Chapter 4. The Warning

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_ CHAPTER IV. THE WARNING

In only a subconscious sort of way was Howland cognizant of anything more that happened that night. When he came back into a full sense of his existence he found himself in his bed at the hotel. A lamp was burning low on the table. A glance showed him that the room was empty. He raised his head and shoulders from the pillows on which they were resting and the movement helped to bring him at once into a realization of what had happened. He was hurt. There was a dull, aching pain in his head and neck and when he raised an inquiring hand it came in contact with a thick bandage. He wondered if he were badly hurt and sank back again on the pillows, lying with his eyes staring at the faint glow of the lamp. Soon there came a sound at the door and he twisted his head, grimacing with the pain it caused him. Jean was looking in at him.

"Ah, M'seur ees awake!" he said, seeing the wide-open eyes. He came in softly, closing the door behind him. "_Mon Dieu_, but if it had been a heavier club by the weight of a pound you would have gone into the blessed hereafter," he smiled, approaching with noiseless tread. He held a glass of water to Howland's lips.

"Is it bad, Croisset?"

"So bad that you will be in bed for a day or so, M'seur. That is all."

"Impossible!" cried the young engineer. "I must take the eight o'clock train in the morning. I must be in Le Pas--"

"It is five o'clock now," interrupted Jean softly. "Do you feel like going?"

Howland straightened himself and fell back suddenly with a sharp cry.

"The devil!" he exclaimed. After a moment he added, "There will be no other train for two days." As he raised a hand to his aching head, his other closed tightly about Jean's lithe brown fingers. "I want to thank you for what you did, Croisset. I don't know what happened. I don't know who they were or why they tried to kill me. There was a girl--I was going with her--"

He dropped his hand in time to see the strange fire that had leaped into the half-breed's eyes. In astonishment he half lifted himself again, his white face questioning Croisset.

"Do you know?" he whispered eagerly. "Who was she? Why did she lead me into that ambush? Why did they attempt to kill me?"

The questions shot from him excitedly, and he knew from what he saw in the other's face that Croisset could have answered them. Yet from the thin tense lips above him there came no response. With a quick movement the half-breed drew away his hand and moved toward the door. Half way he paused and turned.

"M'seur, I have come to you with a warning. Do not go to Le Pas. Do not go to the big railroad camp on the Wekusko. Return into the South." For an instant he leaned forward, his black eyes flashing, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. "Perhaps you will understand," he cried tensely, "when I tell you this warning is sent to you--by the little Meleese!"

Before Howland could recover from his surprise Croisset had passed swiftly through the door. The engineer called his name, but there came no response other than the rapidly retreating sound of the Northerner's moccasined feet. With a grumble of vexation he sank back on his pillows. The fresh excitement had set his head in a whirl again and a feverish heat mounted into his face. For a long time he lay with his eyes closed, trying to clear for himself the mystery of the preceding night. The one thought which obsessed him was that he had been duped. His lovely acquaintance of the preceding evening had ensnared him completely with her gentle smile and her winsome mouth, and he gritted his teeth grimly as he reflected how easy he had been. Deliberately she had lured him into the ambush which would have proved fatal for him had it not been for Jean Croisset. And she was not a mute! He had heard her voice; when that death-grip was tightest about his throat there had come to him that terrified cry: "_Mon Dieu_, you are killing him--killing him!"

His breath came a little faster as he whispered the words to himself. They appealed to him now with a significance which he had not understood at first. He was sure that in that cry there had been real terror; almost, he fancied, as he lay with his eyes shut tight, that he could still hear the shrill note of despair in the voice. The more he tried to reason the situation, the more inexplicable grew the mystery of it all. If the girl had calmly led him into the ambush, why, in the last moment, when success seemed about to crown her duplicity, had she cried out in that agony of terror? In Howland's heated brain there came suddenly a vision of her as she stood beside him in the white trail; he felt again the thrill of her hands, the touch of her breast for a moment against his own; saw the gentle look that had come into her deep, pure eyes; the pathetic tremor of the lips which seemed bravely striving to speak to him. Was it possible that face and eyes like those could have led him into a deathtrap! Despite the evidence of what had happened he found himself filled with doubt. And yet, after all, she had lied to him--for she was not a mute!

He turned over with a groan and watched the door. When Croisset returned he would insist on knowing more about the strange occurrence, for he was sure that the half-breed could clear away at least a part of the mystery. Vainly, as he watched and waited, he racked his mind to find some reason for the murderous attack on himself. Who was "the little Meleese," whom Croisset declared had sent the warning? So far as he could remember he had never known a person by that name. And yet the half-breed had uttered it as though it would carry a vital meaning to him. "Perhaps you will understand," he had said, and Howland strove to understand, until his brain grew dizzy and a nauseous sickness overcame him.

The first light of the day was falling faintly through the window when footsteps sounded outside the door again. It was not Croisset who appeared this time, but the proprietor himself, bearing with him a tray on which there was toast and a steaming pot of coffee. He nodded and smiled as he saw Howland half sitting up.

