The Lady of North Star

CHAPTER I

THE END OF A TRAIL

THERE was a smell of burning spruce in the sharp air, and Corporal Bracknell, of the North-west Mounted Police, threw back his head and sniffed it gratefully. His team of dogs had been conscious of it for some time, and now, quickening the pace, they broke into joyous yelps as they turned inward towards the Saskatoon bushes on the left bank of the frozen river. The corporal smiled to himself.

“They’re wise dogs,” he muttered, “but not wise enough to know the trail’s end. I wonder if I shall find the man here.”

He followed the well-marked track towards the bank. The aromatic smell of the spruce grew stronger, but there was nothing to be seen save the shadowy woods, and the packed sled-road between. The road had been cut through the trees, and here and there a stump bearing the mark of the ax protruded above the snow. For perhaps three hundred yards it ran in a bee-line between the tall trunks, and then turned abruptly to the right. He reached the turning, and looked about him curiously. The road still continued, but the end of it was not in sight, for again it turned, as it seemed to him into the very heart of the forest.

“There’s a house or encampment somewhere about,” he said to himself, “but – ”

He broke off abruptly as something caught his eye. It was a new-marked sled-trail debouching from the main track, and he stooped to examine it carefully. When he straightened himself there was an eager light in his eye, and curbing his impatient dogs he stood considering for a full two minutes.

“He may have a shack here,” so his thoughts ran, “but if there’s more than that, why this broad road?”

He considered the avenue made by the sombre pinewoods on each side of the road, and then shook his head. “Too much style for Koona Dick. There must be a homestead somewhere about, but if those are not the marks of his sled-runners I’m a dutchman.”

He spoke a word or two to his well-trained dogs, and slipping off his snowshoes turned towards the trail which led into the wood, and began to follow it carefully. As he walked, he unbuttoned the pistol-holster at his waist, and gripped the handle of the weapon in preparation for action. The man whose trail he believed that he was following was not given to being over-scrupulous. He had pursued him for nearly four hundred miles, and now that the end of the chase was in sight, it behoved him to be cautious, for if Koona Dick suspected his presence his resentment of it might even go to the extreme length of a rifle bullet. He left the trail, and began to move cautiously from tree to tree.

The short Northland day was almost over. Dusk was coming on apace, and the gloom under the trees deepened, little misgivings awake in his mind.

Was it wise to follow the track into the heart of the wood? His dogs were good dogs, but —

The sudden sharp crash of a rifle echoed through the stillness, followed immediately by a second, and that by the sharp cry of a woman assailed by mortal terror, and then there came the quick yelp of dogs. He turned in his tracks and began to run back under the trees.

How long it was before he reached the main trail he never knew, but never in his life had he run so fast before. Fear was pounding at his heart. His dogs? If they were gone —

He reached the edge of the wood to find them still where he had left them, and his relief found expression in a quick “Thank God!” He looked round him, up and down the road and into the dark woods on either hand. There was nothing to be seen, and the coming of night had already shortened the range of vision. He stood listening intently. No sound broke the awful silence that had followed the shots and the curdling cry of fear. His hand, resting on the gee-pole of the sled, shook a little.

“It was a woman,” he whispered, “a white woman, at that. There’s some infernal mystery about. I wonder if Koona Dick – ”

He did not finish the thought. Setting his face to the turn in the road, he gave the dogs the word and they moved forward. Somewhere at the end of the road there was a human habitation. Of that he was convinced. He would find it, and perhaps at the same time find Koona Dick and the solution of that mysterious cry which had so suddenly startled the silent woods.

But he was not destined to reach the end of the road without further adventure. As he reached the turn he became aware of a narrow road on the left hand cut at right angles from the main track, and as he looked down it, saw a shadowy figure moving swiftly between the trees straight towards him. Against the fading light and the white background of snow he made out the form of a woman, and instantly halted his dogs with the intention of speaking to her. She was perhaps five and twenty yards away when he first saw her, and the distance between them she covered at a run, approaching him apparently without seeing him. Her line of progression brought her within four yards of the place where he stood waiting in the shadow of a giant spruce. Still she did not see him, and he was about to make his presence known, when the sight of her face checked him.

