty of everything. Love had gripped them, 
 had filled their hearts and their minds. 
 
 Joyce was the first to speak. 
 
 "I'll be brave," she whispered. "But, dear, I 
 don't want you to go." 
 
 "It's only for a year," he assured her. "I'll 
 ask for a transfer from this district next summer, 
 and when we go we'll go together." 
 
 "But this year! Fort Dease!" 
 
 "I don't dread that in the least. I've been 
 through worse than Penitentiary Post." 
 
 "But there is something the matter, something 
 terrible there." 
 
 "Just imagination. Spirits don't visit Fort 
 Dease any more than they haunt Trafalgar 
 Square. Only, dear, I don't like to leave you 
 here." 
 
 "Don't worry about me!" Joyce exclaimed,
 
 48 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 fiercely. "I know what you mean. But nothing 
 can happen. I'm yours, dearest, only yours." 
 
 Two days later Phil left Savant House for Fort 
 Dease. Two Indians were to paddle him to a 
 post two hundred miles to the east. There, 
 two more would take him another hundred miles 
 to an outpost, where another relay of canoemen 
 would take him on to Fort Dease. In this way 
 each pair of paddlers would have time to return 
 before the first ice of winter should catch them. 
 
 For Phil it was unlike any other journey he had 
 ever taken in the Northland. He had books, but 
 he did not read as the men drove the canoe up- 
 stream or across lakes. For hours at a time he 
 would lie back on his blankets. Usually only rosy 
 dreams came, but always there was present a dread 
 of what the year might bring, a dread of Wickson. 
 
 He had not meant to speak to Joyce. He 
 was a little ashamed of himself for having given 
 way to a sudden impulse. He felt that he had had 
 no right to speak. His future was uncertain. 
 He was in debt to the Company for half a year's 
 salary. For years he might be shunted about 
 from one remote post to another. He really had 
 nothing to offer, and he had no right to ask Joyce 
 to share the uncertainty of his future. 
 
 Phil spent one night only at his first stopping- 
 place. Lowry, the post-manager, tried to induce 
 him to remain at least a week. 
 
 "Wickson will never know," he urged. "He's
 
 THE CHALLENGE 49 
 
 a fox to find out everything that goes on in his 
 district, but what if he does?" 
 
 But Phil had determined to go on as quickly as 
 possible. A week before he would have remained 
 two weeks, taking his chances on getting to Fort 
 Dease before ice stopped the canoe. Now, in his 
 suddenly awakened manhood, he was intent only 
 on reaching his work. He intended to conduct 
 the business of his post as though it were the most 
 important in the district instead of the least im- 
 portant in fur land. He would not leave Wickson 
 a loophole for complaint or reprimand. Hence- 
 forth his record was to be irreproachable, one that 
 would compel attention. Something other than 
 loyalty to the Company was forcing him now. 
 
 Phil's dread of Wickson, or, rather, of what 
 Wickson might do, drove him to discreet inquiries, 
 however. Lowry knew the district manager well 
 and was a willing talker. 
 
 "It's Company first with him, always," he said. 
 "He's worse than an old-timer because his father 
 and his grandfather were old-timers. He's as 
 much of this country as any Indian. The Com- 
 pany's regulations are the only Bible he knows. 
 I suppose it takes generations to breed the supreme 
 devotion to the H. B. C. that Wickson has." 
 
 "It's too bad it doesn't breed brains as well!" 
 Phil exploded, despite himself. 
 
 Lowry laughed. 
 
 "Think you're too good for Penitentiary Post, 
 eh? Well, I'll tell you, Boynton. You started
 
 SO PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 something last winter and Wickson probably 
 thinks it's his duty to let you down for it. No, 
 Wickson would send his own brother to Dease if he 
 thought he should be sent there. There's only one 
 thing I ever expect to see upset Wickson and that's 
 a woman. It never has yet. He has never had 
 the time, or the opportunity. Probably never 
 happened to think of them. 
 
 "But he's that kind. I don't mean he'd be a 
 devil with women. There's a queer streak in 
 Wickson. He's pretty much of a savage and hard 
 and reckless. He'd be square with them. No 
 caveman about him if he does lack varnish. But 
 he'd be invincible, too. I'd like to watch him. I 
 know what his methods would be." 
 
 Early the next morning Phil went on, two new 
 Indians paddling him. The two who returned to 
 Savant House carried a long letter to Joyce. It 
 was the third Phil had written after Lowry had 
 gone to bed. He could not keep his fear of 
 Wickson from the first two. 
 
 That same morning Joyce had been romping 
 about the stockade with the Osborne children. 
 At last the older ones had run off with some Indian 
 youngsters, leaving the little girl with their teacher. 
 Joyce had sat in the shade of the dwelling house, 
 telling stories, until the kiddy went to sleep in her 
 arms. Fearful of awakening it, she sat there in 
 silence near the open living-room window. 
 
 After a time she heard Mrs. Osborne enter the
 
 THE CHALLENGE 51 
 
 room and sit down at her sewing table. A few 
 minutes later Osborne joined her. 
 
 "I guess there's something in that Fort Dease 
 business after all," he began at once. "I was 
 talking this morning with old Joe. He's pretty 
 sensible about all this Indian conjuring business 
 and the weeteego nonsense and he says he's sure 
 there's something behind the stories those Fort 
 Dease Indians told while they were here. He says 
 it's something more than imagination, and some- 
 thing more than spirits, that drove the post- 
 manager out of his head. If he believed like the 
 other Indians, he told me, he'd think it was a 
 weeteego, but he says a weeteego seldom leaves 
 tracks, and whatever has been haunting Fort 
 Dease left a trail unlike anything ever seen before."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 FORT DEASE stands on the farther edge 
 of the newest, rawest land on the globe. 
 The rare geologists who have seen it call it 
 "juvenile," "immature." The few white men 
 who visit it never willingly return. 
 
 Only yesterday, as the earth measures time, 
 this land lay under the sea. Only last night it 
 rose above the surface, bare, flat, brine-dripping, 
 sodden. To-day it stands as the last reminder of 
 what an unspeakably repellent place our earth was 
 an astral month ago. 
 
 Bordering an empty inland sea more than three 
 times as large as all the Great Lakes combined, it vies 
 with the waste of water in emptiness but bows to it in 
 diversity. The sea is a thing of many moods, raging, 
 inviting, restless, uncertain. The land is unchange- 
 ably sullen, unimaginably dreary. It only broods. 
 
 It is empty of every living thing. In the 
 same latitude as the latest world garden in the 
 West, it lies barren and void. As far as the eye 
 can see from the shore there are only marshes and 
 gravel stretches, desolate plains of coarse grass and 
 sedge. When the tide goes out it leaves a great, 
 ugly expanse of boulder-strewn mud.
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 53 
 
 Far back from the inland sea little trees began a 
 fight which they seem to have abandoned as soon 
 as they had lifted their heads high enough to know 
 what had given them birth. Stunted, unnatural 
 spruce and larch, they serve only to add to the 
 desolate aspect. 
 
 A few ptarmigan live in the low shelter of this 
 puny forest. Otherwise, except on its western 
 and southern borders, the land is too inhospitable, 
 even for those animals which thrive a thousand 
 miles nearer the Arctic. 
 
 No Indians live in it. One hundred miles back 
 from the inland ocean they struggled through an 
 uncertain winter, always facing starvation, always 
 dependent upon the two or three forts such as 
 Dease. Without the Hudson's Bay Company the 
 land would be absolutely tenantless, and even its 
 efforts seem pitifully weak in the dreary, desolate 
 dawn of an azoic waste. 
 
 Rivers thread this land, rough, raw, rushing 
 streams that have scarred the surface with their 
 newly cut banks of clay. They wander in places, 
 as if seeking a river's natural heritage, a valley, 
 only to mingle with the tide at last without ever 
 having attained individuality. 
 
 The streams, the forest, the marshes, the flat 
 shore, the ugly tide wastes, all contribute to the 
 monotony and the rawness and the horrible empti- 
 ness. It is not a land God forgot or shunned. It 
 is a land He never saw. 
 
 Into the centre of it came Philip Boynton. He
 
 54 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 had not seen it before, but he had seen others 
 nearly as bad, and it did not oppress him. There 
 were other things of more importance in Phil's life 
 than his physical surroundings, other things that 
 demanded all his free moments, and luckily for him 
 there was little time for brooding over the dreari- 
 ness that came from within. 
 
 More than forty Indian hunters and their fam- 
 ilies were camped about the fort, nearly one hun- 
 dred and fifty in all, and each dependent upon 
 Phil and the Company for the means of living 
 through the winter. They were silent, sullen, 
 restless, as men might be when they face famine 
 and the quick winter. It was long past the usual 
 time of departure for their hunting grounds far 
 back from the sea, and they were anxious to be 
 away before the ice caught them. 
 
 Supplies for Fort Dease were brought down the 
 coast in a sailboat from Fort Berens, whence they 
 had been sent by the same method from the great 
 depot beyond. It is the duty of the Fort Dease 
 manager to make this annual, precarious trip to 
 Fort Berens but Phil's predecessor had not been 
 able to do so and the work had been done by the 
 Fort Berens manager. He had supervised the 
 transportation, had seen that the goods were stored 
 properly and then had departed, leaving a half- 
 breed, Sandy Thunder, in charge. 
 
 Sandy, who had long been the manager's sole 
 servant at Fort Dease, had instructions to wait 
 until a certain time for the arrival of a new man-
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 55 
 
 ager from Savant House. If he had not arrived, 
 Sandy was to fit out the hunters and send them off 
 to their districts. 
 
 Phil arrived two days before this specified 
 time and of necessity he plunged at once into 
 the work of outfitting the Indians. He had 
 little leisure to study his hunters, either while he 
 traded with them or through that cold record of the 
 Indian's character, the fort journal. This is so 
 kept that each succeeding manager may learn how 
 reliable each hunter is, how industrious, and how 
 much debt he should be granted. 
 
 But, before he passed a pound of supplies 
 over the counter, Phil performed that duty of all 
 managers to themselves in isolated posts. He 
 selected several months' provisions for two, meas- 
 uring generously, and set them aside, to be placed 
 in a cache away from the buildings. Hudson's 
 Bay Company men reduce so far as possible the 
 chance of being left to starve as a result of fire. 
 
 In three days the last of the Indians had re- 
 ceived his debt. Phil worked so hard and so 
 rapidly that he did not realize the unusual speed 
 with which they left the fort. He rushed them 
 through so quickly that he had no time for gossip, 
 that greatest source of a post-manager's informa- 
 tion as to conditions in his territory. He was too 
 busy even to notice the uneasiness of the men, 
 the nervous manner of the women, or the frightened, 
 shifting glances of the children. 
 
 With Sandy to assist him, he worked from early
 
 56 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 in the morning until late at night, and even from 
 the half-breed he failed to obtain a hint as to the 
 state of mind of his hunters. He knew only that 
 they had far to travel and that time was short. 
 Each must track his load up swift rivers, pushing 
 through matted willows on the banks, and even 
 then many might not reach their hunting-grounds 
 before the ice barred their highways. 
 
 The morning of the fourth day Phil had his 
 first opportunity to inspect the place that was to 
 be his home for a year. The fort was built at the 
 mouth of Cut-Bank River. The stream ran 
 twenty feet below the buildings, which were set on 
 the dead level of all the country. 
 
 Over the land as over the sea the view was un- 
 obstructed, without change. Southeast and north- 
 west the shore stretched interminably, monoto- 
 nously. Twice each day it thrust itself far out in 
 pursuit of the receding tide, only to retreat as 
 often. Back of the shore was the same unchange- 
 able view, a country perfectly flat, perfectly bare 
 except for the coarse grass and sedge. Still 
 farther back, at the limit of vision, was a thin, 
 black line, the beginning of the stunted timber. 
 
 The buildings, as at most posts since the stock- 
 ade became unnecessary, were inclosed in the 
 usual picket fence. They did not differ from those 
 of any small post except in size, a fact readily ex- 
 plained by one sweep of the eye around the treeless 
 horizon. It had been necessary to bring the build- 
 ing timber more than one hundred miles down the
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 57 
 
 Cut-Bank in rafts, and logs were too valuable to be 
 wasted. 
 
 There was a dwelling house, a small, square, 
 one-story building made of logs and sheathed out- 
 side with whipsawed siding. There were the trad- 
 ing shop, the warehouse, and the servants' house. 
 Outside the fence stood the inevitable Indian 
 house. Back of the trading shop was the dog 
 yard, and that was all. 
 
 Inside the fence and out the ground was packed 
 hard in dry weather and a mess of sticky clay in 
 wet. Grass grew in patches. Paths led here and 
 there, paths that dwindled out despondently in 
 the bog. 
 
 Phil's house was divided into four rooms. The 
 front door opened upon a hall which led back to the 
 kitchen. The other corner at the rear was oc- 
 cupied by the dining room. In the front of the 
 hall, doors opened into Phil's bedroom on the left 
 and the living room on the right. 
 
 Sandy Thunder slept in the kitchen. The 
 servants' house had long been unoccupied. Sandy 
 had been the only servant, and, with the manager, 
 had constituted the sole population. He did the 
 cooking, the chores, and the few odd jobs necessary. 
 Generally he sat beside his cook stove and smoked 
 a pipe for hours at a time. 
 
 "Well, Sandy," Phil said the first night they 
 were alone together and the half-breed was serving 
 his supper, "the hunters have gone and mighty
 
 58 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 glad they seemed to get away, too. It isn't going 
 to freeze hard for a couple of weeks, is it?" 
 
 "Most often next month, early," Sandy an- 
 swered. 
 
 "I thought so. But an Indian always wants 
 to be certain. Anyhow, they can't kick about 
 being late. They'll make it, but you would have 
 thought it was going to freeze to-morrow the way 
 they got out as soon as they received their debt." 
 
 "It not the ice that makes them hurry. It the 
 weeteego." 
 
 "Nonsense!" Phil was about to exclaim, but a 
 quick look told him that Sandy believed implicitly 
 in the evil spirit. 
 
 "I'll have to look into the weeteego business," 
 he said, soberly. "The Company can't have its 
 hunters driven away. I'll take care of this thing 
 before the Indians come back again." 
 
 Sandy glanced uneasily at his master. Phil 
 had spoken confidently, and many white men had 
 powers Indians could not attain, especially Com- 
 pany men. 
 
 "This is a bad weeteego," he offered. "He 
 travel like the wind. To-day he be here. To- 
 morrow he be way off." 
 
 "Do you really believe there is a weeteego, 
 Sandy?" 
 
 "Me know it," was the ready, confident reply. 
 
 "You haven't seen him?" 
 
 "Me hear him." 
 
 " Sure it wasn't the wind ? "
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 59 
 
 "The wind no make noise like a gun." 
 
 "But an Indian might have fired the gun." 
 
 "Over there," and Sandy swept his arm toward 
 the great bog to the south, "no Indian ever go. 
 Last fall after hunters are all gone, just at dark, 
 me hear gun over there. That the weeteego." 
 
 It was only a confirmation that the man had 
 been misled by his imagination, but Phil had 
 always been interested in this strange superstition 
 common to northern Indians and he saw in it not 
 only a chance to accomplish something worth 
 while in the interests of the Company but enter- 
 tainment as well. 
 
 "But, Sandy," he protested, "how can a 
 weeteego shoot a real gun that makes a real noise?" 
 
 "A weeteego he do anything," was the solemn 
 reply. 
 
 "But you haven't heard anything except this 
 gun?" 
 
 "That man here last year, you no see him go 
 out?" Sandy countered. 
 
 "No, he left Savant House before I got there." 
 
 "He see the weeteego." 
 
 Phil kept a straight countenance with difficulty. 
 
 "Where? "he asked. 
 
 "In this house. The weeteego open the door 
 to his room and look in. Not once but many 
 times. That man he sleep with a gun beside him 
 all the time." 
 
 "What do you do, Sandy?" 
 
 "Me lock the door with the bar and keep a knife
 
 60 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 always sharp. But the weeteego never come near 
 me. Only the other room." 
 
 "Well, get the supper on the table, Sandy, and 
 I'll think over this business. I've got some bad 
 medicine for weeteegos." 
 
 But Phil didn't think over the weeteego business. 
 It didn't bother him any more than a child's 
 stories of ghosts would have given him the creeps. 
 After supper he sat in the living room, trying to 
 read. But always a face appeared on each page, 
 a face that grew in distinctness until the type 
 was blotted out, and at last he laid down the 
 book. 
 
 Outside a cold, raw fall storm was on. Rain 
 pelted against the building and fell in sheets from 
 the eaves. The wind, unobstructed for scores 
 and scores of miles, rattled loose boards in the sid- 
 ing and seemed at times strong enough to lift the 
 house and hurl it into the river. Mingled with it 
 was the noise of the surf on the beach. 
 
 At last Phil went to bed. Joyce and Wickson 
 and what Lowry had told him of the district 
 manager, these were far more important than 
 Indian superstitions, and he dropped off to sleep 
 without another thought of the weeteego. 
 
 He wakened early. Sandy evidently was not 
 up. So Phil lay in bed as had long been his 
 custom. There is no reason why lonely post- 
 managers should keep energetic hours. At last 
 he heard his servant rattling the stove lids and 
 moving about in the preparation of the morning
 
 PENITENTIARY POST 61 
 
 meal. When he judged that it was about ready 
 he got up and dressed. 
 
 Still lazily, for he had all winter in which to do 
 what little work lay before him, Phil went out 
 after breakfast and strolled down the shore past 
 the Indian house. The sky had cleared and the 
 sun was an hour out of the sea. 
 
 He was watching the sun, the only pleasant 
 thing to be seen in all the desolate vastness about 
 him, and it was not until he splashed into a puddle 
 that he saw where he was going. 
 
 His course had taken him into the bare, smooth 
 spot where the Indians had camped, just beyond 
 the Indian house. And as he looked at the ground 
 he stopped, startled. Before him moulded firmly, 
 clearly, unmistakably, in the mud, was the print 
 of a human foot. Not moccasined nor shod in any 
 skin or rubber, but bare, naked, with little ridges 
 where the soft clay had pressed up between the toes. 
 
 For a moment Phil stared at the track. Then 
 he followed it on across the camping grounds until 
 it was lost in the bog beyond. He returned, back- 
 tracking, and found that the maker of the prints 
 had come from the Indian house. 
 
 "Sandy," Phil muttered to himself, "and 
 deucedly cold to be trotting around in his bare feet, 
 too." 
 
 Quite casually, he opened the subject with Sandy 
 an hour later. 
 
 "Walking around for the fun of it in that rain 
 last night?" he asked.
 
 62 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Me no go out last night." 
 
 "Or this morning?" 
 
 Sandy shook his head. 
 
 "When it is dark me stay in," he declared, 
 stoutly. 
 
 "Come, Sandy, you're not afraid of this wee- 
 teego ?" 
 
 The half-breed shook his head uncertainly. 
 
 "Me hear him last night," he said. "He holler 
 like a wolf, off there in the bog. It wake me up 
 in the middle of the night." 
 
 "You think he was here last night?" 
 
 "Me hear him." 
 
 "But it might have been the wind." 
 
 Sandy went to the kitchen window and beckoned 
 to Phil to follow. Silently he pointed out at the 
 soft, glistening clay. 
 
 Leading up to the window and then away from it 
 were tracks made by bare, naked feet.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 
 
 THAT day Phil and Sandy spent build- 
 ing a cache for their emergency supply 
 of food. Sandy did not speak of the wee- 
 teego again. Phil thought of the strange tracks 
 several times. The most reasonable explanation 
 was that one of the Indians had lingered after the 
 others or returned for something he had for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Only the fact that the feet were bare and that 
 the tracks led up to the window perplexed him. 
 Curiosity in the new head of the post might have 
 prompted a peep through the window. But it was 
 unnatural for an Indian to have done so when his 
 tracks would show so plainly. Neither was it 
 natural for one to go barefoot. Indians are always 
 shod and not even the hardiest of them would 
 wander about on so raw a night in his naked feet. 
 Phil resolved to keep the incident in mind. Per- 
 haps he could find in later developments some 
 explanation of the mysterious visit. 
 
 "We put the gunpowder in the cache, too?" 
 asked Sandy after Phil had set aside the provisions. 
 
 "Why gunpowder?" 
 
 "We always do at this fort. One keg. Then 
 63
 
 64 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 if anything happens to the trading shop, fire 
 maybe, there is gunpowder for the Indians." 
 
 Phil saw the wisdom of the plan at once. 
 Indians in the Fort Dease district depend almost 
 entirely on gunpowder for their winter's food. 
 They take a little pork with them when they leave 
 in the fall, and some sugar and tea. Almost never 
 do they take flour. But powder for their trade 
 guns is an imperative necessity. 
 
 "Yes," he told Sandy, "put in a keg. It will 
 be easy enough to get it if we need it." 
 
 For a week Phil found occupation in going over 
 the stock in the trading shop, getting his books up 
 to date and rearranging goods on the shelves. 
 Another week was spent in directing Sandy 
 through a thorough housecleaning job, one that 
 evidently had been neglected since the fall before. 
 
 Phil himself did a great deal of manual labour. 
 He had discovered in those first three days of 
 strenuous work outfitting the Indians that he slept 
 better and there was less time for thinking. 
 Thinking had come to mean only one thing 
 Joyce and Wickson. They were always ready to 
 leap to the front whenever idleness permitted. In 
 the long journey from Savant House, and espe- 
 cially after he had left Lowry, he had threshed out 
 the whole question. He had approached the sub- 
 ject from every angle. He had convinced himself 
 of the loyalty of Joyce. He knew her love was not a 
 flash in the pan but something that would endure. 
 
 He had weighed Wickson carefully and had come
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 65 
 
 to the certain conclusion that he need not fear the 
 district manager. The man had force, determina- 
 tion, brains. He was a big, strong, conquering 
 Northman. But he would be honest with Joyce 
 if he had not been with Phil, and treachery at least 
 was not to be thought of. 
 
 Phil, knew, too, that Wickson started with the 
 handicap of having sent him to Fort Dease. It 
 had aroused Joyce against him, had brought her 
 contempt. As the year wore on and she thought 
 of him out there alone in a lifeless world, she 
 would come to loathe the cause of his being there. 
 
 These had been Phil's sane conclusions on his 
 canoe journey to Dease. Fresh from Joyce's 
 presence, still feeling her last caress, still in the 
 ecstasy of that last moment together, it was only 
 natural that, even in the face of a year's separation, 
 he should look forward with assurance to their re- 
 union the following summer. As he lay back in 
 the canoe, looking up at the sky or with his 
 eyes closed, he had dreamed jubilantly. 
 
 Now, in a brooding, oppressive land, Phil 
 began to brood and to become oppressed. Winter 
 was coming to envelop the paleozoic swamp in 
 which he lived, coming to make it even more re- 
 pellent, more monotonous. He had reached the 
 days of inevitable inactivity, the days that were to 
 be endless, always the same. More and more 
 his thoughts dwelt upon Joyce, and upon Wickson. 
 His first misgivings came, not doubts of Joyce 
 herself but of her ability to win in the fight she
 
 66 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 must make. He became self-condemnatory. He 
 had had no right to speak to her when he did. He 
 should have waited. He should not have asked 
 her to endure what Wickson's jealous love would 
 cause her to endure. 
 
 His attitude toward Wickson underwent a 
 gradual change. He began to suspect that the 
 district manager was capable of anything. Des- 
 pite what Lowry had said of the man, Phil's im- 
 agination painted him with lurid, horrible colours. 
 What had been contempt became hatred, a hatred 
 not unmixed with fear, and a sullen resentment 
 grew daily until it obsessed him. 
 
 These things drove out all thought of the wee- 
 teego, all recollections of the footprints in the mud 
 that first week in spite of Sandy's morose fancies. 
 For a time Phil had cultivated Sandy. To him 
 there had been no distinction between master and 
 servant, between the white race and a mixture of 
 two races. Out there at Fort Dease, alone to- 
 gether, facing an interminable winter with no 
 other companionship, why should a little matter of 
 colour or birth be a barrier? 
 
 Then, too, Phil had always been interested in 
 Indians and in their languages, superstitions, and 
 psychology. In more than one lonely post he had 
 found native and half-breed employees fertile 
 sources of amusement and information. He 
 rattled off Cree and Ojibwa and Chippewayan and 
 Beaver and was the proud possessor of one of 
 those priceless Bishop Baraga Ojibwa dictionaries.
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 67 
 
 Then, too, it is through his Indian servants that 
 a post-manager keeps informed as to the state of 
 affairs in his domain. Indians talk among them- 
 selves as they will not talk to white people, even to 
 representatives of that Company which they call 
 in their own language, "to whom we owe thanks.'* 
 And Indians are as social as white people. They 
 love to gossip, to talk scandal, to hash over the 
 latest sensation. Gradually this talk creeps back 
 to the post-manager and he knows, if he is wise and 
 patient and diplomatic, everything that is going 
 on in the territory for which he is responsible. 
 
 And so in the first weeks Phil spent long hours 
 talking to Sandy. He learned the characteristics 
 of every hunter who traded at Fort Dease. He 
 learned the customs and ways of the post, of the 
 people who made it their headquarters. He 
 gathered and stowed away innumerable bits of 
 scandal and practical jokes, of prowess on the part 
 of this hunter and laziness on the part of another. 
 
 He learned how Henry Chapies had caught two 
 black foxes on the same day and had celebrated 
 by refusing to set another trap all winter. He 
 learned that Job Mecham was supposed to have 
 fits and spend an entire winter moping in his 
 camp, while the next year he would go out and 
 liquidate two seasons' debt with a phenomenal 
 catch of fur. 
 
 He learned how, two winters before, Solomon 
 Moses and his entire family had starved to death 
 through the inability of the Fort Dease manager
 
 68 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 and Sandy to get relief to them in time. Word 
 had been brought in and, as the Company always 
 does, help had been dispatched as quickly as 
 possible. 
 
 Sandy went into a long description of that trip, 
 of how he was caught in the worst storm he had 
 ever known, of how he had become lost in trying 
 to make a short cut between Cut-Bank and 
 Berens rivers, and of how he had arrived too late 
 and had found the family lying dead in the camp, 
 with the exception of Solomon Moses himself, who 
 had probably gone off in search of help and had 
 died on the way. 
 
 After several weeks Sandy finally loosened 
 enough to give the information that the Indians 
 would never return to Fort Dease to dispose of 
 their winter's hunt. 
 
 "You're crazy," Phil exclaimed. 
 
 "You wait and see.'* 
 
 "But why shouldn't they come back?" 
 
 "The weeteego." 
 
 "The weeteego won't keep them away from here 
 in the spring." 
 
 "Way up the Bay there a new post, a Free- 
 trading company. No weeteego there. In the 
 spring all the Indians cross over and go down the 
 White Wolf River to that post and sell their fur. 
 They 'fraid to come back here." 
 
 "But why did they get their debt here this fall 
 if they are afraid of the weeteego ? "
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 69 
 
 "They have to have powder and everything 
 and in the summer they not so afraid of the wee- 
 teego because they had not heard much about it 
 and it not come here before when the Indians are 
 here." 
 
 "How do you know they'll take their fur down 
 the Bay?" 
 
 "They all talk about it while they wait for you 
 to come." 
 
 In spite of the earnestness of the half-breed, 
 Phil did not have much faith in Sandy's story. He 
 had not seen evidences of unusual unrest among 
 the Indians. And these Indians had never known 
 a Freetrader, had never dealt with any one except 
 the Hudson's Bay Company. The story was 
 preposterous. 
 
 When Phil believed he had soaked in all the 
 gossip of the district he failed to find Sandy par- 
 ticularly entertaining. The half-breed was too 
 prone to wander into the realms of superstition, 
 altogether too fond of telling of the weeteego that 
 had been visiting Fort Dease and that had driven 
 the former manager mad. 
 
 As at the beginning, Phil did not attach any 
 importance to this story. He had disposed of the 
 strange footprints in the mud with the explanation 
 that an Indian had returned for something he had 
 forgotten. It was only the morning before that 
 the last of them had gone. 
 
 "I know," Sandy had concluded his tale one 
 night, "white men never believe in weeteego.
 
 70 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 But the manager who was here last year, he 
 believe. He see the weeteego, not once but many 
 time. He know this weeteego come to Fort 
 Dease. The weeteego make him mad, like a 
 loon." 
 
 And so Phil had come to abandon Sandy to his 
 pipe and his kitchen and his fear of the weeteego. 
 He had retired to the front of the dwelling house, 
 to his broodings and his fears and his doubts, and 
 the beginning of winter found him mooning alone 
 in the living room while Sandy smoked his pipe 
 and mooned over weeteegos in the kitchen. 
 
 It was one morning in early November, when the 
 bogs had frozen over and the first big snow was 
 threatening, that Sandy violated a precedent and 
 entered the living room one morning. 
 
 "That keg of gunpowder in the cache, she 
 gone!" he exclaimed, excitedly. 
 
 "What did you do with it?" asked Phil, dis- 
 interestedly. 
 
 "Me never go near that cache." 
 
 "But there is no one else to go near it." 
 
 "It the weeteego." 
 
 "Weeteego nonsense! Weeteegos don't steal 
 gunpowder." 
 
 "Come and you see." 
 
 Phil followed Sandy out to the corner of the 
 enclosure where the cache had been built. Several 
 yards away he saw that one side had been broken 
 into and he hurried forward. The gunpowder 
 was gone.
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 71 
 
 Phil stood up after a quick examination and 
 looked at Sandy. 
 
 "When did this happen?" he asked. 
 
 "It all here last night. Me feed the dogs and 
 see the cache." 
 
 " You haven't seen any more of those barefoot 
 tracks?" 
 
 Sandy pointed to the frozen clay and shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 "Me hear him again last night," he said. "He 
 howl like a wolf off there," and he pointed toward 
 the marsh in the south. 
 
 Phil's investigations of Indian superstitions 
 had led to a discovery, not original with him, that 
 the legend of, or belief in, the loup-garou, or were- 
 wolf, was common among some Indians, as it 
 had been among many primitive people. He 
 knew that the Eskimo of Alaska believes that the 
 killer whale, "the wolf of the sea," has the ability 
 to change at will into the wolf, and vice versa. 
 
 But as he went back to the house, scoffing, 
 he realized that, despite anything he might be- 
 lieve, the gunpowder was gone. 
 
 "Me put another keg there?" Sandy asked. 
 
 "No," Phil answered gruffly. "We'll keep the 
 rest in the store." 
 
 From that time on the weeteego began to take 
 its place in Phil's thoughts with Joyce and Wick- 
 son. Viewed now at a distance, the tracks of 
 naked feet in the mud assumed a sinister signi- 
 ficance. And the gunpowder was gone. No liv-
 
 72 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 ing person was known to be within one hundred 
 miles of Fort Dease. 
 
 The week after the disappearance of the gun- 
 powder the first big storm of the winter struck the 
 coast. For a day it raged without a lull. When 
 night came nothing was to be seen from the dwel- 
 ing house windows beyond the picket fence. 
 The great, barren waste was a mass of flying snow, 
 and the first numbing cold had come. The little 
 house shook as it received the full force of the wind 
 and the eaves formed great whistles which shrieked 
 eerily with each rising blast. 
 
 The storm had brought with it excessive brood- 
 ing and a new despondency, and Phil went to bed 
 early, tired out by the very wretchedness and 
 suspense and grawing uncertainty of his existence. 
 He would not have admitted it, he probably did 
 not realize it, but the land, that new, raw, barren 
 waste, had gripped him. Aided by the forces that 
 attacked from within, it had at last penetrated the 
 callousness built up by a dozen years in the wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 Phil did not know when he wakened or what had 
 caused him to be transferred so suddenly from a 
 dreamless sleep to a complete, alert consciousness. 
 The sounds of the storm were even louder, but in 
 the room there was absolute quiet. It was dark, 
 too, so dark that even the window could hardly 
 be distinguished. 
 
