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 Welcome to today's triple Z..... The triple Z podcast is a daily recording that you can use to help you fall asleep each night. Just turn down the volume, lay back and enjoy as you fall asleep.
We are reading the first five chapters of the book, The Long Patrol by Albert Treynor. Another one of our Authors that could use a Wikipedia entry. Albert worked as a drama critic for newspapers in Chicago and New York before becoming a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He was born on 9 October 1884 in Kane, Iowa, USA. He was known for The films: Flashlight, 1917) Dancing Co-Ed, 1939, and The Rainmakers, 1935. He died on 24 October 1948 in Jackson, California, USA. This book follows a member of the Royal Mounted Canadian police as he investigates that murder of a fellow officer and hunts down their killer in the Canadian woods.
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THE LONG PATROL
CHAPTER One
THE AMBUSHED TRAIL
Near the foot of the valley slope lay an inanimate, drab-colored object of some sort, barely defined against the smooth sweep of the snowy mountainside. From the wooded ridge above, it appeared as a faint speck upon the panorama of wintry landscape. Ninety-nine travelers in a hundred might have passed that direction and never noticed any break in the monotonous waste of white. But on that evening, a little before the fall of dusk, there rode by chance, from out of the pass and over the trail, the one man of a hundred. There were few things worth seeing in the wilderness that escaped the restless scrutiny of Corporal David Dexter of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
A glance ranging across space, as the eagle gazes, and the horseman tightened rein and checked his pony on the brow of the slide. He sat immobile, looking downward. The dun-tinted shape could have been mistaken at the distance for a hillside bowlder or a rotted stump or a tussock of dried grass. But Corporal Dexter was not deceived. October's first snow had swirled over the ranges that day, and the three inch fall spread its covering impartially over mountain and forest and open park. The brownish object below should have been sheeted white, like everything else in view. Whatever it was it must have fallen there in the new snow, some time after the last flurry had passed, not more than a couple of hours before.
The place was a lonely, isolated spot, deep-shut among the remoter fastnesses of the northern Rockies: a haunt of big horn sheep and wandering grizzly bears. Probably there were not five white men alive who had ever sighted the line of unnamed mountain peaks that jutted like broken saw teeth against the eastward sky. The evidence of any recent visitation was of interest to the police.
The rider paused only to reconnoiter the ground below him, and then thrust his knee into his horse's withers, and urged the animal over the shoulder of the declivity. The slope was steep and slippery, but the wise little mountain pony was used to hazardous going. She settled back almost upon her shaggy haunches, and with forelegs reaching stiffly before her, she went scrambling and sliding to the bottom. A quick jog carried the horseman across the snow-smoothed level beyond, and then he knew what it was he had come out of his way to find.
At his pony's feet lay the drab-colored object that had caught his attention on the heights. It was a stiff-brimmed hat—a banded uniform Stetson, such as he himself wore tilted to the crease of his straight drawn brows. The hat had fallen crown up in the snow, and near by, half buried in the white drift, was sprawled a motionless human figure, clad in the familiar summer tunic of the Northwest police.
Corporal Dexter slid out of his saddle, and a second later was kneeling on the ground. He raised the body to a sitting posture, with one of his arms supporting the lolling head, and it needed no further scrutiny to apprise him of the fact of death. His hand pressed against the wet, still-warm face, and he looked at the closed eyelids and tight-locked lips of a man he knew. It was Constable Tommy Graves, R.C.M.P., from the inspection post at Fort Dauntless, two hundred miles to the south.
Corporal Dexter was attached to the barracks at Crooked Forks on the old Dawson road, far across the ranges. But he had met young Graves now and then on long patrol, and remembered him as a happy and gallant comrade. Skirting the edge of a juniper clump there approached from the southward a line of nearly effaced footprints. Thus, after devious wandering, Constable Graves had come to the appointed hour and place, and here his life's trail ended.
The hair at the base of the boy's skull was matted red, and Dexter's probing finger discovered an ugly opening where a bullet had entered from behind. The skin over the forehead was bunched and broken, and the corporal, using a delicately wielded penknife blade, a moment later came into possession of a flattened chunk of led, .30 caliber size.
The words "vengeance" and "reprisal" are never spoken by a mounted officer. Nevertheless, there is no place on earth where the murderer of a policeman may feel safe from the menace of the reaching hand. Dexter at present was on long patrol in the wilderness, seeking two fugitives who were wanted in the settlements for a brutal case of assault and battery. But now his plans must change. New and more urgent business called him.
Crouching on his heels beside his fallen comrade, he took off one of his gloves, and blew his breath to warm his finger tips. From his pocket he brought forth pencil and notebook, and, with calm, steady hand he wrote his brief report. He himself might be summoned at any time to meet a similar fate, and as a member of a methodical organization it was his duty to leave the written record behind. The bullet was sealed in an envelope with the scribbled page, and the packet then buttoned securely in his tunic pocket.
His own terse statement tucked away for safe keeping, he bent over to learn if Tommy Graves' journal sheets were inscribed to date. The young constable's notebook held the usual daily report, beginning three weeks back, when he had set out on his last journey from Fort Dauntless; but the record told only of trivial matters, of miles traveled and landmarks sighted, and did not mention the errand that fetched him to this far, lonesome valley of the British Columbian mountains. Possibly it was a secret mission that he dared not particularize by written words.
A single clew was afforded by a photograph found in the constable's inside pocket. It was a double Bertillon card, carrying the stamp of detective headquarters of Chicago, Illinois, and showing full-face and profile portraits of a man whose name was written down as "Roy, Pink, Crill." The subject of the police photograph was a gross-featured man with no eyebrows and very little hair. It was a repellent physiognomy: thick, pendulous jowl, puffy cheeks, eyes sunk in deep sockets. The cranium was flat on top, with a peculiar indentation behind the temples that somehow made Dexter think of the pits in a copperhead's skull.
Whoever this "Pink" Crill might be, the existence of a Bertillon picture at least proved a criminal record. It was not an unnatural assumption to suppose that he was in flight from the other side of the border, and that young Graves had been assigned to the fatal business of stalking him down.
Crill's body and facial measurements had been jotted down in the columns allotted for the purpose of identification, and after running his glance over the card the Corporal was able to form a vivid mental picture of the man. He would know him if he met him.
Pocketing the Bertillon card for future reference, Dexter stood up, his hands balanced on his hips. With his underlip thrust slightly forward, he moodily scanned the ground where the tragedy had taken place.
