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Show jj By SDISOJ MAESiIAMj j J - - . . . -. 9 CHAPTER I. Continued. 1G Into ii little- hollow in i i - bark, on flie underside (if Hit! lo'.;, some hand had thrust ii .small roll of papers. They were rain-snaked now, him! the Inl; hail ilimiiii'il ami blotted: hut I ;i n realized their significance. They u entile en-tile complete evidence that I lililivth hall accumulated against the arson ring letters that had passed had; and forth helwi't'ii himself ami Cranston. threat of ninnler from the former if llildrelh turni'il stale's evidence, and ii .sinned statement of the arson activities activ-ities of the rim,' by llildrelh himself. . T Copyright. by Little, Brown & Co. "lie didn't look like no lunger to me " "Hut no matter about that it's just as I thought. And I'll get 'em back mark my little words." In the meantime the best thing to do was to move at once to his winter trapping grounds a certain neglected region on the lower levels of the North Fork. If at any time within the next few weeks, Man should attempt" to carry word down to the settlements, he would he certain to pass within view of his camp. lint he knew that the chance of Dan starting upon any such journey before the snow had melted was uot one in a thousand. To he caught in the Divide in the winter means to be snowed in as completely ns tl:e Innuits of upper Greenland. No word could pass except by man on snowshoes. Yet if the chance did come, if the house should be left unguarded, it might pay Cranston to make an immediate im-mediate search. Dan would have no reason for supposing that Cranston, suspected his possession of the letters'; let-ters'; he would not be particularly watchful, and would probably pigeonhole pigeon-hole them until spring in Lennox's d&sk. And the truth was that Cranston had reasoned out the situation almost perfectly. When Dan awakened In the morning, and the snow lay already a foot deep over the wilderness world, he knew that he would have no chance to act upon the Cranston case until the snows melted in the spring. So he pushed all thought of it out of his mind and turned his attention to more pleasant subjects. It was true that he read the documents over twice as he lay in bed. Then he tied them ftito a neat packet and put them away where they would be quickly available. Then he thrust his head out of the window and let the great snowflakes sift down upon his face. It was winter at last, the season that he loved. He didn't stir from the house that first day of the storm. Snowbird and he found plenty of pleasant things to do and talk about before the roaring fire that he built in the grate. He was glad of the great pile of wood that lay outside the door. It meant life itself, it-self, in this season. Then Snowbird led him to the windows, and they watched the white drifts pile up over the low underbrush. When finally the snowstorm ceased, five days later, the whole face of the wilderness was changed. The buck-brush buck-brush was mostly covered, the fences were out of sight ; the forest seemed a clear, clean sweep of white, broken only by an occasional tall thicket and by the great, snow-covered trees. When the clouds blew away, and the air grew clear, the temperature began to fall. Dan haci no way of knowing how low it went. Thermometers Thermome-ters were not considered essential at the Lennox home. But when his eyelids eye-lids congealed with the frost, and his snows had started, anil .Tim Gibbs had returned empty-handed, but evidently not i -ii 1 1 t y-uiiuded. "I've I'oiiml ibat the body's been uncovered- iiml men are already search-in' search-in' for clues. And moreover I think they've found iheia." He paused, weighing the effect of bis words. His eyes glittered with cunning. Hat that be was. he was wondering whether the time had arrived to leave the ship. He had no intention of continuing to give his services to a man with a rope-noose rope-noose closing about him. And Cranston. Crans-ton. Knowing this fact, fluted him as he baled the buzzard that would claim him in the end, and tried to hide his apprehension. "Go on. Hlat It out," Cranston ordered. or-dered. "Or else go away and let me sleep." It was a bluff; but it worked. If Gibbs had gone without speaking, Cranston would have known no sleep that night. Hut the man became more fawning. "I'm tellin' you, fast as I can," he went on, almost whining.,, "I went to the cabin, just as you said. But I didn't get a chance to search it " "Why not?" Cranston thundered. His voice re-echoed among the snow-wet snow-wet pines. "I'll tell you why! Because some, one else evidently a cop was already al-ready searchln' it. Both of us know there's nothln' there, anyway. We've gone over it too many times. After a while he went away but I didn't turn back yet. That wouldn't be Jim Gibbs. I shadowed him, just as you'd want me to. And he went straight back to the body." "Yes?" Cranston had ' hard work curbing his Impatience. Again Gibbs' eyes were, full of ominous speculations. specula-tions. "He slopped at the body, and it was plain he'd been there before. He went crawling through the thickets, lookin' for clues. He done what you and me never thought to do lookin' all the way between the trail and the body. He'd already found the brass shell you told me to get. At least, it wasn't there when I looked, after he'd gone. You should've thought of it before. But he found somethin' else a whole lot more important a roll of papers that Ilildreth had chucked into an old pine stump when he was dyin'. It was your fault, Cranston, for not gettin' them that night. Vhis detective stood and read 'em on the trail. And you know just as well as I do what they were." "D n you, I went back the next morningas soon as I could see. And the mountain lion had already been there. 