 For a moment Phil strained his eyes, so certain
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 73 
 
 had he been that something had wakened him. 
 When he knew that he could not see he listened 
 intently, as if to hear something beneath the roar 
 of the storm. 
 
 But there was nothing except perfect stillness 
 in the room. Phil relaxed at last, concluding that 
 an unusual blast of wind had shaken the house and 
 disturbed him. He thought to drop off to sleep, 
 but found his nerves peculiarly tense. He found, 
 too, that he was unconsciously straining his ears. 
 
 A particularly fierce gust struck the house but 
 even in the rattle and roar there came to him under 
 it all a sound that could have been made by only 
 one thing. The latch of the door was being lifted. 
 The shrieking of the wind and the rattling of loose 
 boards ceased and in the momentary stillness Phil 
 strained to catch a repetition of the sound. There 
 was none. 
 
 Again the wind struck the house, and again Phil 
 caught the sound of a lifting latch. This time 
 there mingled with it a tiny squeak as the door 
 swung on the hinges. 
 
 "Sandy!" Phil cried as he sprang from bed. 
 "What are you doing there?" 
 
 He ran across the room and found the door open 
 a couple of inches. As he grasped the latch he 
 heard the front door open, and when he had swung 
 back the door of his own room the storm struck 
 him, blinding and driving him back with the sting 
 of the snow and the searing cold. 
 
 "Sandy!" he called again, now pressing against
 
 74 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 the wind and looking out. He thought he caught 
 a glimpse of a figure on the veranda but if he did 
 it faded instantly into the darkness and the storm. 
 
 "Sandy!" 
 
 There was no answer and he closed the outer 
 door and went into his room. Shivering, trembling 
 so that he could hardly hold the chimney of the 
 lamp, for the cold had driven through, he finally 
 struck a light. Then, the lamp in his hand, he 
 went to the kitchen. 
 
 As he entered the hall the lamp showed at once 
 that the kitchen door was open. He had never 
 known the half-breed to leave it so. 
 
 "Sandy!" he called as he strode down the hall. 
 
 There was no answer, but as the lamp lighted up 
 the kitchen Phil saw his servant's horror-distorted 
 face peering out from under the blankets on his 
 bunk. 
 
 "What are you doing up at this time of night, 
 opening my door and the front door?" Phil de- 
 manded, angrily. 
 
 The man did not answer. 
 
 "Wasn't that you?" Phil asked as a twinge of 
 the other's terror touched him. 
 
 Still Sandy seemed incapable of speech, and Phil 
 crossed over to his bunk. 
 
 "Haven't you been out of bed?" 
 
 Sandy shook his head. 
 
 "Who was that at my door, if it wasn't you?" 
 
 "The weeteego," whispered the half-breed. 
 
 "Weeteego!"
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 75 
 
 "You no see him?" 
 
 "Of course not." 
 
 "Me see him. Here, in the kitchen. He open 
 that door. Me see him by the window. He hit 
 that bench with his foot. Then he go back 
 through the hall. Me never see him before." 
 
 Phil did not comment. Slowly he turned and 
 set the lamp on the table. There had been the 
 quick impulse to scoff, but somehow the words 
 would not come. He knew that Sandy had not 
 been out of bed. He was not sure that he had only 
 imagined a figure just outside the front door, one 
 that had faded into the storm as a picture fades 
 from a screen at a moving picture show. 
 
 He turned uncertainly and looked at the 
 frightened face of the half-breed. Then he picked 
 up his lamp and without another word returned 
 to his bedroom. 
 
 Cursing himself for permitting Indian supersti- 
 tion and a half-breed's terror to upset him, and 
 at_the same time glancing furtively over his 
 shoulder at the door of his room, Phil crawled in 
 between the big four-point blankets. For a time 
 he found himself listening intently every time the 
 wind howled. It had been only then that he had 
 heard the noise of the lifted latch. But after a 
 half-hour he had argued himself into a firm belief 
 that both he and Sandy had been the victims of a 
 caprice, or series of caprices, of the storm. 
 
 The fright, for it had been that, served to clear 
 Phil's brain. It raised it above the muddy,
 
 76 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 murky, befogging level to which it had been sink- 
 ing. Brooding, inactivity, growing fears and 
 anxieties for Joyce, the depressing effects of 
 solitude and of the land in which he lived, all had 
 combined to rob him of mental vigour. Now he 
 was alert, sane again, and for the first time in weeks 
 his old humorous attitude toward life returned. 
 With a frank grin for his terror of a half-hour be- 
 fore, he turned over and went to sleep. 
 
 Daylight had come when Phil wakened again, 
 a fact that brought him up in bed with a jerk. 
 He had been breakfasting by lamplight for a 
 month. He listened for sounds in the kitchen but 
 there were none. The storm still tore across the 
 bogs and the sea, still whistled and rattled about 
 the dwelling house. The house was very cold. 
 Sandy always had a fire roaring in the living 
 room that his master might have a warm place in 
 which to dress. Phil crossed the hall, but the 
 stove was cold and silent. 
 
 "Sandy!" he called as he started through the 
 dining room to the kitchen. "Sandy, where are 
 you?" 
 
 There was no answer and he threw open the 
 kitchen door to find that room as still and as cold 
 as the others. There was no fire in the stove, and 
 Sandy's bed was empty. Even the blankets were 
 gone. 
 
 The cold decided Phil's next move as he stood 
 there perplexed. He ran back through the hall 
 to his own room to get his clothes. Ten minutes
 
 THE SPECTRE OF FORT DEASE 77 
 
 later he was bundled in his skins and furs and work- 
 ing at the stove with numbed fingers. When the 
 fire was burning well in the living room and he had 
 warmed himself, he went to the kitchen and threw 
 open the outer door. 
 
 A great mass of snow was banked up against it, 
 packed so tightly by the wind that it remained 
 there, a solid, finely chiselled barrier showing each 
 little crevice in the boards against which it had 
 been driven. 
 
 Phil closed the door against the wind and ran 
 through the hall to the front door. It was bar- 
 ricaded in the same way. Sandy had gone, and he 
 had gone in the night, so long ago that the storm 
 had wiped out all traces of where he had passed 
 through the door. 
 
 Returning to the kitchen, Phil again opened the 
 door and stepped out into the big drift. He 
 fought his way across to the trading shop, to the 
 warehouse and back to the dog yard. The dogs 
 were gone. 
 
 He went out through the gate in the picket fence 
 to the Indian house. The door was closed, and the 
 snow was banked high on the threshold. But 
 when Phil opened it and looked in he saw that it 
 had been opened in the night and snow tracked 
 in, leaving great, unshapely prints on the floor. 
 
 He hurried back through the drifts to the front 
 gate in the fence and then across to the side gate. 
 In no place was there a sign of any one having 
 gone out. The storm had attended to that.
 
 78 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Then he returned to the kitchen door and saw that 
 his own tracks had been nearly filled. 
 
 Sandy, with the only dog team, had gone, and 
 in the storm there was no way to follow him. 
 Phil was alone at Fort Dease at the beginning of 
 winter.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE WEETEEGO 
 
 THE weeteego weeteego in Cree, windigo in 
 Ojibwa is not exactly a superstition among 
 woods Indians. There have been weeteegos, 
 and windigos, and the few actual instances have 
 served to establish a firm belief in them. 
 
 The weeteego is not from the spirit world. He 
 is a real, live Indian, either man or woman, who 
 has obtained supernatural powers through some 
 means or other, and who is to be greatly feared as 
 no human force can prevail against him. 
 
 Further, and more gruesomely, the weeteego, 
 or windigo, is a cannibal, an ogre of the wilderness 
 that eats men, women, and children. This is its 
 most fear-inspiring trait, but, through its super- 
 natural powers, it is capable of any diabolical act. 
 Real, live weeteegos, of course, have been 
 mentally deranged Indians who have killed and 
 eaten members of their own families or other In- 
 dians. Insanity is often misconstrued by woods 
 Indians as an evidence of the possession of evil 
 spirits, and the common belief in the power of such 
 spirits, coupled with the few real instances of wee- 
 teegoism, has resulted in more than one panic- 
 disrupted camp. 
 
 79
 
 8o PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Philip Boynton knew all of this. He had heard 
 much of it and one actual instance had come 
 under his observation. He knew the terror of the 
 Indians when they believe a weeteego is near their 
 camp, and he understood perfectly why Sandy had 
 gone. 
 
 Phil felt only exasperation. There was no fear, 
 no dread of what he faced. The shock of finding 
 himself alone cleared his mind of the bloated, dis- 
 torted, inflamed thoughts and he was cool, thor- 
 oughly himself again. He cursed because he 
 faced a winter of his own cooking. He laughed at 
 the thought of himself, a much-served servant of 
 the great Company, cutting his own firewood. 
 Half grinning, half frowning, he went into the 
 kitchen to prepare his breakfast. 
 
 The snow ceased falling at noon and the sky 
 cleared. Phil went out again to try to determine 
 what Sandy had done. He found that the half- 
 breed had taken the toboggan, the dogs, his snow- 
 shoes, his blankets and rabbit-skin robe, four 
 sacks of fish for the team and practically all the 
 food in the kitchen enough to last him two weeks. 
 
 There was nothing to indicate which way he had 
 gone. It might have been northwest to Fort 
 Berens. It might have been south to some 
 hunter's camp across the bogs. It might have 
 been up the river to Lowry's nearest outpost. 
 It might have been up the coast to the Free- 
 trader of whom he had told. 
 
 Of all these places, Fort Berens was the nearest,
 
 THE WEETEEGO 81 
 
 nearly two hundred miles down the shore of the 
 Bay, a difficult, dangerous trip, with no fuel, no 
 protection from storms. Southwest to the Free- 
 trader's it was the same. The chances were he had 
 gone west toward the timber country and the near- 
 est outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company. 
 
 Phil did not find anything hopeful in this. He 
 knew that by the time Sandy had broken a trail 
 for two hundred miles he would have the super- 
 stitious fear pretty well worked out of his system 
 and, because of his white blood, would be ashamed 
 to admit the reason for his flight from Fort Dease. 
 He might even avoid the Hudson's Bay Company 
 altogether. 
 
 The more he thought of it the more he was con- 
 vinced that the last would be the case. On that 
 hypothesis he reasoned out his own predicament. 
 If Sandy failed to tell that he was alone at Fort 
 Dease the fact would not be known all winter. 
 He even stopped to wonder if Wickson would 
 act if he did learn of it. The district manager 
 might ignore the fact, leave him to a year of soli- 
 tude. It would be playing his game, although the 
 Company's policy never wittingly permitted such 
 a thing. 
 
 There would be an opportunity to send out a 
 message in January. At most posts all the 
 hunters gather on New Year's Day. It is an 
 annual affair, the big occasion of the year. They 
 bring in the first of the winter's fur, get new 
 supplies, and, best of all, are guests of the Com-
 
 82 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 pany, eat the Company's food and shake the hand 
 of the Company's representative. It is the bright 
 spot in the Indian's winter. 
 
 But Fort Dease was different. Down there on 
 the shore of the Bay, separated from the hunting 
 grounds by one hundred miles of barren waste, it 
 was too far for all its hunters to come in midwinter. 
 Sandy had told Phil that in past years only a dozen 
 were near enough, and cared enough, to make the 
 journey. Phil remembered, too, what Sandy had 
 said about the hunters not coming back to Fort 
 Dease because of the weeteego, but he gave the 
 report no consideration. Of course the Indians 
 would come, and in six weeks he would have one 
 of them started for Lowry's post with a message. 
 In three months he would have a servant, a dog- 
 team, and perhaps some mail. 
 
 So, in excellent spirits, Phil began his long 
 solitude. It was even better, he thought, than to 
 have Sandy mooning in the kitchen over weeteegos, 
 and, besides, Sandy's bannock was far below 
 standard. 
 
 As for the weeteego, Phil ignored it. He 
 convinced himself that the wind had played a 
 prank, and that Sandy, because the manager had 
 been disturbed, had imagined all that was neces- 
 sary to reach the climax of superstitious terror. 
 
 For a week things went nicely. The flight of his 
 servant seemed to have lifted Phil above the des- 
 pondency caused by the dreary life at Fort Dease 
 and by his brooding over Joyce and Wickson. He
 
 THE WEETEEGO 83 
 
 found enough to keep him busy most of the day 
 and he had brought in a large supply of books from 
 the library at Savant House. He thought much 
 of Joyce, but Wickson occupied less of his attention 
 and his pessimism was gone. 
 
 Then, ten days after Sandy left, and as Phil 
 sat reading one night, he was startled from his 
 chair by a howl from out on the bog. His book 
 slid to the floor and he half rose from his chair. 
 
 It was seldom that wolves came near Fort Dease. 
 There was nothing for them to live on. But, 
 though this fact flashed instantly into Phil's mind, 
 it was something else that kept him in a tense atti- 
 tude of perplexity and uneasiness. He had heard 
 thousands of wolves howl, but he had never heard 
 one exactly like that. As he tried to reproduce 
 the sound in his mind he became more certain 
 that it could not have been a wolf. 
 
 But he knew of nothing else it could have been. 
 There was not a person within one hundred miles 
 of him. Alone, he was out on the edge of as 
 desolate a land as the world knew. On one side 
 was the inland sea, an impossible thoroughfare. 
 On the other was a storm-swept, shelterless 
 waste, as barren of life as the moon. 
 
 The sound was not repeated and slowly Phil 
 relaxed and sank back into the comfortable depths 
 of his chair. He picked up his book again, listened 
 for a moment to the warm sound of the fire in the 
 stove beside him, glanced about the cozy room, and 
 then, with a sheepish grin, again began to read.
 
 4 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 The next day another snow-storm came to rage 
 for three days. There was no need to go out, for 
 he had brought in a large reserve supply of wood, 
 and Phil sat beside the stove in the living room 
 reading. The days were very short, and, in the 
 storm, very dark, and an interesting book upset 
 Phil's schedule. He had not risen until late 
 the morning of the second day of the storm, 
 and his midday meal was forgotten until late in 
 the afternoon. Supper came at ten o'clock that 
 night, and it was nearly midnight when the dishes 
 were washed. Phil returned to the book, the light, 
 and the stove in the living room. 
 
 It was a work on ethnology and, because it was 
 about the Cree Indians, the people he knew best, 
 it was more absorbing than fiction. Consequent- 
 ly, Phil was unconscious of a draught of cold air 
 on the floor until his legs were chilled to the knees. 
 
 But, somehow, as he glanced absently at the 
 stove, he felt that something other than the 
 cold had drawn his attention from the book. He 
 had that indefinable feeling that another person 
 was near him. 
 
 Suddenly aroused, he looked through the double 
 door into the dining room. The door leading on 
 into the kitchen was closed, but as Phil looked he 
 saw the latch slowly lowered into its slot. 
 
 There was no sound. Fascinated, he did not 
 take his eyes from the latch of the dining-room 
 door. Then he became conscious of the cold, of 
 his numbed feet.
 
 THE WEETEEGO 85 
 
 It aroused him from the trance into which the 
 weird movement of the latch had plunged him. 
 Perplexed, he glanced again at the dining-room 
 door. For the first time apprehension came. 
 But only for a moment. He picked up the lamp 
 and went to the door from the dining room into the 
 kitchen and opened it. 
 
 Instantly a swirl of wind extinguished the lamp 
 and he felt the biting snow particles stinging his 
 face. In the first stages of panic he slammed the 
 door against the wind and retreated to the living 
 room, where he quickly scratched a match and 
 touched it to the lamp-wick. 
 
 The light in the familiar room ended his panic. 
 
 He knew at once that the wind had blown open 
 the outside kitchen door and that he had imagined 
 the movement of the latch. He went out arid 
 closed and bolted the door. 
 
 Phil returned to the living room. In a few 
 minutes he was again absorbed in his reading, so 
 completely so that the first notes of the long, weird 
 howl that came from the marshes failed to reach 
 him. The next instant he was sitting erectly in 
 his chair, listening with strained ears, while a 
 peculiar creeping sensation spread from his neck to 
 the top of his head. 
 
 The howl ended and then began again. There 
 was something demoniacal about it. It had a 
 baffled, angry note, and it was not like any sound, 
 human or animal, that Phil had ever heard before. 
 
 He did not return to his book. For a long time
 
 86 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 he sat in his chair listening for a repetition of the 
 sound. None came, but the tense expectancy 
 served only to increase the feeling of uneasiness. 
 Repeatedly Phil told himself that he was a fool, 
 that the solitude was giving him a case of nerves. 
 He even tried to convince himself that he had 
 not heard anything, but the memory of that un- 
 earthly howl was too vivid. 
 
 At last he looked at his watch. It was after 
 three o'clock. He built up the fire and went to 
 bed. 
 
 It was noon when he wakened. As he opened 
 his eyes there flashed upon him a remembrance of 
 the events of the night before. Chuckling at him- 
 self for his unusual case of nerves he arose and 
 dressed. He resolved that day to mend the latch 
 so that there might not be a recurrence of the 
 wind-opened door. In a quick reaction from his 
 uneasiness of the night before he began to hum as 
 he went toward the kitchen. The song came to an 
 abrupt end as he halted at the door. 
 
 Leading across the room from where he stood 
 were two lines of tracks. Broad, shapeless impres- 
 sions in the snow which had blown in while the 
 door had stood open, they were irrefutable evi- 
 dence that he had seen the latch slowly lowered in 
 the slot, that he had had an unknown visitor. 
 
 In a vain effort to explain away this mystery 
 Phil argued to himself that they must be his prints 
 made when he went to the door to close it. But 
 the fallacy of such an explanation was immediately
 
 THE WEETEEGO 87 
 
 apparent in the sight of his own smaller, more 
 slender moccasin impressions leading across the 
 room and back again. In some places his own 
 covered the tracks of the unknown, showing that 
 his visitor had come and gone before he had closed 
 the door in the night. 
 
 Phil hurried across the room and opened the 
 door, only to find a level, unbroken drift piled 
 high against it. Outside there was not a track of 
 anything; could not be with the storm still raging. 
 
 He swept the snow from the kitchen and started 
 a fire. After he had eaten breakfast he went out- 
 side and searched the entire place for signs of some- 
 one having been there in the night. But the wind 
 and the thickly falling snow had covered every- 
 thing. 
 
 That night the manager of Fort Dease feared the 
 unknown for the first time in his life. He sat 
 beside the stove with a book in his hands, but he 
 did not read. Unwillingly, he found himself re- 
 viewing all that he had heard and seen since com- 
 ing to Fort Dease. He remembered what Joyce 
 had told him of his predecessor, of how the man 
 had gone out a mumbling imbecile after a year on 
 the marshes. He recalled the footprints in the 
 mud, the night he had heard his bedroom door 
 opened, the howls from out on the bogs. He re- 
 membered all the stories Sandy had told him, 
 the snowy footprints he had found in the Indian 
 house, those he had seen only that noon in the snow
 
 88 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 on the kitchen floor. And, most vividly of all, he 
 remembered the latch of the door slowly dropping 
 back into its slot. 
 
 Phil did not go to bed until nearly morning. He 
 read fitfully after midnight, but always he stopped 
 to listen as if expecting to hear that dreary howl 
 from out in the storm. 
 
 The next day the sky had cleared and the 
 wind had gone down. Phil had breakfast 
 eaten before noon and immediately set out 
 to examine every bit of ground about the post. 
 The snow had drifted high against the buildings 
 on the lee sides, while in some of the more exposed 
 places the ground was nearly bare. He looked 
 carefully everywhere, but not a sign of any sort 
 was to be seen. 
 
 Returning from the Indian house he stubbed 
 his toe on something hard in a place where the 
 ground had been swept almost clean. The object 
 was kicked loose and ahead of him, but Phil would 
 have passed it had he not caught a glimpse of 
 feathers thrust out from the snow-covered ball. 
 He stooped and picked it up, brushing the snow 
 off with his mittens, and found a half-eaten 
 ptarmigan. 
 
 It was not the fact that it was a ptarmigan that 
 caused Phil to look at it in wonder and then in 
 growing horror. It was a realization of what had 
 befallen the bird. It had not been cooked, not 
 even dressed. The flesh had been torn from it in 
 frozen strips. And no animal had done it. There
 
 THE WEETEEGO 89 
 
 were no small, sharp, awl-like tooth-marks, 
 but wide, flat, dull imprints of human teeth. In 
 the frozen flesh they were as evident as though 
 Phil himself had seen them made. 
 
 In sudden horror he dropped the bird and 
 hurried back to the dwelling house. As he 
 forced his way through the deep drifts he looked 
 apprehensively out over the white waste about 
 him. As far as he could see there was only un- 
 broken, level, white land and unbroken, level 
 gray sea. 
 
 For the first time in his life Phil was afraid of 
 the solitude. The view from the fort was so 
 utterly dead and lifeless, so weighted with sinister 
 possibilities, so suggestive of death itself in fright- 
 ful form, that it reached at last to the soul of the 
 man it held within its grasp. 
 
 But even as he feared it, Phil defied it. Out 
 there in the centre of that waste, with no human 
 chance of escaping from it, in anger because of his 
 very impotency to do so, he shook his fist at the 
 silent, mocking, shrouded desolation and chal- 
 lenged it to battle. 
 
 The land, wise, patient, certain, struck greater 
 terror by its seeming disregard of his presence, 
 and he hurried into the house. 
 
 From that moment on Phil was never able to 
 get away from the idea of the weeteego. He 
 tried to read but could not. He found himself 
 listening always for that howl from the marshes, 
 for sounds of lifted latches, for footsteps in the
 
 90 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 hall or in the kitchen. For a time he tried to 
 argue with himself, to convince himself that he was 
 a fool, and in the week that followed the finding 
 of the ptarmigan nothing happened to support his 
 terror. 
 
 But the intangible dread persisted until the next 
 storm, and on the second night of it Phil again 
 heard the howl from the marshes. He was waiting 
 for it then, heard the first shrill, wailing note, and 
 instantly the flesh crept upward on the back of his 
 neck. 
 
 He did not sleep that night, and when he finally 
 went to bed after midnight, the third night of the 
 storm, he had a rifle beside him on the covers and 
 a small electric hand lamp, one he had brought 
 from England, beneath his pillow. Sheer weari- 
 ness brought quick slumber. 
 
 Phil found himself wide awake, eyes straining 
 against the darkness, ears against the sound of the 
 wind. He could see nothing, hear nothing, yet he 
 was certain that something had wrenched him back 
 to full consciousness. 
 
 And then came a sound, a tiny squeak, distin- 
 guishable only because it was so much more gentle 
 than the noise of the storm. Softly Phil's hand 
 slid under his pillow until he had grasped the flash- 
 light. There was another tiny squeak, and he 
 levelled the lamp at the door and pressed the 
 button. 
 
 Sharply, clearly, distinctly, if only for a fraction 
 of a second, there was outlined a great, black,
 
 THE WEETEEGO 91 
 
 swollen hand gripping the door, while beneath it, 
 darting quickly out of sight, was another hand 
 clasping a long, rusty knife. 
 
 It had been like a picture flashed on to a screen 
 and off again. In the centre of the circle of light 
 there was nothing except the partly opened door. 
 And yet the hands had been there. 
 
 Phil sprang out of bed, a yell bursting from 
 his throat. His rifle in one hand, the flash in the 
 other, he ran down the hall, into the kitchen, and 
 against the fury of the storm as it struck in through 
 the open door. The room was empty, but in the 
 snow that covered the floor were the same shape- 
 less, blurred tracks that had been there before. 
 
 As Phil stood staring at the footprints there 
 came from out on the marsh the long, wailing howl, 
 rising above the noise of the wind and then ending 
 as if cut with a knife.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 
 
 RATHER than inspiring fresh terror, the 
 misshapen prints in the snow, though they 
 seemed to be neither human nor animal, 
 induced anger and utter fearlessness. The hands 
 which he had seen at his door, great, black, hairy 
 things, did not bring fear of some inhuman mon- 
 ster. The weird howls from the marshes did not 
 instil any superstitious dread of the loup-garou. 
 
 Phil dressed, started a fire, swept out the kit- 
 chen, started water to boil for tea, and sat down 
 in his living room to think over the situation. 
 That someone, white or red, insane or criminal, 
 was attempting to take his life was clear. Simi- 
 lar attempts on the life of the former manager 
 evidently had been made, so Phil personally was 
 not the object of attack. Rather, as manager for 
 the Hudson's Bay Company, his life was sought. 
 
 There was nothing to cause him to believe that 
 the unknown had a confederate, and, until the 
 Indians arrived at New Year's, there was no means 
 of Phil getting help. It was a duel, without hope 
 of assistance for either. 
 
 His mind cleared by his anger, Phil quickly 
 came to the conclusion that there was only one 
 
 92
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 93 
 
 thing for him to do. Whether the midnight 
 haunter of Fort Dease were red or white, sane 
 or mad, he must be killed. Where there is no law 
 a man must make his own, and Phil accepted that 
 first and fundamental code. 
 
 He did not have a revolver and there was only 
 one repeating rifle. Each night he had kept it 
 beside his chair as he sat reading in the living room. 
 When he slept, it lay on his bed beside him, and 
 the flash-light was beneath his pillow. The front 
 and kitchen doors were locked and the windows 
 fastened. After dark each night the dwelling 
 house became a fortress, and Phil gradually 
 changed his habits of living so that he slept most 
 of the day and was up the greater part of the 
 night. Sometimes he did not waken until the 
 early darkness of mid-afternoon had come, and 
 breakfast and supper exchanged places. 
 
 But the days and nights passed without a return 
 of the weeteego, as Phil had begun to refer in his 
 thoughts to his unknown adversary. The intense 
 cold of winter had come and as he looked out 
 across the lifeless plain he wondered that any- 
 thing could exist. The damp air was blown in 
 from the bay, condensed and frozen, so that every- 
 thing was enshrouded in a haze. Rather than 
 hiding the terrifying vastness and desolation of the 
 waste, the frost smoke only accentuated the utter 
 loneliness of the land by veiling it. 
 
 Christmas came before Phil realized it, so eager 
 was he for a return of the weeteego. As he
 
 94 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 checked off his calendar he realized that any day 
 the hunters might come, and he began to watch 
 the river and the marshes to the south. But the 
 days passed, and New Year's came and was gone, 
 and no Indians appeared. 
 
 It was the third of January before Phil would 
 admit what it meant. The weather had been fine. 
 There was no reason why they should not have 
 come in to sell their furs and to replenish their 
 supplies. When he arose at noon of January 
 fourth he knew that Sandy had told the truth, 
 that the hunters would not return to Fort Dease. 
 
 It was the first time the inexorable Northland 
 ever conquered him, that he had ever shuddered 
 as he faced the battle it always offers. Alone out 
 there on the edge of the world, unable to send 
 for help, no one knowing that he needed help, 
 threatened constantly by a haunting, ghostly, 
 demon-voiced thing with black, swollen, hairy, 
 knife-clasping hands, it was a situation that 
 threatened his reason as well as his courage. 
 
 Now, in addition, he faced the task of saving the 
 business of Fort Dease from destruction by the 
 very forces which he could not control. He had 
 given out an average of five hundred dollars to 
 more than forty hunters, goods to be repaid with 
 furs in the winter and spring. If the Indians 
 never came back, if they took their winter's 
 catch to a Freetrader up the bay, it meant 
 that the Company would lose the twenty thousand 
 of debt and the future business of the post. Fail-
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 95 
 
 ure to hold the hunters would compel the clos- 
 ing of Fort Dease. 
 
 The solitude, the desolation, the lack of real 
 work, and the strain of night and day defence 
 against the weeteego had worn Phil's spirit. 
 Now the sudden realization of the danger to the 
 Company aroused him as nothing else could. It 
 was a battle-cry to the loyalty of an old Hudson's 
 Bay man. It recovered for him almost magically 
 all his former defiance. 
 
 But it could not bring a plan of action. Des- 
 perate as was his need, he seemed helpless in the 
 situation that confronted him. Without dogs it 
 would be madness for him to attempt to travel 
 even so far as the nearest outpost of the Company. 
 He could not carry or drag enough food to last him 
 until he reached his destination. The trail would 
 have to be broken through deep snow. More 
 important still, the route must be known. Only 
 an Indian could be trusted to make such a journey. 
 Only an Indian could cross that vast space with 
 certainty. 
 
 For a week Phil strove for some solution. 
 With the weeteego still alive and threatening the 
 post it would be futile to attempt to reason with 
 the hunters. Nor would they be willing even 
 under his leadership to wage war on the evil spirit. 
 Help in that task must come from outside. And 
 after that there must be dogs and Indians to carry 
 the news of the capture. Passive resistance to the 
 weeteego might suffice with only his own life in
 
 96 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 danger. But the crisis to the fort demanded 
 action. 
 
 Why Phil felt this he could not have told. It 
 was the unconscious effect of the history of the 
 Company. Every post established in the wilder- 
 ness was witness to the force, the unconquerable 
 will, and the unselfish loyalty of the Company's 
 servants. Always it had meant a struggle. 
 Sometimes it had meant bloodshed and the 
 sacrifice of life. Each stood as the symbol of 
 accomplishment. The relinquishment of one 
 would be a breach of trust to the men who had 
 battled before him. Fort Dease must not be lost 
 through his inactivity. 
 
 But the tenacity of his purpose brought no 
 solution. The very hopelessness of his plight 
 made him savage. His impotence in the face of 
 this great need sent him pacing for long hours each 
 night up and down the living room. 
 
 It was in one of these desperate moods and on a 
 stormy night that the weeteego again visited Fort 
 Dease. One of Phil's precautions, since he had 
 converted night into day, had been to tack 
 blankets over the windows so that no light would 
 shine through. Then, if the unknown came, he 
 could not tell whether Phil was in bed. 
 
 For a long time he had been sitting in his chair 
 staring at the wall in front of him, concentrating 
 with all his power on the problem of reaching the 
 Indians. He was aroused by a faint noise in the 
 kitchen and jumped to his feet, every nerve tense.
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 97 
 
 Again the sound came to him, and he located it 
 at once. The weeteego was trying to lift the 
 latch of the outside kitchen door. 
 
 Phil turned the light very low, picked up his 
 rifle, and walked noiselessly into the dining room. 
 Slowly and carefully he unlatched and swung 
 back the door into the kitchen and listened. 
 Again he heard a sound. Instantly he lifted his 
 rifle to his shoulder and fired. 
 
 While the room still shook with the report, 
 Phil ran back and turned up the lamp. He rushed 
 out into the kitchen, his rifle in one hand, the 
 light in the other, to find the outer door open. 
 
 A quick glance told him the room was empty. 
 He set the lamp on the table and cautiously 
 crossed the kitchen to close the door, only to re- 
 treat when he realized the danger of such an un- 
 protected position. The weeteego might be 
 waiting outside. In a close encounter his rifle 
 would be useless. 
 
 As Phil stood there, irresolute, the weird howl, 
 now familiar but always startling, came from on 
 the bog. When released from the paralyzing in- 
 fluence of the wailing notes that rose and fell with 
 the wind, he sprang forward and slammed the 
 door, only to have it fly back before the storm. 
 
 Again he heard the howl, and when it ended he 
 reached for the latch. It was gone. He groped 
 with his fingers and found that he had shot it away 
 when he had fired at the door. 
 
 The discovery brought a soothing relief. For
 
 98 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 a time he had believed that the weeteego had 
 solved the lock, that bars and hinges were power- 
 less against him. This plain evidence of the lack 
 of the supernatural helped to bring a rational state 
 of mind, and Phil propped a stick of firewood 
 against the door and returned to the warmth of the 
 living room. 
 
 He did not fear a return of the weeteego. The 
 last howl had come from far away, and there 
 never had been a double attack. He turned the 
 lamp low as before and, his rifle standing against 
 the wall beside him, stretched out in his chair. 
 The night wore on and at last, the stimulation of 
 excitement gone, he dropped off to sleep. 
 