It was a young face, and beautiful, but as he saw it, it was a picture of incarnate terror. The eyes were staring as in horror. There was a stony look about the cameo-like features, and he caught the gasping intake of breath as she passed him. He had seen terror in feminine faces before, once when a drunken half-breed had lifted a knife to slay, and once on the face of an Indian girl, swept towards the White Horse Rapids on the Yukon in a frail canoe, and he had no doubt whatever as to the emotion which found expression in that stonily beautiful face. The girl was badly frightened. He was quite certain of that, and the fact of her passing both himself and his team without observing them was further evidence that she was in great stress of mind. As she hurried by something in her hand caught his eye. It was a rifle carried at the trail.

For a moment he stood there undecided what to do. Once he made as if to follow the girl, and then checking himself again, stood considering. Those two shots which he had heard – what did they mean? They had sounded quite close, and now there came this girl, clearly badly frightened, carrying a rifle and hurrying from the wood. He looked up the narrow path between the gloomy pines, his trained mind and his instincts working together. Something had occurred in the wood, something tragical, or it had not brought that look on the girl’s face. What was it?

Tired as he was with the day’s travel, and certain though he was of the nearness of some house of rest, he could not leave the problem unsolved. For the moment he even forgot Koona Dick, and again leaving his dogs he turned into the path from which the girl had emerged. He moved cautiously, with the service pistol in his hand. He did not know what to expect, and he was not inclined to be caught unprepared. Once, as he walked in the darkness of the trees, he paused, and throwing back the ear-flaps of his fur-cap, stood listening. No sound reached him, though a moment before he had caught a noise which had seemed like the snapping of a dry twig. Thinking he must have been mistaken, he resumed his way. As he did so, a shadowy form behind him slid from one tree trunk to another; and as he progressed the form in the wood followed, evidently stalking him.

Corporal Bracknell, however, remained unconscious of the shadow, and moving quickly but silently on his way, came suddenly upon something which brought him to an abrupt halt. In the snow not three yards from where he stood lay the huddled form of a man. For a moment he stared at it as if fascinated, and as the man did not move, when the moment had passed he stepped swiftly forward, and bent over the inanimate form. The man was lying on his side, and a dark stain in the snow the corporal divined was blood. Apparently the man was dead, and as it was now too dark to see his face, the corporal felt in his pouch and produced a tin box of sulphur matches. Striking one, he waited until the sulphur had finished spluttering, and when the wood was fairly alight, he bent over the prostrate form, shading the match with his hands so as to throw the light upon the man’s face. Then suddenly he dropped the match and stood upright.

“Koona Dick!” he muttered, and then whistled softly to himself.

He struck another match and looked again in order to make sure. As for the second time the flickering light fell on the face in the snow, every doubt vanished. The man who was lying there was the man whom he had followed for four hundred miles through the waste, the man whom he had hoped to make his prisoner, but who now, if appearances were to be trusted, had finally escaped him. Dropping the match as it burned towards the end, he thrust his hand inside the man’s fur parka to feel if the heart were beating. He could detect no movement, and as he withdrew the hand, he stood upright, and as he considered question after question went through his mind at the gallop.

Who had killed Koona Dick? The girl whom he had met with that look of frozen terror on her face? Who was she? Had she shot the man lying at his feet? Why had she done so? Where did she live? As the last question shot in his mind he knew that the answer to it was in his grasp. He had seen the direction she had followed, and he guessed that whatever homestead lay at the end of that road cut through the forest would be her dwelling place. As this conviction surged into his mind the whining of his dogs came to his ears. They were evidently growing restless, and since he could do nothing by lingering there, after one glance at the still form lying in the snow, he swung on his heel, and made all speed back to where his team awaited him. They yelped with delight as he appeared, and when he gave the word, bounded impatiently forward along the well-beaten track.

Four minutes later, a turn in the road unexpectedly brought into view the homestead that he was seeking. It was set in the midst of a large clearing, and from its outline in the darkness was of considerable proportions for a Northland lodge. Lights shone in three of the windows, and just as he reached the wooden fence which ran round the house, a door opened, and a light within streaming through outlined the form of a man in the act of entering.

