Philip bundled himself in his coat and went out with the ax and pails.
"Ice!" he muttered to himself. "Now what can he want of ice?"
He dug down through three feet of snow and chopped for half an hour.
When he returned to the cabin the wounded man was bolstered up in bed, and the doctor was pacing back and forth across the room, evidently worked to a high pitch of excitement.
"Murder--robbery--outrage! Right under our noses, that"s what it was!"
he cried. "Pierre Th.o.r.eau is dead--killed by the scoundrels who left this man for dead beside him! They set upon them late yesterday afternoon as Pierre and his partner were coming home, intending to kill them for their outfit. The murderers, who are a breed and a white trapper, have probably gone to their shack half a dozen miles up the creek. Now, Mr. Philip Steele, here"s a little work for you!"
MacGregor himself had never stirred Philip Steele"s blood as did the doctor"s unexpected wards, but the two men watching him saw nothing unusual in their effect. He set down his ice and coolly took off his coat, then advanced to the side of the wounded man.
"I"m glad you"re better," he said, looking down into the other"s strong, pale face. "It was a pretty close shave. Guess you were a little out of your head, weren"t you?"
For an instant the man"s eyes shifted past Philip to where the doctor was standing.
"Yes--I must have been. He says I was calling for Pierre, and Pierre was dead. I left him ten miles back there in the snow." He closed his eyes with a groan of pain and continued, after a moment, "Pierre and I have been trapping foxes. We were coming back with supplies to last us until late spring when--it happened. The white man"s name is Dobson, and there"s a breed with him. Their shack is six or seven miles up the creek."
Philip saw the doctor examining a revolver which he had taken from the pocket of his big coat. He came over to the bunkside with it in his hand.
"That"s enough, Phil," he said softly. "He must not talk any more for an hour or two or we"ll have him in a fever. Get on your coat. I"m going with you."
"I"m going alone," said Phil shortly. "You attend to your patient."
He drank a cup of coffee, ate a piece of toasted bannock, and with the first gray breaking of dawn started up the creek on a pair of Pierre"s old snow-shoes. The doctor followed him to the creek and watched him until he was out of sight.
The wounded man was sitting on the edge of the cot when McGill reentered the cabin.
His exertion had brought a flush of color back into his face, which lighted up with a smile as the other came through the door.
"It was a close shave, thanks to you," he said, repeating Philip"s words.
"Just so," replied the doctor. He had placed a brace of short bulldog revolvers on the table and offered one of them now to his companion.
"The shaving isn"t over yet, Falkner."
They ate breakfast, each with a gun beside his tin plate. Now and then the doctor interrupted his meal to go to the door and peer over the broadening vista of the barrens. They had nearly finished when he came back from one of these observations, his lips set a little tighter, a barely perceptible tremor in his voice when he spoke.
"They"re coming, Falkner!"
They picked up their revolvers and the doctor b.u.t.toned his coat tight up about his neck.
For ten minutes they sat silent and listening.
Not until the crunching beat of snow-shoes came to their ears did the doctor move. Thrusting his weapon into his coat pocket, he went to the door. Falkner followed him, and stood well out of sight when he opened it. Two men and a dog team were crossing the opening. McGill"s dogs were fastened under a brush lean-to built against the cabin, and as the rival team of huskies began filling the air with their clamor for a fight, the stranger team halted and one of the two men came forward alone. He stopped with some astonishment before the aristocratic-looking little man waiting for him in Pierre"s doorway.
"Is Pierre Th.o.r.eau at home?" he demanded.
"I"m a stranger here, so I can not say," replied the doctor, inspecting the questioner with marked coolness. "It is possible, however, that he is--for I picked up a man half dead out in the snow last night, and I"m waiting for him to come back to life. A smooth-faced, blond fellow, with a cut on his head. It may be this Pierre Th.o.r.eau."
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the man kicked off his snow-shoes and with an excited wave of his arm to his companion with the dogs, almost ran past the doctor.
"It"s him--the man I want to see!" he cried in a low voice. "My name"s Dobson, of the--"
What more he had meant to say was never finished. Falkner"s powerful arms had gripped his head and throat in a vise-like clutch from which no smother of sound escaped, and three or four minutes later, when the second man came through the door, he found his comrade flat on his back, bound and gagged, and the shining muzzles of two short and murderous-looking revolvers leveled at his breast. He was a swarthy breed, scarcely larger than the doctor himself, and his only remonstrance as his hands were fastened behind his back was a brief outburst of very bad and, very excited French which the professor stopped with a threatening flourish of his gun.