 Phil believed at first it was his own voice that 
 wakened him, a yell that still echoed in the little 
 room as he started upright in his chair. Then he 
 became conscious of an unfamiliar odour, a strange, 
 nauseating, penetrating smell that drew his head 
 sharply around toward the kitchen door. There 
 was the scent of wet hair and untanned skins, of 
 putrid meat and gross uncleanliness. 
 
 At the same instant a huge, blurry, hairy mass 
 hurled itself toward him in the gloom, sprawled out 
 and fastened itself upon him, crushing him through 
 a wrecked chair to the floor. Two hands which 
 he knew were black and swollen and hairy reached 
 for his throat, and there was a hot, suffocating 
 breath in his face. 
 
 What happened in the next few minutes Phil 
 never knew. He could not remember a con-
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 99 
 
 scious act, a deliberate plan. There remained only 
 a recollection of bursting chest and of muscles 
 driven to superhuman effort by a remorseless fear 
 of a putrid odour from which he strove in vain to 
 escape. 
 
 Rolling, striking, kicking, be finally got to his 
 feet. The fear of something inhuman, monstrous, 
 gave him a strength and a quickness he had never 
 known, and at last he was free of everything except 
 the overpowering odour. The table and the lamp 
 had gone over with the first rush of his adver- 
 sary, and he stood, panting, waiting, in the in- 
 tense darkness. 
 
 A sound came from across the room and he 
 braced himself for a renewal of the attack. There 
 was a rush of padded feet on the floor, and he 
 struck out blindly and in terror. Losing his 
 balance, he stumbled into the hall door. In- 
 stantly he whirled around, his hands outstretched, 
 his muscles taut. 
 
 Alert as only a man can be when he faces death, 
 Phil stood poised for instant action. He held his 
 breath that nothing might interfere with his hear- 
 ing the faintest sound. Outside there was the noise 
 of the wind. Inside there was an absolute stillness. 
 
 And then from out at the edge of the bog, 
 demoniacal in its fury, moaning, baffled, now more 
 threatening than ever, came the howl of the 
 weeteego. It rose and fell and ended in a scream, 
 and while it lasted Phil stood transfixed with the 
 terror of it.
 
 ioo PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 When it was not repeated he went into the 
 kitchen and found and lighted another lamp. His 
 first act was to pile everything movable in the 
 room against the outer door. Then he returned 
 to the living room to survey the damage. His 
 big easy chair was splintered beyond repair, 
 the lamp was smashed, the table and chairs over- 
 turned, and one blanket had been torn from over a 
 window. He tacked this in place, and even as he 
 did so, he looked fearfully at the window as if 
 expecting to see a horrible, monstrous face peering 
 in at him. 
 
 From that night on the manager of Fort Dease 
 never knew "what it was to be without fear. He 
 was wakened from his sleep by dreams of hairy 
 monsters that breathed fetid fumes in his face. 
 He was startled from his book or his meals by 
 loose siding snapping in the wind. 
 
 He had sane moments, short periods when he 
 reasoned that he was safe from attack when there 
 was no storm. The weeteego had visited Fort 
 Dease only at night and only when snow and wind 
 would cover all trace of him before daylight. 
 There were times when he remembered that he had 
 beaten the weeteego in a fair fight, that he had 
 driven him to rout after a blind struggle in the 
 dark. 
 
 But one feature of that struggle had come to him 
 with a terrible significance. The morning after 
 the fight he had found in the dining room the long, 
 rusty knife that had been thrust inside his bed-
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 101 
 
 room door that night he had seen the weeteego's 
 hands. The sight of it brought the recollection 
 that he had heard it drop just at the instant the 
 burly, shaggy form had hurled itself upon him. 
 
 He remembered, too, that not once had he been 
 struck, not once had there been an attempt to 
 gouge or bite, although he had felt the black, 
 swollen hands over his eyes and the face of the 
 monster had been pressed against his. There had 
 been only an attempt to smother him by sheer 
 weight, to bind his arms and to pinion him to the 
 floor. 
 
 There was only one explanation of this. The 
 weeteego had not sought to kill him. He would 
 have kept the knife to do that, and he had a gun 
 or he would not have stolen the gunpowder. In 
 the struggle he could have struck, or maimed, 
 could have torn Phil's throat with his teeth, once 
 could have battered his head against the floor. 
 But he had done none of these things. He had only 
 tried to overpower Phil, to make him a prisoner. 
 
 The thought of being in the hands of the wee- 
 teego was far more terrifying than death. What- 
 ever this monster was, sane or mad, white or red, 
 human or half animal, to be held captive by it was 
 unthinkable. 
 
 This fear grew as the days passed until it 
 became an obsession. Phil forgot the failure of 
 the Indians to come in at New Year's, the loss to 
 the Company. It was seldom that he thought of 
 Joyce. He did not remember Wickson at all.
 
 102 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 His nights became interminable periods of sus- 
 pense, his days short, unsatisfying naps. He be- 
 came thin, haggard. He never left the house to 
 get wood without standing his rifle by the kitchen 
 door. When the frost smoke permitted, he spent 
 long hours searching the white waste about him for 
 some sign of life. 
 
 Most of the time Phil sat in a chair, merely 
 waiting. Sometimes he had slight bursts of 
 energy. In one of these he got bear traps from the 
 trading shop and set them in front of the windows. 
 He argued once that the weeteego must have food, 
 forgetting that nothing eatable had ever been 
 taken from the cache or the kitchen, and filled 
 pieces of bannock with strychnine and placed them 
 outside the kitchen door. 
 
 The weeteego came again. Every time there 
 was a storm his howl was heard out on the marshes. 
 Twice Phil heard him at the kitchen door and 
 fired his rifle as quickly as he could work the lever, 
 with no other result than a badly weakened barrier. 
 Once more he found a half-eaten ptarmigan near 
 the Indian house and immediately he set bear 
 traps at the door. After the next storm he 
 found them snapped and tossed to one side. 
 
 January passed and most of February. The last 
 week of his third month alone at Fort Dease it 
 snowed continuously. The great, flat waste in 
 which he lived was wrapped in a driving white 
 cloud. Day and night the storm continued, and 
 day and night the weeteego howled. After three
 
 THE BATTLE IN THE DARK 103 
 
 days of it Phil's nerves were strained to the break- 
 ing point. He was no longer sane, no longer 
 capable of anything except a constant watch. He 
 lived in a chair beside the stove, sleeping fitfully, 
 waking in spasms of terror, listening always for the 
 howl on the marshes. 
 
 The end of the fourth day of the storm found 
 him so near exhaustion that he kept awake with 
 difficulty. His nerves were raw, and twitching. He 
 had clear moments when he feared for his reason. 
 He drank great quantities of hot, black tea. 
 
 Darkness came early, with hardly a change from 
 the grayness of the storm. The weeteego had not 
 howled for twenty-four hours, and Phil had not 
 slept, waiting for him to howl. The suspense had 
 become unbearable, and he paced up and down the 
 room on the border of frenzy. 
 
 And then it came, as startling as ever, wailing, 
 moaning, threatening. Phil paused in the centre 
 of the room and shook his fist in the direction of the 
 sound. Then he grasped his skin coat from the 
 wall and bound it about him with the long, 
 coloured assumption belt. He slipped on his big 
 gauntlet mittens and tightened the drawstring of 
 the coat's hood about his face. Feverishly he 
 picked up his rifle and dashed through the kitchen, 
 out into the storm and the darkness. 
 
 His snow-shoes were standing upright in a drift and 
 in a moment his feet were in the lashings. Then, 
 eager, intent, he listened for a repetition of the howl. 
 
 It sounded almost instantly, far out on the
 
 io 4 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 marsh up the river, and with a swish of flying snow 
 Phil leaped toward it. 
 
 He had no plan, no lucid idea of what he was 
 about to do. He only knew that off there ahead of 
 him, somewhere in the storm, was the cause of all 
 his trouble, the thing that was driving him mad. 
 His one desire was to find it, to crush it, to end its 
 fiendish torture. He felt that he must sleep, that 
 he must have rest, and he knew that he could 
 not so long as the weeteego lived. 
 
 After a couple of hundred yards he paused to 
 listen. He heard it again and plunged on at once, 
 not realizing that this last howl was different from 
 any he had ever heard. For the first time it had a 
 note of fear, of dismay, almost of terror. It was 
 short, quick, yelping like a brush wolf's clatter. 
 
 Phil ran despite the deep snow. It was terrific 
 work, but he did not know it, no more than did he 
 realize that he was out of sight of the fort, without 
 a sense of direction, rushing on blindly in the storm. 
 
 Sheer weariness brought him to a halt at last and 
 he listened. There was only the rustling of the 
 snow particles driven across the drifts and the roar 
 of the wind. Still expectant, still eager, Phil 
 waited, ready to dash forward at the first note. 
 
 Then from off to the right came a single, sharp 
 cry, so totally different from the howl of the wee- 
 teego that Phil turned, bewildered, stupefied. It 
 was repeated, and then clearly, distinctly above the 
 storm he heard a voice that was unmistakable 
 
 "Phil! Phil!"
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK 
 
 THE voice of Joyce Plummer coming to him 
 out of the storm and the darkness could not 
 clear Phil's brain of the cobwebs with which 
 it had been cluttered for more than a month. 
 It was too unreal. The thought that it could be 
 Joyce was too impossible. She was separated 
 from him by five hundred miles of wilderness, by a 
 northern winter, by conditions too severe for her 
 soft muscles and tender skin. 
 
 And yet so compelling had been the call, Phil 
 started at once in the direction from which it had 
 come. As he plunged ahead, sending the snow 
 flying from his webs, he forgot the weeteego com- 
 pletely. Her voice, his delirium, brought a new 
 and more terrifying obsession. Joyce was in 
 Wickson's power back at Savant House. He had 
 broken trail through half a thousand miles of drifts 
 to save her. 
 
 "I'm coming!" he cried when he heard her voice 
 again. "I'm coming! I'll kill him." 
 
 He imagined that he was out on the lake in front 
 of Savant House. He expected that each step 
 would bring him to the rise leading up from the ice. 
 Fifty yards after that and he would be at the door 
 
 105
 
 io6 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 of the dwelling house. Would he never reach the 
 shore ? Where was Osborne ? 
 
 "I'm coming!" he called again. 
 
 And then in the storm and darkness ahead of him 
 he saw something darker, shadowy in the snow. 
 In another moment he was upon it. 
 
 "Phil! Phil!" came a voice, and Joyce reached 
 out her arms to him. 
 
 "Where is he?" demanded Phil as he looked over 
 her shoulder. 
 
 "He passed me right back there, just before I 
 called. Did you hear him?" 
 
 "No, I didn't hear any one except you." 
 
 "Not that terrible howl? I thought it was a 
 wolf at first, and then he almost ran into me. 
 When he saw me he turned and ran right where 
 you came from, and he screamed again, worse than 
 before. Was that the weeteego, Phil?" 
 
 "Weeteego?" 
 
 He could only repeat what she said. As his 
 brain cleared of the fog and he began to realize 
 something of the true situation he became the more 
 bewildered. 
 
 "There is a weeteego, isn't there? That's why 
 I came, Phil. I heard you were all alone up here 
 and that something terrible, a weeteego, was trying 
 to kill you." 
 
 "You came! From Savant House?" 
 
 More than her presence there beside him in the 
 storm, the knowledge of what such a trip must 
 have meant served to bring order to his confused
 
 THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK 107 
 
 brain. But returning sanity only added to his 
 bewilderment. 
 
 "Of course," Joyce said. "Is it far from here?'* 
 
 "Far? Where?" 
 
 She peered at him anxiously, trying to see his 
 face in the darkness. 
 
 "To Fort Dease?" 
 
 "No, no. Not far. The river must be here 
 somewhere." 
 
 "Yes, it's right beside us." 
 
 "Then we just follow it downstream. It's not 
 far. We'll be there in a few minutes. Come 
 on." 
 
 "But Phil! The dogs!" 
 
 "The dogs! Of course. There must have been 
 dogs." 
 
 He turned back and Joyce took his hand. 
 
 "They're right here behind us," she said, gently. 
 "I was breaking trail for them. Come and we'll 
 get them." 
 
 Together they went a few yards on Joyce's 
 back trail. 
 
 "Here they are," she said when the leader shook 
 the snow from his coat and sprang to his feet just 
 in front of her. "You lead the way, Phil, and 
 they'll follow. They know me." 
 
 He did as she said and began to break out a trail 
 along the river, the high, cut bank of which was 
 dimly visible on his left. He kept on until a slight 
 rise told him he was nearing the picket fence and 
 then veered slightly until he struck it.
 
 io8 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "We're almost there," he said as he turned. 
 "The dogs coming all right?" 
 
 "Yes. They're coming." 
 
 By the time Phil had ploughed through from the 
 gate to the kitchen door his brain had cleared com- 
 pletely. In the same time Joyce, remembering his 
 queer questions and uncertain, hesitating actions, 
 came to the firm conclusion that he, like his prede- 
 cessor, had become deranged as a result of the 
 months alone in haunted Fort Dease. So fearful 
 had she been of finding him a babbling idiot, so 
 certain had she been after the first words with him, 
 Joyce found herself trembling with the dread of 
 what she faced. 
 
 As Phil stopped at the kitchen door he saw the 
 poisoned bannocks he had placed outside for the 
 weeteego. He snatched them up at once and 
 carried them inside without a word. Then the 
 thought of the bear traps in front of the windows 
 suddenly came to him. He hurried out and 
 grasped the leader by the trace. 
 
 "Go inside," he called to Joyce as he began to 
 drag the team away from the house. "Go in 
 where it's warm. I'll put up the dogs." 
 
 He tugged violently, for the dogs, hungry and 
 tired, had smelled the place where the food had 
 been and were trying to break away toward the 
 side of the house. Joyce hesitated a moment and 
 then sprang to help him. She ran toward the 
 wheel dog, only to be forced back by the team to- 
 ward the window of Phil's bedroom.
 
 THE WEETE EGO'S LAST ATTACK 109 
 
 "Go back!" he cried, excitedly. "Go back into 
 the kitchen." 
 
 He dropped the leader's trace and darted 
 across to Joyce, who was not more than two feet 
 from the bear traps hidden beneath the snow. He 
 grasped her roughly and pulled her back to the 
 kitchen door. 
 
 "Go in!" he cried as he sprang again to the 
 leader of the now-disorganized team. 
 
 By sheer strength he straightened out the dogs 
 in their traces, lifting the leader clear of the ground 
 as he pulled, and still by sheer strength he dragged 
 the team after him toward the kennels. Joyce, 
 more certain than ever of his complete mental 
 derangement, turned and stumbled into the dark 
 kitchen. Her knees struck a bench and she sat 
 down, the strength suddenly gone as was the spirit 
 which had driven her all the way from Savant 
 House. 
 
 Phil did not come in for fifteen minutes or more. 
 As Joyce waited all the forebodings engendered 
 during the four weeks of her journey from Savant 
 House enveloped her. She was alone in a lifeless 
 world with a fear-haunted maniac. The thing 
 she dreaded most had come to the one she loved 
 most, but even a sense of the responsibility that 
 she now knew to be hers could not lift her above 
 the crushing hopelessness of her predicament. By 
 her long journey she had conquered the North, 
 only to lose to it at the end.
 
 no PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 And then Phil entered, groped about for the 
 lamp and lit it. His quarter of an hour spent in 
 unharnessing and feeding the dogs, in springing 
 the bear traps he had set beneath the windows, 
 had completed the work of restoring his wandering 
 wits. To him responsibility had brought sanity and 
 sanity had brought fearlessness and confidence. 
 
 "Joyce!" he cried as he turned and saw her in 
 the light for the first time. "Why did you come 
 out here to Dease?" 
 
 "I had to, Phil." 
 
 She rose to her feet, hesitated a moment, search- 
 ing his eyes for a sight of the thing she had heard 
 in his voice out there in the storm and darkness. 
 But it was not there and, dizzy with the delight of 
 it, she swayed forward into his waiting arms. 
 
 "Why did you come?" Phil repeated after a 
 moment. 
 
 "No one else would come. No one else would 
 believe you needed help. And you do, don't you, 
 Phil?" 
 
 "Of course not." 
 
 "And you're you're all right, Phil?" 
 
 "Certainly, I'm all right. But nothing that 
 could ever happen to me could be worth such a 
 trip for you. What made you come?" 
 
 "Start the fire and get me something to eat and 
 I'll tell you as you work. I'm nearly famished. 
 I haven't had anything since breakfast, and you 
 were in sight when it stopped snowing for a minute 
 this morning, just as I was starting."
 
 THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK in 
 
 "You were out there alone in that storm all day 
 and camped near here last night!" 
 
 It was the thought of the weeteego, not of the 
 storm, that brought the exclamation from Phil, 
 and for an instant the old terror was in his eyes. 
 
 "What is it?" Joyce asked quickly. 
 
 "Nothing," he answered, thinking she had seen 
 his fear. 
 
 "But I saw it, just before I called to you, down 
 there on the bank of the river. Was that the 
 weeteego ? " 
 
 "Weeteego! Nonsense!" 
 
 "But Phil! I saw it, and you were out there 
 looking for it. And the half-breed who ran away 
 and left you alone said he saw it and that you did, 
 right here in this house. The Indians who brought 
 me almost here were afraid of it." 
 
 Before Phil returned from putting up the dogs 
 he had determined, if possible, to keep all knowl- 
 edge of the mysterious spectre of the storms from 
 Joyce. His own haunted weeks were so vivid, the 
 terror of them so fresh, the delirium from which he 
 had just been freed still so oppressive, he knew that 
 she must be spared an experience similar to his 
 own. 
 
 "Sandy was always seeing things," he replied, 
 carelessly, as he busied himself with the fire. "I'm 
 glad he got out. Only mooned around the kitchen 
 here talking weeteego until he was off his head." 
 
 "But Phil! The man ran past me back there on 
 the river! Who was he?"
 
 ii2 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "An Indian was in to trade this morning. Per- 
 haps he was camped somewhere around here and 
 when he ran into you he thought you were the 
 weeteego, though there never was a weeteego out- 
 side of Sandy's head." 
 
 "And you haven't seen anything, or heard 
 anything, since you've been here?" 
 
 "Not a thing." 
 
 Phil was bending over the kettle as he spoke. 
 Suddenly he leaped to the middle of the room, 
 every nerve taut, his eyes staring at the door. 
 Joyce at the same instant had jumped from her 
 bench and clung to him. Together they stood for 
 a moment, tense, alert, terrified, while above the 
 sound of the wind rose and fell that demoniacal 
 howl of the weeteego. 
 
 There was a new note of savagery, of desperate 
 defiance, in the long, weird wail, and it ended in a 
 diabolic shriek that left Phil as nerveless as it did 
 Joyce. 
 
 But he was the first to recover, and his laugh was 
 perfectly natural as he said : 
 
 "That certainly startled me. It's the first 
 sound I've heard all winter, unless I made it my- 
 self. It isn't often a wolf comes around Fort 
 Dease." 
 
 He turned back to the stove, but Joyce grasped 
 his arm and pulled him around until he faced her. 
 
 "Listen, Phil," she commanded. "Don't try 
 to deceive me. You can't. You never could with 
 those eyes and that face and your nervousness.
 
 THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK 113 
 
 I know Sandy told the truth. I felt it from the 
 first. That is why I came. And because I know 
 some of it, you must tell me everything. I'm here, 
 and I'm going to stay here with you. Now tell 
 me about this weeteego." 
 
 Phil knew at once that it was useless to try to 
 deceive Joyce. As he saw how cool and unterri- 
 fied she was, as he thought of the five hundred 
 miles she had travelled to be with him, he felt 
 suddenly ashamed of his own weakness in suc- 
 cumbing to something that had only the ap- 
 pearance of the supernatural. 
 
 "I don't know what is," he said, simply. "It's 
 human, of course, but whether it's red or white, 
 or insane or not, I don't know. It's clever enough 
 to come only when there is a storm so that I 
 haven't been able to track it, and it stands off 
 there on the marshes and howls like you just heard. 
 Of course that sort of thing gets on your nerves 
 when you're all alone in this hole." 
 
 "But doesn't it do any more than howl?" 
 
 Phil hesitated. He did not want to tell all that 
 the weeteego had done. As he searched his 
 imagination for a harmless story he saw Joyce 
 look at the splintered door. 
 
 "Did he ever get in?" she asked. 
 
 "He always makes an attempt," he answered, 
 suddenly finding himself unable even to belittle 
 the weeteego's activities. "Once since Sandy left 
 he did. He caught me asleep in the living room, 
 but I managed to get loose and he ran."
 
 ii4 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Why didn't he kill you while you were asleep ?" 
 
 "That's the queer part of it. He could have 
 done so, easily. But he seemed bent on capturing 
 me alive." 
 
 "Capturing you alive!" 
 
 Joyce lost some of her self-possession and 
 courage, but she quickly recovered both. 
 
 "Why haven't you killed him?" 
 
 "I have tried. I have shot at him there at the 
 door three times, and I've set bear traps, and I've 
 put out poisoned food. But he never wants food. 
 He never takes it when he can. Long ago I made 
 up my mind to take my first chance to shoot him, 
 but he never comes except in big storms and at 
 night." 
 
 " But with both of us here, and he knows you are 
 not alone now, there will be no danger," Joyce said, 
 confidently. 
 
 "No, because we are going to leave at once." 
 
 " Phil ! Not desert the Company ! " 
 
 "The Company has been deserted. This wee- 
 teego has driven all the Indians away. None of 
 them came in at New Year's and they won't come 
 in the spring. I gave out twenty thousand dol- 
 lars' worth of debt and the Company stands to lose 
 that and all future business here. I've got to get 
 out and round up the Indians before they get to the 
 opposition down the Bay this summer. I would 
 have been away from here six weeks or more ago 
 if I could have gone. But without dogs it would 
 have been impossible."
 
 THE WEETE EGO'S LAST ATTACK 115 
 
 "And we'll go out together!" Joyce cried ex- 
 citedly. " Phil, that will be the jolliest sort of a 
 trip. Just you and I together in the wilderness. 
 We can do it, can't we?" 
 
 "I was thinking of taking you only so far as 
 Lowry's nearest outpost and then getting Indians 
 to guide me to the hunters' camps. Only an In- 
 dian could find them. But Joyce! You haven't 
 told me how you got here." 
 
 "But we can go to the outpost together," she 
 cried, ignoring his question. "We'll do that much 
 together, and, Phil, we'll save Fort Dease in spite 
 of Wickson." 
 
 "W T hat do you mean?" he demanded. 
 
 "Wickson wouldn't send help when he heard 
 what had happened here. He laughed and said 
 there was nothing the matter, that you had let an 
 Indian superstition ruin the post and could stay 
 here until you got out the best way you could. 
 He said if you weren't man enough to handle some 
 gullible natives he didn't want you in his district." 
 
 "He didn't say that to you?" demanded Phil, 
 fiercely. 
 
 "No, he told Mr. Osborne, and Mrs. Osborne 
 told me. Then he left on a trip of inspection in the 
 western part of his district. The day after he left 
 I started. The Osbornes tried to keep me. They 
 said I could never get here. They said you were 
 all right and that the story had grown by the time 
 that it reached Savant House, as such stories al- 
 ways do. They even believed that Sandy had run
 
 n6 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 away because he had had trouble with you and 
 that there wasn't any weeteego after all. 
 
 "But I came, anyway. I had some money, and 
 Mrs. Osborne helped me to get two Indians and 
 two dog teams, and we went to Mr. Lowry's post, 
 and then to his outpost, and then here. Only 
 yesterday morning the Indians refused to go any 
 farther. 
 
 "They had heard about the weeteego and they 
 said night before last that they had heard it howl. 
 They were going to take both teams of dogs and go 
 back. But I made them leave one for me, and I 
 broke trail all yesterday and to-day. It wasn't 
 far. Only fifteen or sixteen miles, they said, right 
 down the bank of the river. And I had ridden 
 nearly all the way from Savant House and wasn't 
 tired." 
 
 " Did they start right back ? " asked Phil, quickly. 
 
 "No. They said they would wait there a day 
 and rest. Then they were to start straight back 
 for the outpost." 
 
 "And had you followed the river very far before 
 they stopped?" 
 
 "Yes, for several days." 
 
 "That's great!" he exclaimed, joyfully. "We 
 need only follow the river until we strike their trail. 
 It will be easy going after that and it will be 
 certain. We won't have more than three days of 
 travel before the end of the storm permits us to see 
 where they went, and we may even catch them." 
 
 It was a great relief to Phil, for after he had
 
 THE WEETE EGO'S LAST ATTACK 117 
 
 broached his plan of starting back at once with 
 Joyce he had realized that he would be risking 
 her life as well as his own in an attempt to cross 
 the white desert without a trail to guide him. 
 
 "We'll start the moment the storm is over," 
 he said as he turned again to his task of preparing 
 a meal. 
 
 After supper they sat in the living room for a 
 long time. The weeteego was forgotten. The 
 storm had ended soon after supper and the sky was 
 clear. They knew they could start in the morning, 
 but, though they needed the sleep, there was too 
 much to talk about. Joyce drew from Phil much 
 of the story of his lonely vigil out there on the edge 
 of the world, but mostly they talked of them- 
 selves, in that happy, aimless fashion of lovers. 
 
 Inevitably the subject of Wickson came up. 
 
 "Did he bother you?" asked Phil, vehemently. 
 
 "Not disagreeably. Really, Phil, had it been 
 under other circumstances I wouldn't have cared so 
 much. He is an unusual man in many ways. He 
 can be most interesting, and agreeable, only he 
 never could be to me after what he made you 
 suffer. I'd be afraid of him, if I were near him too 
 long. He gives the impression of invincibility, 
 somehow. You can't help but believe he gains 
 everything he sets out to gain. Just that im- 
 pression of him weakens any one. I I'm afraid 
 of him." 
 
 Phil glared at the stove and said nothing.
 
 ii8 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "But you're not afraid! For me!" Joyce cried. 
 
 He was at her side in an instant. 
 
 "Never, sweetheart," he whispered. "After 
 what you've done I'll never again know what any 
 sort of fear is." 
 
 Phil turned his bedroom over to Joyce and said 
 he would make a bed on the couch in the living 
 room. 
 
 "But the weeteego?" she asked. "Hadn't we 
 better take turns sleeping?" 
 
 "He'll never bother us on a clear night. He 
 never has. He's clever enough to come only when 
 he will leave no tracks. No, we needn't worry 
 about him. I'll sleep out here, and as soon as we 
 can in the morning we'll get started." 
 
 But Phil did not prepare for sleep. He had no 
 intention of doing so. Whatever the weeteego's 
 habits, he would not take any chances so long as 
 Joyce was in the house. He piled furniture against 
 the kitchen door. In the living-room he turned 
 the lamp far down and sat on the couch with 
 his back to the wall, his rifle beside him. He made 
 himself as uncomfortable as possible that he might 
 not fall asleep. 
 
 But his exhaustion was far greater than he had 
 realized in the excitement of Joyce's arrival. 
 Once in the night she crept out and found him 
 lying on his side, deep in sleep. She brought a 
 blanket from her bed and laid it gently over him, 
 dropped a soft kiss on his hair and went back to 
 bed.
 
 THE WEETEEGO'S LAST ATTACK 119 
 
 When Joyce wakened again it was daylight. 
 She listened for a moment but there were no 
 sounds. She knew that Phil had meant to start as 
 quickly as possible and she believed that he was 
 out harnessing the dogs. 
 
 But when no sound came after fifteen minutes 
 of drowsy waiting she sprang from bed and rushed 
 out into the living room. 
 
 "Phil!" she called when she found the place 
 empty. "Phil!" 
 
 The room was very cold and she went out to the 
 kitchen. The outside door was open. The sight 
 of it threw her into a vague panic. 
 
 "Phil! Phil!" she cried, as she rushed to look 
 out. 
 
 In the deep snow near the house she saw the 
 tracks made when she and Phil had come with the 
 dogs. The storm had half buried them, rounding 
 the edges and corners, rendering them shapeless. 
 
 But over all else, sharp and clear and standing 
 out with sculptural distinctness, were the tracks 
 of a toboggan that had been brought to the door 
 and then taken away. Beside it were great, shape- 
 less footprints, and directly in front of the door was 
 a huge, round, deep impression that might have 
 been made by a sack of grain tossed into the drift. 
 
 Again Joyce called, but her voice was lost in- 
 stantly in the silence of the vast, desolate waste. 
 Terrified, she rushed back to the bedroom and put 
 on her moccasins and outer clothing. Fastening 
 the sash about her skin coat as she ran, she went
 
 120 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 out to the store, to the dog kennels, to the servant 
 house and to the Indian house. 
 
 But nowhere was there a track, nowhere a sign 
 of Phil, except the bright, clear impression of a 
 toboggan that had been drawn out through the 
 gate and then north down the shore to the ice along 
 the edge of the bay. 
 
 From where she stood on the bank of the river 
 she could not see any moving thing within many 
 miles. She looked north, south, east, and west, but 
 everywhere the view was the same. The white 
 expanse was unbroken. 
 
 Back at the kitchen door she looked carefully at 
 the tracks made since the storm had ended. 
 Chiselled in the great, shapeless hole in the drift 
 was something that furnished her first clue. As 
 if it had been stamped in hot wax, there was the 
 unmistakable impression of a knotted rope. 
 Even the twisted strands were clearly defined. 
 
 In terror Joyce glanced at the trail made by the 
 toboggan down to the shore ice. It went straight 
 out from the land until it disappeared on the stone- 
 like crust. And as she looked she knew that the 
 weeteego had accomplished his purpose, that he 
 had captured Phil alive.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 
 
 PHIL wakened once in the night after Joyce 
 had placed the blanket over him. He 
 threw it off and again sat bolt upright, 
 his back to the wall. 
 
 For a time the fear of what might have happened 
 while he was asleep kept him alert. But his 
 nervous exhaustion and need of sleep were far 
 greater than he realized, and in half an hour his 
 head had dropped to one side and he was slumber- 
 ing so soundly that even the penetrating odour 
 that soon after filled the room failed to rouse him. 
 
 So extreme was his exhaustion that he was easy 
 prey for the great, hairy figure that padded softly 
 across the room from the kitchen door and looked 
 down at him. The next instant a long, narrow 
 bag of soft caribou skins, the hair on the outside, 
 was slipped over his head. His body was given a 
 quick pull and then a thrust and his head was on 
 the floor and his feet sticking into the air over the 
 edge of the couch. 
 
 So quickly was it done that Phil did not recover 
 complete consciousness until the bag had been 
 slipped up over his feet and tied tightly. His head 
 had been thrust through a small hole in the end but 
 
 121
 
 122 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 all the rest of his body was completely enclosed. 
 The sack was so tight he could not draw his 
 arms up from his sides, and even as he realized 
 what had happened the weeteego began lashing 
 him around and around with a rope so that he was 
 perfectly helpless. 
 
 Phil did not make a sound. After the first 
 convulsive twist of his body he did not even 
 struggle. He realized at once that he could do 
 nothing to escape and his first thought was that, by 
 keeping quiet, by not calling for help, the weeteego 
 would bear him away without disturbing Joyce. 
 
 When his prisoner was firmly bound, the weeteego 
 stood up and looked around. He took one step 
 toward the hall and a yell of warning was upon 
 Phil's lips. But the bulky, furry figure, shadowy 
 in the dim light from the low-turned lamp, turned 
 suddenly, picked something from the floor and the 
 next moment was pulling Phil's otter-skin cap 
 down over his ears. Then he lifted his prisoner, 
 carried him out through the kitchen door and 
 dumped him into a snowdrift. 
 
 Phil landed in a sitting position and saw at once 
 that he had been left alone and also that he could, 
 by a series of jerking, convulsive movements, hop 
 back into the kitchen. Before he could draw up 
 his body for the first movement the weeteego re- 
 appeared from around the corner of the building 
 with a toboggan. He lifted his prisoner into it 
 and began to lash him fast. 
 