The re-staging of the crime presented few difficulties for the experienced observer. Behind the fallen body was a snow-shrouded log. Fifty paces beyond the course of a frozen creek ran past. The banks of the stream were thickly fringed with junipers, but at this one point there was a break in the cover. Winding up from a distant notch in the mountains, the creek afforded the logical trail for any voyageur making in that direction from the southeast. The log commanded the opening in the juniper bushes, and Constable Graves had been sitting on the log.
Even under the covering of fresh snow, the marks were legible. The policeman's rifle lay buried as it had fallen in the cold drift near the log. Graves evidently had sat there for a long while, with his rifle across his knees. Like a deer hunter he had chosen his place in the open and allowed the falling flakes to cover him, while he waited, motionless. The still hunt needs patience, but usually it is the surest way.
In this instance, however, something had gone wrong with the hunter's plans. No one had come along the course of the brook. The snowy stream surface was as smooth and level as placer sand. Dexter contemplated the lower stretch of ground, and then turned with meditative eyes to search the slope behind him.
A stand of densely growing cedars climbed upward along the mountainside. Obeying the trailer's instinct, he walked straight across the open ground and entered the nearest point of cover. And there he found, as he was sure he must find, the imprints of booted feet.
Somebody who wore a criss-cross pattern of hob nails had stood concealed in a fairy bower of frost-rimed branches. The furrowed snow in a breast-high crotch indicated the place where a rifle barrel had been rested for steady sighting. And from the powdery drift at his feet the corporal picked up an empty cartridge case, .30 caliber, that smelled of freshly burned powder. The story was complete.
The trail of the departing hob nails went northward through the cedars, and thence Corporal Dexter's future pathway lay, inevitable, unswerving, relentless as the summons of fate.
A policeman does not desert a policeman, in life or death. Dexter returned to his fallen comrade, and as gently as though he feared the hurting of sensate flesh, he gathered the pitiful human shape into his arms. He was not a big nor powerful man, but there was a lithe, cougar-like adequacy hidden in the muscles of a lean and hard-trained body, and he made little effort of his task.
Susy, the pony, objected to her new burden, but Dexter had no time to parley. He crowded into the horse with his shoulder, and before she could really think of acting skittish, the limp weight was deposited across her saddle. Dexter bent a few turns of a lashing thong under the cinches, and after that she could do nothing but submit to the arrangement.
As coolly as a workman taking a needed tool from his kit, the corporal pulled his carbine out of the saddle holster. Then, with the reins twisted in his fingers, and the pony shambling at his heels, he turned back afoot into the cedars and started northward, following the hobnail boots.
CHAPTER two
KNIGHTS OF THE LAW
In the wild mountain district where Corporal Dexter and a few knightly comrades rode in the service of the King's Law, there was not more than one officer available to patrol each two hundred square miles of territory. In the back hills were certain inaccessible regions never visited by civilized beings. A crime committed in such an out-of-the-way valley as this might remain unsuspected for years.
The murderer of Constable Graves could have no inkling that a second officer had just ridden down through the passes. It probably did not occur to him that there was any danger of pursuit, and he did not try to mask his trail.
The tracks led for a distance through the thick timber, and then slanted down to the brook and continued northward along the unobstructed course of the stream. The killer walked with a free, unhurried stride, without pausing anywhere by the way to listen or glance behind. Particles of feathery snow still held loosely around the edges of the prints, and Corporal Dexter knew that the maker of the tracks was traveling not more than twenty minutes ahead of him.
For a distance of two miles or so the trail followed the meanderings of the winter-bound brook. But at last, near the banks of a forking stream, the hob nails turned aside and entered a dismal spruce forest that extended upward over the valley slope in an unbroken area of overweighted tree tops. The failing twilight scarcely filtered through the interlaced branches overhead, and Dexter found himself groping among the shadowy tree shapes in a purple-tinged dusk that thickened and deepened as he advanced.
He quickened his pace, hoping to run down his quarry before night overtook him. But he had traveled scarcely five hundred yards among the spruces, when he discovered open ground ahead, and stopped short at the edge of a stumpy clearing, cut in the midst of the standing timber.
Before him in the darkness, vague and unreal as the apparition of a wood troll's dwelling, there loomed the dingy outline of a low-roofed log cabin.
The horseman instinctively reached behind to grab his pony's muzzle. But the precaution was needless. Susy stood with drooping head, and apparently lacked interest to announce her arrival. Dexter eyed her sharply, with a passing glance at the burden she carried, and then turned back to reconnoiter the shadows.
He had not heard of any settlers living on this side of the range. Apparently the builder of this cabin was a newcomer. The logs showed recent ax marks, and the second growth of seedlings had not yet found time to spring up among the stumps.
The silence was like a weight upon the senses. Dexter heard no sound except the faint creak of saddle leather as Susy breathed. He might easily imagine himself alone in all that vast stretch of forest. But as he peered forth from behind his shelter of brush, a vagrant puff of air brought to him an odor of chimney smoke. And as he strained his vision to see in the gathering darkness, he was aware that the hobnail prints ran directly across the open ground to the cabin door.
He left the pony to drowse in the thicket, with the reins dangling from the bit, and strode forward alone into the clearing. Placing his own feet in the marks left by the other boots, he followed his man to the cabin entrance. For ten seconds he held motionless, his foot touching the outer sill. Still he heard no sound. But the line of tracks ended here, and he knew that Constable Graves' murderer was inside the cabin.
Between two men who had not yet seen each other, the door of spruce slabs held shut like the closed book of doom. Once it was opened, the warrant of death for one or the other must be read. If Corporal Dexter crossed the threshold, he would walk forth again to escort a manacled prisoner to the hangman's gibbet at Fort Dauntless; or else he would not walk forth again. It was the custom of the mounted to play for all or nothing, and ask no odds of fortune. The corporal's thin lips harbored a half cynical smile as he accepted the terms. He prayed only that the drawbar was not fastened.
The click of his carbine sounded fearfully loud in his ears as he thumbed back the hammer. He did not wait after that, but reached with his left hand to knock open the wooden latch. The door swung ajar, and he kicked it wide on its squeaking hinges.
Even in that moment one corner of Dexter's restless mind was absurdly detached from the rest of himself, engaged in trivial speculation. The cabin builder must have come there after the grizzlies holed-up for the winter, he reasoned in lightning flashes of thought. Otherwise he would have got a silver tip, and so had bear grease on hand to lubricate hinges. Dexter's orderly soul hated annoyances that could be prevented, such as squeaking doors.
He had crossed the snow-buried sill with crunching feet, and halted on the threshold, his glance sweeping the square, murky space before him. Details impressed themselves instantaneously: walls of peeled logs; tiny, four-paned windows; bare puncheon floor; a disorderly grouping of ax-hewn furniture; a smoldering fire in a clay-daubed fireplace; the pent-in odors of camp stew and wood smoke and steaming garments. A man with a shaggy beard knelt by the fire stirring a cooking pot. He whirled at the rush of cold air from the doorway, and then his stirring spoon rattled on the hearth as he stumbled to his feet.
