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Show Qj THE RIVER of SKULLS iSfe"" h George Marsh T yHig0 (f PENN PUBLISHING CO. I WNU SFRV1CB With them in the hospital were two men of their own battalion, who had enlisted under the names of Maddock and Sanford. They manifested man-ifested marked curiosity in the whis-pered whis-pered conversation of the two friends. One day, as John and Aleck Al-eck were comparing Aleck's sketch with a map of Labrador they had obtained from London, they looked up to find Jim Maddock (now calling call-ing himself McQueen), who had noiselessly approached on slippered feet, staring over their shoulders. "What did you do?" demanded the indignant Alan. "What could we do in a hospital, except send him about his business?" busi-ness?" "So that's where Mr. McQueen comes In, eh?" "Yes, he and his partner, Sanford, San-ford, known as Slade." "And they've followed you like wolves ever since!" "And I'm going to give them what wolves deserve," McCord laughed. Alan sat with chin In his cupped hands while McCord resumed his narrative. From time to time this man Maddock Mad-dock had caught fragments of their conversation and now, with the evidence evi-dence of the sketch and map, knew that the two friends were concerned with a gold strike in Labrador. From then on, he had hounded them cache on the headwaters. Beside our own food, four big dogs will need a lot of grub." "Right again." John McCord smiled into Alan's questioning eyes. "But let me finish my story first before we go into the future." When he had decided on how he would try to reach the River of Skulls and keep his secret, McCord had worked a number of years in the lumber business and the Rouyn quartz mines to make enough money mon-ey to finance his expedition. Finding Find-ing no suitable white men who would undertake the gamble with him he, at last, decided to hire Indian In-dian voyageurs from Ontario, withholding with-holding the real purpose of his venture ven-ture until they found the Koksoak. But there was Heather. For months, deaf to his arguments and entreaties, the girl who had often joined him on his prospecting trips into the northern bush had grown tall and strong, able to handle rifle, canoe and dogs as well as a boy. She had insisted on going with him. The death of his mother decided it Wrong as it seemed, he preferred subjecting her to the dangers involved in-volved in the search for the River of Skulls to leaving her without protection pro-tection in the hands of her mother. So, in the previous summer, John McCord had started from Rupert House with Heather and his crew of Ojibways to find the headwaters of t SYNOPSIS "voting trapper. Noel, Cner a"d Rough, husky f look in vain fof the I - Uppers' camp 1" the deso-"'""Sry deso-"'""Sry of Northern cart- . RVernes destroyed by wol-i wol-i l WP forced to subsist on ""C house in the wilderness v where they are greeted "f man with i un. Intro-i Intro-i John McCord. hunter. ! Alan he dares f ,nrt 'ear t the Kiver of Skulls IB Jin Lakes, where no man :SS Tbeen before. Heather daughter, who had come 1 the wilderness, wins the tfon Rough- O" the fZure for Fort George. rJtiS tells him to bring him i and to keep his mouth ;;2on, He gives the boy S Mm not to show it at JTind promises to explain all tswed to Fort George Alan Sen and Slade. Provincial 2 Arsene Rivard. clerk, and al for Berthe Dessane, with Tin love. The two police are , ruide to the Big River wil-.Accidentally wil-.Accidentally Alan drops one of , bills snd when questioned In-'Jd In-'Jd got It from Neil Campbell, . River two years before. He ffimake good his lie by .rth ind seeing Campbell before (He has had a chance to talk to fcrthe's h"ther te"5 AIan tne , ifter s man wanted for mural mur-al bjve hired a boat to check on it Whale River. Alan beats a to Whale Island, en route to Iri to get his dogs. Alan report re-port George. Another govern-at, govern-at, s seductive Mrs. Hanbury, wplne, tries to bargain with tdl her the whereabouts of Mc-id Mc-id his daughter. The only out-s out-s Berthe's Jealousy. Miserable ierthe'l coolness, Alan suspects i poisoning her mind. When 0 islu Alan when they start Aim igrees saying they will ii non as they can be prepared, in rood-by to Berthe. Alan and fueen, Slade, Trudeau and Goy-it Goy-it the long Journey to the Three junction of the Mad, Conjuror iliiil Rivers, all of which Mc- jilmds to cover In his search, it decides on the Mad first, Alan is that Its headwaters are the : hideout, and plots with Noel to 1 McQueen and Slade, and head io Talking River to warn McCord. ':n, Alan is warmly welcomed M md Heather, but tells John 3 of the search for him for mur-KcCord mur-KcCord tells his story, identify-s identify-s Hanbury as his runaway wife. a and Slade as former Army who know of his secret map of ter of Skulls country, left him army buddy. 