perfume, disguised the reek of the atmosphere. It was pungent but delightful, and the stranger remarked upon it.
“What’s that you are smoking?” he asked.
For one instant the half-breed’s eyes were turned upon him with a curious look. Then he turned back to the contemplation of the stove.
“Kind o’ weed that grows around these wilds,” he answered. “Only stuff we get hereabouts. It’s good when you’re used to it.” He laughed quietly.
The stranger looked from one to the other of his three companions. He was struck by a sudden thought.
“What do you do here? I mean for a living?”
“Trap,” replied the Breed shortly.
“Many furs about?”
“Fair.”
“Slow work,” said the stranger, indifferently.
Then a silence fell. The wayfarer was getting very drowsy. The pungent odour from his companions’ pipes seemed to have a strangely soothing effect upon him. Before he was aware of it he caught himself nodding, and, try as he would, he could not keep his heavy eyelids open. The men smoked on in silence. Three pairs of eyes watched the stranger’s efforts to keep awake, and a malicious gleam was in the look with which they surveyed him. He was too sleepy to observe. Besides, had he been in condition to do so, the expression of their eyes would probably have been different. Slowly his head drooped forward. He was dreaming pleasantly already, although, as yet, he was not quite asleep. Now he no longer attempted to keep his eyes open. Further his head drooped forward. The three men were still as mice. Then suddenly he rolled over on one side, and his stertorous breathing indicated a deep, unnatural slumber.
The hut was in darkness but for a beam of light which made its way in through a narrow slit over the door. The sunlight shone down upon the huddled figure of the traveller, who still slept in the attitude in which he had rolled over on his fur coat when sleep had first overcome him. Otherwise the hut was empty. The half-breed and his companions had disappeared. The fire was out. The lamp had burned itself out. The place was intensely cold.
Suddenly the sleeper stirred. He straightened himself out and turned over. Then, without further warning, he sat up and found himself staring up at the dazzling streak of light.
“Daylight,” he murmured; “and they’ve let the stove go out. Gee! but I feel queer about the head.”
Moving his head so that his eyes should miss the glare of light, he gazed about him. He was alone, and as he realized this he scrambled to his feet, and, for the moment, the room–everything about him–seemed to be turning topsy-turvy. He placed his hand against the post which supported the roof and steadied himself.
“I wonder where they are?” he muttered. “Ah! of course,” as an afterthought, “they are out at their traps. They might have stoked the fire. It’s perishing in here. I feel beastly queer; must be the effects of starvation.”
Then he moved a step forward. He brought up suddenly to a standstill. His two hands went to his waist. They moved, groping round it spasmodically. Undoing his clothes he passed his hand into his shirt. Then one word escaped him. One word–almost a whisper–but conveying such a world of fierce, horror-stricken intensity–
“Robbed!”
And the look which accompanied his exclamation was the look of a man whose mind is distracted.
So he stood for some seconds. His lips moved, but no words escaped them. His hand remained within his shirt, and his fingers continued to grope about mechanically. And all the time the dazed, strained look burned in his great, roving eyes.
It was gone. That broad belt, weighted down with the result of one year’s toil, gold dust and nuggets, was gone. Presently he seated himself on the cold iron of the stove. Thus he sat for an hour, looking straight before him with eyes that seemed to draw closer together, so intense was their gaze. And who shall say what thoughts he thought; what wild schemes of revenge he planned? There was no outward sign. Just those silent moving lips.
CHAPTER II
MR. ZACHARY SMITH
“Rot, man, rot! I’ve been up here long enough to know my way about this devil’s country. No confounded neche can teach me. The trail forked at that bush we passed three days back. We’re all right. I wish I felt as sure about the weather.”
Leslie Grey broke off abruptly. His tone was resentful, as well as dictatorial. He was never what one might call an easy man. He was always headstrong, and never failed to resent interference on the smallest provocation. Perhaps these things were in the nature of his calling. He was one of the head Customs officials on the Canadian side of the Alaskan boundary. His companion was a subordinate.
The latter was a man of medium height, and from the little that could be seen of his face between the high folds of the storm-collar of his buffalo coat, he possessed a long nose and a pair of dark, keen, yet merry eyes. His name was Robb Chillingwood. The two men were tramping along on snow-shoes in the rear of a dog-train. An Indian was keeping pace with the dogs in front; the latter, five in number, harnessed in the usual tandem fashion to a heavily-laden sled.
“It’s no use anticipating bad weather,” replied Chillingwood, quietly. “But as to the question of the trail–”
“There’s no question,” interrupted Grey, sharply.
“Ah, the map shows two clumps of bush. The trail turns off at one of them. My chart says the second. I studied it carefully. The ‘confounded neche,’ as you call him, says ‘not yet.’ Which means that he considers it to be the second bush. You say no.”
“The neche only knows the trail by repute. You have never been over it before. I have travelled it six times. You make me tired. Give it a rest. Perhaps you can make something of those nasty, sharp puffs of wind which keep lifting the ground snow at intervals.”
Robb shrugged his fur-coated shoulders, and glanced up at the sun. It seemed to be struggling hard to pierce a grey haze which hung over the mountains. The sundogs, too, could be seen, but, like the sun itself, they were dim and glowed rather than shone. That patchy wind, so well known in the west of Canada, was very evident just then. It seemed to hit the snow-bound earth, slither viciously along the surface, sweep up a thin cloud of loose surface snow, then drop in an instant, but only to operate in the same manner at some other spot. This was going on spasmodically in many directions, the snow brushing up in hissing eddies at each attack. And slowly the grey mist on the hills was obscuring the sun.
Robb Chillingwood was a man of some experience on the prairie, although, as his companion had said, he was new to this particular mountain trail. To his trained eye the outlook was not encouraging.
“Storm,” he observed shortly.
“That’s my opinion,” said Grey definitely.
“According to calculations, if we have not got off the trail,” Chillingwood went on, with a sly look at his superior, “we should reach Dougal’s roadside hostelry in the Pass by eight o’clock–well before dark. We ought to escape the storm.”
“You mean we shall,” said Grey pointedly.
“If–”
“Bunkum!”
The two men relapsed into silence.