Corporal Dexter had counted on the chance of there being more than one person in the cabin. And it was well for him that he was on his guard. Some intuitive faculty of the brain served the warning, and without seeing or hearing, he was aware of a gliding movement along the wall at his right. He caught the edge of the door and swung it back towards him as a buckler of defense. As he jerked his head aside a spurt of flame scorched his face, an explosive report slammed in his ears, a bullet plowed the door slab and deflected in spattering pieces.
His face stung from the flying splinters, and there was a trickle of blood at the corner of his eye. Choked by powder fumes, half blinded, he flung the door against the wall. A crouching shape and the oval of a white face loomed in the smoke. He caught the blurred outline of a hand, and a pistol poked almost into his face. Lacking time to shorten the reach of his carbine, he did not try to fire, but struck, instead, with the heavy barrel.
The rap of the steel on knuckle bones gave a crisp, nut-cracking sound. He laughed aloud. There was a thump at his feet, and he saw the pistol on the floor. He could reach the weapon with the toe of his boot, and he worked it towards him and kicked it through the doorway. Then he backed away a pace, with carbine leveled. He spoke with restraint, keeping the excitement from his voice. "Take warning," he said. "I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the King."
The light from the fireplace reflected upon the shadowy figure of his assailant. The man had clutched at his right hand with his left, and was glaring at the officer with the tense, sullen ferocity of a trapped animal. The position of the hands, partly extended, gripped together in pain, gave unwitting invitation. In a trice Dexter had brought a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. With incredible swiftness he reached forward, and there was a double snick as he linked the steel circlets about the man's wrists and sprang fast the locking wards.
The prisoner shuddered at the cold touch of metal, and shrank backward, an instant too late. He was an under-sized man, sallow of face, with short-cropped black hair, sharp, hawklike features, and dark, wide-spaced eyes that glittered with unnatural brightness in the firelight. The corporal's glance went down to the heavy mountain boots, which his prisoner wore tightly laced over the tucked-in bottoms of his trousers. The boots were wet with melting snow.
He nodded grimly. "Why did you kill Constable Graves?" he asked.
The man turned his head in surly defiance, and refused to answer.
"Who are you?"
The stranger breathed harshly through his open mouth, but still maintained his stubborn silence.
"Very well," said Dexter. "It's your privilege not to commit yourself. But I warn you of the facts to be submitted to the Minister of Justice. Young Graves murdered—thirty caliber bullet through the back of his head. Thirty caliber case in the snow. Strange pattern hobnails leading here—tracks that match those wet boots you're wearing." He glanced sharply about him, and stepped suddenly into the corner and picked up a rifle that was leaning against the wall. "Thirty caliber," he observed, and then threw down the lever to sniff at the breach. "Fired recently, and not yet cleaned," he added, and thrust the weapon behind the door, out of harm's way. "All complete! Not to mention the personal fact that you fired at sight, with murderous intent, when Corporal Dexter strolled into your doorway."
From the moment he had entered the cabin, Dexter had kept the corner of a wary eye on the shaggy-haired individual by the fireplace. The man had scrambled up from his cooking pot when the door banged open, but after that he had remained standing uncertainly on his stumpy legs without venturing to join in the hostilities. Now for the first time the corporal turned to look squarely upon his unkempt bearded countenance. And with the meeting glance the officer's eyelids flickered suddenly in pleased surprise.
Here, at least, was some one he knew without asking introductions. In the travel-stained man with the untidy whiskers, he recognized one of the fugitives whom he had been following across the ranges from Crooked Forks. "Well now!" he ejaculated. "Jess Mudgett!"
"Yes, sir," muttered the other, with a furtive, hangdog lowering of the head.
"Warn you also," asserted the corporal crisply. "You and 'Phonse Doucet assaulted and almost killed the trader at Crooked Forks. He foolishly tried to make you pay the last year's account, I understand. We needn't go into that now. This new matter is more important. Accessory in murder, perhaps. At any rate, you'll go with us to Fort Dauntless. I arrest you in the name of His Majesty, the King."
"I don't know what you're talking about," faltered Mudgett, his forehead paling under the grime. "That storekeeper—I can explain about that. And as for—anything else: I ain't had nothing to do with—anything wrong. I swear my Bible oath."
Dexter surveyed the man curiously. He knew him of old—a trapper in season, general ne'er-do-well at all times, sneak thief on occasion, notorious coward—he never would have assaulted anybody unaided. 'Phonse Doucet, of course, was the instigator in that affair—Doucet, the half-breed, braggadocio and bully, a giant of a man, with a dangerous habit of going amuck when liquor was to be had.
"Where is 'Phonse now?" asked the corporal. "I trailed you two as far as Wild Swan Creek, and then I lost you."
"'Phonse went north," asserted Mudgett. "He'll be far from here by now."
"Who's your new friend?" the officer inquired.
Mudgett started to speak, but at that instant he happened to meet the beady glance of the shackled man across the room; and he received a look of baleful warning that made his teeth click over the half uttered word. He rubbed his nose nervously to hide his confusion. "Never saw him before," he stammered. "Just came here a little while ago for shelter. Didn't tell me his name."
Dexter himself had felt the threat pass, like an electric discharge, and he knew that he could get nothing out of Mudgett while he remained under the malevolent eye of the murderer. He did not attempt to pursue the subject. "Whose cabin is this?" he asked after an interval. "It's new."
"I built it this fall," said Mudgett uneasily. "Figured to trap marten and lynx over the winter."
"All alone?" asked Dexter, who knew that mountain trappers usually worked in pairs.
"No," said Mudgett after a moment's hesitation.
"Is this man here your partner?"
Mudgett shot a furtive glance at the other prisoner, and shook his head. "No," he replied, "I'm working with another man."
"Who?" asked Dexter, eyeing him sharply.
"A fellow named Stark."
"Who's Stark?" the corporal inquired. "Never heard of him."
"Trapper mostly. That's about all I can tell you. I met up with him last summer and we decided to throw in together."
"Where is he now?" asked Dexter with a quizzical stare.
"Somewhere up the valley scoutin' out lines for the traps. Don't know just where."
Acting on impulse the corporal brought out the Bertillon card he had taken from the pocket of Constable Graves. He exhibited the photographic likeness of the man known to the Chicago police as "Pink" Crill. "Is this your Stark, by any chance?"