Corporal Bracknell shouted to him, and the man turned round and peered into the darkness, then he rested something against the wooden wall of the passage, shut the door, and moved towards the policeman.

“Who are you?” he asked, as he came nearer.

“Corporal Bracknell – on Dominion service,” replied the policeman.

“Corporal Bracknell?”

As the man echoed the words the corporal caught a puzzled note in his tones, and explained further.

“Yes, of the Mounted Police.”

“Oh, of course! I was not thinking of the Mounted service. I am a stranger in the Nor’-West – ” Bracknell had already divined that such must be the case, but he did not say so. He laughed lightly, and made his wants known.

“I’m on service, and tired. I should be grateful for supper and a bunk if that is possible.”

“It is quite possible, Officer, and Joy – I mean Miss Gargrave will be very glad to oblige you. She is always pleased to play the Good Samaritan.”

As the man spoke the name, the corporal remembered that he had heard it before. It had been borne by an eccentric Englishman, who had been reported enormously wealthy and who had perished rather tragically on the Klondyke, three years before, and the mystery of whose death had never been cleared up, satisfactorily. He knew now where he was.

“This is the North Star Lodge, then?” he inquired.

“Yes!” was the reply. “Will you go in now and attend to your team afterwards, or – ”

“In my service,” laughed Bracknell, “the dogs come first.”

“Very well,” answered the other. “I will wait for you!”

He lit a cigarette and watched the corporal whilst he loosed the dogs from the traces, and fed them with frozen fish. The light from the window fell on his face and showed that he was less interested in the operation than in the man engaged upon it, for never for a moment did his eyes leave the officer, and there was a ruminative look in them, as if he were speculating what manner of man the policeman was. The corporal was quite conscious of the stare, but gave no sign of it, though once or twice as he moved about, he flashed a glance at the stranger, endeavouring in his turn to take the other’s measure. When he had finished his task he turned to him.

“I am ready now.”

“So am I,” laughed the man; “it is cold waiting about.”

He threw his cigarette away, and moved towards the door of the house. Corporal Bracknell followed him, and as the door opened his guide stumbled over something which fell with a clatter on the pinewood floor.

The man stooped and picked it up.

“My rifle,” he explained. “I had forgotten it was there. I rested it against the wall when you hailed me.”

The corporal nodded, but made no remark. His thoughts were engaged with Koona Bill lying out there under the shadow of the pines, and he was wondering what the meeting with Joy Gargrave would be like, guessing as he did that she must be the girl who had passed him out in the wood. His companion conducted him to a room that for the Northland was positively luxurious, and waved him a chair near the stove.

“You will like to change your socks and moccasins,” he said politely. “I will go and inform Miss Gargrave, and return for you in ten minutes or so. It should be almost dinner time.”

Corporal Bracknell nodded, and when the man had departed looked round the room with some curiosity. Nowhere in the wild region where his work was done was there another such room, he was sure. Even the commandant’s rooms down at the Post were poor beside it. The furniture was of excellent quality. The wall was match-boarded, hiding the outer logs, and there were furs everywhere. Pictures too! Something familiar in one of them caught his eye, and moving towards it he saw that it was a photograph of Newham College, Cambridge.

He stood looking at it, whistling softly to himself. He himself had been at Caius, and having a sister at Newham, had once or twice had tea in its precincts. He wondered what the picture was doing here in this lodge in the northern wilderness, and he was still wondering when a gong sounded. Hastily he began to change his socks, and the operation was scarcely completed, when the man who had introduced him to the house appeared.

“Ready, Corporal?”

“Almost,” he replied, and half a minute later stood up and nodded.

“This way,” said the other laconically, and led the way out of the room and across the wide passage. The policeman was prepared for surprises, but the appearance of the room into which he entered almost took his breath away. Except for the roaring Yukon stove, and the fur rugs on the polished floor, it was a replica of the typical dining-room of an English country house. The furniture was Jacobean, the table was laid with the whitest napery, and silver and glasses gleamed on its whiteness. He had a quick apprehension of oil-paintings on the wall, of a long-cased clock in the corner, and of two girls standing together near the stove, then his companion’s voice sounded.

“Corporal Bracknell! Miss Gargrave! Miss La Farge.”

He bowed to the two ladies in turn. The second he knew as he glanced at her was of French Canadian extraction, with perhaps a dash of Indian blood in her veins; but the first was a golden-haired English girl, tall, blue-eyed, with face a little bronzed by the open-air, and – the girl who had passed him with her face the index of mortal terror and her rifle at the trail. It was she who spoke in a voice that had the indescribable accent of culture.

“We are pleased to see you, Corporal Bracknell. No doubt, if you have been long on the trail, you will be ready for dinner.”

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

FEELING like a man in a dream, the corporal took his seat at the table, and when the soup was served by an Indian youth, he was too much amazed to attempt conversation. Miss Gargrave looked at him and casually asked, “You have never been to North Star before, Mr. Bracknell?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I am new to this district. I was transferred from Edmonton four months ago.”

“Then you did not know of our existence?”

The corporal smiled. “I had heard something of it; but the truth is I had forgotten all about it.”

The girl nodded. “I can understand that. We are so far out of the track of things that it is easy for the world to forget us.”

Bracknell would have liked to ask why such as she should continue to live in the wilderness; but he repressed his curiosity, and looking round smiled again.

“Your solitude is not without its amenities. I did not think there was such a room as this anywhere in the north. It reminds one of home!”

“You are English, of course?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “I come from Kendal, in Westmorland.”

“Kendal?” There was an accent of surprise in her voice.

“You know Kendal?” he inquired quickly.

“Yes,” she answered. “I have stayed in the neighbourhood. Are you any relation of Sir James Bracknell of Harrowfell?”

“My uncle and guardian,” he smilingly replied.

Joy Gargrave looked at him thoughtfully. “I have met your uncle,” she said slowly. “I should scarcely have looked for his nephew in the Mounted Police.”

“Why not?” he demanded, with a laugh. “The Force is a packet of surprises. My sergeant at Edmonton was the heir to an Irish peerage, and I know a trooper down at Alberta who is the second son of a marquis.”

“But Sir James!” she murmured. “He did not seem to me the sort of man who would approve – ”

“He does not know,” interrupted the corporal.

“It is very likely that he would not approve if he did. But that does not greatly matter; as before I came out here we quarrelled, and the relations between us are likely to continue strained.”

“Is it permissible to ask the cause of this quarrel?” inquired the man on the other side of the table, whose name the corporal had not yet learned.

Bracknell frowned at the directness of the question and was about to administer a snub, when he caught Miss Gargrave’s eyes fixed upon him expectantly. He laughed shortly as he replied, “Well, Mr. – ar – ”

“Rayner is my name,” said the other. “I forgot I had not introduced myself.”

The corporal nodded. “I was about to say, Mr. Rayner, that it is a private matter; but there can be no harm in saying that my uncle had a matrimonial scheme for me of which I did not approve, so here I am.”

He laughed to hide his embarrassment of which he was conscious, and looked at Miss Gargrave to whom the explanation had really been offered. There was a thoughtful look upon her face.

“Sir James is rather dictatorial,” she said, and then turned the conversation. “Do you like the service?”

“Yes,” was the reply, given wholeheartedly. “It is a man’s work, and the open-air life, with all the many hazards of the North, is infinitely preferable to stewing in chambers waiting for briefs; or devilling the K.C. who wants to keep all the crumbs on his own table.”

The girl nodded. “I can understand that,” she commented, and for a moment she sat there crumbling her bread.

The thoughtful look on her face was accentuated. Remembering what he had seen there when she had passed him in the road, the corporal found himself wondering if there was any connection between the two. Then Miss Gargrave spoke again.

“I suppose you are in this neighbourhood on professional business?”

“Yes,” he answered readily enough. “I have been following a man for a month and have trailed him something like four hundred miles.”

“That is a long journey in winter,” said the girl a trifle absently.