"You"ll do," he said, standing off to survey his prisoner. "I believe you"re harmless enough to have the use of your legs and mouth." With a comic bow the little doctor added, "M"sieur, I"m going to ask you to drive us back to Fort Smith, and if you so much as look the wrong way out of your eyes I"ll blow off your head. You and your friend are to answer for the killing of Pierre Th.o.r.eau and for the attempted murder of this young man, who will follow us to Fort Smith to testify against you."
It was evident that the half-breed did not understand, and the doctor added a few explanatory words in French. The man on the floor groaned and struggled until he was red in the face.
"Easy, easy," soothed the doctor. "I appreciate the fact that it is pretty tough luck, Dobson, but you"ll have to take your medicine.
Falkner, if you"ll lend a hand in getting me off I won"t lose much time in starting for Fort Smith."
It was a strange-looking outfit that set out from Pierre Th.o.r.eau"s cabin half an hour later. Ahead of the team which had come that morning walked the breed, his left arm bound to his side with a babiche thong. On the sledge behind him lay an inanimate and blanket-wrapped bundle, which was Dobson; and close at the rear of the sledge, stripped of his greatcoat and more than ever like a diminutive drum-major, followed Dudley McGill, professor of neurology and diseases of the brain, with a bulldog revolver in his mittened hand.
From the door Falkner watched them go.
Six hours later Philip returned from the east. Falkner saw him coming up from the creek and went to meet him.
"I found the cabin, but no one was there," said Philip. "It has been deserted for a long time. No tracks in the snow, everything inside frozen stiff, and what signs I did find were of a woman!"
The muscles of Falkner"s face gave a sudden twitch. "A woman!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, a woman," repeated Philip, "and there was a photograph of her on a table in the bedroom. Did this Dobson have a wife?"
Falkner had fallen a step behind him as they entered the cabin.
"A long time ago--a woman was there," he said. "She was a young woman, and--and almost beautiful. But she wasn"t his wife."
"She was pretty," replied Philip, "so pretty that I brought her picture along for my collection at home." He looked about for McGill. "Where"s the doctor?"
Falkner"s face was very white as he explained what had happened during the other"s absence.
"He said that he would camp early this afternoon so that you could overtake them," he finished after he had described the capture and the doctor"s departure. "The doctor thought you would want to lose no time in getting the prisoners to Fort Smith, and that he could get a good start before night. To-morrow or the next day I am going to follow with the other team. I"d go with you if he hadn"t commanded me to remain here and nurse my head for another twenty-four hours."
Philip shrugged his shoulders, and the two had little to say as they ate their dinners. After an hour"s rest he prepared a light pack and took up the doctor"s trail. Inwardly he rankled at the unusual hand which the little professor was playing in leaving Pierre"s cabin with the prisoners, and yet he was confident that McGill would wait for him. Mile after mile he traveled down the creek. At dusk there was no sign of his new friend. Just before dark he climbed a dead stub at the summit of a high ridge and half a dozen miles of the unbroken barren stretched out before his eyes.
At six o"clock he stopped to cook some tea and warm his meat and bannock. After that he traveled until ten, then built a big fire and gave up the pursuit until morning. At dawn he started again, and not until the forenoon was half gone did he find where the doctor had stopped to camp.
The ashes of his fire were still warm beneath and the snow was trampled hard around them. In the north the clouds were piling up, betokening a storm such as it was not well for a man in Philip"s condition of fatigue to face. Already some flavor of the approaching blizzard was carried to him on the wind.
So he hurried on. Fortunately the storm died away after an hour or two of fierce wind. Still he did not come up with McGill, and he camped again for the night, cursing the little professor who was racing on ahead of him. It was noon of the following day when he came in sight of the few log cabins at Fort Smith, situated in a treeless and snow-smothered sweep of the plain on the other side of the Slave. He crossed the river and hurried past the row of buildings that led to post headquarters. In front of the company office were gathered a little crowd of men, women and children. He pushed his way through and stopped at the bottom of the three log steps which led up to the door.
At the top was Professor McGill, coming out. His face was a puzzle.
His eyes had in them a stony stare as he gazed down at Philip. Then he descended slowly, like one moving in a dream. "Good Heavens," he said huskily, and only for Philip"s ears, "do you know what I"ve done, Phil?"
"What?" demanded Philip.
The doctor came down to the last step.