Mudgett leaned forward to see the print. But if he recognized the ill favored physiognomy, he gave no sign. "Never saw him before," he declared in his whining voice.
The inquiry was leading nowhere, and Dexter decided he might better save his breath until some later moment when he had Mudgett alone. He buttoned the photograph into his tunic, and smiled acidly.
"I'm going out to look after my horse," he observed, "and meanwhile I'll truss you for safekeeping."
He had only the one pair of manacles, but a brief search of the cabin discovered a length of elkhide thong. Approaching Mudgett, he twisted the rawhide about his wrists, and knotted the loop tight. The cringing trapper protested his innocence almost with sobs, but his pleading went unheeded. Dexter glanced about with a speculative frown, and then motioned the man towards the double-decked bunk, built against the wall at the right of the fireplace.
"I'll feel more comfortable about you two if you're in bed," he said. "We all might as well sleep a few hours before we start south. So climb in, please."
There was something in the quality of the corporal's voice that schooled Mudgett to instant obedience. Without a word, the trapper shambled across the floor and hoisted himself into the bunk.
Dexter turned next to the handcuffed man. "You in the upper berth," he commanded.
The stranger stood backed against the logs of the opposite wall, with his shoulders drooping, his arms hanging limply. But as the officer addressed him he looked up with his somber stare. He must have appreciated the futility of resistance however, and after a second's hesitation he lurched forward, and moved towards the bunk on heavy, dragging feet.
"You still prefer to remain nameless?" inquired the corporal.
The prisoner made no answer, but as he stumbled past Dexter he shot him a glance so charged with venom that even the seasoned man-hunter was startled.
The officer refrained from further remarks, and stood by with compressed lips until the man had climbed into the upper berth. Then, in silence, he fastened the booted feet together with unbreakable rawhide. This done, he pushed the end of the thong between a crack of the foot logs, drew it taut, and secured it to the outer bunk post, where the knot could not possibly be reached by manacled hands. Mudgett's feet then were similarly bound, and lashed flat against the end of the bunk.
"I'll ease 'em up a bit when I come back," Dexter promised. "Meanwhile you'll have to make the best of it."
Serene in the knowledge that his prisoners would not escape during his absence, he walked out of the cabin and slammed the door behind him.
It was pitch dark outside, and growing colder. The corporal felt his way across the clearing to the thicket where he had left Susy, and was not greatly astonished to find that the pony had disappeared. His pocket lamp revealed her hoof prints leading through the timber, and he followed her for a half mile or so across the slope, and finally overtook her in an open ravine where she had smelled out a patch of elk hay that could be pawed up from under the snow.
She came back a few steps to meet him, and meekly nudged him with her forehead while she was receiving her deserved scolding. Dexter relieved her of the grim burden she carried. He made a hammock sling of his bed tarp and picket rope; and as the Indians protect their dead, so he hoisted among scented tree branches the muffled figure of his one-time comrade; and left him for the night. This melancholy service rendered, he took off Susy's saddle, removed the bit from her mouth, and permitted her to remain in the gulley where she had found shelter and pasturage for herself.
Then, with his thoughts on the savory pot that Mudgett had so opportunely set stewing in the fireplace, he turned back on the trail and retraced his steps to the clearing among the spruces.
He had been absent nearly an hour, and the unattended grate fire must have burned itself out. Not the faintest flicker of light showed from the cabin windows, and it was impossible to discern even the outline of the building in the all-engulfing darkness. He groped his path among the stumps, and finally reached the door.
Stamping the snow from his feet, he was fumbling for the door latch, when the deathlike silence was suddenly broken by a shrill, whirring sound, as though a bell were ringing.
He stood stock-still, with lips fallen apart, listening in blank astonishment. The bell stopped ringing; there followed a momentary hush; and then he heard a voice speaking. The tones carried to him from the darkness within, clear and distinct. His eyes opened wider, and for seconds he stood motionless on the outer threshold, tense and wondering. Incredulous at first, he knew at once that he could not be mistaken. It was a woman's voice he heard.
CHAPTER three
WITHOUT MERCY
For a breathless interval Dexter held his position before the closed door, listening to the amazing voice within. A woman! Her words came to him, decisive and sharp, in high-keyed inflection. It was too dark to look for new footprints, but whoever she was, she must have arrived there during his absence. But whence had she come? What was a woman doing in this far-off, snow-buried forest? Even a vivid imagination failed to answer.
Had he acted on first impulses, Dexter would have thrust his way into the room to demand explanations. But reflection stayed him. He probably would learn more about her if he kept out of sight.
She was talking excitedly, in quick, broken sentences. "Betrayed!" he heard her say to some one invisible. "The police are in the valley."
There ensued a brief pause. Then she spoke again. "Yes! Both arrested! Murder—a constable from Fort Dauntless!"
Another silence followed, and the listener outside waited in acutest suspense. "That's what I was afraid of," said the speaker finally, as though in response to a question. "They quizz them until their nerve breaks, and they tell all they know. But don't worry. I'll take care of that danger. Nobody's going to talk this time."
There was a hushed interval once more, and then the woman laughed. It was a strange, mirthless laugh, with a wild, inhuman note that sent a shiver through the hearer's veins. "Lifeless tongues never talk!" she asserted in a reckless tone. "You lie low for a while, and you're in no danger. I give you my word! There's one thing left to do, and I'm doing it now!" A breathless interlude passed, and the woman spoke with sharp finality. "I'm going through with it!" she declared in rising accents. "That's settled! Good-by!"
The voice broke off with a hysterical catch at the end. For five seconds no sound came from the cabin. From the spruces somewhere a little timber owl sent forth a hollow, long-drawn trill, that floated in the air, lonesome and remote, and died like an expiring breath. The veering wind eddied around the north wall of the cabin, cutting with razor sharpness through protecting woolens, flinging snow particles. Corporal Dexter shivered, and again his hand reached for the door latch.
But before he found the handle, the silence was rent by a man's scream—a hoarse voice, straining to unnatural falsetto, that carried terror and craven pleading in a single frenzied outcry, "Don't! Oh, no! Merc—!"
The appeal broke in the middle of the word, and the door of the cabin trembled before the jarring concussion of an exploding firearm.
There was an appalling hush; and then the horrid thump of another gunshot jarred the door of the cabin.
The corporal's chilled fingers had found the latch at last, and as he lifted it up, he flung his weight forward to throw open the door. But the latch seemed to have jammed, and his shoulder bumped forcibly against solid planks that failed to give. He hammered at the catch, and heaved himself recklessly against the barrier, in an effort to break his way in. But he only bruised his shoulder, and the door would not yield. Instead of wasting his further efforts, he stooped to discover what was wrong. And then he understood. The bar was down. The door had been locked from the inside.
From the darkened cabin there came a vague jumble of sounds: a soft thud of a weight falling, a stifled groan of mortal anguish, a fluttering movement of something on the creaking floor boards. But the wind was also in Dexter's ears, and he could not have sworn definitely just what it was he heard.
He remembered a split of log on the ground, that he had stumbled over when he crossed the clearing a while before. Now he retraced his steps, and dug the heavy billet out of the snow. The quartered section of tree trunk was as much as his strength could manage, but he lugged it back to the cabin and contrived to swing it as a ram. The first and second blows seemed to have little effect on the stoutly barred door, but the continued battering began to tell. Finally he heard a splintering crack within, and at last something gave way entirely, and the door broke from its frame and sprang open with a crash. He dropped his log and stepped across the threshold, his narrowed eyes searching the gloom of the smoke-filled room.
The hearth fire had dwindled down to a few smoldering coals that threw a dull red shimmer to the opposite wall. But beyond the faint streak of light, the darkness was impenetrable. An ominous silence surcharged the oppressive, tainted atmosphere.
Baxter's finger was on the trigger of his carbine as he held impassive, listening for some rustle of sound to locate an intruding presence. He knew that his figure loomed in silhouette against the dim glowing hearth, and he was keenly alive to the imminence of danger. At any instant he might see the flash, hear the crash of a shot fired treacherously from the darkness; and he steeled himself unconsciously to the shock of sudden hurt.
His weapon was balanced lightly at his hip, and with his free hand he drew out his pocket lamp. The shaft of light struck across the room, throwing its brilliant white bull's-eye upon the bunks. He looked, and his eyes dilated at the ugly sight before him.
Fallen backwards, half in and half, out of the bunk, Mudgett hung feet uppermost, his head and shoulders resting on the floor, his ankles still tied to the foot logs, as the corporal had left him. His long, matted hair had tumbled back from his temples, and he gazed up at the ceiling with unmoving eyes that shone with the luster of opaque glass. His hands were still bound together by the elkskin thong. From under his shoulders a dark tinged stain trickled and spread upon the floor.
Automatically, as a man acting in a daze, Dexter shifted his light upward. The higher bunk was still occupied by the man without a name. He was lying on his side, still and lifeless, his manacled arms dangling limply over the edge of the bunk. His feet were securely tied to the end post, and so, like Mudgett, he had met his fate while helplessly fettered, tethered like a sheep for slaughter, without a chance of fighting back.
The fierce dark eyes were closed, and the bitter lines of malice somehow had been erased from his pallid face. His temple was black with powder burn, and just behind his eye there showed the red drilled mark of an entering bullet. Dexter observed certain other details of fact, and it needed no closer examination to tell him that both prisoners had been delivered from his hands by death.
CHAPTER four
FIND THE WOMAN
The corporal had faced horrors before. It was not the hideous envisioning of tragedy that froze his blood: it was the haunting memory of the voice that he had heard—the voice of a woman. "Lifeless tongues never talk!" she had said in dreadful resolve. And the sound of that voice still echoed in his brain. The fatal shots were fired by a woman.
Somewhere among the shadows this woman must be hiding now, backed in one of the dark corners, probably, crouching cat-like with weapon in hand, watching every move that Dexter made.
The policeman stood in a situation of peril, and for once in an adventurous career he was at a loss to know how to meet an emergency. He never before had been called upon to deal with an armed and desperate woman, and there came over him suddenly a strange feeling of inefficiency as he realized that, no matter who she was or what she had done or might do, he could not make himself draw the trigger of his gun. Masculine pride, the honor of the mounted, every deep-rooted instinct—heritage of a warrior race and breed—cried out against such an unnatural encounter. He would have to take this woman alive and unharmed, or else she must go free, and leave him dead with his two prisoners in the cabin among the spruces.
He still clung to his carbine, on the off-chance of bluffing through a most disagreeable business. But in the show-down he knew he would have to trust to luck and his quickness of movement.
With nerves strung taut as wires he faced about and flashed the bull's-eye of his lamp around the walls of the room. And the bright searching light discovered no resemblance of human shape.
Incredulous, he winked his eyes two or three times, and turned for his second survey of the cabin interior. Slow and deliberate now, he moved the lamp from left to right, dipping the shaft of light from rafters to floor, and upward again; and so wove luminous orbits around the four walls of the room. He scrutinized the underside of the clapboard roof, looked under the bunk, poked behind a row of garments hanging on pegs, and finally even peered up the fireplace chimney. And he saw neither substance nor shadow to betray the existence of any lurking intruder.
There was a quantity of cut brush and fagots piled by the hearth. The policeman stooped for an armful of the kindling, tossed the fuel into the fireplace, and applied a match. The dry, pitchy material took flame instantly, and crackled into a furious blaze. The yellow flare reflected to the farthest corner, searching out every black nook where a person could hide. And there was no one visible.
For a moment he stood irresolute, with puzzled lines drawn between his brows. A woman had been in the cabin a little while before. She must have entered shortly after he went to search for Susy. And she had barred the door behind her. Apparently she had locked him out with deliberate intention, while she did the work she had hardened herself to do.
On his return he had heard the mysterious ringing of a bell. He had heard her quick, overwrought speech; the shots that were fired. His hearing was trustworthy. But if by chance he were tempted to doubt the testimony of his own ears, there remained the two lifeless, huddled objects in the bunks to bear mute witness to the remorseless visitation.
It seemed unlikely that she could have found her chance to escape in the short time it had taken him to pick up the log and batter his way into the cabin. The possibility of some secret cubbyhole, behind the logs or under the floor, suggested itself. As his glance strayed about him, his eye was caught by a metallic glint of something that had been dropped near the wall across the room from the bunks. Crossing the floor, he reached down and picked up a small pearl-handled revolver.
The gun he had knocked from the hand of his first prisoner was a big, heavy-framed weapon. This was a small caliber revolver, light in weight, delicately made—the sort of firearm a woman might choose to carry in her handbag. With a grim tightening of his lips he tilted up the breach and snapped the cartridges from the cylinder. Two were empty cases that had just been fired.
He nodded to himself. This, of course, was the weapon of death. Either it had fallen accidentally from a trembling, guilty hand, or else the owner had flung it away as a hateful possession. Dexter pocketed the revolver, and set about his distasteful task. The woman must be hiding somewhere, and he would find her, he promised himself, if he had to turn the cabin inside out.