"Bad fall you had," he greeted, drawing a small table close beside the bed. "This snow is treacherous when you're climbing among the rocks. When it caves in with you on the side of a mountain you might as well make up your mind you're going to get a good bump. Good thing Croisset was with you!"

For a few moments Howland was speechless.

"Yes--it--was--a--bad--fall," he replied at last, looking sharply at the other. "Where is Croisset?"

"Gone. He left an hour ago with his dogs. Funny fellow--that Croisset! Came in yesterday from the Lac la Ronge country a hundred miles north; goes back to-day. No apparent reason for his coming, none for his going, that I can see."

"Do you know anything about him?" asked Howland a little eagerly.

"No. He comes in about once or twice a year."

The young engineer munched his toast and drank his coffee for some moments in silence. Then, casually, he asked,

"Did you ever hear of a person by the name of Meleese?"

"Meleese--Meleese--Meleese--" repeated the hotel man, running a hand through his hair. "It seems to me that the name is familiar--and yet I can't remember--" He caught himself in sudden triumph. "Ah, I have it! Two years ago I had a kitchen woman named Meleese."

Howland shrugged his shoulders.

"This was a young woman," he said.

"The Meleese we had is dead," replied the proprietor cheerfully, rising to go. "I'll send up for your tray in half an hour or so, Mr. Howland."

Several hours later Howland crawled from his bed and bathed his head in cold water. After that he felt better, dressed himself, and went below. His head pained him considerably, but beyond that and an occasional nauseous sensation the injury he had received in the fight caused him no very great distress. He went in to dinner and by the middle of the afternoon was so much improved that he lighted his first cigar and ventured out into the bracing air for a short walk. At first it occurred to him that he might make inquiries at the Chinese restaurant regarding the identity of the girl whom he had met there, but he quickly changed his mind, and crossing the river he followed the trail which they had taken the preceding night. For a few moments he contemplated the marks of the conflict in the snow. Where he had first seen the half-breed there were blotches of blood on the crust.

"Good for Croisset!" Howland muttered; "good for Croisset. It looks as though he used a knife."

He could see where the wounded man had dragged himself up the trail, finally staggering to his feet, and with a caution which he had not exercised a few hours before Howland continued slowly between the thick forest walls, one hand clutching the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket. Where the trail twisted abruptly into the north he found the charred remains of a camp-fire in a small open, and just beyond it a number of birch toggles, which had undoubtedly been used in place of tent-stakes. With the toe of his boot he kicked among the ashes and half-burned bits of wood. There was no sign of smoke, not a living spark to give evidence that human presence had been there for many hours. There was but one conclusion to make; soon after their unsuccessful attempt on his life his strange assailants had broken camp and fled. With them, in all probability, had gone the girl whose soft eyes and sweet face had lured him within their reach.

But where had they gone?

Carefully he examined the abandoned camp. In the hard crust were the imprints of dogs' claws. In several places he found the faint, broad impression made by a toboggan. The marks at least cleared away the mystery of their disappearance. Sometime during the night they had fled by dog-sledge into the North.

He was tired when he returned to the hotel and it was rather with a sense of disappointment than pleasure that he learned the work-train was to leave for Le Pas late that night instead of the next day. After a quiet hour's rest in his room, however, his old enthusiasm returned to him. He found himself feverishly anxious to reach Le Pas and the big camp on the Wekusko. Croisset's warning for him to turn back into the South, instead of deterring him, urged him on. He was born a fighter. It was by fighting that he had forced his way round by round up the ladder of success. And now the fact that his life was in danger, that some mysterious peril awaited him in the depths of the wilderness, but added a new and thrilling fascination to the tremendous task which was ahead of him. He wondered if this same peril had beset Gregson and Thorne, and if it was the cause of their failure, of their anxiety to return to civilization. He assured himself that he would know when he met them at Le Pas. He would discover more when he became a part of the camp on the Wekusko; that is, if the half-breed's warning held any significance at all, and he believed that it did. Anyway, he would prepare for developments. So he went to a gun-shop, bought a long-barreled six-shooter and a holster, and added to it a hunting-knife like that he had seen carried by Croisset.

It was near midnight when he boarded the work-train and dawn was just beginning to break over the wilderness when it stopped at Etomami, from which point he was to travel by hand-car over the sixty miles of new road that had been constructed as far north as Le Pas. For three days the car had been waiting for the new chief of the road, but neither Gregson nor Thorne was with it.

"Mr. Gregson is waiting for you at Le Pas," said one of the men who had come with it. "Thorne is at Wekusko."

For the first time in his life Howland now plunged into the heart of the wilderness, and as mile after mile slipped behind them and he sped deeper into the peopleless desolation of ice and snow and forest his blood leaped in swift excitement, in the new joy of life which he was finding up here under the far northern skies. Seated on the front of the car, with the four men pumping behind him, he drank in the wild beauties of the forests and swamps through which they slipped, his eyes constantly on the alert for signs of the big game which his companions told him was on all sides of them.