Corporal Bracknell smiled. “Nothing to boast of. There have been many longer trails in the Territory by our men. Did you ever hear how Constable Pedley took the lunatic missionary from Fort Chipewayn to Saskatchewan down the Athabasca River in the very depth of winter?”

“Yes,” answered the girl. “That was an epic. The constable lost his own reason in the end, didn’t he?”

Bracknell nodded. “Yes, but he’s better again now; though naturally that experience has set its mark on him. And if I had got my man my return journey would have been much harder than the journey up, as I should have had to look after him; and sleep with one eye open all the time.”

“You speak as if you had lost your man,” said Rayner. “Is that so?”

“Yes, I have lost him finally,” answered the corporal slowly.

“Who was he? What had he done? Was he a very desperate character?” inquired Miss Gargrave, and to the corporal as he turned to her it seemed as if there was a look of troubled expectancy in her face.

“He was an Englishman,” answered Bracknell quietly, his eyes fixed on the beautiful face. “I do not know that he was a particularly desperate character, but he certainly was not scrupulous, and he was suspected of selling whiskey to the Indians in the reservation, which is a serious offence in the Territory.”

“What name?” asked Miss La Farge.

“His proper name I do not know, but he has been known through the North as Koona Dick!”

As he gave the name he saw Joy Gargrave’s face grow white, and the trouble in her eyes was plain. Also, with the tail of his eye, he saw Mr. Rayner start violently, and guessed that both he and his hostess were not unacquainted with the man who lay out there in the snow under the shadow of the pines. For a moment after his reply there was a strained uneasy silence. The corporal removed his eyes from his hostess’s face and glanced round the table. Mr. Rayner was fingering the stem of a wine-glass nervously, whilst Miss La Farge was looking from him to Miss Gargrave with puzzled eyes. Evidently she was conscious that something unusual was taking place, but the corporal was sure that to her the name he had just spoken was without any special significance. That it was known to the other two people present he was certain, and he waited to see what would follow. The sense of strain grew more pronounced, then Mr. Rayner shuffled uneasily and broke the silence.

“I notice, Corporal Bracknell, that you speak of this – er – fellow in the past tense, and you say that he has escaped you finally. Do you mean to say that he is – a – dead?”

“He is lying in the snow in a path cut through the trees off the main road to the Lodge,” answered the corporal steadily, “and he has been shot, I think.”

“Good God!” ejaculated Mr. Rayner, in a voice that, whilst it expressed astonishment, seemed to the corporal to be a little flat. “And we have been sitting here, gassing, whilst – ” He broke off abruptly. “Joy,” he cried addressing Miss Gargrave, “you are ill. The shock of this story – ”

“It is nothing,” interrupted the girl in a shaking voice. “I – I – feel a little faint. If you will excuse me – ” She rose to her feet, staggered a little, and then, as Miss La Farge ran to her, fainted outright. For a moment Corporal Bracknell did not speak, though a look of utmost concern came upon his face. The situation seemed to him to be thronged with dreadful possibilities. Remembering the look on the girl’s face when he had encountered her in the forest road, and the rifle in her hand, he found in this faint further support for the suspicion which had occurred to him when he had stood by the supine body of Koona Dick. Living in the wilds, it was scarcely likely that the news of a dead man would affect her thus, if that news were without special significance for her. Death in the Northland – death sharp and sudden was not so uncommon as all that. Moving accidents by flood and field, by wild beasts and wild men, were part of the general circumstances of wilderness life; why, therefore, should the girl be thus affected by the news that he had uttered? Whilst Mr. Rayner assisted Miss La Farge to carry their hostess out of the room, he stood there, his mind occupied by this momentous question. The answer was one which took the form of a further question and which filled him with concern. Had she killed Koona Dick, with whom, as he was sure, she was acquainted?

Again he saw the beautiful face, the picture of terror and the eyes in their unseeing stare of horror, and wondered what was the meaning of it all. Had the girl seen the body of Koona Dick lying there in the shadow of the pines with his blood staining the snow, and was she merely frightened; or was her knowledge of a more intimate and guilty character? He could not decide, and whilst he was still wondering, the door of the room opened and Rayner entered. His face now was mask-like, and his voice was suave and even as he addressed the officer.