He was standing near the doorway, and he started to work systematically around the walls. The structure, which contained the single, barren, four-square room, was built of six inch logs, saddle-notched at the corners and chinked with moss and clay. An inspection of the cubical interior quickly convinced him that the walls could hold no closet or compartment large enough for the concealment of a human being. From the floor to the slanting roof overhead, all space was easily accounted for. He searched high and low, in the fireplace, behind the bunks, back of the door, under the window sills. Every log and chinked crevice between the logs was subjected to minutest scrutiny. He even climbed up on the bunk poles to assure himself that there was no false work between rafters and the outside roof. Nothing of interest was discovered.
There still was the floor to be looked under. The floor was made of adze-hewn puncheons, uneven and loosely laid, without being spiked to the beams. With an old spade he had found, Dexter got a purchase under one of the rude planks, and pried it up. He had eliminated all other possible places of retreat, and as he snapped on the button of his pocket-lamp and dropped to his knees, he felt with a certain sense of disquiet that something at last was due to happen.
A dank odor of forest mold came up from the hole he had made, and from the under darkness he heard the squeak and sudden scampering of a family of pack rats. But there was no other sound or movement of life.
He raised a second strip of flooring, and then, with a quick-drawn breath, he squeezed his lean body through the opening. There was no knowing what he might find under here, and as he flattened upon his chest to avoid the beams, he could not help reminding himself that quarters were a bit cramped for active maneuvering. The ground under him was littered with decaying forest stuff, and evidently had never been disturbed by rake or spade. There was barely enough space under the floor for him to move, but by wriggling along at full length, he made his way to the end of the cabin and back again. And he found nothing whatever. The mystery of the voice remained unsolved.
Emerging from the opening in the floor, he brushed the leaves and dirt from his uniform, and stood motionless for a space, a look of perplexity clouding his keen, weather-bronzed face. He had heard a sound like a whirring bell that, amazingly, had made him think of a telephone. But a telephone in service must have wires leading somewhere. He had examined every square foot of ground and walls and roof, and had found no connected instrument, nor any vestige of electric wiring in the cabin. There was no way to account for the bell. It was bewildering.
For the time being, however, he was most concerned about the woman. She was not in the cabin—that much was settled. She must have managed to get away somehow.
His glance strayed to the door, hanging partly open on its broken hinges. There remained this one possibility. She might have been standing by the wall when he battered his way into the cabin. Waiting her chance, she could have slipped behind him in the darkness as he stumbled over the threshold, and then passed out unseen through the open doorway. In which event her departing footsteps would betray her. Dexter crossed the cabin, and stepped outside.
His flash-lamp served him once more. The light scintillated upon the fresh fallen snow, awakening a sparkle of diamonds. From the darkness beyond the clearing came the trail of hobnail boots that had led him in the first place to this dismal habitation in the forest. Also the marks of his own making were clearly defined. But there were no other prints.
He rubbed his wet sleeve across his eyes, and gazed searchingly about him. And there was nothing to be seen but whited stumps, and the soft, unscuffled surface of snowy ground. The woman had not come out that direction.
There were windows in the cabin—one on each side and two in the rear—which were large enough, perhaps, to allow a small and frightened fugitive to squeeze her body through. He walked around the building, throwing the light rays back and forth as he advanced, examining the ground underfoot and each window sill as well. So he made the circuit of the cabin, and came back, hopelessly perplexed, to his starting place at the front door. The snow lay as it had fallen on the sills and under the windows, without any imprints of human making. The slayer of the two men in the cabin bunks had vanished without leaving any trace behind.
Dexter was ready to confess his utter mystification. A strange feeling of unreality gripped him, as though he suddenly discovered himself in contention with some strange, unnatural denizen of the forest, who flitted about on darksome errands without touching foot to the earth. Some one was there a few minutes ago; murder had been done; and now this some one was gone—disappeared like a shadow in a dream.
The ringing sound he had heard only added to his bewilderment. It really was absurd to suspect the existence of a telephone circuit in the wilderness, nevertheless in his tour of the outer premises the corporal had looked for telephone wires. Had there been a line of any sort leading to the cabin, the snow-covered strands would have revealed themselves in the bright glare of his flashlight. He had found no wires.
The idea of a radio set occurred to him, and was immediately abandoned. Such a means of communication would require aerials and a connecting wire running to the cabin; or, if not that, at least an inside loop. Also there would have to be batteries, not to mention the bulky receiving and transmitting instruments. There was no such equipment on the premises; and an escaping fugitive could not have had time to dismantle and lug away a radio outfit. Of this he was positive: the voice he heard was not talking by wireless.
He checked up his facts, and considered the last remaining possibility—a chance so remote that it was scarcely worth thinking about. Could there be a tunnel or conduit leading underground to the cabin? He could conceive of no motive that would induce men to undertake the enormous labor of digging a trench through the forest. The notion was preposterous. But he had his report to write, and he was trained to thoroughness in all matters of investigation. It would be easy enough to determine if the ground had ever been broken.
Equipping himself with the spade he had used to pry up the floor boards, he proceeded to shovel a narrow pathway around the cabin, tossing aside the light covering of snow, and inspecting the bare soil underneath. He worked assiduously, and it did not take him a great while to complete the full circuit of the building. The ground was strewn naturally with the season's carpet of leaves and fallen twigs, and the topsoil below was the rich forest loam that requires ages in making. The experienced woodsman needed only a glance around the circular pathway to assure himself that the ground hereabouts had never been disturbed since the beginning of time. He was convinced finally, beyond all doubt. There was no tunnel.
Dexter tossed his shovel aside, and stood for a while by the open door of the cabin. His lips had fallen apart, and his head was thrown up to listen. But he heard only the familiar sounds of the forest, the moaning of the north wind in the trees, the crack and snap of sap-frozen branches. All else was silence. The eerie plaint of the owl came wavering from the darkness, but the empty, ghostly note seemed only a part of the great hush that brooded over the wilderness. The last man left on earth could not feel a sense of lonesomeness more poignant than Dexter felt at that moment, as he stood before the doorway of death, vainly waiting for some sound or movement to break the stillness about him. But for the discharged revolver in his pocket, and his knowledge of what lay in the two sleeping bunks, he might almost have persuaded himself that the events of the last two hours were the illusions of a strangely disordered brain.
He had investigated the cabin inside and outside, had left nothing undone that a searcher could possibly do. The mystery of it all seemed to lie beyond human power of solving. As he remained there, sentinel-like in the darkness, his hand strayed to his pocket and brought out a pipe and tobacco pouch. He carefully stuffed the bowl with fine cut leaf, and then absent-mindedly returned both pouch and pipe to his pocket. For a while longer he lingered by the doorway, his unseeing glance roving slowly about him. Then, with an ironic shrug, he suddenly stirred and stepped out into the clearing.