1 September dusk settled on the river valley and Rough had his supper, sup-per, he followed Heather into the cabin and, while she ate, lay on Uie floor at her feet. Suddenly the husky raised his head, his ears pointed and nostrils working. "What is it, Rough a wolf come to call on us?" The dog stalked on stiff legs to the door, his back hair rising, and sniffed through the crack at the bottom, bot-tom, then sucked his breath in a low snarl. "Why, what can it be!" exclaimed the girl, standing in the middle of the room listening. At dusk she had dropped the heavy cross slab of birch which made the door secure, se-cure, into its seats on each of the door Jambs. With a step she reached the gun-rack, drew her 38 revolver from its holster and slipped it into the hip pocket of her whipcords. whip-cords. Then she seized her 30-30 carbine, cocked it, and stood beside the uneasy dog. Presently the husky flew into a veritable frenzy. Hair bristling, he scratched frantically at the door sill, voicing his anger with snarls of rage. "Roughy, Roughy, what Is it, boy?" she whispered. "I can't open the door. Rough! I don't dare! What's there, boy?" Shortly, above the dog's growls, rose a voice outside the cabin. "Kekway! Kekway!" Heather froze where she stood grasping her rifle. Indians! It was the Montagnais salutation to friends or strangers. "Were they McQueen's men? Did they know she was alone with Rough? What should she do? Again came the call: "Kekway! 'alio!" Then Heather got control of her nerves. These men had come in the night to a camp. By the law of the north, from Labrador to Alaska, they would be welcomed and fed, if they were hungry. She must tie Rough up, open the door and see what they wanted. Fairly dragging the reluctant husky from the door, she secured him to the spruce upright of the bunk with a heavy rawhide, then lifted the cross bar and. opened the door, still holding her cocked rifle. "Kekway!" she called as the faint light from the single candle illuminated illumi-nated the doorway. From the gloom of the clearing came the reply: "You tie husky?" "Yes, he's tied up! Who are you?" Heather demanded in the calmest tones she could muster. "Hunter from Conjur' Riviere!" came the reply in the unmistakable voice of an Indian. "We roll cano' een rapide lose all meat we shoot. Water spoil flour." Two blurred figures emerged from the murk of the clearing to stand in the doorway where the suspicious girl nervously fingered the trigger of her 30-30. Inside, the angry Rough filled the room with his snarls. "Where's your canoe your camp?" she asked, doubtful of this story of a capsize in the rapids above the camp. "We save cano' an' mak' fire on de shore, here. Den we fin' path. Eet was dark we not see eet, before." be-fore." The light from the door lit the swart faces of the Montagnais as they stared in amazement at the tall, blonde haired girl In men's breeches holding the rifle. She had seen many Indians but there was something in the mink-like eyes of these men she did not like. From the Conjuror River, they said. This meant nothing to the girl whose heart beat with apprehension. Why had her father left her alone! (TO BE COXT1WED) IIPTER Vll-Continued -10 Mowing year the supply ship t company brought Aleck .ood to Fort Chimo. There 'Med him he would never J mythical River of Skulls lie did, he would starve belt be-lt couldn't hunt for gold and t at the same time. And he'd ' Snd the deer, or starve. But bad reached the River of and he had found gold, and starved. I "mean to tell me that he 3d tracked hundreds of miles interior, found gold and got Chimo before the ice!" de-,1 de-,1 the doubtful Alan, thrilled the Koksoak and the gold sands of the River of Skulls. "Do you understand, now, why I wanted you for my partner?" demanded de-manded the giant Alan sat, brows furrowed In thought Then he asked: "How did you got away without McQueen finding find-ing out that you'd come by Hudson's Hud-son's Bay?" "You see I fooled them. They knew that I hadn't arranged to sail, last summer, on either the Hudson's Bay Company's or the Revillon Freres' supply ship that stops at Chimo and they heard that I was in the Hurrinanaw bush with Heather, prospecting. I took good care that they would hear it. It couldn't have been until some time in the winter that they learned that we had gone to Moose and in from Rupert House. Knowing that I was somewhere some-where in this big headwater country, coun-try, they came to Fort George to get Indian guides. And then they ran into you. As police they could command any kind of aid, so they carried forged papers. Later, she followed them by plane to help them, but, if I know