 Instantly Phil strove with all his strength to
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 123 
 
 throw himself off. He lifted his legs and tried to 
 thrust the weeteego from him. He lifted his head 
 and butted futilely. But the great, hairy odour- 
 ous thing only laughed as he sprawled out on top 
 of his victim and continued to lash him down. In 
 two minutes his task was completed and he had 
 jumped ahead to the traces. The toboggan was 
 jerked forward and Phil saw the gate-posts flash 
 by. There was a short struggle in deep drifts and 
 then his head dipped and he shot down the gentle 
 slope to the bay. 
 
 The soft, grating sound of the toboggan in the 
 snow ceased and he began to bump along on the 
 hard crust and jagged pieces of broken ice. 
 Straight out from shore he went and then came a 
 sudden halt. Phil saw the weeteego bending over 
 him and then his face was covered with a piece of 
 caribou hide. It was very cold and he was glad 
 of the protection, but instantly he knew that it had 
 been done for another purpose. Around and 
 around, until it fairly spun, the toboggan was 
 whirled until Phil had no sense whatever of direc- 
 tion. Then the weeteego started off at a trot, the 
 toboggan jerking and bumping over the hard drifts 
 and broken ice behind him. 
 
 As Phil lay there, unable to get an inkling from 
 the stars as to which way he was going, bound so 
 that he could not move, thumped and battered by 
 the constant pounding of the toboggan on the 
 wind-carved, tide-disrupted surface, his thoughts 
 were more of Joyce than his own predicament.
 
 124 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 She would waken in the morning to find him gone. 
 She could not find a track on the hard surface of the 
 bay to indicate what had happened to him. It 
 would be impossible for her to go back to Lowry's 
 nearest outpost alone. No one would come to 
 Fort Dease for four or five months. She could not 
 survive until then. 
 
 There was, too, the possibility that the weeteego 
 might return and capture her. What that would 
 mean he could not even guess, except that it would 
 be something horrible. He knew that, at any risk, 
 he must escape and return to her or at least kill 
 this monster that now held him prisoner. 
 
 In the face of what might happen to Joyce, Phil 
 had no time to consider his own predicament ex- 
 cept from the angle of regaining his liberty. With 
 the memory of his fear-haunted months so vividly 
 fresh, with his knowledge of the depressing effect 
 of the vast desolation by which she was sur- 
 rounded, with the horror of this mysterious 
 spectre of Fort Dease multiplied by its ultimate 
 success, he was ready to cry out in futile protest 
 against the fate Joyce could not evade. He 
 writhed and twisted inside his tightly lashed bag, 
 and when he recognized the uselessness of it he 
 lay still and cursed until stopped by a wild, mock- 
 ing, exultant burst of laughter from the traces 
 ahead. 
 
 Hour after hour Phil was dragged across the 
 rough surface of the shore ice. Occasionally there
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 125 
 
 was a short stop for rest, but the thing ahead 
 seemed to be more tireless than a sledge dog. It 
 romped at times as if from sheer excess of spirits, 
 but not once, except when it had laughed, had it 
 taken any notice of its prisoner. 
 
 Dawn came and the light was reflected from 
 under the skin drawn across Phil's face. Two 
 more hours went by. They seemed like weeks to 
 the prisoner. Despite the thick sack in which he 
 was bound, the lashings did not permit circulation 
 and the intense cold reached him. He became 
 more and more cramped and stiff and in time the 
 sluggishness became of the mind as well as of the 
 body. The constant hammering of the toboggan 
 on the rough going, the monotonous jerking and 
 thumping, combined with the cold to bring a 
 lethargy which he could not shake off. 
 
 It was while Phil was in this stupor that the 
 toboggan finally struck a smooth, even trail and 
 ascended a slight rise. When he finally became 
 conscious that he was no longer being bumped and 
 mauled on the shore ice, he strove to remember 
 which way the toboggan had turned when it 
 struck the land. Unless he knew there was no way 
 to tell whether he had been carried northwest or 
 southeast from Fort Dease. And without that 
 knowledge he could never return should he escape 
 from the weeteego. There would not be a markj 
 on the packed snow or ice over which he had been' 
 hauled, and he might wander on to starvation, t 
 all the time leaving Joyce farther behind him.
 
 126 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 While he was still cursing himself for having 1 
 relaxed his vigilance, there was a sudden shading 1 
 of the light reflected up beneath the piece of 
 caribou skin that covered his face. Then the 
 toboggan stopped and his head was uncovered. 
 
 The first thing Phil saw brought paralyzing 
 amazement. Above him and all about him were 
 trees, bent, ragged spruce trees thirty feet high 
 and six inches thick at the butts. As his stunned 
 mind accepted them it accepted also what they 
 told him. There were no trees like these within 
 one hundred miles of Fort Dease. He must have 
 become unconscious from the cold and exhaustion, 
 had been delirious and been days on the journey 
 instead of a few hours. If he did regain his liberty 
 he could never find his way back to Joyce, could 
 never make the trip without adequate equipment 
 even if there were a trail. 
 
 Completely unnerved by his discovery, Phil 
 turned his head listlessly and for the first time saw 
 the weeteego in daylight. The man was standing 
 a few feet away, calmly surveying his prisoner. 
 
 There was nothing maniacal, nothing malignant, 
 in the face Phil saw. It was that of an Indian, 
 with all the Indian's usual immobility of feature 
 and inscrutability of eye. It told nothing, either 
 of friendliness or hostility, of power or weak- 
 ness, of madness or rationality. 
 
 But there the similarity to the usual type of 
 native ceased. Never had Phil seen an Indian 
 dressed in anything except the manufactured
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 127 
 
 garments furnished by the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany. This man was clothed only in skins, skins 
 half tanned and with the fur on. Great, bulgy, 
 shapeless folds of them enveloped a body larger 
 than that of the usual native and gave him the 
 appearance of a huge, hairy, upright animal. 
 Even the skill of the savage in fashioning such 
 garments was absent. Their barbarous crude- 
 ness gave the impression of something bestial. 
 
 The Indian began at once to take off the lash- 
 ings that bound Phil to the toboggan. He 
 removed the rope which he had wound about the 
 bag and his prisoner stretched and drew up his 
 cramped legs and arms with a sigh of relief. That 
 sigh brought the first change of expression in the 
 man's face. To Phil's amazement, he smiled, 
 a friendly, understanding smile that said plainly, 
 "I thought you'd feel better." 
 
 The Indian disappeared and Phil twisted him- 
 self about so that he could see a skin wigwam 
 behind him. He heard the tiny crackle of a newly 
 kindled fire, and then the Indian came out and 
 carried him inside. 
 
 Phil began to hope that the friendliness of the 
 smile was to be extended to deeds as well, for the 
 Indian began at once to untie the mouth of the bag 
 at his feet. But he had no sooner slipped it back 
 than he passed a leather thong tightly about the 
 ankles. Then from under a mass of skins and fur 
 at the rear of the wigwam he drew a piece of chain, 
 red and pitted with rust. For a moment he
 
 128 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 fondled it proudly, triumphantly. Then he began 
 to fasten it about Phil's legs just above the ankles. 
 He worked deliberately, yet certainly, as though 
 by a prearranged plan. The links were small 
 enough to permit tying, and the chain was long 
 enough for a series of intricate and clever knots 
 which Phil knew never could be untied. 
 
 He did not struggle as he watched, for he knew 
 it was useless. From the beginning he had seen 
 that a trick alone would give him the necessary 
 opportunity to kill his captor or to escape. But 
 as he saw the skilful manner in which the Indian 
 tied the chain his courage vanished. Only a 
 file could ever free him. 
 
 The chain adjusted to his satisfaction, the 
 Indian removed the leather thongs and pushed 
 back the bag until he could reach Phil's hands. 
 These he bound with thongs to a leather belt he 
 placed about Phil's waist and then removed the 
 bag entirely. 
 
 Phil sat up to be nearer the fire and his captor 
 at once stretched a piece of rope from the belt at 
 the back to a stake which was firmly imbedded 
 in the frozen ground. Another rope was run from 
 the chain to another stake in the front, and Phil 
 found himself able to sit up, lie down, or roll over, 
 but powerless to move his hands more than six 
 inches from his waist or draw up his feet so that he 
 could work at the chain. 
 
 His prisoner tied to his satisfaction, the Indian 
 placed more wood on the fire and then went out.
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 129 
 
 He had not spoken, had not given a sign of his 
 intentions or plans, and Phil, though he knew the 
 man was a Cree, had made no attempt to speak to 
 him. He knew that, above all things, he must not 
 act too quickly, and that by waiting and watching 
 he could gain more information than by asking 
 questions. 
 
 The whole thing was a mystery to the Hudson's 
 Bay man. He had spent a dozen years in the 
 North but never had he heard of anything similar 
 to the present situation in any of its aspects. 
 Indians had rebelled, had attacked forts and killed 
 servants of the Company in the old days. In more 
 recent years, within Phil's own experience, there 
 had been sporadic, isolated instances of individuals 
 running amuck. But never had there been an at- 
 tempt to make a white man prisoner in this 
 amazing fashion. 
 
 That the Indian was the man he had come to 
 refer to as the weeteego there was no doubt. 
 And as Phil thought of the real meaning of the 
 word, he shivered. Had a weeteego decided to eat 
 a white man instead of some one of his people? 
 If he had, there was absolutely no hope of escape. 
 Bound as he was, Phil knew it was useless to try to 
 free himself. He knew the Indian would maintain 
 constant vigilance and that a blow on the head or 
 the thrust of a knife would be the means of frus- 
 trating any dash for liberty. 
 
 Horrible as was the idea of being eaten by this 
 savage, desperate as he found his situation, Phil
 
 130 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 was reassured somewhat by the apparent sanity of 
 his captor. A weeteego is mentally deranged. 
 This man appeared to be entirely normal. And 
 came the encouraging thought, if he had intended 
 only to eat his prisoner he would not have taken 
 the trouble to capture him alive. He would have 
 killed him the first night he had gained entrance 
 to the living room while Phil was asleep. 
 
 But despite the apparent sanity of the Indian 
 as expressed by his face and actions, there re- 
 mained the utter lack of anything else that was 
 usual. The man was dressed entirely in skins, 
 poorly tanned or not tanned at all. There were no 
 dishes for cooking and on the other side of the 
 wigwam was a large piece of meat that had been 
 gnawed when raw and frozen. The dirt and filth 
 were unspeakable, and the odour, as the fire warmed 
 the interior of the shelter, became nauseating. 
 
 Except for the chain and piece of rope with 
 which he was bound and the trade gun lying on a 
 pile of fur beyond the fire, there was not an evi- 
 dence that the Indian had ever seen or been 
 associated with white men. Everything about 
 the camp was utterly primitive. Such a thing was 
 unheard of. For a thousand miles in every direc- 
 tion the natives had known the Hudson's Bay 
 Company for two hundred years or more. They 
 had abandoned their skin clothing for wool and 
 cotton generations before. Kettles and various 
 trade sundries were indispensable. 
 
 As Phil puzzled over this unaccountable fact
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 131 
 
 the Indian reentered the wigwam. He piled more 
 fuel on the fire and then began to gnaw at the 
 frozen meat. After a few bites he held the huge 
 piece in the flames until it was blackened and then 
 tore off the melted part in great strips. 
 
 To Phil the sight was not disgusting. On more 
 than one instance he had been reduced to fare not 
 much better and he was very hungry. He had not 
 eaten much the night before because of the ex- 
 citement of Joyce's arrival. It had been very 
 cold and the spectacle of food being eaten brought 
 instant realization of his famished condition. 
 
 He did not speak, but the Indian caught his 
 expression and grinned across the fire at him. He 
 held out the huge piece of meat and then withdrew 
 it, chuckling as he saw the disappointment in his 
 prisoner's face. 
 
 In that grin and that chuckle Phil found some- 
 thing that brought greater fear than anything that 
 had happened since he had wakened to find himself 
 in the bag. They told him beyond doubt that 
 the man was a maniac. It had shown for an 
 instant in his eyes, in the cunning smirk, in the 
 wild notes of his laugh. Fascinated by the 
 terror of his predicament, Phil watched the man 
 devour pound after pound of raw meat. 
 
 The man fairly wallowed in his food. He 
 smeared his face and his hands and his fur cloth- 
 ing with the grease that oozed from between the 
 tissues as the heat of the fire drove out the frost. 
 He pulled with his teeth and his hands until great,
 
 132 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 dripping, red pieces were torn off. He crowded 
 these into his mouth and gulped them down as 
 does a dog, without chewing. 
 
 The quantity of food he consumed was enor- 
 mous, but the more he ate the more ravenous he 
 became, the more insane the gleam of his eyes when 
 he glanced across the fire at his prisoner. As Phil 
 watched, spellbound, he wondered if the man 
 would ever satisfy a hunger that seemed to grow 
 the more he ate. 
 
 The meal ended only when the piece of meat, 
 which Phil estimated had weighed all of ten 
 pounds, was consumed. The Indian wiped the 
 backs of his black, bloody, hairy hands across his 
 face, glared fiercely at his prisoner, threw himself 
 back against the pile of fur and skins behind him 
 and immediately was asleep. 
 
 It was more a stupor than a slumber, as Phil 
 soon discovered by experimenting with various 
 noises he was able to make by rattling the chain 
 that held his legs, coughing and rolling about. 
 The Indian had become drunk with an excess of 
 food, was the victim of a gluttonous debauch. 
 
 When he was satisfied that his captor would not 
 wake, Phil began to test the thongs and ropes 
 which held him. He strained and pulled but could 
 not gain an inch. He twisted and turned his hands 
 but he could not reach a knot. One attempt 
 showed him that it was utterly impossible for him 
 even to touch the chain that held his feet together. 
 
 He did not abandon the effort after the
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 133 
 
 first trial. So long as the light lasted he con- 
 tinued to twist and turn, to tug and jerk. After 
 a few minutes his exertions became frantic, and he 
 rolled and writhed on the ground in a spasm of 
 terror and desperation, ceasing only when ex- 
 hausted. When his strength began to return he 
 resolved not to use it in so futile a fashion. Rather 
 he became cool and determined. Systematically 
 he attempted to discover some way to free himself. 
 He did not allow himself to be hurried by the fear 
 that the Indian might waken. He knew it was 
 his one chance, that his life and that of Joyce 
 depended upon his success. 
 
 But darkness found him no nearer freedom than 
 when he had begun. For at least five hours he had 
 had every opportunity to attempt escape. Yet 
 each knot seemed tighter than before, each thong 
 as strong. 
 
 The fire had gone out and Phil became very 
 cold. He was lying on several skins and he 
 managed to work one or two up and around him, 
 but not sufficiently to keep him warm. His 
 hands and feet were soon numb and he suffered 
 far more than when he had been wrapped in the 
 caribou-skin bag on the toboggan. 
 
 When he had abandoned his idea of freeing him- 
 self he turned his attention to the peculiar facts 
 connected with his imprisonment. He remem- 
 bered that the Indian had appeared to be perfectly 
 sane until he had begun to eat. At first he had
 
 134 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 not seemed to be inordinately hungry, but as the 
 meal progressed he had torn at the meat more and 
 more savagely, had gulped larger pieces of it whole, 
 and all the time the insane light in his eyes had 
 increased, until at the end he had glared at his 
 prisoner with blazing ferocity. Food seemed 
 to have made the man mad. Food seemed to 
 have aroused a primitive passion. 
 
 Repeatedly Phil found himself reviewing all 
 that he had learned about the people of his dis- 
 trict. Sandy had exhausted his store of gossip. 
 Something in it must give a hint as to the identity 
 of this man. To be sure, the secret of the weeteego 
 was solved. But who had become the weeteego? 
 Which of the few Indians in the district had be- 
 come this deranged creature. 
 
 As Phil searched his memory he could not 
 banish from his mind the spectacle of the Indian 
 at his meal, the thought that through food alone 
 had he seemed to become a maniac. Perhaps 
 there lay the explanation. A winter of starva- 
 tion, the abandonment of hope, and then the 
 coming of the caribou and the resultant frenzied 
 debauch! It was enough to weaken a man's 
 mind, to make him a monomaniac on the subject 
 of food. Food was all men lived for in the Far 
 North. Food meant everything. Its need was 
 constant, imperative, and its absence was an un- 
 ending peril. 
 
 And then the two thoughts coincided. Food 
 and the story Sandy had told of the Indians who
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 135 
 
 had starved to death. Sandy had found the bodies, 
 except that of the head of the family, who had 
 wandered off, presumably in a vain search for food. 
 
 Instantly the entire story of the weeteego, his 
 actions, his life alone through two winters, his 
 strange behaviour and the terror it had brought 
 to the fort, all became instantly plain. All ex- 
 cept his indomitable determination to make a 
 Hudson's Bay Company man prisoner. Phil 
 saw how the man had been driven insane by the 
 slow extinction of his family and his own craving 
 for food, how the long, cold, foodless winter had up- 
 set his reason and driven him out to wander across 
 the marshes like a wolf. But why had he haunted 
 Fort Dease and why had he captured him? 
 
 The cold finally put an end to Phil's conjectures. 
 Slowly the numbness crept up to his brain and at 
 last he lost consciousness. 
 
 It was still night when he opened his eyes. A 
 bright fire was burning, his body was warm again 
 but each muscle seemed a bundle of shooting, 
 fiery pains. With difficulty Phil twisted his head 
 and looked across the blaze. 
 
 The Indian was sitting quietly beside the fire. 
 He returned Phil's glance calmly, with just a 
 suggestion of the friendly smile of the day before. 
 There was nothing wild or disordered in his eyes or 
 features, and Phil's hopes rose instantly. The 
 man was a monomaniac on the subject of food. 
 If he could catch him in a sane moment he might 
 gain the advantage.
 
 136 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Wotcher," Phil said calmly, employing the 
 common method of greeting. 
 
 The Indian looked up quickly, a new light in his 
 eyes, something as a sailor might have done had he 
 been long absent from the familiar sounds of the sea. 
 
 " Solomon Moses," Phil exclaimed, sharply. 
 
 "Yes," was the slow answer in Cree. 
 
 "Where have you been, Solomon Moses?" 
 
 "I am dead," was the calm reply. 
 
 "How long have you been dead?" 
 
 "This is the second winter." 
 
 "Why do you tie the hands and feet of the man 
 who has never harmed you?" 
 
 Again the maniacal light flashed in the Indian's 
 eyes, and Phil shivered as he saw it. But when 
 Solomon Moses spoke he was as calm and as sane as 
 his hearer, though he sometimes faltered in choos- 
 ing a word, as if speaking were an unfamiliar task. 
 
 "Two years ago I take my family out for the 
 hunt as I always do, in the same place where I 
 have always gone, and where my father and his 
 father hunted. The Hudson's Bay Company has 
 always known where I hunt. In the early winter 
 the caribou do not come. I wait and wait, 
 for they always have come, and all our fish is gone. 
 My wife and I set snares for the rabbits, but there 
 are only a few. Neither are there many ptarmi- 
 gan. The dogs die because there is nothing for 
 them to eat. The little ones are crying for food 
 and I say to my wife: 'I will go out and find the 
 caribou. In ten days I will come back.*
 
 SOLOMON MOSES 137 
 
 "But I do not find the caribou and when I 
 come back in two weeks my wife is so weak she 
 can not set snares. I am very weak, but I set 
 some snares and catch two rabbits and leave them 
 with my wife and the three children and go out 
 again and look for the caribou. I find the trail of 
 an Indian hunter and follow it until I come to 
 his camp. He has a little meat and he is going to 
 the fort and he says he will tell them there that I 
 and my family are starving and I have no dogs and 
 can not come in for food. He promised me that 
 and I saw him go. 
 
 "I took what little meat he could let me have 
 and went to my camp. My wife could not lift her 
 head, and I gave her the meat for her and the 
 children and went out again to look for the cari- 
 bou. I was very weak but some days I would kill 
 a ptarmigan. 
 
 "At last I get back to my camp. I do not find 
 caribou, and I am very weak. My wife is lying 
 in the cold wigwam, with no fire for she is too weak 
 to get wood, and beside her two of the children are 
 lying dead and the last one is dying. When my 
 wife doesn't see I take one of the children out and 
 cut off some meat from its legs and take it in and 
 put it in the pot and make a soup and feed her, 
 and then I go out again and look for the caribou. 
 
 "That week I find two ptarmigan. The next 
 week I find a rabbit. Then I go home, and my camp 
 is still, and my wife and the last child are dead. 
 And the Company has not come with food."
 
 138 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Solomon Moses had spoken quietly, dispassion- 
 ately, but his story had been so vivid that the 
 pathos of it made Phil forget for the moment his 
 own danger. He had only pity for the savage that 
 sat across the fire from him. 
 
 But when Solomon Moses spoke again his voice 
 had changed, and the wild light was in his eyes. 
 
 "I turn and leave them there because I have not 
 the strength to put them out of the way of the 
 wolves," he said. "I go out until I can not walk, 
 and I lie down in the snow and die. And then my 
 spirit sees a caribou, and another, and more and 
 more, and I am in the middle of the herd, and 
 my spirit kills many of them and feasts and grows 
 fat. And when I have grown fat with the meat I 
 remember my wife and children and I say: 
 
 "They are dead, dead because the Company 
 did not send food when it was told they were 
 starving and that I had no dogs to go to the fort. 
 It is the Company that killed them, and it is the 
 Company that must pay. I will go to Fort Dease, 
 and I will take the man there and carry him off 
 and tie him up where no one can find him and 
 where he can never get away, and I will keep him 
 there and watch the hunger come and tear him. 
 I will sit beside him and eat, and I will never give 
 him any, and when he asks for meat I will laugh. 
 After a while he will be like my wife and children 
 when I find them in my camp, cold and hard and 
 white like the pieces of ice that stick up on the 
 shore of the salt water."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 
 
 THE effect of Solomon Moses' story upon 
 Phil was paralyzing because of the very 
 horror and hopelessness of his position. 
 Unable to escape, watched by a cunning, half- 
 crazed savage, already suffering from exposure 
 and hunger and his nerves shaken by the trying 
 ordeal of the long winter, he was ill-prepared to 
 meet a desperate situation. 
 
 The grim motive back of his captor's actions, 
 the passion of the primitive man for revenge, the 
 cunning with which his project had been carried 
 out, the indomitable patience that had carried him 
 past every failure and through two long winters, 
 each in itself was enough to cause complete des- 
 pair. 
 
 But, critical as was his position, after the first 
 quick panic Phil's courage returned. At last he 
 knew the danger he faced. At last there was no 
 mystery, nothing spectral, nothing suggestive of 
 the supernatural. There was no longer an un- 
 known to dread, no longer any uncertainty. For 
 the first time since he had seen the prints of bare 
 feet in the mud the previous Fall, weirdness, 
 stealth, suspense and nameless hazard were absent, 
 
 139
 
 i 4 o PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Everything was out in the open, plain, understand- 
 able. The very reality of his danger served to give 
 Phil a cool, clear brain, even a slight assurance. 
 
 Then, too, he grasped the situation as a whole. 
 He saw that it was not only his safety, his life. 
 His vision clear of dread and mystery, he saw that 
 upon him alone depended the safety of Joyce and 
 the success of the territory of which he was in 
 charge. He must escape and protect her and he 
 must round up the hunters before they went to the 
 opposition down the bay. 
 
 Phil did not waste any time. Twelve years of 
 close contact with the natives had given him a 
 thorough knowledge of Indian psychology, a com- 
 plete understanding of the Indian character. He 
 did not undervalue the red man's ability, as many 
 white men are prone to do, nor did he allow roman- 
 tic misconceptions to overrate it. 
 
 To Phil the Indian was what he really is, a 
 child, with all a child's fears, all a child's lack of 
 control of primitive passions. To Phil, too, he 
 was the child accustomed through generations to 
 accepting the advice and guidance of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, even to submitting to its repri- 
 mands. 
 
 He did not believe that Solomon Moses was in- 
 sane except possibly on the one subject of food. 
 An Indian can make himself believe many things, 
 can bring about a state of mind that borders upon 
 or gives the impression of insanity, a condition 
 from which he can be jolted back to the normal.
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 141 
 
 "Look here," snapped Phil in Cree, "you 
 can't do this, Solomon Moses. You'll get caught. 
 You'll be hung. The police and the Company 
 men will come, and there will be an end of you." 
 
 "There is no one to come." 
 
 "There is. A dog team just came to Fort 
 Dease, driven by an Indian, and he said four teams 
 with white men were only a day behind them. 
 They will track you to this place and take you." 
 
 "But they can not take a spirit. I am dead." 
 
 "You know you are not dead. You only try to 
 think you are. If you are dead, put your hand 
 in the fire there and see if it will burn." 
 
 The Indian did not reply and his eyes wavered 
 as had many a hunter's when Phil lectured him on 
 laziness or extravagance or failure to pay his debt. 
 It was the first point in Phil's favour and con- 
 sciously now he continued the role he had naturally 
 assumed, that of father of his flock. 
 
 "You can't fool me, Solomon Moses," he ex- 
 claimed, confidently. "You went out and found 
 the caribou and killed and ate. You did not die. 
 You only tried to think you were dead. You 
 have lived alone ever since and have not gone 
 among your people and your brain has become 
 soft and you do foolish things. A little boy 
 would know that he can not kill a white man, 
 especially a Company man, and live." 
 
 The Indian had lapsed into the sullen, silent 
 mood characteristic of his people when criticized. 
 It is not unlike that of a spoiled child, and though
 
 142 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 it gives the impression of hopeless perversity, it did 
 not deceive Phil. 
 
 "Those white men and the Indians are looking 
 for me now," he continued. "The Indians are 
 with them to track you and the toboggan. They 
 will surely come before I starve to death, and when 
 I tell them what you have done they will find you 
 or the policemen will come from the West. You 
 know that they never fail." 
 
 Solomon Moses did not look up from the fire, 
 did not indicate that he had heard. 
 
 "Come," Phil commanded. "Take off these 
 thongs. Take them off and give me something to 
 eat and something to keep out the cold." 
 
 There was a slight, uneasy shifting of the Indian's 
 position and Phil immediately pressed hisadvantage. 
 
 "See here," he said, "you were a good hunter 
 and you would like to return to the hunt and get 
 debt from the Company. You have not gone 
 back because you have a debt and no furs to pay. 
 The Company is not angry because of what you 
 have done. The Company knows you had a bad 
 spirit and that it made you do things you did not 
 want to do. Take off these thongs and go back 
 to the fort with me and I will give you a fresh debt 
 and I will tear out of the book the page which 
 shows your old debt. If any one asks where you 
 have been, or what you have done, I will tell them 
 that an evil spirit captured you and took you off 
 and that I went after you and killed the bad spirit 
 and brought you back with me.
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 143 
 
 "You can go to the fort and get a new gun 
 and a new knife, and blankets and tea and sugar 
 and clothes so that you will be warm and dry and 
 have a full belly and smoke a pipe again. And 
 you can see the other Indians at the fort and 
 laugh and talk with them and have a good time, 
 and find a new squaw and have a camp and more 
 children." 
 
 Solomon Moses jumped to his feet, his eyes 
 blazing, his face distorted with rage. Phil saw 
 his mistake instantly. His eloquence had carried 
 him too far. He had touched the two things that 
 routed his captor's sanity. 
 
 "I had a good squaw!" the Indian cried, fiercely. 
 "I had a camp and fine children. I had tea and 
 sugar and a new gun and tobacco. And the 
 Company killed my squaw and my children and 
 took everything from me, and the Company will 
 pay. You will starve." 
 
 As he danced in anger beside the fire his head 
 struck a piece of meat that hung from one of the 
 poles. He glanced up at it. In that moment his 
 frenzy vanished to leave him in the grip of another 
 passion. He grasped the meat hungrily, though 
 he had just awakened from the sleep induced 
 by his last gorge, and began to devour it as 
 if he were starving. 
 
 Phil was fascinated by the spectacle. The man 
 appeared to be famished, and he tore and gulped 
 great strips and chunks of meat. That stoicism 
 which only the Indian can assume was gone. The
 
 144 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 wild light of the day before reappeared in his eyes. 
 His features became bestial. He was insane with 
 the fear of hunger. 
 
 Phil sank back hopelessly. Arguments would 
 be worthless now. The man had been unbalanced 
 by his experience of two years before and never 
 could be counted upon so long as the sight or 
 mention of food would upset his mind in this 
 fashion. The prestige of the Company, the 
 superior mental power of a white man, could not 
 avail against an irrational passion. 
 
 The meat devoured, Solomon Moses dropped 
 on to the pile of skins and furs and was instantly 
 asleep. As Phil looked at the black grease- 
 smeared face, the great, hairy, paw-like hands, 
 the primitive clothing of half-tanned pelts, he was 
 seized with sudden anger at the thought of being 
 in the power of such a creature. He, an intelli- 
 gent white man with a trained mind and controlled 
 passions, the plaything of this savage, hare- 
 brained brute! In sudden exasperation and revolt 
 he turned and twisted and tugged at his bonds. 
 
 His struggle ceased almost immediately when he 
 realized that he was only reducing himself to the 
 untamed level of Solomon Moses. If he had this 
 vaunted superiority, the gift of civilization, why 
 not make it effective? Why should not his 
 superior mentality prevail over what was only 
 brute cunning? 
 
 He sat up to be nearer the slowly dying fire 
 and began to go over the situation point by point.
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 145 
 
 While the Indian lay in a stupor he must free him- 
 self from the thongs and the chain. It was a long 
 time since he had eaten. He could live for many 
 days without food but another freezing such as he 
 had suffered while the Indian was asleep before 
 and his strength might be depleted to the point 
 where freedom from his bonds would be only a 
 mockery. 
 
 But try and scheme as he did, Phil was unable to 
 loosen a knot. He could not reach one with his 
 fingers, and there was no rough surface of any kind 
 near him against which he could wear the strips of 
 leather. And always he was confronted with the 
 knowledge that, once his hands were free, he 
 still had the problem of his chain-bound ankles. 
 He could not walk with his feet tied so closely 
 together, and he did not believe he could ever 
 unloosen the tangled knots. 
 
 Still, only through freeing his hands was there 
 any hope. He twisted on to his side until he 
 could reach the belt about his body with the fore- 
 finger of his right hand. It was only a leather 
 thong, an inch wide, and be began to scratch and 
 scratch. If he could wear it through he could get 
 his hands together and the knots that held them 
 would be easy. 
 
 The fire went out and the cold was intense. 
 His hands became numb, and he shivered uncon- 
 trollably. In one of these spasms he dug against 
 the tight strap with his nail and broke it off
 
 146 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 in the quick. Immediately Phil turned over to 
 make the same attempt with his other forefinger. 
 But there the thong was a little shorter and he 
 could not reach. 
 
 He bent his head in a vain effort to reach the 
 belt with his teeth. He thrust aside all the skins 
 upon which he lay, thinking he could wear through 
 the belt by rubbing it against the frozen ground. 
 But the strap had been tied tightly so that it was 
 protected by his thick clothing and he could 
 not touch it to the earth. 
 
 By the time Phil had abandoned this effort 
 he was so numb with cold he was unable to do any- 
 thing more. As best he could he scraped the 
 skins back beneath him and drew others over him. 
 Shivering, numbed, half conscious, he saw the 
 dawn of the second day come, but before it was 
 full daylight he had succumbed. 
 
 Again Phil was wakened by the shooting, 
 twitching pains of warming muscles. He opened 
 his eyes to see Solomon Moses once more sitting 
 on the other side of a roaring fire. Only this time 
 there was no friendly little smile for the prisoner. 
 Instead, the man seemed not to have recovered 
 from his mania. He glared through the smoke at 
 his prisoner and when he saw Phil's painful move- 
 ments he laughed wildly. 
 