Inasmuch as he had seen everything there was to be seen about the cabin and its immediate premises, it occurred to him that he might as well extend his circle. The intuitive sense that belongs to all ramblers of the silent places seemed to tell him during the last few minutes that he was alone in the valley. The "feel," the woodsmen and mountaineers say, has nothing to do with the consciousness of smell or hearing or sight. Dexter merely felt that now there was no one else in the neighborhood. He did not expect to make any momentous discoveries, but a restive will demanded action of some sort. Flashing his light before him, he chose his direction at random and strode across the clearing.
At the edge of the open ground he found a runway that wild animals had trod out through the thicket during seasons past. He glanced among the trailing branches and checked himself abruptly, his eyes blankly staring. In the snow he saw the freshly made outline of a narrow, high-arched foot—a woman's shoeprint.
CHAPTER five.
SHADOWS OF SILENCE
In a moment Dexter was on his knees, with his face close to the ground, and he studied the marks in the snow with the peering concentration of a man trying to read a page of fine-lettered type. A light dusting of wind-blown drift had begun to form in the trampled depression, and instead of crumbling there now was a slight banking up around the edges. As near as he could reckon by the faint clews vouchsafed him, the print was less than an hour and more than a half hour old. So this woman, whoever she was, had evidently been there when the murders were committed.
The officer's mouth was set in a harsh line as he scrambled to his feet. He had found a trail at last, and the fact that the prints were narrow and small and gracefully arched, in nowise softened his recollection of the ugly affair in the cabin. It was not so easy to forget the faces of the two men left behind in the bunks.
With the tense, quick movements of a hunting dog, the policeman cast back a distance along the runway. There were other tracks, clean-cut and plain to read. It was a double trail, with some of the prints pointing towards the cabin, and others turned the opposite direction. The woman had approached from the north, and departed over her same pathway, and the deeper toe marks of the retreating prints indicated the fact she had fled from the scene, almost running.
Dexter followed for a short distance through the underbrush, and then retraced his steps to the clearing. There was no hurry. A few faint stars were beginning to prick through the darkness of the sky. The weather was clearing, and he knew there was little likelihood of further snowfall for thirty hours at least. When he was ready to follow, the trail would still lie in the forest. The fugitive was in the situation of a fish firmly hooked at the end of a fisherman's line. Wherever she went, the line of her footprints tethered her relentlessly to the place of tragedy. Dexter could overtake her, and pick her up, whenever he was ready.
Meanwhile he lingered for a final scrutiny of the marks at the edge of the cabin clearing. And singularly, the high-arched tracks stopped short on the margin of the thicket, at the spot where he had first picked up the trail. Unbelieving, he searched about with his light, and finally made out the entire outer circuit of the stumpy ground. And he was much puzzled when he failed to find any small footprints within a radius of ten yards of the cabin.
Here was mystery piling upon mystery. He had heard a woman's voice in the cabin, and he knew as positively as any one may be positive in matters of evidence, that it was a woman who had shot and killed the two helpless victims in the locked room. And here was a trail, obviously feminine, in an almost unexplored region of the snowy wilderness, where he was quite certain that a white woman had never set foot before.
These facts were left behind, within the cabin and without, in the grim record of events. But there was a startling discrepancy to be explained. Between the thicket, where the footprints halted, and the cabin, where the two prisoners lay dead, a thirty-foot area of smooth-fallen snow intervened. If the maker of the tracks had been in the cabin, how had she crossed the open stretch? In what manner had she escaped, without leaving shoe marks in the clearing? There was no way she could have swung across above the ground, and there was no underground passage. Dexter's stern mouth relaxed for a moment in a grin of self-depreciation. He did not know the answer. There was nothing he could do but follow the trail, and try to wring the truth from the woman when he caught her.
Still he felt no great need for haste. He returned to the cabin, and paused for a final survey of the scene of crime. Again he bent over the lifeless forms in the bunks, and this time ascertained the caliber of the bullets that had carried sudden death. Mudgett had been shot through the heart; a brain shot had flicked out the life of his dark-faced comrade. The muzzle of the weapon had been thrust close in each instance. The bullets were short 32 caliber, but the killer evidently had aimed with deliberate care, and at such nearness of range, the small bits of lead were instantly effective.
The weapon with the two fired chambers, which Dexter had picked up from the floor was a 32 caliber revolver. As in the tragic case of Constable Graves, cause and consequence were logically brought together. The fouled firearms and the bullets were left in his hands as grewsome relics; but the murderers had escaped him—one by death, the other by inexplicably vanishing.
In the bushwhacking of the constable, followed by the killing of his assassin, Dexter sensed the working out of some strange, vaguely revealed drama that apparently involved the fate of several actors. He had pushed his way into an uninhabited country, expecting eventually to encounter a single individual who was fleeing from the penalty attached to a lesser offense; and he had walked unexpectedly upon the stage of wholesale crime.
The motive underlying the attack upon the constable was understandable. The young policeman had traveled across the range on official business, and his slayer no doubt had reason to put him out of the way. But the man who shot Graves, in his turn was shot and killed. And Mudgett also! It was not so easy to fathom the motive of this double affair in the cabin.
Dexter recalled every word spoken by the mysterious voice, before the gun reports sounded behind the closed door. The woman had mentioned the prisoners under arrest, and expressed the fear that they might be forced to talk. What could they talk about—what dangerous secret did they know? It must be something dreadful, if such a desperate method were needed to enforce their silence.
From the scanty facts in his possession the corporal tried to pick out some logical thread of connection between the people thus far enmeshed in the threefold tragedy of the wilderness: Mudgett, the stranger in the upper bunk, the woman from nowhere. Besides these there was the trapper, Stark, who, Mudgett declared, had built himself a winter shack farther up the valley. 'Phonse Doucet, the assailant of the Crooked Forks store keeper, had escaped somewhere on this side of the mountains. So there were five, at least, who had suddenly pushed across into this lonesome, isolated territory where even the marks of squaw-hatchets were seldom found.
Nor had Dexter forgotten the face of the man in the Bertillon photograph, which Constable Graves carried in his pocket. And for some reason the name of "Pink" Crill stuck insistently in his mind. Was this outlander also sojourning in the wilderness? And if so, was he in any way involved in the affairs of the others? There was no saying. Yet the corporal could not escape the feeling that he had touched the sinister web of some large criminal business—of plot and counterplot—that entangled the members of some unidentified outlaw band. What hope of profit might draw traffickers in organized crime to such infertile, out-of-the-way fields, he was unable to guess. He only knew that the country had been suddenly invaded by a mysterious and dangerous company of intruders.