Everywhere about them lay white winter. The rocks, the trees, and the great ridges, which in this north country are called mountains, were covered with four feet of snow and on it the sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. But it was not until a long grade brought them to the top of one of these ridges and Howland looked into the north that he saw the wilderness in all of its grandeur. As the car stopped he sprang to his feet with a joyous cry, his face aflame with what he saw ahead of him. Stretching away under his eyes, mile after mile, was the vast white desolation that reached to Hudson Bay. In speechless wonder he gazed down on the unblazed forests, saw plains and hills unfold themselves as his vision gained distance, followed a frozen river until it was lost in the bewildering picture, and let his eyes rest here and there on the glistening, snow-smothered bosoms of lakes, rimmed in by walls of black forest. This was not the wilderness as he had expected it to be, nor as he had often read of it in books. It was not the wilderness that Gregson and Thorne had described in their letters. It was beautiful! It was magnificent! His heart throbbed with pleasure as he gazed down on it, the flush grew deeper in his face, and he seemed hardly to breathe in his tense interest.

One of the four on the car was an old Indian and it was he, strangely enough, who broke the silence. He had seen the look in Howland's face, and he spoke softly, close to his ear, "Twent' t'ousand moose down there--twent' t'ousand caribou-oo! No man--no house--more twent' t'ousand miles!"

Howland, even quivering in his new emotion, looked into the old warrior's eyes, filled with the curious, thrilling gleam of the spirit which was stirring within himself. Then again he stared straight out into the unending distance as though his vision would penetrate far beyond the last of that visible desolation--on and on, even to the grim and uttermost fastnesses of Hudson Bay; and as he looked he knew that in these moments there had been born in him a new spirit, a new being; that no longer was he the old Jack Howland whose world had been confined by office walls and into whose conception of life there had seldom entered things other than those which led directly toward the achievement of his ambitions.

The short northern day was nearing an end when once more they saw the broad Saskatchewan twisting through a plain below them, and on its southern shore the few log buildings of Le Pas hemmed in on three sides by the black forests of balsam and spruce. Lights were burning in the cabins and in the Hudson Bay Post's store when the car was brought to a halt half a hundred paces from a squat, log-built structure, which was more brilliantly illuminated than any of the others.

"That's the hotel," said one of the men. "Gregson's there."

A tall, fur-clad figure hurried forth to meet Howland as he walked briskly across the open. It was Gregson. As the two men gripped hands the young engineer stared at the other in astonishment. This was not the Gregson he had known in the Chicago office, round-faced, full of life, as active as a cricket.

"Never so glad to see any one in my life, Howland!" he cried, shaking the other's hand again and again. "Another month and I'd be dead. Isn't this a hell of a country?"

"I'm falling more in love with it at every breath, Gregson. What's the matter? Have you been sick?"

Gregson laughed as they turned toward the lighted building. It was a short, nervous laugh, and with it he gave a curious sidewise glance at his companion's face.

"Sick?--yes, sick of the job! If the old man hadn't sent us relief Thorne and I would have thrown up the whole thing in another four weeks. I'll warrant you'll get your everlasting fill of log shanties and half-breeds and moose meat and this infernal snow and ice before spring comes. But I don't want to discourage you."

"Can't discourage me!" laughed Howland cheerfully. "You know I never cared much for theaters and girls," he added slyly, giving Gregson a good-natured nudge. "How about 'em up here?"

"Nothing--not a cursed thing." Suddenly his eyes lighted up. "By George, Howland, but I _did_ see the prettiest girl I ever laid my eyes on to-day! I'd give a box of pure Havanas--and we haven't had one for a month!--if I could know who she is!"

They had entered through the low door of the log boarding-house and Gregson was throwing off his heavy coat.

"A tall girl, with a fur hat and muff?" queried Howland eagerly.

"Nothing of the sort. She was a typical Northerner if there ever was one--straight as a birch, dressed in fur cap and coat, short caribou skin skirt and moccasins, and with a braid hanging down her back as long as my arm. Lord, but she was pretty!"

"Isn't there a girl somewhere up around our camp named Meleese?" asked Howland casually.

"Never heard of her," said Gregson.

"Or a man named Croisset?"

"Never heard of him."

"The deuce, but you're interesting," laughed the young engineer, sniffing at the odors of cooking supper. "I'm as hungry as a bear!"

From outside there came the sharp cracking of a sledge-driver's whip and Gregson went to one of the small windows looking out upon the clearing. In another instant he sprang toward the door, crying out to Howland,

"By the god of love, there she is, old man! Quick, if you want to get a glimpse of her!"

He flung the door open and Howland hurried to his side. There came another crack of the whip, a loud shout, and a sledge drawn by six dogs sped past them into the gathering gloom of the early night.

From Howland's lips, too, there fell a sudden cry; for one of the two faces that were turned toward him for an instant was that of Croisset, and the other--white and staring as he had seen it that first night in Prince Albert--was the face of the beautiful girl who had lured him into the ambush on the Great North Trail! _

Read next: Chapter 5. Howland's Midnight Visitor

Read previous: Chapter 3. The Mysterious Attack

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