 "My squaw lay in the wigwam without a fire," 
 he chuckled. "She was too weak to go out for 
 wood, and the children were beside her, dying of 
 the cold and the hunger."
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 147 
 
 He sprang to his feet, picked up a piece of meat 
 and held it temptingly a few inches from Phil's 
 mouth. He took a knife from the mass of skins 
 behind him and made a motion as if to sever his 
 prisoner's bonds. When he saw the sudden gleam 
 in Phil's eyes aroused by the sight of a cutting in- 
 strument he thrust it into the ground on his side 
 of the fire, out of the white man's reach, but where 
 he could always see it. 
 
 The spirit of torture aroused, he took small 
 pieces of meat and hung them from the wigwam- 
 poles above Phil's head and high enough so that 
 there was no possibility of his ever reaching them. 
 He set another piece beside the knife and so close 
 to the fire it began to crinkle and sizzle in the heat, 
 filling the wigwam with an odour that was madden- 
 ing to Phil. He could not help but sniff hungrily, 
 and Solomon saw him and grinned delightedly. 
 
 The Indian began at once a search for more 
 meat. He tumbled back the pile of skins, rolling 
 pieces of bone on the ground beside the fire. He 
 pawed these over, ribs, shoulder-blades, long 
 thigh-bones, some of them cracked and splintered. 
 But he did not find more meat. He stood up, 
 looked around the wigwam and then at his 
 prisoner. 
 
 "The caribou do not come," he said, vacantly. 
 "I will go out and find them. In ten days I 
 will return." 
 
 "No!" cried Phil, involuntarily. "I'll freeze 
 to death!"
 
 148 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 It seemed to arouse Solomon from his sudden 
 trance, but the demoniacal glitter was still in his 
 eyes when he said : 
 
 "No, you will not freeze. I will return to build 
 up the fire before the cold reaches your heart. 
 It is not the cold but the hunger that will tear out 
 your heart and leave you like the pieces of ice on 
 the shore of the sea. You will starve but I must 
 eat. I must have much meat. There is plenty 
 at my other camp, and I will go for it. It is 
 far, but I will be back before the cold reaches your 
 heart. And while I am going I will leave these to 
 keep you company," and he pointed at the small 
 swinging pieces of meat and at the knife thrust 
 into the ground beside the fire. 
 
 For an instant he seemed to be gauging Phil's 
 bonds and the distance from the knife. Then he 
 laughed. 
 
 "Maybe you can get the knife," he said. "I 
 will let you try. But even if you did," and he 
 pointed to the chain and chuckled, proudly, "I 
 found the white man's leather and it can not be 
 broken. With it on you can not go far." 
 
 He went out and Phil heard him take his tobog- 
 gan from where it hung in a tree. He heard the 
 crunch of his snowshoes as Solomon hurried away, 
 and in a few moments there was no sound except 
 the occasional crackling of the dying fire. 
 
 For a long time Phil lay there, slowly working 
 his legs and arms until the sharp pains began to 
 diminish and he had better use of his muscles.
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 149 
 
 He was weak from exposure and hunger, yet his 
 spirit had been fired by the absence of the crazed 
 Solomon, while the sight of the knife was inspiring 
 rather than tantalizing. It was out of his reach, 
 and yet he knew that he must get it, that ulti- 
 mately he would, and he began to plan. 
 
 Phil saw at once that he would have to wait until 
 the fire had burned out and no coals were left. 
 The knife was directly across the blaze. It ap- 
 peared to be hopelessly beyond reach, but there 
 was the possibility that, by tugging and turning, 
 he could reach it with his mouth. His body 
 was not restrained from the waist up, and he 
 need only fall across the fire to bring his face close 
 to the blade. 
 
 Impatiently he watched the flame die down, saw 
 the bright embers turn to gray and crumble. The 
 cold was still intense but he did not feel it. He 
 tried to be calm and yet every little while he cursed 
 the coals that still glowed between him and the 
 knife. 
 
 Then, struck with a sudden idea, he turned 
 quickly on his side, caught up a piece of untanned 
 caribou hide with his teeth, and with a jerk of his 
 head flung it over the fire. Exultantly he sat up, 
 worked over as near to the knife as possible, and 
 then threw himself out toward it. 
 
 Instantly the door of the wigwam was darkened, 
 the low shelter shook with peals of demoniacal 
 laughter, and a black, hairy hand snatched the 
 blade past Phil's nose. Again there was a wild
 
 ISO PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 laugh and Phil saw Solomon Moses running out 
 of the wigwam waving the knife above his head and 
 shrieking like a fiend. 
 
 With difficulty Phil drew himself back from the 
 smoking hide and lay listening to the Indian as he 
 went farther and farther away. At last there was 
 silence, and then from a distance came the old 
 familiar howl that had made many a night hideous 
 at Fort Dease. After a minute it came again, 
 still more distant. The man really was going 
 away. In his absence there was still a chance to 
 escape. 
 
 Phil looked at the hole the blade had made in the 
 ground, cursing because it was not still there. It 
 had been almost within his grasp. Solomon Moses 
 could not have thought of a greater act of torture 
 than the one he had just perpetrated. 
 
 And then Phil saw something that brought him 
 up to a sitting position with a jerk. Beside where 
 the knife had been thrust into the ground was a 
 long, sharp splinter of the thigh-bone of a caribou. 
 With it any piece of leather could be sawed 
 through. With it he could free himself in five 
 minutes. 
 
 Recklessly he threw himself out on to the 
 burning hide over the coals, stretched his head as 
 far as he could and opened his mouth. The bone 
 was two inches beyond. 
 
 He crawled back and threw himself out again, 
 extending his body to the utmost, only to have his 
 lips still an inch from the sliver of bone. Again
 
 THE SPLINTERED BONE 151 
 
 and again he tried it, until at last he was so ex- 
 hausted he could not come within three inches. 
 
 For a time he rested. Then he began to exper- 
 iment with different positions. He worked slowly 
 now, and carefully, but not once was he able to 
 better his second attempt. An inch still inter- 
 vened between his lips and the bone. 
 
 As Phil lay resting from his exertions, studying 
 the piece of bone that had so accidentally tumbled 
 to its aggravating position, the cold struck in and 
 he shivered. Without the bone he could not get 
 free. And if he did not liberate himself before 
 Solomon's return there was no hope. As he lay 
 there panting, the steam arose from his nose and 
 mouth in regular puffs. Phil watched it absently 
 and then suddenly sat upright. He stared at the 
 bone for an instant and then with a contented smile 
 lay down and covered himself as best he could 
 with the skins behind him. 
 
 Quite patiently he waited an hour and then 
 another, until the bitter cold had completely 
 chilled everything in the wigwam. At last, stiff 
 and numb, he sat up, worked over toward the fire 
 as far as he could, threw himself across the now 
 dead ashes, craned his neck to the limit, and then 
 deliberately thrust out his tongue until the tip 
 touched the cold bone. After holding it there for 
 several seconds be began to draw it in. Slowly 
 the bone followed until with a hungry snap Phil 
 caught it between his teeth. 
 
 There was a sharp pain in his tongue as the skin
 
 152 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 which had been frozen to the bone was wrenched 
 loose, but he only grinned and bent his head until 
 his right hand had clasped the splinter. In less 
 than two minutes the thongs had been cut and he 
 was standing up, bound only by the chain about 
 his ankles.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 
 
 PHIL had some matches in a trousers pocket 
 and his first act was to start a fire. There 
 were only a few sticks of wood in the wig- 
 wam, but he warmed himself as best he could with 
 these and then began to examine the chain that 
 bound his ankles together. 
 
 As he had expected, the knots were hopeless. 
 The peculiar shape and size of the links lent them- 
 selves to quick bends and an inextricable tangle. 
 The metal chilled his fingers until they were numb 
 and useless. And then luck came to his aid. 
 
 Phil knew that the bit of a steel axe would break 
 in cold weather on striking a hard knot. He did 
 not know that most chain is made of wrought iron, 
 not steel. This particular bit of chain, which 
 Solomon Moses had picked up one night at Fort 
 Dease, happened to be steel. Phil did not know 
 this, and he was too ignorant of metals to find out. 
 But there were several rocks inside the wigwam, 
 loosened from the soil by the fire, and in a moment 
 he was sitting on the ground, one stone between his 
 ankles and beneath the chain, and the other poised 
 in both hands above it. He brought it down once 
 over a link and shattered it into three pieces. 
 
 153
 
 154 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Phil kicked his feet far apart with a shout of 
 triumph. 
 
 In five minutes he had selected a pair of worn 
 fur mittens and a long skin coat from the mass of 
 half-tanned pelts on which Solomon Moses had 
 slept, had set a piece of meat near the fire to thaw, 
 and had made a pack of all the available skins that 
 would serve as a sleeping-robe. In the centre of 
 the pack he placed the few small pieces of frozen 
 caribou flesh that the Indian had hung about the 
 wigwam to tantalize his prisoner. 
 
 Alternately gnawing and tearing at the melted 
 sides and placing the meat near the fire to thaw 
 again, Phil managed to consume between three or 
 four pounds in half an hour. Then he swung the 
 pack over one shoulder and left the wigwam. 
 
 Two trails led from the door. He knew he had 
 been brought in on that from the left. He knew 
 that Solomon Moses had departed on the other. 
 There was no chance for a mistake and at once he 
 started off on the trail to the left. 
 
 But as he walked on beneath the small spruce his 
 courage began to fail. He was sure that he was mo re 
 than one hundred miles from Fort Dease. Other- 
 wise there could be no timber. With the chain 
 clanking about his ankles, with his meagre supply 
 of meat, without snowshoes if a storm should 
 come, without any knowledge of where he was, the 
 situation was desperate. The extreme exaltation 
 aroused by regaining his liberty was too great, 
 however, to permit Phil to remain disheartened.
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP ,155 
 
 "It's make it or starve," he said aloud, and then 
 he added, confidently "And if it doesn't snow to 
 cover up the trail I'll make it." 
 
 He walked on rapidly, for his circulation was 
 still sluggish, but one hundred yards from the 
 wigwam he halted in amazement. He was out of 
 the forest, out on the big barren waste that bord- 
 ered the bay, and less than a mile in front of him 
 was the shore of the inland sea itself. 
 
 "I thought it was funny that Indian could have 
 dragged me a hundred miles when I figured it was 
 no more than thirty!" he exclaimed aloud. "But 
 what on earth are trees doing down here?" 
 
 He went on and after a quarter of a mile looked 
 back to see that he had been held prisoner in a 
 small patch of stunted spruce that had the ap- 
 pearance of an island in the vast, white desert. 
 
 "Probably was an island in the bay when the 
 shore was a hundred miles farther back," Phil 
 thought as he started on. "And it's probably a 
 few million years older than the land around it." 
 
 As he approached the shore he realized that a 
 serious problem must be solved at once. When 
 Solomon Moses had spun the toboggan around and 
 around and had covered Phil's face with a piece of 
 leather, he had made it impossible for his prisoner 
 to know whether he had been carried southeast or 
 northwest from Fort Dease. It was equally im- 
 possible for Phil to know now whether he was 
 northwest or southeast of the fort. He knew the 
 ice on the bay, or the snow where it had not been
 
 156 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 swept off by the wind, would not show a mark of 
 the toboggan. 
 
 "It's an even chance either way," he thought as 
 he struck the shore ice and looked first one way 
 and then the other. " I suppose I'm lucky to have 
 the possibilities equal." 
 
 In the old days he would have started off" at 
 once, gladly availing himself of a situation of even 
 chances. Now the thought of Joyce alone at Fort 
 Dease made him hesitate and brought an end 
 to his exhilaration. He must not take even a half 
 chance in the matter. To reach and protect 
 Joyce, to save Fort Dease to the Hudson's Bay 
 Company, he must be absolutely certain. 
 
 Standing there, he studied the situation. Not a 
 factor which might help him to determine direc- 
 tions was forgotten. He reviewed everything 
 that had happened since Solomon Moses had first 
 left the prints of his bare feet in the mud the pre- 
 vious fall. He recalled everything he had heard 
 about the Indian, all Sandy had told him and all 
 that he knew of the district. He analyzed each 
 of the cunning tricks Solomon had employed, de- 
 ducted the entire life of the monomaniac in the 
 last two years. 
 
 At the end two things were fixed in his mind. 
 The weeteego had always howled from the marshes 
 off the south of Fort Dease. The weird wails had 
 grown faint always in that same direction. But 
 Solomon had always been careful to come only 
 when a storm would cover his tracks. He had
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 157 
 
 never overlooked anything to keep his identity 
 and his whereabouts a secret. Therefore, his 
 leaving always in the one direction was a blind. 
 
 Secondly, before Solomon's family had been 
 wiped out by starvation he had hunted near Berens 
 River. It had been his father's hunting territory. 
 Naturally, he would remain there, for no one would 
 suspect his presence in it, and no one would ever 
 cross it. Further, he would have to live in the 
 timber country far to the south or west to get food. 
 The camp in the island of spruce was only a tem- 
 porary refuge from which he had carried on his 
 operations against Fort Dease. The trail by 
 which he had departed that morning had led to- 
 ward the west, toward Berens River. 
 
 Instantly the whole thing became clear to Phil. 
 The island of spruce was northwest of Fort Dease. 
 It was the only logical place for Solomon's camp. 
 With perfect confidence Phil turned along the 
 shore to the southeast. 
 
 Through the long hours of the night he did not 
 stop. Walking as fast as he could, often breaking 
 into the easy, shuffling gait of the dog driver, he 
 kept on. But the pace could not last. The chain 
 knotted at each ankle became more and more of a 
 hindrance. It began to chafe his legs as the knots 
 swung back and forth with each step. In time, 
 as Phil's knees grew weary, the unaccustomed 
 weight served to throw him off his balance and he 
 stumbled over the uneven surface in the dark. 
 
 The exhilaration with which he had started, even
 
 158 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 though it were heightened by his certainty that 
 he was taking the right direction, was not suffi- 
 cient to spur cramped, sore, tired muscles through 
 many miles. By midnight his pace had slowed 
 down to a bare two miles an hour. By four 
 o'clock in the morning it was with difficulty that 
 he kept moving at all. 
 
 There have been many instances of men con- 
 tinuing to travel when strength seems completely 
 exhausted, and Phil furnished still another. He 
 was carried on by the desire to live, by the desire to 
 reach Joyce, by the desire to serve the Company. 
 He cursed the chain as he stumbled forward. He 
 cursed his own physical weakness. He cursed 
 Solomon Moses. He cursed Wickson. And be- 
 cause the cursing seemed to help, he cursed again 
 and again. It took his mind off his physical self, 
 and he went back so far as his schooldays and 
 cursed a weazened, sour, uninspiring little teacher 
 who had never done anything more than make 
 one sarcastic remark relative to Phil's lack of 
 proficiency in mathematics. 
 
 And, still cursing, he came to the mouth of Cut 
 Bank River and Fort Dease. At the first indica- 
 tion of dawn for days and nights would soon be of 
 equal length he saw the squat, desolate, insigni- 
 ficant little buildings perched on the edge of the 
 stream, but to him there never was a more wel- 
 come sight. Forgetting the chains, he went 
 quickly up the slope, through the side gate and 
 across to the kitchen door.
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 159 
 
 There was no light, but he had not expected one. 
 Joyce was asleep but she must be wakened. As 
 he neared the door he called: 
 
 "Joyce! Oh, Joyce!" 
 
 He paused outside to listen. There was no 
 answer. 
 
 "Joyce! "he repeated. "Wake up! I'm back!" 
 
 Still there was no sound from his bedroom and 
 anxiously he opened the door and entered. He 
 struck a match, but there was no lamp in the 
 "kitchen, and he clanked across the floor and into 
 the living room. 
 
 "Joyce!" he called again. "Joyce! Are you 
 here?" 
 
 The place was deathly still as he stared about 
 the room. Then the match burned his fingers. 
 He struck another and went forward to the table. 
 As it flared up and he was about to lift the chimney 
 from the lamp he saw the long butcher-knife 
 from the kitchen sticking straight up in the read- 
 ing-table and squarely in the centre of several 
 sheets of paper. His first glance took in the line 
 at the top, in a hand unmistakably feminine: 
 
 To whomsoever comes to Fort Dease and finds this : 
 
 His fingers trembling from sudden fear, Phil 
 touched the match to the wick, replaced the 
 chimney and then began to read: 
 
 To whomsoever comes to Fort Dease and finds this: 
 I, Joyce Plummer, until recently serving as gover-
 
 160 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 ness to the children of Mr. Osborne, manager of the 
 Hudson's Bay Company post at Savant House, arrived 
 at Fort Dease on the first day of March, having travelled 
 the last two days alone because the two Indians who 
 came with me refused to go farther on the grounds that 
 a weeteego, or some form of evil spirit, haunted Fort 
 Dease. 
 
 Less than a quarter of a mile from the fort, and 
 when it was dark and storming very hard, I heard 
 this weeteego shrieking and the next moment it almost 
 ran into me, turning off when it saw me and my dog- 
 team and howling as it ran. I called, and was answered 
 by Mr. Philip Boynton, manager of Fort Dease, who 
 was pursuing the weeteego after it had attempted to 
 enter the dwelling house. Mr. Boynton heard me and 
 helped me reach the fort. 
 
 I wish to say here that I am engaged to be married to 
 Mr. Boynton and that I made the journey to Fort Dease 
 from Savant House because I believed that he was in 
 danger. This belief was not shared by any one else, 
 despite the fact that the former manager had been 
 taken out with an unsound mind because of his experi- 
 ences here and the additional fact that Mr. Boynton's 
 servant, Sandy Thunder, deserted him in November, 
 leaving him alone at the fort until my arrival. 
 
 I wish to state further that I found Mr. Boynton 
 nearly exhausted, both nervously and physically, 
 by his experiences of the winter and that, though 
 he did not wish to tell me at first, he was practically 
 in a state of siege. On several occasions the wee- 
 teego, as I call it, has gained entrance to the dwell- 
 ing house, once being driven off only after a terrible 
 struggle. It always came when there was a big 
 storm so that it could not be traced. It never at- 
 tempted to steal anything. Mr. Boynton had no 
 knowledge of what or who it could be, whether mentally 
 unsound, of criminal intent, white or red. Three times
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 161 
 
 Mr. Boynton fired at it while it was trying to open the 
 kitchen door, as the door will show. 
 
 Soon after my arrival the night of March first, 
 the storm ceased and the sky became clear and the 
 temperature very low. Mr. Boynton did not ex- 
 pect an attack but nevertheless he barricaded the 
 kitchen door and, though he told me he would sleep 
 in the living room, he did not lie down but sat up 
 on the couch. I wakened in the night and went 
 out and saw that he had gone to sleep and fallen over, 
 and I laid a blanket over him. 
 
 When I wakened again it was broad daylight. I 
 thought that strange, as we were to start early that 
 morning for Mr. Lowry's nearest outpost as Mr. 
 Boynton had to round up his hunters, all of whom, 
 with about twenty thousand dollars' worth of Com- 
 pany goods, were not intending to return to Fort 
 Pease but were going with their fur to the opposi- 
 tion up the shore of the bay. 
 
 I called his name, but there was no answer, so I 
 dressed and went out. The kitchen door was open 
 and a window had been taken out, sash and all. Out- 
 side in the fresh snow were tracks that told unmis- 
 takably that the weeteego had come in the night, had 
 made Mr. Boynton prisoner and had carried him away 
 on a toboggan. I followed the toboggan track down 
 to the shore of the bay. There was no sign there on the 
 hard crust and ice to tell in which direction he had been 
 taken. I could only see, by the tracks at the house, 
 that the weeteego had no dogs but had drawn his tobog- 
 gan himself, and I knew therefore, that he could not 
 have gone very far. 
 
 I returned to the dwelling house, started a fire 
 for breakfast and have written this. After I have 
 eaten I will hitch up the dogs and start northwest 
 along the shore and try to see where Mr. Boynton 
 has been taken, and, if possible, set him free.
 
 162 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Here Joyce signed her name, but there was more 
 beneath it: 
 
 March third: I followed the shore toward the north- 
 west all yesterday but could not see a sign of any one 
 having fivelled that way nor of any one having left 
 the ice to go on to the shore. I concluded that I had 
 taken the wrong direction and the next day returned to 
 Fort Dease. To-morrow morning I will start along the 
 shore to the southeast and will keep On until I find a 
 trace of him. 
 
 For a full minute Phil did not move. He had 
 been leaning with both hands on the table, his 
 head bent forward, and it sank still lower as he 
 stared at the last sheet. Joyce, out there on the 
 shore ice, going farther and farther away, even 
 then probably breaking camp and pressing on in 
 search of him! Joyce, a long day ahead of him, 
 the certain victim of the first storm that would 
 sweep down the coast! No shelter, no fuel, 
 nothing to guide her if the thick snow should come! 
 A team of half-wild dogs that might even now have 
 run away from her, leaving her without food or 
 robes ! 
 
 Slowly, absently, he rearranged the sheets of 
 paper, thrust the knife back into the hole it had 
 made and pressed it into the table. Listlessly he 
 turned away, and then with a leap that carried 
 him half way to the door he started for the kitchen 
 and began building a fire. He rushed outside and 
 filled a pail with snow and set it on the stove and 
 then started a fire in the living room stove. Back
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 163 
 
 in the kitchen again he searched in the cupboard 
 and found a file he had used to sharpen the butcher- 
 knife. He hurried back to the living room and, 
 seated on the floor beside the now roaring heater, 
 he began sawing away at a link of the chain around 
 one ankle. 
 
 For an hour and a half Phil filed and cooked and 
 filed and ate, and when he had finished eating he 
 filed until his hands were cramped and his arms 
 ached. But at last both legs were free. 
 
 An additional half hour was necessary for his 
 preparations. He had thrown off the malodorous 
 skins he had worn from Solomon Moses' camp 
 and now he clad himself in his own winter cos- 
 tume. He gathered food and some fuel, a pail and 
 two rabbitskin blankets and lashed them all on a 
 small toboggan which had been hanging in the 
 trade shop. He tied his snowshoes on top and 
 then searched the house for his rifle. When he 
 did not find it he decided that Joyce must have 
 taken it. So he got between the traces, started 
 down the slope to the shore ice and set off at a 
 trot toward the southeast. 
 
 The monotony of travel brought opportunity for 
 reflection. The first thing that occurred to him 
 was his failure to add a postscript to Joyce's 
 message. Otherwise, any one coming the next 
 summer would never learn what had happened to 
 him. It was not of sufficient importance even to 
 consider turning back, however, and he went on, his 
 mind busy with the possibilities of catching Joyce.
 
 164 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Phil admitted readily to himself that the situa- 
 tion was about as hopeless as had been his own 
 position when lying prisoner in Solomon Moses' 
 camp. This was the fourth day of clear, fair 
 weather. The temperature was fifty or more 
 below each night, but that was nothing compared 
 to the storms that generally sweep the coast. 
 With no wind a man can survive. With a bliz- 
 zard howling down across the six or seven hundred 
 miles of unobstructed bay, with no shelter within a 
 hundred miles, with no fuel, a Northman would 
 have a difficult time of it. Joyce would be easy 
 prey, while he, on the verge of exhaustion, could 
 not fare better. 
 
 All day as he hurried on he watched the sky as 
 much as the ice ahead of him. Granted that he 
 could keep on, granted that the good weather held, 
 he could not hope to overtake Joyce until two days 
 and two nights had passed. Then, even if she 
 still had the dogs, a day and night at least would be 
 required for the return journey. And to expect 
 seven days without a storm! It was preposter- 
 ous. 
 
 Despite the hopelessness of it, despite the fear 
 that grew and grew, despite his own weariness and 
 the slower and slower pace, Phil kept doggedly 
 at it until nearly dark. Then he stopped only 
 long enough to get a bite to eat. Night found him 
 again plodding on, keeping at the edge of the hard 
 going, watching always, to the right, the left and 
 ahead, even stopping occasionally to call.
 
 PHIL REFUSES HELP 165 
 
 Midnight came and he began to debate with 
 himself the advisability of resting until morning. 
 But always the thought that when morning came 
 Joyce would be resuming her journey ahead of 
 him brought a new resolution. 
 
 Later he began to consider whether he should 
 not go on without his toboggan. It was becom- 
 ing unbearably heavy. And Joyce had surely 
 taken plenty of food and robes. Any girl who 
 would have the courage to undertake such a jour- 
 ney would have brains enough to go well provided 
 when she had dogs to pull all she needed. Then 
 the thought would come: "What if the dogs ran 
 away with the toboggan and left her?" He would 
 stumble on, tugging harder at his load. 
 
 Under such conditions it is invariably the case 
 that a man's mind goes first. When that vague 
 thing called a spirit maintains its relentless urging, 
 when muscles continue to contract long after the 
 last reserve of power seems to have been tapped, 
 visions come, strange, vague, oppressive thoughts 
 that flit and flare and mock and madden. 
 
 They came to Phil, intermittently at first, and 
 he brought all his mental energy to bear in an 
 attempt to fight them off. He knew too well 
 that they would only hasten the end, that in their 
 grip he might wander out to sea on the ice or pass 
 Joyce on the shore. 
 
 But they came back to taunt him. Once they 
 made him see Joyce just ahead and he ran forward, 
 crying her name, until he tripped and fell and re-
 
 166 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 covered his senses. Once he heard the yelp of her 
 dogs, her dogs running away, and he shouted 
 hoarse commands. 
 
 Then, so clearly it startled him, he heard the 
 tinkle of a sleigh-bell. It stopped him short, and 
 he looked eagerly behind and on each side. He 
 hesitated, then laughed bitterly and started on. 
 Again he heard the bell. He knew it was a de- 
 lusion, but he stopped again. 
 
 The tinkle came once more, from the rear, and 
 he wheeled about. As he stood there, swaying 
 with weakness, he saw a dark object on the ice 
 rushing toward him. But he thought it only 
 another delusion and turned to start on again. 
 
 The bell sounded nearer, but he ignored it. 
 
 "Joyce! Joyce!" came in a great voice from 
 behind him. "Joyce! Wait! I'm coming!" 
 
 Phil wheeled, every nerve tense, the delusions 
 scattered by the reality of that voice, by the 
 knowledge of whose voice it was. As he stood 
 there a dog-team dashed up and was halted at his 
 side. A man came running forward to peer into 
 his face. 
 
 "Damn you, Wickson!" Phil cried. "Go back! 
 Keep out! You started this but you can't see the 
 finish."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 
 
 PHIL drew back his right fist, swung vic- 
 iously at Wickson's face, missed, whirled 
 himself off his feet and sprawled out on the 
 ice. 
 
 He did not get up. The sudden, excessive 
 effort had sapped the last of his strength. The 
 quick blaze of anger had completed the work of 
 exposure, anxiety, loss of sleep and terrific exer- 
 tion. 
 
 When he recovered consciousness day had come 
 and he was being bumped along as he had been 
 when Solomon Moses had carried him away. For 
 a moment he believed that he was again in the 
 Indian's power. 
 
 But there was no covering over his face. In- 
 stead of the soft, padding shuffle of Solomon's 
 hairy boots there came the quick, scratching sound 
 of many small feet. He was only half reclining, 
 and he lifted his head to see five weary dogs be- 
 tween the traces and at their head the vigorous, 
 swiftly, moving figure of John Wickson. 
 
 For a time he was content to lie where he was. 
 He did not let the district manager know that he 
 was awake, but after a few minutes Wickson 
 
 167
 
 168 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 turned and saw that Phil's eyes were open. Im- 
 mediately he halted the team and walked back. 
 
 "We'd better have something to eat," he said 
 as he began to undo the lashings that held Phil 
 to the toboggan. "I've been waiting until you 
 came to. Feel any better?" 
 
 "A little." 
 
 Wickson spread some robes on the ice. 
 
 "Lie down on these," he commanded, "while I 
 get a lunch. Guess we won't bother with tea. We 
 may need the wood later. Looks like a storm." 
 
 Phil did not comment while Wickson drew some 
 frozen bannock and meat from his grub-box. 
 The mention of a storm had brought back with 
 added force the seriousness of Joyce's predicament. 
 He watched the sky anxiously, noted the direc- 
 tion of the wind, argued with his better judgment 
 that the storm would not strike before noon. 
 
 He was hungry, too, and when Wickson handed 
 him his portion of frozen food he began to gnaw 
 at it as voraciously as had Solomon Moses. After 
 the meal the district manager asked his first 
 question. 
 
 " How did you get loose ? Kill him?" 
 
 "No. He went away and I cut the straps." 
 
 "Couldn't get the chains off, eh?" 
 
 "You saw them at the fort!" 
 
 "Yes. Didn't see any signs of Miss Plummer 
 on your way back?" 
 
 "No. I travelled in the night. She probably 
 turned back before she got as far as I was."
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 169 
 
 "Well, we mustn't lose any time now. Want 
 me to tie you on?" 
 
 "No, I can stick." 
 
 Phil wrapped the robes about him and sat down 
 on the toboggan, leaning back against the load. 
 Wickson went to the head of the team and started 
 on at once. For an hour he did not falter. Then 
 he called back, only half turning his head: 
 
 "I think I see her." 
 
 Wickson, because he was on his feet, had the 
 larger horizon, and it was some time before Phil, 
 too, saw a dark spot on the ice ahead of them. 
 
 "Can you make her out?" he demanded. 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 After a while Wickson called back again: 
 
 " She's not there. It's only the dogs, all tangled 
 in a bunch." 
 
 Phil raised himself to get a better view. The 
 thing he had feared had happened. Joyce might 
 still be many miles away, more miles than they 
 could cover before the storm struck them. The 
 wind was gaining in force constantly and he could 
 feel the cold through his robes. If Joyce had been 
 thrown and hurt when her team broke away, if she 
 had been left lying on the ice, she would be dead if 
 they did reach her. 
 
 Wickson had increased his pace and in fifteen 
 minutes he halted the team fifty yards from the 
 dogs ahead of them. Phil got to his feet to look. 
 Perhaps Joyce lay on the other side of the little 
 knot of dogs.
 
 170 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Wickson was already half way there, and Phil 
 tipped over the toboggan on which he had been 
 riding and his own, which Wickson had tied at the 
 rear. The team thus anchored, he ran ahead. 
 
 "Got loose this morning probably when she was 
 hitching them up," commented the district man- 
 ager, who was already busy untangling the harness. 
 "You can see they weren't hitched to the tobog- 
 gan. They look in good shape, so she probably 
 fed them last night. And she can't be many miles 
 ahead, for these fellows couldn't have gone far 
 without getting in a mess like this." 
 
 Phil did not comment. He had seen everything 
 that Wickson had. He had also seen the first 
 driving flakes of the storm. To the north a white 
 curtain shut out the sky and the ice, and he 
 wheeled anxiously toward the southeast for a last 
 look before his view would be cut off in that 
 direction. But nowhere was the gray surface of 
 the land and sea broken by the tiniest point of 
 black. 
 
 Phil's eyes became blurred. Somewhere down 
 there, perhaps injured, perhaps now dead, perhaps 
 struggling helplessly on in search of him, was 
 Joyce. Suddenly he was crazed by the thought of 
 it. The very impotency of any human agency 
 in the face of nature as she was about to manifest 
 herself, the monstrous injustice of Joyce's plight, 
 the horrible death that was inevitably hers, all 
 served to bring a blinding, uncontrollable rage. 
 
 His fists clenched, he wheeled upon Wickson,
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 171 
 
 who was bending over a twisted trace. He took a 
 step forward, then stopped. 
 
 "Wickson," he said, "look here." 
 
 The district manager whirled quickly, for, 
 though Phil had spoken quietly, there was a tense 
 unnatural note in his voice. 
 
 "I'm going on, even if there isn't a chance," 
 Phil continued. "I've got to go on. I've got 
 to make sure. You go back." 
 
 "I won't do anything of the sort." 
 
 "You will, Wickson. Because, if you come 
 with me, and we find her, find her too late, or if 
 we don't find her at all, I'm going to kill you. 
 You'd better go now while you have the chance." 
 
 If Phil had spoken wildly, had shouted or 
 cursed, Wickson would have ignored him. But 
 he was deadly quiet, deadly in earnest, and there 
 was no escaping the fact that he meant every word 
 he said. 
 
 "You started all this, Wickson," Phil continued. 
 "If she is dead it is you that killed her and I'll kill 
 you. You call yourself a Hudson's Bay man. 
 You pose as a faithful servant of the Company. 
 But there never was a man in the service who 
 betrayed the Company to help himself as you have 
 done. There have been cowards and thieves and 
 crooks, but not one of them ever left a Company 
 man to die when they might have sent help, or let 
 a woman go out and do what the Company should 
 have done. The Company has always protected 
 its men, and they have always protected each
 
 172 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 other, have always stood together. But you, to 
 get me out of the way, to get what you thought 
 would be a clear field, risked everything except 
 your own hide. 
 
 " But you're going to be paid for it. After this 
 storm I'll kill you if you're here. And if you get 
 back, and I get back, I'll follow you until I find 
 you, and then I'll kill you." 
 
 As the first rushing, driving, stinging blast of 
 the storm struck them the two men stood facing 
 each other. Phil stared the hatred that had not 
 been in his voice, but Wickson seemed not to have 
 heard. He looked at Phil's face, absently, as if his 
 thoughts were elsewhere. 
 
 "I believe you would," he said at last. "But 
 we've got to get started." 
 
 Phil reached for the collar of Joyce's leader and 
 dragged the team back to his own toboggan. He 
 hooked up the traces, saw that his load was secure, 
 and spoke sharply to the dogs. 
 
 "Get on your toboggan," commanded Wickson, 
 gruffly, as he ran up and tied a line to the collar of 
 Phil's leader and made him fast to the rear of his 
 own sleigh. 
 
 "Untie that dog!" Phil cried as he sprang for- 
 ward. "You heard what I said!" 
 
 "Get on your toboggan," repeated the district 
 manager. "You're in no shape to travel. And 
 don't waste time." 
 
 Phil stepped close to Wickson and stared at him. 
 
 "You heard what I said?"
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 173 
 
 "Yes, but get on your toboggan. Hurry man! 
 There's a chance." 
 
 His last word brought Phil to a realization of the 
 selfishness of his hatred. There was a chance 
 though it were only one in a million, but as long 
 as that chance existed other things must wait. 
 
 "Go on!" he exclaimed as he turned back to his 
 toboggan. Half way he wheeled and shouted: 
 
 "But what I said still holds!" 
 
 Wickson nodded as he ran to the head of his 
 team and started on down the shore. 
 
 For an hour they travelled thus, each man 
 straining his eyes in an effort to pierce the gray 
 veil that surrounded them. Phil had an unstable 
 seat on his little toboggan, and the wind began to 
 find crevices through which it reached his body. 
 At last when he was so stiff that he could no longer 
 hang on he rolled off, got to his feet, and ran ahead 
 until he was beside Wickson. 
 
 "This is getting too thick," he panted. "I'll 
 take my team and stay close inshore, and you take 
 the other and keep a little farther out. We might 
 pass her this way." 
 
 "If you can do it," said Wickson. "But don't 
 get out of sight or we'll never find each other." 
 
 He stopped the dogs and Phil untied his leader. 
 
 "Keep me in sight all the time," cautioned 
 Wickson as they started. 
 
 For another hour they went on, always at a trot, 
 always searching the ice and the low, level shore,
 
 174 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Phil, because he had the inside course, and 
 because his anxiety was so great, glanced only 
 seldom toward the other dog-team. Sometimes 
 it disappeared in a thickening burst of the storm. 
 Sometimes it was ahead, sometimes behind, and 
 when it stopped short he did not know but pressed 
 on. 
 
 For Wickson had found Joyce. Stumbling 
 blindly along in the smother, far out from shore, 
 he had caught a glimpse of her on his left and had 
 wheeled immediately. When he drew up beside 
 her he glanced back and saw Phil's team disappear 
 in the gray curtain down the wind. 
 
 "You!" cried Joyce when she saw who it was. 
 
 Wickson looked down at the face framed by the 
 hood of dark fur, at the eyes lighted by over- 
 whelming relief. He trembled when she reached 
 out and grasped his hand and smiled up at him, 
 and at once he forgot everything, everything ex- 
 cept the presence of this woman there beside him, 
 the fact that he had found her, that he could save 
 her, that .... 
 
 He glanced quickly over his shoulder. Phil 
 had disappeared in the storm down the shore, was 
 going on and on. There would be only one result. 
 There was nothing back there at Fort Dease to tell. 
 
 There was no one within two hundred miles, no 
 one except him and this woman. His fierce 
 determination to have her overpowered all else. 
 
 "Joyce!" he cried, sweeping his arms about her. 
 "Now you're mine! Now!"
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 175 
 
 Instantly a small, mittened fist struck the white 
 patch from his chin where the skin had frozen and 
 left a red smear across his face. Another fist dug 
 into his stomach so wickedly that he gasped for 
 breath and loosened the grip of his arms. 
 
 "You beast!" cried Joyce as she sprang free. 
 "You sent him up here to this. You would not 
 help him, and now, when he may be dying just 
 ahead, you stand here and say 'mine.' 
 
 "Yours! What is yours? You have nothing 
 that's decent or honest. You have the soul of a 
 snake, and the heart of one, and the ways of one. 
 You have the body of a big, strong, brave man, and 
 you have instincts that would shame a wolf. 
 
 "You call yourself a Hudson's Bay man, but 
 there isn't a sleigh-dog at any post that isn't a 
 better servant of the Company. You would wreck 
 the Company to gain your own ends. You would 
 sacrifice good men. 
 
 "Yours!" Joyce fairly screamed in the excess of 
 her passion. "I'll show you if I'm yours! Take 
 your dogs! Go back with them! I'll go on and 
 find him, and even failure and cold and hunger and 
 the end will bring greater happiness than you could 
 give me in a thousand years." 
 
 She turned abruptly and started off, walking 
 rapidly down the wind toward the shore. 
 
 Wickson stared at her as he had stared at Phil 
 two hours before. For a moment he was per- 
 plexed, mystified. Then came a quick flash of 
 anger, anger that was directed at the back of
 
 176 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 the girl now half enveloped in the curtain of the 
 storm. 
 
 "And she did that! To me!" he exclaimed, 
 fiercely. 
 
 He spoke to his dogs and started after Joyce 
 in his long, easy, swift, swinging lope. As she 
 heard his approach she whirled to face him. 
 
 "Get on the toboggan," he commanded, grufHy, 
 as he stopped the team. 
 
 "I won't!" 
 
 He picked her up, carried her back, and dropped 
 her heavily on the top of the load. 
 
 "Hang on," he said as he turned away. " Boyn- 
 ton is just ahead somewhere. We've got to hurry." 
 
 He started forward on the run, veering in toward 
 shore and calling to his dogs. In a moment the 
 team was galloping to keep up with him. 
 
 Wickson's anger increased as he ran, and he wasi 
 alert for the first sign of the team and its driver 
 somewhere ahead of him in the storm. He had 
 suddenly discovered that he must catch Phil, that 
 he must find him before it was too late, that noth- 
 ing else mattered. 
 
 It was not a sudden solicitude for Phil's safety 
 that drove him on. Phil, as had always been the 
 case with Wickson, was merely a means to an end, 
 and now Wickson desired his safety, not for Phil's 
 sake, but for his own. 
 
 "And she did that! To me!" he repeated 
 fiercely to himself again and again, and each time 
 he ran faster.
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 177 
 
 For Wickson had been stung as he never had 
 been before. Not by what Joyce had said to him, 
 not by what Phil had threatened, but by his own 
 treachery, by what he had done to himself. It was 
 his pride that had been injured, and his anger was 
 the greater because he himself had delivered the 
 blow. At first that anger had been directed to- 
 ward Joyce, but as his mind grasped all the facts 
 she faded from his thoughts. 
 
 John Wickson had always been accustomed to 
 winning. He never had known what failure might 
 be. Success was a habit with him. In his own 
 way he had been proud of this success, but as he 
 ran on ahead of his dogs he saw that his pride 
 was in himself, not in what he had accomplished. 
 It was he, he alone with his power and his strength 
 and his determination and his intellect that had 
 carried him high in the North country. It was his 
 greatest possession, this ability to win, not to win 
 by any means, but to win solely through sheer 
 strength of mind and of body. 
 i Back there on the ice he had done something 
 he had never done before, something he had never 
 considered doing. He had abandoned his usual 
 methods, he had mistrusted his own ability, he had 
 descended to treachery to gain what he wanted. 
 He was not afraid of Boynton, not afraid of his 
 threat. He would delight in an equal combat. 
 Yet he had taken the weakling's way, had dodged 
 a fight, had shown disrespect for his own power. 
 To win this woman he would have let Phil go on to
 
 178 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 perish instead of dragging him back and crush- 
 ing him as he could. 
 
 The thought stung him on to a faster pace, to a 
 greater desire to take him and Joyce back to Fort 
 Dease, to reestablish the struggle on an even foot- 
 ing. Then, and he smiled grimly, he would win as 
 he always had won, by the sheer strength of him. 
 
 Accordingly there was a certain exultation in 
 his cry when he caught sight of a dim shadow ahead 
 of him. In a moment he had dashed up to Phil's 
 toboggan and stopped his team. With a jerk of 
 his thumb over his shoulder, he sat down with his 
 back to Joyce, staring ahead with a grim smile 
 when he saw Phil dash past him, heard her low cry 
 as she sprang to her feet. 
 
 Of what happened in the next forty-eight hours 
 none of the three was ever able to recall anything 
 except isolated incidents. All that time they lay 
 wrapped in their robes, buried in the snow. The 
 storm roared over their heads, never relaxing its 
 vigilance, never missing an opportunity to swoop 
 down and enter the smallest opening. 
 
 Each nursed a piece of frozen meat close to the 
 body. When the surface was thawed they nib- 
 bled. After each short sleep they wakened to find 
 several mouthfuls ready. 
 
 None knew what the others did. For the first 
 twenty-four hours they did not care. Joyce had 
 been exhausted by four days of steady travel. 
 Phil had hardly been in fit shape to leave Fort
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 179 
 
 Dease. Wickson had travelled a thousand miles 
 since February first. He had ridden much of the 
 way, but the two days before he had reached Fort 
 Dease he had travelled alone, and for three days 
 and two nights he had not stopped even to make a 
 fire. Hard, unbreakable man that he was, he had 
 reached the point where rest was more than 
 welcome. 
 
 Trying as was the siege, each benefited by it. 
 They were comparatively comfortable. Wickson 
 had turned the toboggans on edge under a form- 
 ing drift so that the storm defeated itself by con- 
 tinually adding to their covering. They derived 
 nourishment from the meat, and they could sleep 
 undisturbed. 
 
 The evening of the second day the storm blew 
 out. The three emerged like polar bears, shaking 
 off the snow. Wickson and Phil began at once to 
 round up and harness the dogs. The toboggans 
 were loaded, a comfortable place was made for 
 Joyce on the larger one, and they were soon ready 
 to start. 
 
 Little was said during the preparations. Phil, 
 in answer to Joyce's questions, had outlined the 
 story of his capture and explained the mystery of 
 Solomon Moses. She told how she had lost her 
 team in the morning and had abandoned the to- 
 boggan because she could not drag it. 
 
 Phil asked the district manager how he happened 
 to arrive on the scene when he did. 
 
 "I got back to Savant House three weeks after
 
 1 8o PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Miss Plummer left," Wickson answered, simply. 
 "I started after her at once. It was no trip for a 
 woman. About fifty miles from Dease I met her 
 Indians. Said they were afraid of a weeteego. 
 Mine wouldn't go on, so I came alone. Found 
 her note and saw where you had filed off the chains 
 and knew you had got loose. I started less than 
 ten hours after you did." 
 
 There was now no danger. By travelling all 
 night and most of the next day they would reach 
 Penitentiary Post, where they would have good 
 food, shelter, a chance to rest. What would come 
 afterward, they did not even plan. Each was 
 still suffering from the lassitude which follows 
 bodily exhaustion. 
 
 They travelled all night. At dawn they halted 
 and built a fire. Stimulated by the hot, black tea, 
 they decided to go on until they reached the fort. 
 They were tired, but they would rather rest in bed 
 than on the ice, would rather sit down to a table of 
 steaming dishes than continue to gnaw frozen 
 food. 
 
 They went on all day. Every hour Wickson 
 and Phil changed places, one riding, the other 
 going ahead, while occasionally Joyce ran beside 
 the dogs to drive the numbness from her feet and 
 the ache of the cold from between her shoulders. 
 
 When darkness came there was no sign of the 
 fort. It meant two more hours at least, possibly 
 three, with the dogs showing signs of the strain. 
 But always there was the thought of warm beds,
 
 "SHE DID THAT! TO ME!" 181 
 
 endless sleep, scalding tea, fried pork, sugar, hot 
 bannock, possibly a tin of jam. 
 
 In those last hours it is doubtful if any of the 
 three considered the real relationship that existed 
 between them. Hatred and jealousy and fear and 
 contempt, plan for the future, none of these could 
 persist in the face of their purely physical de- 
 sires. 
 
 Phil was in the lead when they reached the 
 mouth of Cut Bank River. 
 
 "We're there!" he called back to the others as he 
 turned up the shore. 
 
 In a moment the snow forced a halt and he re- 
 turned to the rear toboggan for his snowshoes. 
 Wickson already had his on and had started for- 
 ward. 
 
 "What's that smell?" he demanded, suddenly, 
 as he stopped and sniffed. 
 
 Phil looked up, inhaled the air. 
 
 "Someone's there!" he cried. "They've started 
 a fire in the dwelling house." 
 
 He sprang after W'ickson and the dogs toiled 
 behind him in the deep snow of the slope. 
 
 "How far back is the fort?" asked Wickson, 
 who was breaking out the fresh trail. 
 
 " Right at the top of the bank here," answered 
 Phil as he peered past the district manager into the 
 darkness. 
 
 He stopped, stared for a moment, and then 
 sprang on. 
 
 "Hurry up!" he called at Wickson's back.
 
 182 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "There's been a fire! The dwelling house is 
 gone!" 
 
 They had reached the top of the low bank and 
 Wickson stopped at the corner of the picket fence. 
 Phil ploughed up to his side. Before them was a 
 white expanse broken only by the four sides of the 
 inclosure. Dwelling house, trading shop, ware- 
 house, servants' house, Indian house, all were gone. 
 Even the cache which Phil and Sandy had made 
 was levelled.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 PHIL'S PLANS AND WICKSON 
 
 STANDING side by side, the two men looked 
 across the spot where Fort Dease had been. 
 The space within the inclosure was perfectly 
 level. The blanket of snow lay unwrinkled. The 
 site of Penitentiary Post was as empty and as 
 barren as the surrounding waste. 
 
 Because of their intimate knowledge of the 
 Northland, Phil Boynton and John Wickson 
 understood at once and perfectly the peril they 
 faced, grasped instantly every detail of their 
 problem. Neither minimized in his own mind the 
 danger of the situation and yet neither spoke of it. 
 
 The North is a land of the unexpected, of the 
 uncertain, and those who are of it know the in- 
 finite possibilities it holds for irregularity and 
 variety. They come, in time, to treat the unusual 
 as the usual, the extraordinary as the common- 
 place, and to them there is nothing surprising, 
 nothing disconcerting, nothing that completely 
 dismays. Obstacles are inevitable. Their size 
 and peculiarities only cause comment. 
 
 And so it was that Wickson said: 
 
 "Well, the woodpile wasn't burned. We can 
 have a warm camp to-night." 
 
 183
 
 184 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Which we're tired enough to care more about 
 than anything else," added Phil as they turned 
 back to bring up the dogs. 
 
 Half way they met Joyce floundering toward 
 them through the deep snow. 
 
 "What has happened?" she asked, anxiously. 
 
 "The fort's burned, every building of it," 
 Phil answered. 
 
 "The fort burned! Why, that means that we 
 have no food, no 
 
 She stopped, unable to go on and express in 
 words what the situation would mean to them. 
 
 "Oh, we'll get out somehow. We'll have a good 
 camp to-night. That's all that any one cares about 
 now. And when we are rested we'll make plans." 
 
 "It will be hardest on the dogs," added Wickson. 
 "They'll miss a meal or two." 
 
 There was no intention on the part of the men to 
 deceive Joyce as to the true situation. She did 
 not have the physical strength nor the skill of a 
 man, but she had shown herself equal in spirit in 
 the face of a much more perilous emergency, and 
 they accorded this spirit its just respect. 
 
 It was this one thing, however, that dismayed 
 Phil. Joyce was brave enough, but that very 
 bravery and desire to do her share would only add 
 to her torture. She would tax her strength too 
 often. She would be forced to go on when her 
 body was racked by every step. She would be 
 cold and for days and days she would be hungry, 
 starving at the end. And always there would be
 
 PHIL'S PLANS AND PTICKSON 185 
 
 the possibility that her soft, round, pink body 
 would become "hard and cold and white like the 
 pieces of ice that stick up on the shore of the salt 
 water." 
 
 Phil's concern for Joyce served only to strengthen 
 his determination that they must get out, and as he 
 drove his team into the inclosure his mind was busy 
 with the problem. 
 
 First, they would have food for no more than two 
 days when they would be ready to leave the site of 
 Fort Dease. Fort Berens was more than a week's 
 journey to the northwest along the coast, a fuelless, 
 hazardous trail. Two hundred miles to the west 
 was the nearest outpost of the Company. But 
 only an Indian could find it. 
 
 They were bound on one side by the bay and 
 on the other by a wide strip of treeless, storm- 
 swept, lifeless country. No food, no shelter, no 
 fuel, no possibility of gaining any one of these 
 that was the situation. 
 
 In a surprisingly short time Wickson and Phil 
 had taken care of the dogs and built a fire in the 
 shelter of the big pile of wood. They started snow 
 to melting for tea, cut some bacon and mixed a 
 bannock. Little was said as they worked. All 
 three were very tired, and because of their weari- 
 ness they shivered even when close to the big fire. 
 
 The tea and the hot food accomplished wonders 
 in reviving their spirits, however, and after the 
 meal they became even cheerful. Enjoyment is 
 largely a matter of contrast, and after the long,
 
 186 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 cold, weary days and nights on the shore ice, the 
 shelter of the woodpile, the full stomachs and the 
 roaring blaze brought a certain amount of con- 
 tentment. For the first time the destruction of 
 the fort was mentioned. 
 
 "There wasn't a fire in the place when I got here 
 just before dark that night," Wickson said, "and 
 I didn't stop to build one. After I read that note 
 I started at once." 
 
 "Of course not," said Phil. "All the buildings 
 wouldn't catch from one fire. There is only one 
 answer to this. Solomon Moses got back to his 
 camp down the shore, found I had escaped, and 
 started after me. His life-work has been to starve 
 a Hudson's Bay Company man because he be- 
 lieves the Company let his family starve two years 
 ago. He knew that if he burned the post I 
 couldn't get anything to eat and that I couldn't 
 get out without food." 
 
 "But the thing's done," was the district man- 
 ager's only comment, " and all we have to consider 
 is getting out. That and getting supplies in here 
 by summer so we can take care of the hunters." 
 
 "There won't be any hunters," Phil retorted. 
 "That is, unless Solomon Moses is captured and 
 the Indians rounded up before spring." 
 
 "But you can't do anything like that without 
 food. We haven't enough to take us any- 
 where. Our best plan is to start for the nearest 
 outpost to the west and travel the last of the way 
 on nothing."
 
 PHIL'S PLANS AND WICKSON 187 
 
 "And if we are lost or delayed by a storm what 
 will we live on?" asked Phil. 
 
 "That's a chance we've got to take," answered 
 Wickson, soberly. 
 
 "And in the meantime we leave Solomon Moses 
 free to do what he wants to do. And when spring 
 comes the Freetrader will have the hunters." 
 
 "You aren't suggesting that we eat what little 
 food we have while we try to capture Solomon 
 Moses?" asked Wickson. "Isn't it better to go 
 out first, get food, and return?" 
 
 "It is if we were sure of getting out. But look 
 here. You're a good man, Wickson. They say 
 you can do most things that an Indian can do. 
 But I don't think you can get across to the nearest 
 outpost. I don't think you can find your way 
 after that storm. And we've got to be sure when 
 we start on our slim rations. 
 
 "Here's what I suggest. Solomon Moses left 
 me at his camp down the shore to go after more 
 meat. He probably brought in at least a hundred 
 pounds. It started to snow right after he burned 
 the post. He most likely went to that camp. We 
 can go down there, surprise him, give him a run- 
 ning start, and then follow his trail to the timber 
 country. We can use what meat he leaves at the 
 camp until we get to the timber. There we will 
 have a chance at some caribou or find some 
 hunter's camp, and Solomon will supply the guide 
 we need." 
 
 "And if anything happens to lose us our guide
 
 i88 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 before we get to the timber, or if we get there 
 and can't get food?" asked Wickson, quietly. 
 
 "It's a chance we've got to take. At least we 
 don't take so big a chance that way as to start to 
 the nearest outpost without any guide and on 
 short rations." 
 
 It was a plan which required daring and courage. 
 Neither of the men lacked either. And Wickson 
 had chafed inwardly at the necessity of leaving 
 Fort Dease without doing anything to save the fur 
 business for the Company. In either programme 
 they faced death by starvation. But in Phil's 
 plan there was the possibility of definite ac- 
 complishment. If successful, the reward of their 
 toil, their privations, would be not only the saving 
 of their own lives but the achievement of that 
 which the Company had a right to expect of them. 
 
 Both men were silent for a moment. Then 
 they looked up. The fire of courageous purpose 
 leaped into their ' eyes simultaneously. Joyce, 
 watching, was thrilled and glad at the same time. 
 But when they spoke it was quietly, simply, as 
 though over the decision of an ordinary day's 
 work. 
 
 "You're right, Boynton. Your plan is best. 
 How much food have we?" 
 
 "Enough for two days." 
 
 Wickson arose. 
 
 "I'm going to take a look around," he said as he 
 walked out past the fire. "There may be some- 
 thing left, something we can use for dog food at
 
 PHIL'S PLANS AND WICKSON 189 
 
 least. We haven't a thing for them, and we can't 
 go far without the dogs." 
 
 "Better wait until daylight," Phil suggested. 
 "We won't be getting out of here to-morrow be- 
 cause we won't be fit to start." 
 
 "I want to know what we have to bank on before 
 I go to sleep," was the answer, and Wickson walked 
 off into the darkness. 
 
 As soon as they were alone Joyce leaned over 
 and placed a hand on Phil's arm. 
 
 "I'm afraid," she whispered. "Must we stay 
 with him? Isn't there some way to have Wickson, 
 go one way and us another?" 
 
 "Not with two days' food," laughed Phil. 
 "But there is nothing to be afraid of. We're 
 in the same boat and we've got to stick together. 
 Afterward we'll have something to settle. But 
 we're neither of us fools enough to try to settle it 
 here with this job before us." 
 
 "But he will, Phil," insisted Joyce. "That is 
 just what I am afraid of. Things like this don't 
 frighten him. Out there on the ice that day he 
 found me, in the face of everything, he made love 
 to me. Said that I was his, that he had found me. 
 He won't stop at anything. Phil, I feel sure that 
 he didn't intend to tell me that you were near 
 us, that he intended to let you go on in the storm 
 looking for me." 
 
 "Wickson wouldn't do a thing like that. He's 
 a hard man, but he wouldn't fight that way.
 
 190 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 This is the kind of a fight that you can't under- 
 stand. He understands and I understand. And 
 I know that I can trust him to fight fair." 
 
 "But you only look at it from a man's stand- 
 point, and as a man sees such things. A woman 
 feels them, Phil, and I have felt all along that we 
 can't trust him. He didn't play fair when he sent 
 you to Penitentiary Post, and he didn't play fair 
 when he refused to send help after he heard that 
 you were here alone. 
 
 "No, Phil, the man is a savage. He wants me 
 and he will do anything to get me, and I'm afraid." 
 
 Phil did not answer. Something in Joyce's 
 tone had caused a sense of uneasiness which her 
 words had failed to inspire. He realized suddenly 
 that the situation did permit Wickson to practise 
 any deviltry he might devise. He knew the 
 district manager had already jeopardized the 
 Company's interests to gain his own ends, while 
 Joyce's theory that Wickson would have let him go 
 on alone after he had found her was entirely ten- 
 able in the light of other events. 
 
 "Well," he said at length, "whether you're 
 right or not, the three of us have got to stick to- 
 gether, and the best thing we can do is to be on our 
 guard." 
 
 "Oh, Boynton!" came a strangely muffled voice 
 from out in the darkness. 
 
 Phil jumped to his feet, but Joyce held him 
 back. 
 
 "Don't go!" she implored. "It's a trap.
 
 PHIL'S PLANS AND WICKSON 191 
 
 Didn't you hear how strange his voice sounded? 
 He's hiding and is going to kill you. Phil. Don't 
 
 go-" 
 
 "Such a thing couldn't happen," he replied as he 
 tried to release himself. 
 
 "Anything can happen in such a place and with 
 such a man," she declared, fiercely. "Ask him 
 what he wants." 
 
 "What's the matter?" Phil called. 
 
 "Come here, Boynton. Give me a hand." 
 
 "Something is wrong," and Phil pulled away and 
 ran off in the darkness. 
 
 " Where are you ? " he called when he reached the 
 site of the dwelling house. 
 
 "Down here," came a voice from his feet, and he 
 peered into what had been the cellar beneath the 
 kitchen. 
 
 "What's happened? 5 
 
 " I went through the floor and broke my leg or 
 turned my ankle, or something. Give me your 
 hand and I can get out." 
 
 Phil reached down, braced himself, gripped the 
 ringers that touched his, and heaved with all his 
 strength. 
 
 "Lord, that hurts!" came from Wickson's 
 clenched teeth as he rolled out into the snow. 
 
 He lay still for a moment and Phil bent over him, 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Maybe it's only a strain," he said, encourag- 
 ingly. "You can't have anything like that now, 
 man!"
 
 192 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "I've got it," was the vicious retort. "Give me 
 a hand over to the fire." 
 
 Phil helped him to his feet and then supported 
 him across to the camp. 
 
 "What is it?" cried Joyce when they entered the 
 circle of light. 
 
 "Just another little setback," said Phil as he 
 eased Wickson to a seat on a blanket before the 
 fire. 
 
 He began at once to undo the moccasin lashings 
 on the injured foot and soon had the duffles and 
 stocking off. 
 
 "That's it," said Wickson as he bent forward to 
 look, the perspiration dripping from his forehead. 
 "I lit on that foot and turned the ankle, turned it 
 bad. I won't be able to put it to the ground for 
 ten days or two weeks." 
 
 He glanced up to see the consternation in the 
 faces of his companions. 
 
 "Oh, don't let it bother you," he said, gruffly. 
 "Go on. Get out as best you can. I'll stay here 
 and take my chances."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 
 
 TAKE your chances ! " Phil snorted. " What 
 chances have you ? We might as well shoot 
 you as leave you this way." 
 
 "But you can't help any by staying, not if there 
 were a dozen of you." 
 
 "We're not going to stay. We've got two dog 
 teams and one of them can haul you." 
 
 "Don't be a fool, Boynton. A dog team is no- 
 good when you haven't anything to feed it. I 
 tell you, your own chances are slim enough and I 
 won't be a burden to any one. Besides, there is 
 the Company to consider. Those Indians must be 
 rounded up, supplies must be got in, and this crazy 
 Indian put out of the way. We can't lose a post 
 like this." 
 
 Phil's face flushed with anger when Wickson 
 mentioned the Company, and when he attempted 
 to speak he only spluttered. Then before the 
 words could come, he turned away and began to 
 throw wood upon the blaze with reckless hands. 
 
 "The first thing to do is to get that ankle fixed 
 up," he said when the fire was roaring to suit him. 
 "Is there anything on your toboggan we can use 
 for a bandage?" 
 
 193
 
 194 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "There's a spare shirt. We can't do anything 
 but bind it up tight." 
 
 Phil found the shirt and cut the back into long 
 strips. With Joyce's help he bound the injured 
 joint firmly and evenly and then replaced the 
 duffles and moccasin. 
 
 "Now you must keep it quiet," Phil said as he 
 began to arrange Wickson's bed beside the fire. 
 "We won't start to-morrow because we need a day 
 to rest and get ready. That will give you two 
 nights and a day when you won't have to move, 
 and we can keep hot cloths on it to-morrow. 
 We're too tired to do it to-night." 
 
 Phil arranged Joyce's bed at Wickson's head 
 and his own at the district manager's feet so that 
 they flanked the fire on three sides. Each had a 
 rabbit skin robe sewed to half of a four-point 
 blanket, a covering that would keep them warm 
 even without a fire, and ten minutes after Wick- 
 son's ankle had been bandaged Joyce and Phil were 
 asleep. It wasn't long afterward before the dis- 
 trict manager's weariness became greater than the 
 pain and he, too, had dropped off. 
 
 It was mid-forenoon before Phil wakened and 
 built a fire. The others did not move until tea 
 had been boiled. The sun was shining, the entire 
 world about them white and clean and fresh, but 
 the camp beside the woodpile was a cheerless place 
 and all three had wakened to a complete realiza- 
 tion of what they faced. 
 
 "We'll see how much food there is before we
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 195 
 
 cook breakfast," Phil said as he began to take 
 things from the grub-box on Wickson's tobog- 
 gan. 
 
 The others watched him expectantly, though 
 each knew how insignificant the supplies were. 
 When it was all spread before the fire they looked 
 at each other questioningly. 
 
 "We're hungry enough to eat all that to-day," 
 Phil finally said. 
 
 "Three days is as long as we can make it last. 
 But it will take us to Solomon Moses's shore camp, 
 and I'm banking on meat there." 
 
 "But the dogs?" asked Joyce. 
 
 "I fed them the last before we started from up the 
 shore," answered Wickson. "Didn't you have 
 fish stored here, Boynton?" 
 
 "Solomon wouldn't have left any of that. I'll 
 get some breakfast and then look around. There 
 may be something that the fire didn't touch." 
 
 After the meal Phil made a careful search of the 
 entire place. In the cellar of the dwelling house 
 he found a charred piece of bacon, ten pounds in all. 
 In the ruins of the warehouse he found a pile of 
 burned fish. He dug into it with an axe and dis- 
 covered less than twenty pounds in the centre 
 that had not been touched by the fire. Around 
 this was enough half-baked food to last the dogs 
 four days, while the half dozen unscorched fish 
 would do for themselves. 
 
 When Phil had gathered in a sack all the dog 
 food he could he turned the two teams loose and let
 
 196 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 them make a meal of the charred crumbs. The 
 hungry animals licked up all that remained. 
 
 Little was said about the camp fire that after- 
 noon. There was no mid-day meal and Phil and 
 Joyce lay on their robes and dozed, while Wickson 
 sat with his back against the woodpile and his in- 
 jured ankle near the blaze. At sunset Phil sat up 
 and looked at the sky. 
 
 "We've had enough rest," he said, suddenly, 
 "and night is as good as day for travelling on the 
 shore ice. We'll start now." 
 
 He sliced some of the burned bacon and gave it 
 to Joyce to fry and then began to arrange the loads 
 on the two toboggans. By dark the teams were 
 hitched up, Wickson was seated on the larger 
 toboggan with his back against the robes and grub 
 box, and they were ready to start. Down on the 
 shore Phil tied the leader of the second team to the 
 tail of the first toboggan, Joyce took her seat at the 
 rear, and they were off. 
 
 Except for brief stops every two hours to give 
 Phil a chance to regain his breath, they travelled at 
 a trot all night. Before the first sign of dawn 
 they drew in close to shore, where the wind had 
 banked up a drift against projecting pieces of shore 
 ice, and halted. 
 
 "We'll stay here until daylight so we can 
 see what we're doing," said Phil as he sat down 
 beside Joyce on her toboggan. 
 