His glance returned grimly to the silent figures in the bunks. No doubt these two held the secret, of which he himself had failed to find the key. But he could scarcely believe that murder had been committed just to prevent their telling what they might know. If this were the only motive, why was not the policeman shot instead of his prisoners? Dexter had not dreamed of the presence of a third person in the cabin, and the woman might have left the door unbarred and ambushed him with perfect safety as he entered.
He shook his head grimly. There must have been other reasons for the wanton shooting. Vengeance? The voice had said something about being betrayed. Had Mudgett or his companion sent the word that summoned Constable Graves into the woods? Such a supposition was improbable. If the constable's murderer had betrayed any one to the police, why had he himself shot the policeman? Dexter sighed as he realized that his speculations were leading nowhere. Until he knew a great deal more than he knew now, he was groping vainly, without one enlightening clew to suggest the meaning of this strange and dark affair. It was wiser to leave off theorizing, and go after the woman.
There was nothing further to detain him. He paused only to prop the broken door in place, to prevent the intrusion of forest creatures, and then quit the cabin and struck off across the clearing.
Where his new quest would take him, he could not foresee. In all probability he would have to travel for some distance through the dense forest. Susy, the pony, was sure to prove more or less of a hindrance on such an expedition, and moreover she was tired after her long journey that day across the pass. He had previously unsaddled her, and she would do well enough by herself in the sheltered gully by the brook. So he mercifully left her behind, and set forth on foot.
The trail of the small shoes was easily followed. For a distance the woman had continued her headlong course, but the underbrush was too thick for heedless going, and it was soon evident that she had been forced to moderate her pace. Still she had kept on as fast as darkness and difficult ground permitted.
By the accumulated signs along the way the policeman knew that she traveled without a light, groping her path as best she might. Frequently she had stumbled over some unseen obstruction and now and then walked blindly into a tree trunk or windfall. And in the denser thickets spatterings of snow told how invisible branches had swished back in her face.
Dexter continued to use his pocket lamp, and he had eyes for everything. By the promptness with which she had recovered from each misstep, he gathered that she was an agile, quick-witted woman, probably young. It must have been a painful ordeal to go plunging through the thickets, but she had taken the punishment with apparent stoicism, scarcely pausing at any time in her hurried, free-swinging stride.
At one place, where she had touched the edge of a briary clump, Dexter found a wisp of hair caught on a thorn—three soft, wavy silken threads of a deep bronze shade. He pulled off his glove to twist the gossamer strand about his forefinger, and almost imagined a sensation of human warmth. And somehow he felt a sudden dislike for the work he had to do. There are times when police business calls for sterner qualities than simple courage and loyalty. The corporal was confronted by a duty that revolted every knightly instinct; nevertheless he pushed onward at a faster pace. He could not shirk a disagreeable task, and was resolved to have it over with as soon as possible.
The woman did not turn down towards the more open ground along the course of the valley stream, but continued to travel through the deeper forest. She had soon wandered away from the vaguely defined runway, and was forced to seek out her own pathway. Through occasional openings in the tree-tops Dexter caught glimpses of the north-bearing star Capella, which the Indians call the "little white goat." For a while the fugitive had kept on in a northerly direction, but presently the trail began to bend to the left, turning towards the back hills. And as the corporal followed, he began to realize that he was swinging on a wide arc towards the west. The line of prints meandered back and forth in a rather aimless way, but the trend of divergence was always to the left. By the signs he inferred that the woman had missed her bearings, and, as usually is the case with lost people, was circling gradually around the compass.
Experienced wayfarers of the wilderness learn to "average" their windings, always bearing towards an imaginary fixed point ahead, like a ship tacking at sea. The star Capella served to-night as an infallible guiding beacon for travelers in the trackless country. But the woman, whoever she was, continued to wander farther and farther off her original course. By the time he had followed a half hour on her trail Dexter was certain that she was a newcomer in the northland.
In spite of darkness and the denseness of the timber, she still kept up her rapid pace. It seemed to her pursuer that she was in panic-stricken flight. Surely she must tire very soon. But her circling path led Dexter on and on through the dismal forest and still there was no evidence of lagging on the trail. He was beginning to marvel at the story of brave endurance that he read in the trail of the little footprints. The fugitive might not be versed in woodcraft, but nevertheless she seemed to have the pluck and physical stamina of a seasoned voyageur.
The corporal had his lamp to light the way before him, and he plowed through the snow with enormous energy. He was certain that he gained steadily, yet at the end of an hour he had not overtaken the woman.
By almost imperceptible degrees the line of tracks kept on curving in a left hand arc, and after winding his way for another twenty or thirty minutes through the hushed labyrinths of the woods, he became aware that he was now heading more southerly than west. He trudged onward until a rift in the drooping branches overhead gave him a momentary glimpse of the sky, and he found the beacon star twinkling above his left shoulder. The trail he followed had swung around the compass, and he was traveling back to the east. He half smiled to himself as he reckoned distance and direction. The hunted woman had wandered by tortuous paths through miles of darkness, only to turn back at last towards the tragic spot from which she had fearfully fled.
By the freshly trod prints, the skilled tracker knew that he was running down the fugitive. In places, fluffy bits of snow were still breaking at the edges of the new-made tracks. He should overtake her any minute now. As he lengthened his stride he listened for sounds of lightly crunching feet, and peered sharply ahead, expecting with every step to catch sight of a hurrying figure among the spruces.
He was advancing through a tangle of snow-sheeted brush, his arm thrusting aside the trailing branches, when suddenly he caught a red glint of light in the darkness beyond. At the same instant a stray breath of wind brought to him a resinous smell of wood smoke. A fire of some sort apparently had been kindled in the forest ahead.
Wondering, he broke his way out of the thicket, and paused for a moment to stare before him. A flaming glow flickered among the trees, throwing ruddy reflections upon the wintry landscape. A glance told him it was too big a blaze to be a camp fire. He knew that a forest conflagration seldom starts and never gains much headway when the trees are laden with snow, but for the instant he felt the sharp sense of alarm that communicates itself to all woodland dwellers at the sight and scent of burning timber. He left the trail he was following, and plunged straight through the underbrush towards the crimson flaring light.
Crashing forward, heedless of the lash of branches, he forced his path through the densest thicket. As he advanced he caught glimpses of fire and saw sparks leaping among the trees. He passed through the intervening stretch of forest, and stumbled to the edge of an ax-hewn clearing. In the middle of the snowy ground stood a log building, with smoke and flames spouting upward from the walls and roof. The surrounding area was illuminated with the brightness of day, and at a glance Dexter identified the place. He had circled back to the scene of murder. The cabin had been fired, and was blazing in the forest like a lighted torch.