her, to keep an eye on them as well." "They might not be here now, if I hadn't dropped that bill." "Yes, they would! They know where we're headed and this is the way there." McCord's eyes suddenly sudden-ly went hard and cold as he said, bitterly: "Now it's war to the knife, Alan! I've worked years to get here and if Jim McQueen and his pair of half-breeds try to follow us to the Koksoak to steal our gold, I'll wipe them out as I would vermin." After a long interval, McCord asked: "Crazy am I? If you've changed your mind Alan it's pretty pret-ty wild, I know this plan of mine why-" Alan looked sharply at the other. He rose, thrust out his hand and gripped the one that met his. "The River of Skulls or bust!" he cried. '''But we ought to send Heather back to Fort George, John, before we start inland!" McCord slowly shook his head. "It would break her heart." Leaving Rough with Heather, Alan and John took the puppies and dropped downstream to meet Noel at the Forks and bring his heavy cargo up the strong water of the Talking. When the sudden chill of the early "He must have had a streak of luck with the deer." with his curiosity. The last week of McCord's stay in the hospital Aleck Drummond had had a secondary operation op-eration from which he died. Before he became unconscious he gave McCord Mc-Cord bis sketch map and his blessing. bless-ing. "So that's how you happen to be on the Talking River?" "Yes." "You decided to go in from the headwaters of the Koksoak if you could And them?" "Yes." "Did McQueen know that Drummond Drum-mond went in from Chimo?" "He overheard Drummond speak of Chimo and told me so." "But we may starve before we find the headwaters of the Koksoak." Kok-soak." "Let me finish my story; then we can go into "that," said McCord, knocking his pipe out on his moccasin moc-casin and going on with his narrative. narra-tive. On their return to Canada after the war, McQueen had hunted him up and made repeated overtures to be taken as a partner on the expedition expe-dition he knew McCord contemplated, contemplat-ed, and was refused. Following this, McCord's wife, who had deserted him, suddenly appeared at his mother's moth-er's home in his absence and manifested mani-fested great interest in Heather. "licipation of what was com- ' K you'd known Aleck you'd at he was one of the few 50 could have done it." must have had a streak of ,Ji the deer." ji And he had a streak of ;;ting the River of Skulls. 4 at first," went on McCord, wouldn't find the river. He "jwnl but finally followed 31 clay and rusty quartz :'er and came to an alluvial ' orge. The river was m and gravel bars and he ; !me skulls and bones. Then work panning the bars .tnch. Late in Septem-snow Septem-snow was falling and "toes frozen, he worked Jlbe 0W t gorge, and uld have it part of the jWwn crossed below him. meat for his trip to e dlhe djdn,t show at the IT and nuggets he had i cbags and he wouJd found the river. An mm 1? which delflyed rwdSn'S Bay saved iri m lng at dimo and 'treal. Then, before ih?imen with the back- tJ7 ing back a for-War for-War broke out." w!1 and nugEets did anedbtrhing back with lie ml ,toe excited Cm-ScCorS Cm-ScCorS nty surrouding as clearing. Amm "l0"53 dollars' 0Wfr a few weeks' pan- !Wofth kalot of heavy ;,45SthSand-bars- And ;iCl , SUrface" The frl Pea quartz vei ' mUe above, for cen- En? his story " & their . P'Pe' :-CthT h:,d studied h sKlhe fcUer had 'mie y """h the H'ne af'a,,s for the long eavawi:htir return. Suspicious, he learned that his wife had been seen in a car with McQueen Mc-Queen on the day she saw Heather. They had Joined forces to watch his movements and it was evident that if John McCord boarded the supply ship of the Hudson's Bay Company or of the Revillon Freres, bound for Chimo and the River of Skulls, he would find McQueen a fellow passenger. But he had no intention of going to Chimo and having his secret shortly known to the world. The strike was a bonanza. The short working season of one summer would hardly touch the placer gold in those sand-bars. So McCord decided de-cided to avoid Fort Chimo and attempt at-tempt to establish a base somewhere some-where on the headwaters of the great river, where they could renew their supplies from the East Coast of Hudson's Bay and pretend to c&rry on a trade with the Indians. "Well, John," broke in Alan, shaking shak-ing his head doubtfully, "I must admit ad-mit that you're a cool one. Where do you plan to winter if we locate this River of Skulls and collect some dust? At this cache on the headwaters?" head-waters?" "Exactly, or return here, if we can make it." "Then we'll have to come back over the ice with the dogs. That means, unless we strike the caribou as Drummond did. in September, we'll starve before we reach the |