 "Look here, Boynton," suddenly exclaimed 
 Wickson. "I've been thinking this thing over.
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 197 
 
 Now's the time to get this Indian. We can't let 
 him escape. You leave us and go ahead. Sneak 
 up to his camp with my rifle. Make a noise and 
 when he looks out, shoot him. We've got a chance 
 to get him now and we can't be sure of having it 
 again." 
 
 Phil did not answer and Wickson exclaimed, 
 angrily: 
 
 "Why, there is no other way to look at it. This 
 man has ruined the business of the post. You say 
 yourself that if he continues to haunt this place 
 not a hunter will stay with the Company. I know 
 it looks as though I'm putting it up to you. But 
 you're the only one who is physically able to do 
 it." 
 
 "There is not a chance in the world of my being 
 able to get him," retorted Phil. "That Indian is 
 only crazy on one subject. He is probably ex- 
 pecting just that thing, and waiting for it with his 
 trade gun. And even if I thought that I could do 
 it, I wouldn't." 
 
 Wickson, as is the case with big, active men who 
 are unable to do what they see must be done, had 
 grown irritable. At Phil's refusal to consider such 
 a plan of procedure he turned upon him savagely: 
 
 "Think, man, the chance that you have! 
 You may hunt for days, weeks, or months before 
 you find him again. Think what you owe the 
 Company! God! but I wish I had two legs. 
 Solomon Moses would never leave that camp!" 
 
 "Wickson," interrupted Phil, quietly. "You
 
 198 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 might have a dozen legs and you'd never kill that 
 Indian while I was here to prevent it, as long as we 
 need him for a guide to the timber country." 
 
 "Why don't you tell the truth?" taunted Wick- 
 son. "Why don't you admit that you are afraid? 
 It's a good thing for the old H. B. C., Boynton, 
 that it has few men like you in its service or it 
 would be a laughing stock instead of the mighty 
 thing it is. At least for the sake of the men who 
 have done things in the past you might take this 
 little chance." 
 
 At the first word Phil had jumped to his feet 
 and run across to the injured man's toboggan. 
 
 "That's enough, Wickson," he said. "I'm run- 
 ning this thing and I'll run it as I see fit. I'm not 
 afraid for myself. And I don't care particularly 
 what happens to you. But there's a woman here. 
 I'm responsible for her. And she's going to get 
 out. I'm neither going to risk having that Indian 
 get me with his trade gun nor am I going to spoil 
 our chance of getting a guide out of this country. 
 
 "Can't you see what that would mean, Wick- 
 son? Isn't it bad enough for her to be out here 
 now, where only men should be, without running 
 the risk that worse things should happen? Aren't 
 you satisfied with being responsible for the fact 
 that she is here, without wanting to place her in 
 greater danger? 
 
 "Or can you see that with your single idea? 
 I tell you that there are other things in this world 
 besides the Hudson's Bay Company and a man's
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 199 
 
 loyalty to it. Thank God, I can keep my bal- 
 ance." 
 
 Phil stopped speaking and stood waiting, eager 
 for a reply, poised to deliver a fresh denunciation. 
 But Wickson had nothing to say. From what 
 Phil could see of him in the darkness he did not 
 seem even to have heard. He was gazing at the 
 black wall of night out on the ice. At last a 
 sound came from his lips, a mocking, mirthless 
 chuckle. 
 
 Had Phil been able to see the man's face he 
 would have paused. He would have known that 
 the laugh was not for him, that he even had been 
 forgotten. But he could not see and he burst forth 
 angrily: 
 
 "I don't want to hear talk of loyalty from you, 
 Wickson. I'll never learn it from a man who has 
 put himself ahead of the Company as you have 
 done. You are responsible for the loss of Fort 
 Dease, for everything that has happened here. 
 You did it all because " 
 
 "That's enough," snapped Wickson. "You've 
 said all that. Go ahead and run this thing as you 
 want to." 
 
 Phil, more angry than ever, was about to speak 
 again when he heard Joyce call his name softly and 
 he turned and went back to her. 
 
 "Don't," she whispered. "It doesn't do any 
 good, and it only takes your strength to become so 
 angry. He's not worth it, Phil." 
 
 "But "
 
 200 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Yes, I heard all he said, and if it is the thing 
 to do, the thing to do for the Company, I wish you 
 would." 
 
 "You're a better man than he is," he whispered 
 as he drew her to him. 
 
 "But," she protested, "I wish you wouldn't 
 stay back on my account." 
 
 "It isn't on your account. Now that John 
 Wickson sees what his treachery has cost the 
 Company he can think only of saving it. But we 
 are going to get out and we are going to save Fort 
 Dease. I can think of both. And I am not going 
 to let the work of one spoil the chance of doing the 
 other. I didn't tell him so. I couldn't, I was so 
 mad. I don't want to capture Solomon Moses 
 now. I want him to see us in plenty of time so 
 that he can start off for the timber. It's our only 
 chance to get out. Everything depends on it. 
 After that we can save Fort Dease and put 
 Solomon out of the way." 
 
 "But Phil! You're not going to kill him on 
 sight?" 
 
 "I don't see what else there is to do." 
 
 "But that's a monstrous thing. You haven't 
 the right to take a human life that way, even if the 
 man is insane. 
 
 Phil shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "There are some things you have to do in this 
 country." 
 
 "But you can't! It's a terrible thing! It's not 
 right! It's not just! You must promise that
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 201 
 
 you'll try first to capture him, to take him prisoner 
 and turn him over to the proper authorities. If 
 he's insane he is not at fault." 
 
 "What would I do with him if I did capture him 
 alive ? He would be a constant source of danger 
 to you and a burden that might prevent our get- 
 ting out." 
 
 "No, you must promise you won't." 
 
 It was the first time Phil had ever been asked 
 for a promise and it was the first thing Joyce had 
 ever asked of him. 
 
 "All right," he said after a moment. "I'll try." 
 
 Dawn came a half-hour later and they started 
 along the shore. Phil had no way of knowing how 
 close he might be to the island of spruce in which 
 the Indian had his camp but he had not gone 
 more than a mile before it appeared ahead of 
 him. He hurried on until he struck a fresh 
 snowshoe trail leading away from the shore. 
 
 "It's just a mile from here," he said when he 
 stopped the dogs and went back to the first tobog- 
 gan for his snowshoes. "Joyce, you go ahead of 
 this team. Here are Wickson's snowshoes. Don't 
 keep too close when we are near the camp. I'll go 
 ahead." 
 
 He called loudly to the dogs to follow him and 
 plunged up the bank, Wickson's rifle in his hands. 
 Half way to the island of spruce he called sharply 
 to his dogs and a little later turned and struck at 
 one with his fist. The poor brute, which had been 
 toiling patiently, yelped in fright and astonish-
 
 202 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 ment as it sprang to one side while the wheel dog, 
 which protested whenever any member of the team 
 was punished, sat back on his haunches and 
 howled. 
 
 "That will give him a start, unless he's on one 
 of his meat drunks," Phil thought as he went on 
 again. 
 
 Two hundred yards from the edge of the timber 
 he halted again. 
 
 "I'm not going to take the chance that he is 
 lying in the brush with a gun," he called back to 
 Joyce. "I'm going to make a circle and see if he 
 has gone." 
 
 He swung out to the left until he was able to see 
 the bare, white waste on the other side of the 
 spruce. Then, when he stopped to watch, he 
 caught a black dot on the drifts far ahead of him 
 and speeding in the opposite direction. 
 
 "He's gone!" he called to the others. "He's 
 started back for the timber country. Now we've 
 got a trail that will take us out." 
 
 Eagerly they pushed ahead and in five minutes 
 the teams were halted beside the wigwam in which 
 Phil had been held prisoner. Phil dived inside at 
 once and began to paw over the pile of furs in the 
 rear. Wickson sitting on his toboggan, Joyce 
 watching the dogs, they heard him call. The 
 next moment he came out dragging a hind quarter 
 of caribou. 
 
 "We won't starve yet!" he exclaimed. "And 
 we'll have some right now. There's a fire still
 
 THE WHITE DESERT 203 
 
 going inside and it won't take long to fry a few 
 steaks." 
 
 "You're going right on, aren't you?" asked 
 Wickson. 
 
 "Of course. We've got to let him know we're 
 after him. Otherwise he might double back." 
 
 All morning the fleeing black dot on the great 
 snow plain was in sight. The crust was hard and 
 firm, having been packed by the wind and stiffened 
 by the intense cold, and with his long, narrow, 
 turned-up snowshoes Phil was able to maintain 
 a good pace, while the dogs, with their compara- 
 tively light loads, followed easily. 
 
 Contrary to Phil's expectation, Solomon's snow- 
 shoes did not leave a well-marked trail. The crust 
 was too hard, and it was only in little patches of 
 snow that had lodged in the depressions that the 
 path of the fleeing Indian could be seen. 
 
 When the sun was up the wind began to blow 
 and soon even the few snowshoe impressions be- 
 gan to fade. Phil looked ahead anxiously. Sol- 
 omon had reached the black line which marked the 
 beginning of the stunted spruce, the tops of which 
 barely showed above the surface of the snow. 
 Against such a background, and at that distance, 
 he could no longer be seen. 
 
 Phil glanced back and saw that the spruce island 
 near the bay was still visible. It was his last 
 landmark. If he went on, if the sky became 
 clouded, he would be completely lost before night. 
 If the wind continued to wipe out the faint im-
 
 204 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 prints of Solomon's snowshoes there would be 
 nothing to guide him. 
 
 He stopped the dogs as if for one of his usual 
 breathing spells but he did not go back to sit down 
 on Joyce's toboggan. Instead, he kept looking 
 ahead, weighing the chances, trying to reach a 
 decision. If he pressed on and lost the trail it 
 would be certain death for all three. He could 
 never hope to cross the barren waste unguided. 
 Even if he did cross it, he would be little better off. 
 
 To turn back offered no better alternative. He 
 could only return to Solomon's camp, or the site of 
 Fort Dease, and start out anew but with no better 
 chance of reaching any place and with less food. 
 As Phil realized this he looked across the deso- 
 late waste before him and shivered. To go back 
 meant to delay the end. To go on brought it 
 nearer. He could picture them wandering out 
 there on the white plain until starved and frozen. 
 He didn't care for himself, and he did not think of 
 Wickson, but the thought of the torture in store 
 for Joyce was more than he could bear. 
 
 He hesitated; turned back. As he was about 
 to swing out and wheel the team he glanced again 
 toward the place where he had last seen the Indian. 
 Beyond the black line of the first stunted bushes, 
 in a clear space no larger than his hand, it seemed, 
 there appeared for an instant a crawling speck 
 against the white snow. 
 
 "I'm a fool," he muttered as he started forward 
 again. ," It's the only chance. Come on, puppies."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 SOLOMON'S TRAIL 
 
 A LITTLE after noon Phil reached the first 
 of the dwarfed growth that showed above 
 the surface of the snow. For more than 
 an hour there had not been a trace of Solomon 
 Moses and he had been guided entirely by the 
 little patch of white he had seen beyond the black 
 line. 
 
 Once in the brush, however, Phil struck some- 
 thing that was both a difficulty and an incalculable 
 benefit. Sheltered by the spruce, the snow had 
 not been packed so firmly by the wind. The sur- 
 face became softer and soon Phil was walking in 
 six inches of it. Sometimes drifts two feet deep 
 were piled up. Since the last storm there had been 
 no severe winds accompanied by low temperatures 
 to pack and stiffen the snow, and the last fall still 
 lay loosely on top. 
 
 Eagerly Phil pressed on toward the opening 
 which he had seen the Indian cross. There he 
 would find the trail if he was ever to find it, and 
 from there he must continue with as few rests as 
 possible until he reached the permanent camp of 
 Solomon Moses in his old hunting-ground. 
 
 The Indian's trail was there and Phil swung into 
 205
 
 206 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 it with a fresh burst of speed. Though he had 
 travelled all night and all day, he kept on with only 
 short rests until darkness finally compelled a halt. 
 
 Joyce, who had been riding almost continuously, 
 did most of the work of making camp. Phil did 
 not realize his great weariness until he stopped 
 and begun to chill. He unharnessed the dogs 
 while Joyce dug a great hole in the snow and 
 gathered brush for a fire. When everything was 
 done except the cooking she insisted on Phil 
 sitting down while she attended to that, and the 
 next morning she was up and had breakfast ready 
 before he wakened. 
 
 As she worked there beside the fire in the dark- 
 ness she was conscious of being watched and 
 glanced up to see Wickson looking at her. 
 
 "Good morning," she whispered. "Your ankle 
 better?" 
 
 "Yes, thanks, but still useless." 
 
 Joyce touched her lips with a finger and mo- 
 tioned toward Phil. 
 
 "I know," Wickson whispered. "He needs the 
 sleep. It was a great day's work he did yesterday. 
 I didn't think he could last it through." 
 
 Joyce turned to her boiling tea and simmering 
 meat with a sudden, inexplicable feeling of friend- 
 liness toward the injured man. At first she be- 
 lieved it was because they were equal partners in 
 the face of a great danger. But they had been 
 before. As she puzzled over the situation, pre- 
 tending to be busy with the kettle of meat, she
 
 SOLOMON'S TRAIL 207 
 
 realized that it was a change in Wickson himself. 
 For the first time he had looked at her without that 
 disturbing light in his eyes. For the first time 
 since that dinner in Savant House she did not feel 
 uncomfortable in his presence. 
 
 Wondering, she glanced at him again, but this 
 time he was not watching her. 
 
 "Tell me, honestly," she said, "what our 
 chances are. Is there anything I can do to help?" 
 
 "Our chances are good, if Boynton can stand the 
 pace," Wickson replied at once. "He did the 
 only thing we could do, and you can help by going 
 ahead once in a while and giving him a ride. 
 That's the only thing I'm afraid of, his playing 
 out. He didn't start in good shape, but he's young 
 and a man can stand a lot of punishment when he 
 has to." 
 
 Phil did ride for an hour altogether that day, 
 while Joyce, with Wickson's snowshoes, went 
 ahead of the dogs. Solomon Moses' trail was 
 unmistakable but it had one disconcerting feature. 
 When they camped that second night they had not 
 found a place where the Indian had stopped to 
 sleep. He had gone on without a rest for a day 
 and a night^ and as he travelled quite as fast as 
 they he must be a day ahead of them, perhaps 
 thirty or more miles. 
 
 Wickson, who had watched every foot of the 
 trail from his seat on the toboggan, commented on 
 this fact that night, and Phil looked anxiously at 
 the sky, as he had done often in the afternoon.
 
 208 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "I know it," he said, "and the only thing we 
 can hope for is that it doesn't snow until we reach 
 the spruce. Once in the timber we can find his 
 trail, even if there is a foot of snow on it.'* 
 
 "And out here?" asked Joyce. 
 
 "It would be hopeless in an hour or two, less if 
 there should be a wind with the snow." 
 
 It did not snow that night nor the next day, 
 though the clouds still hung low. In the middle 
 of the forenoon Joyce was leading while Phil took a 
 breathing spell on the toboggan. For a mile the 
 trail led through thick brush, much of which was 
 taller and more sturdy than that through which 
 they had been travelling. 
 
 "Boynton! Your rifle! Quick!" cried Wick- 
 son. 
 
 "What is it?" asked Phil as he floundered ahead 
 through the drifts without his snowshoes. 
 
 Joyce, at Wickson's call, had drawn back in 
 sudden fear and was looking uncertainly about 
 her. 
 
 "There's a camp ahead," whispered Wickson as 
 Phil passed him. "Be careful. He may be 
 there." 
 
 "Come back, Joyce," commanded Phil as he 
 started ahead. "Get behind Wickson and keep 
 low." 
 
 He slipped into the brush at one side of the trail 
 and began to work forward. At last, by bending 
 down, he could see a skin tent just ahead. 
 
 His rifle ready, he moved nearer, stopping every
 
 SOLOMON'S TRAIL 209 
 
 few feet to look around and to listen. But there 
 was no sound and no movement and he reached the 
 camp without seeing any indication of the Indian's 
 presence. 
 
 He was at the rear, but from his final position 
 he could see the snowshoe trail leading up from 
 the direction in which he had come, while on the 
 other side the webbed impressions went on toward 
 the west. Solomon had come and gone. 
 
 Still moving cautiously and ready with his rifle, 
 Phil went around to the front of the wigwam and 
 looked in. It was empty. 
 
 " Bring up the dogs," he called. "He has gone." 
 
 He threw back the flap over the door and en- 
 tered. The ashes in the centre were still warm and 
 one coal showed when he blew upon them. 
 
 "What is it?" called Joyce from outside. 
 
 "Wait a minute," Phil answered as he began a 
 search. 
 
 The wigwam was much smaller than that in 
 which he had been held prisoner. Placed near the 
 door where they could be seen at once were two 
 bones freshly stripped. But nowhere was there 
 any caribou. He picked up the bones, crawled out 
 through the low door and stood up. 
 
 "Any meat?" asked Wickson. 
 
 "Only these," Phil answered holding up the 
 bones. "Left to remind us that he has meat and 
 we haven't much. But they may be welcome in 
 soup later. Solomon stopped long enough to 
 have a good meal."
 
 210 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Then we have lost him!" cried Joyce. "If 
 this is his camp we'll never find him." 
 
 "This is only a relay camp," Phil exclaimed. 
 "I might have known he would have something 
 like this between the timber and his shore camp. 
 This is where he came for meat when he had me 
 tied in the other wigwam." 
 
 "Let's get along, then," interrupted Wickson. 
 "It hasn't helped any to find it." 
 
 "It did help," Phil replied. "It delayed Solo- 
 mon and he is no more than six hours ahead of us 
 now. There was a coal or two still left in the ashes, 
 and the coals from this small spruce don't last long. 
 He probably started from here at daylight this 
 morning." 
 
 Wickson looked at the low clouds and noted the 
 direction of the wind. 
 
 "That gain may help, but I doubt it," he said. 
 "We're not more than half-way, if his hunting 
 district is somewhere near Berens River, and if it 
 snows and blows before we get into the thick spruce 
 we'll never track him." 
 
 Phil knew as well as the district manager what a 
 snow-storm would do to them. With the first flake 
 the gain of a day and a half over the Indian would 
 be valueless. Without his track to guide them 
 there was no possibility of their ever reaching a place 
 where they could obtain food. It meant the end. 
 
 They started at once, Phil in the lead and shov- 
 ing his snowshoes ahead savagely. Tired as he
 
 SOLOMON'S TRAIL 211 
 
 was, already beginning to feel the results of half 
 rations, the dread of the coming snow aroused an- 
 ger rather than fear. He glared at the clouds and 
 dared them to open their heavy bins, and all the 
 time he kept increasing his pace, scorning the usual 
 stops for rests, driving himself on through the re- 
 mainder of the day. At last darkness and weari- 
 ness combined to send him stumbling along the 
 sides of the trail and he called a halt. 
 
 Phil went to sleep while Joyce cooked supper. 
 She gathered the wood, dug out a hole for the beds, 
 assisted Wickson to a place beside the fire, melted 
 snow for the tea and set meat to simmering in a 
 kettle. The brush burned quickly and she spent 
 much time gathering enough to do what little 
 cooking there was to be done. 
 
 All the time Wickson watched her closely and 
 Joyce knew that he did. But as in the morning 
 she felt something different in his scrutiny. Once 
 she stole a glance at him when her face was in the 
 shadow and saw that, while his eyes were upon 
 her, his thoughts were not. He seemed to be 
 planning, scheming, turning something over and 
 over in his mind, and the tense stare and furrowed 
 brow, the forceful attitude and the lack of un- 
 certainty in his expression, dismayed Joyce more 
 than anything she had ever known about him be- 
 fore. 
 
 Her old fears and disquietude returned. As she 
 had always believed, the man was ruthless. He 
 sat there planning to resume the battle the minute
 
 212 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 the three were safe again. While others toiled and 
 fought for him he devised fresh means of ruining 
 the happiness which she and Phil deserved. 
 
 Joyce was not the sort of woman who would have 
 feared Wickson or any other man under normal 
 circumstances. She was intelligent enough to 
 know that any one would be powerless to ac- 
 complish such a thing. But up there in the North 
 country everything was different. This man was 
 like the land in which he lived. He was as cruel as 
 the cold, as ruthless as a blizzard, as unswerving and 
 as insatiable as the snarling water of the great rivers. 
 Mercy was absent in him as in the land itself. 
 
 And it was toward this that they were strug- 
 gling. She and Phil together were taking this man 
 to a place of safety that again he might attempt to 
 wreck their happiness. Angrily she poked at the 
 meat in the kettle with a stick. Was it worth it? 
 Would it not be better to die out there on the great 
 white desert where they could be together, where 
 they could be sure of each other, than to struggle 
 on that this man might win in the end ? 
 
 She did not know what he might do. Her 
 reason told her that in reality he could accomplish 
 nothing against her love for Phil. And yet all she 
 had seen of the man, all she had heard of him, all 
 the things she had felt of him served to oppress 
 with a certainty that his will would prevail. 
 There was no law, no convention, no power of any 
 sort, to which he need give heed. Like the North 
 itself, he would conquer in the end.
 
 SOLOMON'S TRAIL 213 
 
 And then, swinging down slowly, lazily, turning 
 to dart upward and melt in the warm air above the 
 fire, came the first flakes of the storm. Joyce, her 
 former fears instantly forgotten in the face of this 
 immediate terror, turned pleadingly to the man 
 she had just declared to be without mercy. 
 
 "Is it the end?" her eyes asked plainly. 
 
 Wickson nodded but did not speak. His eyes 
 shone with fury. Silently he shook his fist at the 
 sky. Crippled, helpless, he sat there defying the 
 North to do its worst. There was no fear, no sup- 
 plication, in his attitude, and as she looked Joyce 
 found herself admiring the courage of the man 
 while she dreaded his power. 
 
 The snowflakes, falling thickly now, struck 
 Phil's face and wakened him. He sat up slowly, 
 still dazed, and then the significance of the storm 
 reached him. He glanced quickly at the others 
 and then spread his hand before the little blaze. 
 
 No one spoke. Joyce forgot the meat simmer- 
 ing in the kettle. Phil continued to stare into the 
 fire and Wickson at the snow as it dropped into the 
 zone of firelight. There was no bluster, no noise, 
 no furore about the storm. A summer evening 
 could not have been more peaceful, and yet each 
 softly fluttering flake spelled the end for those 
 three out there in the middle of that trackless, 
 treeless waste. 
 
 At last Joyce lifted the kettle from the fire and 
 they began to eat supper. It was the first meal 
 since morning and they were very hungry. But
 
 214 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 even the food, welcome as it was, failed to rouse 
 them from their despondency, and as soon as the 
 last shred of meat was gone and the last drop of 
 broth was drained, each turned to his robes and 
 spread them beside the dying fire. 
 
 But, tired as they were, none of them slept for a 
 time. The fire quickly died down and left the 
 camp in darkness. At first there were spots where 
 each lay, where the fire had been built, where the 
 toboggans had been turned on edge beside them. 
 But gradually the black shapes became dim and in 
 half an hour everything lay white except a small 
 place where a few lingering coals still spluttered 
 as the snow struck them. 
 
 The dogs, tied to the dwarfed growth about the 
 camp, had been restless at the beginning of the 
 storm but gradually they dug nests in the drifts 
 and went to sleep. The spot was as quiet as any 
 other on that vast, lifeless plain. 
 
 Out of that tomb-like silence there burst upon 
 the three people in the camp the first notes of a 
 demoniacal shriek that rose and fell with a mock- 
 ing cadence. It ended in a wild burst of laughter 
 and a gleeful chuckle that brought a chill even to 
 Wickson's heart as he threw back his robe and sat 
 up.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 
 
 THAT'S not a wolf," whispered Wickson. 
 "What is it? Even the dogs are scared. 
 They never answered." 
 
 "It's the weeteego," answered Joyce, her voice 
 trembling and hoarse. 
 
 "Take the rifle and get after him, Boynton," 
 commanded the district manager. "He isn't far." 
 
 "I will not!" retorted Phil* exultantly. "That 
 yelling nearly drove me crazy last month, but I 
 never heard a sweeter sound than it was just now." 
 
 " Sweeter ! " exclaimed Wickson, angrily. " He'll 
 come in here and murder us before we can make a 
 move." 
 
 Phil's elation vanished, but not because of what 
 Wickson had said. 
 
 "I'm afraid it won't help," he said, "though 
 there is no danger. You don't understand Solo- 
 mon Moses. I told you his life work is to starve a 
 Hudson's Bay Company man. He is going to 
 stick around here and chuckle because he thinks 
 we're finished now for good. You should have 
 seen the joy in his face when he told me how he 
 would watch me die. He can't resist coming to 
 mock us." 
 
 215
 
 216 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "But if he stays until the storm is over we can 
 track him!" cried Joyce. 
 
 "That's what I first thought of but he's too 
 clever for that. He's banking on a long storm, 
 two days probably, with a wind at the end of it. 
 He'll stay out there and laugh at us until mid- 
 night. Then he'll slip off and by daylight there 
 won't be a sign of his tracks." 
 
 Again the howl burst upon them, ending as be- 
 fore in a wild chuckle of delight. 
 
 "The thing to do is to keep watch and start as 
 soon as he does," declared Wickson. "It's our 
 only chance." 
 
 "And Solomon will see that we don't get it," 
 retorted Phil. "You know there is no chance 
 whatever of finding him out in that," and he 
 swung his arm at the brush and the darkness and 
 the thickly falling snow. 
 
 Tired as they were, there was no sleep for any of 
 them so long as Solomon Moses howled. Some- 
 times he came so close to camp that all three started 
 as if he were upon them. Sometimes he sounded 
 as if he were far away. He howled to the right 
 and the left, to the front and the rear. He re- 
 treated and advanced, and once after he had been 
 barely heard there was a long silence. 
 
 "He's gone!" exclaimed Phil. "That ends us." 
 
 He turned to his robe, shook off the snow, and 
 prepared to go to sleep. Joyce followed but 
 Wickson, under the spell of the demoniacal shrieks 
 for the first time, remained sitting on his robe.
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 217 
 
 At last, just as Phil had dropped off to sleep, 
 the howl came from close by. Phil and Joyce sat 
 up again, expectant, encouraged. 
 
 For a long time they sat there. Every few 
 minutes Solomon shrieked his joy at them until 
 to Wickson, at least, it became maddening. Phil 
 only laughed. 
 
 "I hope he forgets himself," he said, "and waits 
 until daylight. If he only would, we'd have a 
 chance." 
 
 Joyce arranged her robe about her shoulders and 
 shivered. 
 
 "It's getting cold," she said, and her teeth 
 chattered. "It was warm when the storm be- 
 gan." 
 
 Phil glanced up at the sky, saw that the flakes 
 of snow were smaller and less in number. Sud- 
 denly he sprang to his feet. As he did so Solomon 
 howled again, close by this time. But the star- 
 tling thing was the new note, a note of terror, that 
 dominated the shriek. It was terror and dis- 
 may and defeat, all told in a wild, wailing cry. 
 The noise of crashing brush came to those in the 
 camp and then all was still. 
 
 "What is it?" whispered Joyce. 
 
 "See!" cried Phil, pointing toward the north. 
 "That's what got him." 
 
 The others looked up to see a bright star shining 
 through a rift in the clouds. As they stared an- 
 other appeared. 
 
 "The wind changed!" Phil continued, excitedly.
 
 218 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 " It's clearing off. We'll get out yet. We'll be on 
 his track at daylight." 
 
 When the dawn came they had started, pushing 
 on toward the west, again only six hours behind. 
 The day was bright and cold, Solomon's trail plain 
 and fresh, and they made good time until dark. The 
 next day it was the same, and when they camped 
 that night they knew that they would be within 
 the shelter of the timber the next forenoon. 
 
 This knowledge was accepted differently by each 
 of the three. To Wickson, brooding all day over 
 thoughts he shared with no one, it seemed almost a 
 matter of indifference. Joyce, watching him anx- 
 iously, trying vainly to read his intentions, felt 
 that it mattered little that they had covered the 
 most hazardous part of their journey if their 
 happiness was still to be ruined by this man of 
 implacable purpose. 
 
 To Phil alone the nearness of the timber was an 
 unmixed relief. He alone seemed to realize what 
 it meant to them in the way of shelter from storms, 
 possibilities of meat, and, best of all, a clear trail 
 to the camp of Solomon Moses. After supper he 
 did not go to sleep at once, as had been his custom. 
 Tired as he was, he could not refrain from sitting 
 by the fire and planning on the next day. 
 
 "None of us knows how near his camp is," he 
 began. "We're liable to strike it 'most any time 
 after noon. I'm not looking for an ambush, but 
 I am afraid he may destroy what meat he had there, 
 or make off with it.' :
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 219 
 
 "But he won't have time to get far," Joyce 
 offered. 
 
 "Yes, because he is a day and a half ahead. He 
 didn't stop after he left us that night in the storm. 
 And he must know that we're on his trail. The 
 thing for us is to figure out what he will do." 
 
 "If his plan is to starve us, as he has been 
 trying to do, he'll destroy any food there is in his 
 camp," said Wickson. 
 
 "That's reasonable," said Phil. "Then what 
 are we to do?" 
 
 "We're in a territory where there are other 
 Indian hunters, and there is a chance that we'll 
 run across a hunting trail." 
 
 "We've got to do that anyway, to win through, 
 but the first question is to deal with Solomon him- 
 self. Then, when that's done, we've got to get on 
 the trail of some hunter at once. We haven't 
 much meat left, and there is only one more meal 
 for the dogs, half a meal at that. When we find a 
 hunter we've got to send him for another. We've 
 got to get messengers to all the Fort Dease 
 Indians and tell them that the weeteego is dead and 
 won't bother them again. We've got to get a 
 messenger to Fort Berens and have a boatload of 
 supplies start up the bay as soon as the ice goes out, 
 and I've got to get back to Dease and be ready 
 for the hunters when they do come." 
 
 "You! Back to Fort Dease!" 
 
 Joyce looked at him in consternation. 
 
 "Of course," said Phil. "I'm the one who gave
 
 220 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 out the debt and as the books are burned, I'm the 
 only one who can collect the fur." 
 
 "Then I'm going with you." 
 
 It was the first time Phil had even considered 
 where Joyce should go, once they were in a place of 
 safety, and he did not answer. 
 
 "There is no other place for me to go," she pro- 
 tested. 
 
 "Perhaps you're right," said Phil. "You can 
 get back to Savant House in the summer. But 
 we've got to handle Solomon Moses first. I'm 
 going to keep ahead to-morrow so that if he has 
 any trap you won't get caught. I don't think 
 there will be, but we want to play as safe as 
 possible. After we get hold of him, we can plan 
 the next move." 
 
 Phil had ignored the fact that Wickson was his 
 superior officer, that he should look to him for 
 orders and suggestions. Now that they were 
 nearing possible safety, too, his thoughts turned 
 at once to what must be done for the Company. 
 His own future, and that of Joyce, must depend 
 on his work, and, while he felt that he was just in 
 his charge that Wickson was responsible for all 
 the trouble, the fact remained that ruin had come 
 to Fort Dease while it was in his custody and that 
 he must regain as much as possible of what had 
 been lost. 
 
 Now that he was about to act, now that he was 
 the aggressor, he forgot his weariness and the
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 221 
 
 dangers that still lay ahead. He became more 
 than ever the leader, the confident director of their 
 activities, and he was eager for morning to come. 
 
 Joyce saw this, felt proud because of it, and in 
 her exultation she glanced involuntarily at Wick- 
 son. The district manager read her thoughts 
 instantly and, to her surprise, he grinned good- 
 humouredly. 
 
 "You're right, Boynton," he agreed. "And 
 I guess I'll be on my feet in time to help. If you 
 can carry things through as you have planned, 
 nothing more can be expected. The only weak 
 point is my own suggestion. Everything depends 
 upon our getting food in Solomon's camp, if we 
 find it, and then in running across the trail of a 
 hunter. That last is not so easy as it sounds. 
 There are not many Indians ahead of us and it's 
 going to be luck if we find one before we starve." 
 
 "We've run greater risks than that so far, and 
 there's Solomon to deal with first," said Phil as 
 he prepared his robe for the night. 
 
 He tucked himself in beside the fire and was 
 asleep at once. Joyce and Wickson still sat facing 
 the blaze, for they had not driven themselves to 
 exhaustion as had Phil. 
 
 In the presence of only the district manager 
 the girl's exultation soon vanished. Despite the 
 man's friendly smile, despite his submission to all 
 that Phil had planned, her fear of him only in- 
 creased. He was letting Phil do the work, letting 
 him get them out to a place of safety and save Fort
 
 222 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 Dease. But what after that? He had sent Phil 
 to Penitentiary Post to get him out of the way, 
 had given him an inconsequential station when 
 his abilities deserved the best opportunity. Why 
 would he not do something worse once he had re- 
 turned to Savant House. It would be easily pos- 
 sible for him to ruin Phil's future with a report 
 of the winter that was properly coloured, or un- 
 coloured. He need not lie. He need only omit 
 part of the truth to damn Phil forever. 
 
 Wickson moved carefully to one side and began 
 to spread out his robe. He had not been looking 
 at Joyce, did not seem to know that she was there. 
 His face was hard and resolute, had that expression 
 she feared more than any other. As he lay down 
 he saw Joyce staring at him. 
 
 "Wait until I'm on my feet!" he exclaimed as he 
 pulled the robe over his face. 
 
 As usual, they were under way at daybreak the 
 next morning. Phil was ahead with Wickson's 
 rifle, the only weapon they had. The district 
 manager and Joyce rode on the toboggans. Two 
 hours took them well into the spruce forest. 
 
 "I'll go on ahead now," said Phil as he stopped 
 for his first breathing spell. "Keep about half 
 an hour behind me. We may not reach his camp 
 to-day, and it may be only a few miles from here. 
 If I see any signs of him I'll lay something across the 
 trail. You stop there until I call or come for you." 
 
 Joyce and Wickson waited the half hour and 
 then spoke to the dogs. There was a fair trail
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 223 
 
 and the teams needed only an occasional urging. 
 Joyce was in the lead and as she sat on the tobog- 
 gan she looked ahead constantly, while always her 
 ears were ready for the sound of a rifle shot or 
 Phil's voice. 
 
 But nothing happened. Nothing lay across 
 their path. Hour after hour passed. And then 
 at noon Joyce suddenly stopped her dogs at a 
 bend in the trail. Lying across it just ahead was 
 a dead branch of a spruce. 
 
 "Better go ahead and tie the leader," said 
 Wickson when he saw what had happened. "We 
 don't want these dogs to get a smell of the camp 
 and stampede us into it until Boynton is ready." 
 
 Joyce took a chain from the toboggan, waded 
 through the snow to the head dog and fastened 
 him to a tree. As she was about to turn back she 
 saw something on the smooth surface beside the 
 trail and went forward. Traced in the snow with 
 a stick was a message from Phil: 
 
 Smelled smoke. Close. 
 
 "What is it?" called Wickson. 
 
 Joyce motioned silence and waded back to his 
 toboggan. 
 
 "We mustn't make any noise," she said. "Phil 
 wrote in the snow that he had smelled smoke 
 just ahead." 
 
 "The wind is this way, but it means he is close. 
 We ought to get action soon." 
 
 Joyce brushed the snow from a windfall a few
 
 224 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 feet away and sat down facing the place where 
 Phil had gone. For a time she waited quietly 
 but as the minutes slipped by and there was no 
 sound, nothing to tell what was happening in the 
 forest ahead, she became restless. Once she 
 glanced at Wickson and saw him watching her 
 with a queer smile about his mouth. 
 
 "Hard on the nerves, eh?" he asked. 
 
 Joyce sprang from her seat and started toward 
 her own toboggan. He was mocking her, taunting 
 her with the possibilities of what might be happen- 
 ing ahead of them, and a wave of anger and hatred 
 swept over her. 
 
 "I didn't mean anything like that," he said. 
 "Sit down again. I've been wanting to speak to 
 you." 
 
 "I don't know of anything you can say that will 
 interest me!" replied Joyce, fiercely, though she 
 was conscious of a softened note in his voice she 
 had never heard before. 
 
 "I think it will," he retorted, harshly now. "I 
 imagine, woman-like, you have come to the con- 
 clusion that because you and Boynton didn't de- 
 sert me back there at Fort Dease, because you 
 have gone to a lot of trouble in an effort to save 
 my life, I'll be good in the future?" 
 
 Joyce, startled by the brutal frankness of the 
 question, only stared at him. 
 
 "What I wanted to say," Wickson continued, 
 "is that you are mistaken if you do think so. Ever 
 since we left Fort Dease I've been afraid that you
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 225 
 
 would afraid that you would expect something 
 of me. 
 
 "But," and he hitched himself upright and struck 
 his knee with a mittened fist, "I'm not that sort. 
 I wouldn't stoop to such a thing. It's not a man's 
 way. It's not my way. If I have ever wanted 
 anything I have gone after it. I have won it. I 
 never let any consideration except my own ideas 
 of what is right stand in my path. And I've 
 always got what I went after. You've probable 
 heard that since you've been in the North country. 
 I always win." 
 
 The last had not been said boastingly. The 
 man had spoken merely as if he were stating a well- 
 known fact, but the significance of his words 
 served only to bring fresh terror to Joyce, to leave 
 her standing there in the snow staring at him, 
 hating him, fearing him, and wholly unprepared 
 for his next statement. 
 
 "But I don't want you. I thought I did. I 
 thought I wanted you more than anything I had 
 ever wanted. That's why I made that trip from 
 Savant House to Fort Dease. That's why I 
 started down the shore looking for you the minute 
 I read the last word of your note. And if I still 
 wanted you I wouldn't let Boynton or anything 
 Boynton has done for me, or could do against me, 
 stand in the way of my having you. But I don't 
 want you. 
 
 "That's why I'm telling you this. I don't 
 want you or him to think I quit a fight because
 
 226 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 you happened to do me a good turn. I'm not 
 that sort, and if I wanted you now I wouldn't 
 give you up." 
 
 He spoke harshly, vehemently, with a depth 
 of passion that seemed altogether out of proportion 
 with his words. He was so volcanic in his delivery 
 that, despite the thought he had conveyed, Joyce 
 still looked at him in speechless apprehension. 
 
 "I just wanted to make myself clear on that 
 point," he continued, more mildly. "I wanted 
 you to know that you have nothing more to fear 
 from me, if it's fear you have of me, and I wanted 
 you to understand that it wasn't any softening on 
 my part, any feeling of gratitude." 
 
 For a moment Joyce continued to stare. Her 
 apprehension vanished as she finally grasped what 
 he had said. A smile spread over her face, cracked 
 the frosted skin of her cheeks and chin. And then 
 she burst into uncontrolled laughter. 
 
 "What is it?" demanded Wickson, angrily. 
 "What's so funny?" 
 
 "I can't help it," she managed to say between 
 choking fits of mirth. "It's all so so I 
 
 "Don't get hysterical," he advised. 
 
 "I'm not. I you don't know much about 
 
 women, do you?" 
 
 "I guess I know all that any one does. It 
 isn't much." 
 
 "That proves it," she replied, quickly. "A 
 man who knows the first thing about women would
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 227 
 
 never think of saying what you said to me. It's 
 insulting, it's aggravating, it's maddeningly chal- 
 lenging." 
 
 She stopped suddenly and bit her lip. 
 
 "Don't make that mistake in my case," he 
 growled. "I merely told you how I felt." 
 
 She looked at him skeptically for a moment but 
 she could not but believe that the man was sincere 
 in all the strange things he had said. She remem- 
 bered, too, that unaccountable change she had 
 felt in his attitude toward her and the friendly 
 smile he had given her while Phil was asleep, and 
 instantly curiosity possessed her. 
 
 "Would you mind," she asked, hesitatingly, 
 "mind explaining this sudden this sudden 
 changer" 
 
 For the first time she saw embarrassment in 
 Wickson's face. His eyes fell before hers and he 
 did not look up again when he spoke. 
 
 "There are some things a man doesn't like to 
 talk about," he answered, gruffly. 
 
 But Joyce, or any other woman, would not be 
 rebuffed on such a quest. 
 
 "I ought to know wherein I failed," she pro- 
 tested. "It's only fair to me, since you have been 
 so frank." 
 
 "You wouldn't understand." 
 
 "I would try to understand." 
 
 He looked at her appraisingly for a moment. 
 
 "Boynton was the cause of it all." 
 
 "Phil! How?"
 
 228 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "Oh, nothing he did. He couldn't have done 
 anything to change me. It was something he said. 
 It opened my eyes, gave me a new view of myself, 
 and you weren't in that view, that's all." 
 
 It seemed final, and Joyce, despite the challenge 
 of his attitude and words, despite her insistent 
 desire to get at the bottom of this sudden change 
 toward her, refrained from pressing the point. 
 She resumed her seat on the windfall, and when she 
 looked at Wickson again he began to speak. 
 
 "I may as well tell you," he announced. 
 "You'll not believe it all, but it's the truth, every 
 word of it, and I'd rather have you know than to 
 think I have a soft streak. 
 
 "They say I am a savage," he continued. 
 "They say I was born in the North and that I'm as 
 hard as the North. Oh, they don't say it to me, 
 but I know they say it. They think I'm all body, 
 that I get ahead by the bulk of me. But they're 
 fools. I've got a mind, I can use it, and I can out- 
 think any of them. They say I bull into things 
 regardless, but I don't. I reason everything out. 
 Or I always did until you came. Now I've 
 reasoned you out. 
 
 "Not until you came to Savant House did I 
 ever go off my head. I did completely then. 
 And when I did, I lost the two things which have 
 meant most in my life. You did that to me." 
 
 He stopped speaking and Joyce was unaccount- 
 ably affected. She forgot that it was her power 
 that had done this, overlooked entirely that he had
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 229 
 
 paid an unconscious tribute to her beauty and de- 
 sirability, forgot even that John Wickson was 
 suffering as she had hoped he would suffer. She 
 remembered only that she was listening to the most 
 appealing thing in the world, a confession of weak- 
 ness by a strong man. She felt that she must say 
 something but she did not know what it could be. 
 Then Wickson looked up quickly. 
 
 "But you never can do it again," he resumed, 
 fiercely. "Now I know how little you really count 
 in my life. I see how unimportant you are to me 
 compared to what I owe to the Company.'* 
 
 "To the Company!" exclaimed Joyce, invol- 
 untarily. 
 
 "Yes, to the Company. All my life I have 
 known that I was serving it faithfully, giving it all 
 my strength, all my energy, all my ability to win. 
 Then you came. For the first time I forgot it. 
 I sent Boynton off to Dease when he should have 
 had a post where he would be given a chance to do 
 the work he can do best. When I knew he was 
 in trouble I let him get out the best he could. I 
 wanted him out of the way. I wanted you. 
 
 "Then when I learned you had gone to Dease 
 I started after you at once. I went down the 
 shore after you, and I was going to take you back. 
 And then you did the second thing to me. You 
 took away all my pride in my ability to win 
 through myself, made me a coward, a weakling, 
 ready to win by letting Boynton go away and die 
 in the storm while he was looking for you. That
 
 230 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 brought me to. I saw what I had become, how I 
 had failed myself, and, worst of all, had failed the 
 Company. I resolved to win back everything I 
 had lost. 
 
 ''That morning when we stopped to wait for 
 daylight and Boynton wouldn't go on and kill 
 Solomon Moses, I was beside myself. Your life, 
 my life, Boynton's life, nothing counted in my de- 
 sire to undo the wrong I had done the Company. 
 And then Boynton said that which explained me 
 to myself. He said I thought only of the Com- 
 pany, but that he could keep his balance. And I 
 knew at once that he was right. He was balanced. 
 He was balanced with you in his life. I wasn't 
 and I never could be. I live for only one thing, 
 the Hudson's Bay Company, and there isn't room 
 for anything else in my life. I thought you meant 
 everything to me, but when he said that, I saw 
 that you never could mean anything worth while. 
 No woman can. I wasn't made to be influenced 
 by a woman. I wasn't made to share anything 
 with one. I saw that as soon as I got you I would 
 forget you. I'd go back to my first sweetheart, 
 the only one I ever had or ever will have." 
 
 Wickson had raised himself up so that he sat on 
 the top of the load. His face was more gentle than 
 Joyce had ever believed it could be. His eyes were 
 lighted as are only those of a man who tells of the 
 biggest thing in his life. He seemed transformed 
 by the passion of an ideal. 
 
 "You don't know what it means," he continued.
 
 WICKSON TELLS OF HIS LOVE 231 
 
 "You can't ever know. But my father and his 
 father were brought up in the service and c'ied in 
 it. I have never known anything else. It has 
 been responsible for every act of my life. It 
 means everything to me. I'd die to-morrow for 
 it. I'd do anything to serve it. I slipped once, 
 when you came, but I'll make up for that. I'll 
 give everything I've got, everything I can get, to 
 the once big ideal of my life. It's the Company, 
 the men in the Company, and the memory of the 
 men who have made it what it is, the memory 
 of the countless ones who have lived and died for 
 it, that I love. You! I only thought I loved you. 
 There's no room for you in my life. I'm not built 
 that way. Boynton is. He can love you and 
 be loyal to the Company. He's balanced when 
 he has you both. I lost my balance. I couldn't 
 have two things in my life. Thank God I saw 
 it in time."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 
 
 ATER Phil had left Joyce and Wickson 
 to follow more slowly and had gone on 
 alone through the spruce forest he began 
 to realize the difficulties before him. As hour after 
 hour went by and there was no sign of the Indian 
 having stopped, or of his camp, misgivings and 
 anxiety added to his nervousness. So much de- 
 pended upon his success, so many things might 
 bring failure. 
 
 Phil knew that Solomon expected pursuit. The 
 Indian could tell even the approximate time when 
 the dog teams would reach his camp. He had 
 gained a big lead by travelling night and day, and 
 there would be plenty of time for him to destroy 
 whatever meat he had or to double back beside 
 his trail and lie in ambush. He might do neither 
 of these things but lead his pursuers in a circle, 
 crossing and recrossing his trail, until they perished 
 from exhaustion and starvation. 
 
 But as Phil hurried on, driven to greater speed 
 by the necessity of quick action, fearful of every 
 thicket because it might shelter Solomon and his 
 trade gun, an encouraging thought came to him. 
 The Indian would reach his camp tired and hungry. 
 
 232
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 233 
 
 He would have meat there, and in the presence 
 of meat he could not maintain his caution or his 
 sanity. If Phil could strike his camp just after 
 one of these debauches his work would be easy. 
 
 The idea brought confidence and a new burst 
 of speed, and he pressed on with less fear of an 
 ambush. He became more and more certain that 
 he would find Solomon in a stupor and conse- 
 quently was wholly unprepared for the smell 
 of smoke that suddenly came to his nostrils. 
 
 Instantly he stopped, found a dead branch to 
 lay across the trail, traced his message in the snow, 
 and then squirmed into the brush on one side and 
 began to work his way forward. But as he slipped 
 the mitten from his right hand and let it dangle 
 by a string that his trigger finger might be ready 
 he remembered his promise to Joyce. As he con- 
 sidered it he found that, even without the pledge, 
 he would hesitate to shoot the Indian in cold blood. 
 Just what chance for his life he would give Solomon 
 he had not decided when he saw the wigwam in 
 an open spot just ahead of him. 
 
 The flap over the door was down and smoke 
 was coming from the hole at the peak, a light, 
 hazy smoke that rose swiftly, evidence of a bright 
 fire inside. And a bright fire meant that Solomon 
 was awake, alert. 
 
 As Phil stood there in the brush debating his 
 next move the Indian decided it for him. The 
 flap was pushed back and Solomon crawled out. 
 As he rose to his feet he listened, looking down
 
 234 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 the trail by which he had come. Then his eyes 
 quickly swept the edge of the opening until they 
 found Phil. 
 
 But even as Phil knew that he was discovered, 
 even as his lips framed the words in Cree, "stand 
 still," Solomon had leaped backward and disap- 
 peared behind the wigwam. Phil sprang forward 
 at once, running out to one side to catch a glimpse 
 of the Indian if possible. But he had already 
 reached a dense thicket a few yards behind his 
 camp and had disappeared. 
 
 Phil started after him without hesitation. 
 Solomon was without snowshoes and could not 
 go far before he was overtaken. But the man 
 had gone through the middle of a clump of tangled 
 spruce saplings and Phil stumbled and tripped and 
 forced his way with difficulty. 
 
 When he emerged in larger, more open timber 
 the Indian was not in sight. His trail was plain, 
 however, and Phil started after him confident that 
 he could soon overtake him. The spruce became 
 thinner and the ground began to rise gradually 
 until he burst through a fringe of brush and came 
 out on the crest of a low ridge. 
 
 Before him was spread out a great, shallow bowl, 
 perhaps two hundred yards in width and bare of 
 trees. Here and there were small clumps of brush, 
 while in the centre the ground rose gently to a little 
 knoll that was cut off squarely on the right. 
 
 Running straight toward this knoll, and less 
 than one hundred yards from him, was Solomon.
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 235 
 
 Phil raised his rifle, intending to shoot over the 
 man's head, but even as his eyes lined up with the 
 sights he became conscious of a movement on the 
 edge of the bowl at his right. The next instant 
 there flowed over the rim and down toward the 
 centre of the depression a herd of at least twenty 
 caribou. They appeared singly and in pairs, 
 bounding through the snow, stringing down the 
 slope. 
 
 As Phil watched, too startled by their sudden 
 appearance to act, a halt in Solomon's flight turned 
 his attention again to the Indian. He, too, had 
 seen the caribou, and instantly he ceased to be the 
 fugitive. He dropped into the snow and crawled 
 forward swiftly. His shaggy back was not unlike 
 that of a great bear as he wallowed along in the 
 deep drift, while the stealth of his actions and the 
 quick, alert movements of his head gave the im- 
 pression of some huge beast of prey. 
 
 Despite the deep snow and the steep ascent, 
 Solomon reached the top of the knoll in an in- 
 credibly short time. Not once had he turned to 
 see if he were pursued. Not once had his atten- 
 tion been on anything except the approaching 
 caribou. At the edge he crouched, tense, expect- 
 ant. And then as the first of the herd passed be- 
 neath him he sprang out and down upon the back 
 of the leader, a big, galloping bull. 
 
 If Solomon had stalked like a wolf and leaped 
 like a bear, he assailed his prey as does a lynx or 
 mountain lion. Far away as he stood, Phil could
 
 236 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 hear a snarl and a shriek as the caribou went down 
 to its knees and the two rolled over and over. 
 
 For a moment they were hidden by the flying 
 snow, and then the bull emerged from the smother, 
 rearing and striking and trying to run, snorting, 
 wild eyed, driven to the extreme of exertion by the 
 strange hairy, malodorous thing that clung about 
 its neck. 
 
 Solomon's mania when eating frozen meat was as 
 nothing compared with his frenzy now that hot, 
 dripping flesh was within his grasp. His arms 
 were clasped about the caribou just back of its 
 head, and as he shrieked and roared he snapped 
 again and again at the long ears, tore at them with 
 his teeth until the blood spurted, clung to them, 
 and shook them as a terrier does a rat. Solomon 
 was after his meat. He had found the caribou. 
 
 As Phil recovered from his amazement and 
 realized that the Indian's mania had driven him to 
 attack a bull caribou bare-handed he started at 
 once down the slope, only to halt when still within 
 the shelter of the brush. The herd, stopped and 
 startled by the attack upon its leader, had turned 
 in fresh panic and plunged through the deep snow 
 straight toward where he was standing. 
 
 Meat! Life-giving, strengthening, saving meat, 
 was within his grasp. There was plenty for Joyce, 
 plenty for him, plenty for Wickson. There were 
 three big meals a day, not two slim ones. There 
 was food for the dogs. He could take that vigour 
 and strength and speed, that wild, reckless energy,
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 237 
 
 that was plunging up the slope toward him, 
 harness it, store it, use it to gain safety, success, 
 happiness. 
 
 There was a choking sensation in Phil's throat as 
 he cocked his rifle. Solomon and his struggle were 
 forgotten. There was a smile as he compared his 
 own emotions upon seeing the herd rush toward 
 him with the Indian's when he grasped a frozen 
 chunk of meat in his hands, but as he lifted his 
 rifle and aimed at the largest of the animals he was 
 thinking most of the fact that the luck had changed, 
 that he was freed from the constant, depressing 
 nightmare of hunger. 
 
 Once, twice, three times, he fired. Coolly, 
 calculatingly, painstakingly, he sighted and pulled 
 the trigger. Without hurry or excitement he 
 plunged the lever down and back. The herd 
 stopped. Was there danger everywhere? Which 
 way next? And while the paralyzed animals 
 debated Phil fired steadily until the hammer 
 clicked on an empty chamber. The gun was 
 empty, but he had dropped four caribou with 
 seven shots. Another was barely crawling away, 
 would never reach the other side of the bowl. 
 
 The herd had turned and rushed back, and now 
 it disappeared over the opposite ridge, almost in 
 the direction in which it had come. But Phil 
 did not see the last of them go. He had plunged 
 down the slope at once toward the battle that still 
 raged at the bottom. 
 
 Had the bull borne his antlers, Solomon Moses
 
 238 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 might have had a chance. The fury of his attack, 
 the strength of his mania-driven body, the utter 
 disregard for injury and the deep snow would have 
 gone far, with the leverage of the horns, to bring 
 the caribou to his knees. He might possibly have 
 broken its neck. 
 
 But the animal's head was bare except for 
 the two long ears, now bloody and tattered, and 
 there was nothing to give Solomon a secure hold. 
 Though he struck and slashed with his feet as a 
 lynx slices with its hind claws, he accomplished 
 nothing. His arms were clasped about the bull's 
 neck and he could not let go. 
 
 As Phil started toward them the caribou's terror 
 had begun to change to anger. It leaped and 
 whirled so that the Indian was dragged through 
 the drifts and all the time its efforts became more 
 fierce and more varied while its opponent's strength 
 was obviously shrinking. 
 
 But if the Indian's vigour diminished his spirit 
 became more ferocious. As Phil came nearer he 
 could hear the snarls and the growls, the roars of 
 rage, the purely animal cries of a beast in its 
 greatest ecstasy. The man snapped and tore with 
 his teeth, striving to kill by sheer fury and im- 
 petuosity. His attack was planless, heedless, 
 simply a blind, snarling, tearing, snapping on- 
 slaught inspired by the lust for flesh. 
 
 Phil halted twenty yards away and began slip- 
 ping cartridges into his rifle. But, with his weapon 
 ready, he hesitated. He could not fire into that
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 239 
 
 swirling, plunging mass and be sure of his mark. 
 There was no justification for his risking himself 
 by going closer. 
 
 As he debated what he should do one of the bull's 
 violent lunges finally loosened Solomon's arms. 
 The Indian hung on only by the strong grip of his 
 teeth in a tattered ear. But as he hung there, 
 arms groping for a new hold, the caribou struck 
 with both forefeet. A grunt was driven from Solo- 
 mon's lungs. His teeth tore loose from the dripping 
 ear. The fur flew in a cloud from the breast of 
 his skin coat where the sharp hoofs had struck, 
 and the Indian went back and down into the 
 snow. 
 
 Instantly the bull was on top of him, bellowing 
 its rage, stamping and tearing and ripping with 
 its hoofs. One of Solomon's arms struck up, but 
 against those shod flails he could do nothing. In 
 a few seconds he ceased to fight back. 
 
 Still the bull continued to strike and trample, 
 beating and slicing the now inert body. In- 
 voluntarily Phil, his rifle forgotten, let out a roar 
 of protest. The bull stopped, looked at him, 
 sniffed the air and then loped off by the side of 
 the bowl. 
 
 As Phil started forward he was stopped by the 
 report of a gun that came from beyond the ridge. 
 He stared unbelievingly, only to hear a second, 
 then a third and a fourth. Instantly he saw the 
 reason for the flight of the caribou. They were 
 being pursued by Indians when he and Solomon
 
 240 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 had met them, and the herd had been turned back 
 upon the hunters. 
 
 As he realized what the shooting meant he be- 
 came dizzy with the delight of it. He had killed 
 the meat they needed. Now he had found the 
 guides that were equally essential to success. 
 Messengers to bear the news to the Fort Dease 
 hunters, a messenger to Fort Berens, some one to 
 take Wickson back to Savant House, all had come 
 at once! 
 
 And the weeteego, the cause of it all! Phil 
 did not doubt for a minute that Solomon Moses 
 was dead but he was hardly prepared for the 
 battered, bloody unrecognizable mass of flesh and 
 fur that lay stretched out on the red snow. In 
 those brief seconds he had been literally torn to 
 pieces. The poor, crazed savage had fallen a 
 victim to his own lust for meat. 
 
 Phil turned away to dispatch the fifth caribou, 
 which still floundered slowly up the side of the 
 bowl. He cut its throat and those of the other 
 four, and when his task was finished he looked 
 across to the opposite ridge to see four Indians 
 standing there watching him. 
 
 That night the Indians camped with the Hud- 
 son's Bay Company people at Solomon Moses' 
 wigwam. The meat had been dressed and hauled 
 up. The hunters had seen what remained of 
 Solomon Moses, and, though they never knew who 
 he was, they were convinced that the weeteego 
 would never again haunt Fort Dease.
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 241 
 
 Wickson had immediately taken care of opera- 
 tions and was busy planning and directing. In 
 the morning they started for the nearest of the 
 Indians' camps, ten miles to the west, and the 
 next morning two of the men went out with the 
 news for the other hunters of the district and to 
 get additional dogs and men. 
 
 While Wickson chose a wigwam, Phil and 
 Joyce decided to cook their own supper in the open 
 that night, and it was around the campfire that 
 Phil first learned of what the district manager 
 had said to Joyce that noon on the trail. 
 
 "Didn't want you!" he exclaimed indignantly. 
 "The bear! He doesn't know 
 
 He stopped. Joyce was laughing. 
 
 "You would rather have him as a rival than con- 
 temptuous," she said. 
 
 Then she became suddenly serious. 
 
 "But Phil, it was a greater relief to me than to 
 know Solomon Moses was dead, than to know we 
 were not going to starve. Don't you see? A man 
 like that, a man who is governed as he governs 
 himself, who stops at nothing why, Phil, I would 
 always have been afraid of him, even with you." 
 
 He did not resent this, for he knew how Joyce 
 meant it, and he had suddenly found that he had 
 nothing except pity for Wickson. 
 
 "Poor devil," he said as he stared at the fire. 
 "What a lonesome life he has." 
 
 Joyce smiled but she did not dispute him. 
 After a long silence she said:
 
 242 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 "At least his sweetheart will never grow old, or 
 fade, or be moody." 
 
 "What do you mean?" demanded Phil indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 "Nothing that you could understand in your 
 present frame of mind. But there is something 
 else to talk about. I am going back to Savant 
 House with Wickson." 
 
 "With him! That long trip! Joyce, you 
 can't!" 
 
 "I can, and I must." 
 
 "But- 
 
 "I signed a contract with the Hudson's Bay 
 Company in London. I agreed to do certain 
 things. Is there any reason why I should not 
 fulfil that contract? Is there any reason why I 
 should not be as loyal to the Company as you have 
 been, or as Wickson is?" 
 
 "But you! You are a woman! It never was 
 expected. Why run that risk for a fool reason?" 
 
 "Listen," she commanded. "I told you about 
 my father, how he had to leave Canada, how I 
 came over here largely because I felt that I must 
 live the life for him, do something of what he had 
 to give up. That is the way I have always felt, 
 that it was not I but Dad who is here, and I have 
 tried always to do the things that I knew he 
 would do. Do you think, otherwise, I would have 
 had the courage to make that journey from Savant 
 House to Dease, or that I would have dared to go 
 out alone to find you?
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 243 
 
 "No, Phil, I have my own ideals, and my own 
 obligations, and I am going to fulfil them. I am 
 going back to Savant House and give those chil- 
 dren a year's schooling, as I agreed to do. I have 
 no more dread of returning with Wickson than I 
 would of making the trip with my own father. 
 And you have enough to keep you busy without 
 being burdened with me. Only you must ask 
 Wickson for a transfer. I know he will give it to 
 you. In the summer you can come back to 
 Savant House. Then I will be yours, not the 
 Company's." 
 
 But Phil did not ask Wickson. That night the 
 district manager summoned him to the wigwam. 
 
 " Boynton, I want you to start for Berens in the 
 morning," he said. "Take two teams and two 
 men. Get supplies there and be ready to go up 
 the bay to Fort Dease as soon as the ice permits. 
 And as soon as you get there and take in the fur, 
 start the Indians up the Cut-Bank to get timber 
 for new buildings. You know what is needed. 
 Rebuild the fort." 
 
 Phil did not reply. He only stared at Wickson 
 while anger and revolt engulfed him. To rebuild 
 Fort Dease meant that he must remain there 
 another year. It meant that he would not see 
 Joyce for eighteen months. It meant that his op- 
 portunity to do the work he could do best was put 
 off, perhaps indefinitely. It meant that in Wick- 
 son's mind, it was still Penitentiary Post. 
 
 But the youth who had flaunted his contempt
 
 244 PENITENTIARY POST 
 
 in the face of Borthwick the winter before was 
 not there in the wigwam with \\ickson. Some- 
 thing had driven out the heedlessness and the 
 recklessness and the impetuosity. Something 
 had widened his vision, had tempered his ideas. 
 Duty and responsibility had assumed a new 
 significance. They were no longer shadowed by 
 personal desires or aversions. 
 
 "Very well," Phil said, and he turned and went 
 out. 
 
 The first of July Phil arrived at the mouth of the 
 Cut-Bank River, at the site of what had been Fort 
 Dease. The supplies were unloaded and stored 
 in tents brought for the purpose. Soon afterward 
 the Indians came with their fur. Phil remembered 
 their debts as best he could and settled accounts. 
 Then he sent the entire band up the river for 
 timber and dispatched the boats to Fort Berens 
 with the fur and for more supplies. For the 
 second time he was left alone in monotonous, 
 desolate Penitentiary Post. 
 
 July passed and August came. One evening 
 while Phil was cooking supper before his tent he 
 heard a call from the river bank and rushed out 
 to see a white man and two Indians coming toward 
 him. 
 
 "Hello, Boynton," said the stranger as he ex- 
 tended his hand. "I'm Morris, from Savant 
 House. Passed your Indians with the rafts several 
 days ago. Here's your mail."
 
 SOLOMON GETS HIS MEAT 245 
 
 With scant courtesy for his guest, Phil opened 
 the flat bag and drew out two letters. One was 
 in the same writing that he had found that March 
 morning upon his return from Solomon Moses' 
 shore camp. The other was addressed with a 
 typewriter and bore the seal of the Company. 
 
 "You'll pardon me, old man," he managed to 
 say as he tore open the first envelope. "Long 
 time since mail day, you know." Morris grinned, 
 knowingly. 
 
 But Phil was already looking at the letter. The 
 first page was all right, the tenth, and the thirtieth. 
 Joyce was safe. 
 
 He tore open the second. This was one sheet, 
 typewritten. He read: 
 
 I am leaving in the morning for the Mackenzie 
 River, where I take charge of a new district. My 
 successor will be here in the fall. Before leaving I 
 have sent Mr. Morris to take charge of Fort Dease. 
 You are to return at once to Savant House. Mr. 
 Osborne has obtained a transfer to a post on the 
 new railroad in Ontario so that he may send the 
 children to school. You are to succeed him as manager 
 here. Please act upon these instructions at once. 
 
 JOHN WICKSON. 
 
 P.S. The missionary arrived last week with a broken 
 leg. If you hurry you can reach here before he is able 
 to leave. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000110486 8