1 went back lots of times since. And that shell ain't nothing but all the time I supposed I put it in my pocket. You know how it is a fellow throws his empty shell out by habit." Gibbs' eyes grew more intent. What was this thing? Cranston's tone, instead in-stead of commanding, was almost pleading. But the leader caught himself him-self at once. "I don't see why I need to explain any of that to you. What I want to know is this : why you didn't shoot and get those papers away from him?" For an instant their eyes battled. But Gibbs had never the strength of his leader. If he had. it would have been asserted long since. He sucked in his breath, and his gaze fell away. It rested on Cranston's rifle, that in some manner had been pulled up across his knees. And at once he was cowed. He was never so fast with a gun as Cranston. "Blood on my hands, ell same as on yours?" he mumbled, looking down. "What do you think I want, a rope around my neck? These hills are big. but the arm of the law has reached up before, and it might again. You might as well know first as last I'm not goin' to(do any kiliin's to cover up your murders." "That comes of not going myself. You fool if he gets that evidence down to the courts you're broken the same as me." "But I wouldn't get more'n a year or so, at most and that's a heap different dif-ferent from the gallows. I did aim at him " "But you just lacked the guts to pull the trigger '." "I did, and I ain't ashamed of it. But besides the snows are here now. and he won't be able to even get word to the valleys for six months. If you want him killed so bad, do it yourself." your-self." This was a thougnt indeej. On the other hand, another murder might not he necessary. Months would pass before be-fore the road would be opened, and in the meantime Cranston would have a thousand chances to steal hack the accusing letters. He didn't believe for an instant that the man Gibbs had seen was a detective. He had kep' too close watch over the roads t'o. that. "A tall chap, In outing clothes dark-haired and clean-shaven?" "Yes?" "Wears a tan hat?" "That's the man." "I know him and I wish you'd punctured him. That's Failing the tenderfoot that's been staying at Lennox's. Len-nox's. He's a lunger." Some Hand Had Thrust a Small Roll of Paper. They were not only enough to break lip the ring and send its members to prison ; with the aid of the empty shell and other circumstantial evidence, they could iu all probability convict Bert Cranston of murder. For a long time he stood with the shadows of the pines lengthening about him, his gray eyes in curious shadow, for the moment a glimpse was given him Into the deep wells of the human soul ; and understanding came to him. Was there no balm for hatred even in the moment of death? Were men unable to forget, the themes and motives of their lives, even when the shadows closed down upon them? Ilildreth had known what hand had struck him down. And even on the frontier of death, his first thought was to hide -his evidence where Cranston could not find it when he searched the body, but where later it might be found by the detectives that were sure to come. It was the old creed of n life for a life. He wanted his evidence to be preserved not that right should be wronged, but ' so that Cranston would be prosecuted and convicted and made to suffer. His hatred of Cranston that had made him turn state's evidence in the first place had been carried with him down into death. As Dan stood wondering, he thought be beard a twig crack oh the trail behind, be-hind, him, and he wondered what forest for-est creature was still lingering on the ridges at the eve of the snows. The snow began to fall in earnest at 'midnight great, white flakes that almost al-most in an instant covered the leaves. It was the real beginning of winter, and all living creatures knew it. The rt'olf pack sang to it from the ridge a wild and plaintive sung that made Bert Cranston, sleeping in a lean-to on the I'mpqua side of the Divide, twoar and mutter in his sleep. But he didn't really waken until Jim Gibbs, one of his gang, returned from his secret mission. They wasted no words. Bert flung aside the blankets, lighted a candle end placed It out of the reach of the night wind. His face looked swarthy and deep-lined in its light. "Well?" he demanded. "What did you find?" "Nothin'," Jim Gibbs answered gut-tuntlly. gut-tuntlly. "If yoti ask me what I found out, I might have somethin' to answer." an-swer." 'Then " and Bert, after the manner man-ner of his kind, breathed an oatli "What did you find out?" ills tone, except for an added note of savagery, remained the same. Ye: his heart was thumping a great deal louder than he liked to have it. Reading Read-ing that the snows were at hand, he had sent Gibbs for a last search of the body, to find and recover the evidence evi-dence that Ilildreth had against him urid wh.ch had not been revealed either mi Hildreth's person or in ins cabin, lie had become increasingly apprehensive appre-hensive about those letters be had written Ilildreth, and certain other documents that had been in his pos-resslon. pos-resslon. He didn't understand why Uu:y Liido't turned up. And now tf.e sin j "You Just Lacked the Guts to Pull the j Trigger." ! mittens froze to the logs of firewood that he carried through the door, and the pine trees exploded and cracked in the darkness, he was correct in his belief that it was very, very cold. But he loved the cold, and the silence si-lence and austerity that went with it. The wilderness claimed him as never before. The tagged breed that were his ancestors had struggled through such seasons as this and passed a love of them down through the years to him. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |
