The Yukon Trail

by Raine, William MacLeod

  Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had done such a thing. And Sheba—would she accept as true this weight of circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?

  It could all be explained so easily. And yet—the facts fitted like links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals—his purchase of the automatic—his public meeting with two known enemies of the Scotchman, during which he had been seen to give them money—his target practice with the new revolver—the unhappy chance that had taken him out to Seven-Mile Creek Camp the very day of the robbery—his casual questions of the miners—even the finding of the body by him. All of these dovetailed with the hypothesis that his partners in crime were to escape and bear the blame, while he was to bring the body back to town and assume innocence.

  Paget was admitted to his cell later in the morning by Gopher Jones. He shook hands with the prisoner. Jones retired.

  "Tough luck, Gordon," the engineer said.

  "What does Sheba think?" asked the young man quickly.

  "We haven't told her you have been arrested. I heard it only a little while ago."

  "And Diane?"

  "Yes, she knows."

  "Well?" demanded Gordon brusquely.

  Peter looked at him in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she knows the charge is ridiculous."

  The chip dropped from the young man's shoulder. "Good old Diane. I might have known," he said with a new cheerfulness.

  "I think you might have," agreed Peter dryly. "By the way, have you had any breakfast?"

  "No. I'm hungry, come to think of it."

  "I'll have something sent in from the hotel."

  "How's Macdonald?"

  "He's alive—and while there's life there is hope."

  "Any news of the murderers?" asked Gordon.

  "Posses are combing the hills for them. They stole a packhorse from a truck gardener up the valley. It seems they bought an outfit for a month yesterday—said they were going prospecting."

  They talked for a few minutes longer, mainly on the question of a lawyer and the chances of getting out on bond. Peter left the prisoner in very much better spirits than he had found him.

  CHAPTER XVII

  "GOD SAVE YOU KINDLY"

  A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak. They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from the doctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watch between them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The fever of the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervals between had been once or twice quite rational.

  The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Sheba looked at Diane.

  "Will they let us see him, do you think?"

  "Perhaps. We can try."

  Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs. Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.

  The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when he looked up.

  Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"

  "Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.

  His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met a troubled smile, grave and sweet.

  "Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How is Macdonald?"

  "Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."

  Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share. Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naïve, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, heavy wave.

  "We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him," Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."

  "Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough," agreed Elliot.

  "Peter is still trying to get the officers to accept bail, but I don't think he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town against you."

  "Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."

  "Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes it for granted that you are guilty. We'll have to wait in patience till Mr. Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won't let us mention the subject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."

  Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You'll have to go, ladies. Time's up."

  When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the old Irish vernacular. "God save you kindly."

  He knew the peasant's answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."

  The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked at her with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble was a sure passport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were in a sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this new twist of fate.

  Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminine ferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn't do it—that he couldn't do such a thing?"

  "They don't all know as well as you do how noble he is, my dear," answered Diane dryly.

  "But it's just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man he has broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."

  Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin. Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know that Macdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and that their rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty between them.

  "It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.

  Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of the Paget house.

  "Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.

  "Yes. He's quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut of triumph in Wally's cock-sure manner.

  Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence against Gordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The little man always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to rap him over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was a friend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special cause for exultation.

  The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped a hint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicity in the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had been arrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the United States, would go far to neutralize any report he might make against the validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added later reports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it would not matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to the Land Office.

  Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumption that Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted the guilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interest of Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this new development for all it was worth.

  He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating and the loss of blood had sapped al
l the splendid, vital strength of the Scotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white face was bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; only the steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.

  "I want to talk business for a minute, Miss Sedgwick. Will you please step out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.

  She hesitated. "The doctor says—"

  "Do as I say, please."

  The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence against Elliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.

  After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out his programme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, and his brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak of luck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew now that in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake. To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coal claims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudiced hopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He had been in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut of the cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable position to one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidence to show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to the Department would be labor lost.

  Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk. Macdonald smiled feebly at her and fired the first shot of his campaign to defeat the enemy.

  "Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.

  The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."

  "Brought me from where?"

  "From where he found you unconscious—at the ford."

  "That's his story, is it?"

  Macdonald shut his eyes wearily, but his incredulous voice had suggested a world of innuendo.

  The young woman stood with her gloves crushed tight in both hands. It was her nature to be always a partisan. Without any reserve she was for Gordon in this new fight upon him. What had Wally Selfridge been saying to Macdonald? She longed mightily to ask the sick man some questions, but the orders of the doctor were explicit. Did the mine-owner mean to suggest that he had identified Elliot as one of his assailants? The thing was preposterous.

  And yet—that was plainly what he had meant to imply. If he told such a story, things would go hard with Gordon. In court it would clinch the case against him by supplying the one missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.

  Diane, in deep thought, frowned down upon the wounded man, who seemed already to have fallen into a light sleep. She told herself that this was some of Wally Selfridge's deviltry. Anyhow, she would talk it over with Peter.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  GORDON SPENDS A BUSY EVENING

  Paget smoked placidly, but the heart within him was troubled. It looked as if Selfridge had made up his mind to frame Gordon for a prison sentence. The worst of it was that he need not invent any evidence or take any chances. If Macdonald came through on the stand with an identification of Elliot as one of his assailants, the young man would go down the river to serve time. There was enough corroborative testimony to convict St. Peter himself.

  It all rested with Macdonald—and the big Scotch-Canadian was a very uncertain quantity. His whole interests were at one in favor of getting Elliot out of the way. On the other hand—how far would he go to save the Kamatlah claims and to remove this good-looking rival from his path? Peter could not think he would stoop to perjury against an innocent man.

  "I'm just telling you what he said," Diane explained. "And it worried me. His smile was cynical. I couldn't help thinking that if he wants to get even with Gordon—"

  Mrs. Paget stopped. The maid had just brought into the room a visitor. Diane moved forward and shook hands with him. "How do you do, Mr. Strong? Take this big chair."

  Hanford Strong accepted the chair and a cigar. Though a well-to-do mine-owner, he wore as always the rough clothes of a prospector. He came promptly to the object of his call.

  "I don't know whether this is where I should have come or not. Are you folks for young Elliot or are you for Selfridge?" he demanded.

  "If you put it that way, we're for Elliot," smiled Peter.

  "All right. Let me put it another way. You work for Mac. Are you on his side or on Elliot's in this matter of the coal claims?"

  Diane looked at Peter. He took his time to answer.

  "We hope the coal claimants will win, but we've got sense enough to see that Gordon is in here to report the facts. That's what he is paid for. He'll tell the truth as he sees it. If his superior officers decide on those facts against Macdonald, I don't see that Elliot is to blame."

  "That's how it looks to me," agreed Strong. "I'm for a wide-open Alaska, but that don't make it right to put this young fellow through for a crime he didn't do. Lots of folks think he did it. That's all right. I know he didn't. Fact is, I like him. He's square. So I've come to tell you something."

  He smoked for a minute silently before he continued.

  "I've got no evidence in his favor, but I bumped into something a little while ago that didn't look good to me. You know I room next him at the hotel. I heard a noise in his room, and I thought that was funny, seeing as he was locked up in jail. So I kinder listened and heard whispers and the sound of some one moving about. There's a door between his room and mine that is kept locked. I looked through the keyhole, and in Elliot's room there was Wally Selfridge and another man. They were looking through papers at the desk. Wally put a stack of them in his pocket and they went out locking the door behind them."

  "They had no business doing that," burst out Diane. "Wally Selfridge isn't an officer of the law."

  Strong nodded dryly to her. "Just what I thought. So I followed them. They went to Macdonald's offices. After awhile Wally came out and left the other man there. Then presently the lights went out. The man is camped there for the night. Will you tell me why?"

  "Why?" repeated Diane with her sharp eyes on the miner.

  "Because Wally has some papers there he don't want to get away from him."

  "Some of Gordon's papers, of course."

  "You've said it."

  "All his notes and evidence in the case of the coal claims probably," contributed Peter.

  "Maybe. Wally has stole them, but he hasn't nerve enough to burn them till he gets orders from Mac. So he's holding them safe at the office," guessed Strong.

  "It's an outrage," Diane decided promptly.

  "Surest thing you know. Wally has fixed it to frame him for prison and to play safe about his evidence on the coal claims."

  "What are you going to do about it?" Diane asked her husband sharply.

  Peter rose. "First I'm going to see Gordon and hear what he has to say. Come on, Strong. We may be gone quite a while, Diane. Don't wait up for me if you get through your stint of nursing."

  Roused from sleep, Gopher Jones grumbled a good deal about letting the men see his prisoner. "You got all day, ain't you, without traipsing around here nights. Don't you figure I'm entitled to any rest?"

  But he let them into the ramshackle building that served as a jail, and after three dollars had jingled in the palm of his hand he stepped outside and left the men alone with his prisoner. The three put their heads together and whispered.

  "I'll meet you outside the house of Selfridge in half an hour, Strong," was the last thing that Gordon said before Jones came back to order out the visitors.

  As soon as the place was dark again, Gordon set to work on the flimsy framework of his cell window. He knew already it was so decrepit that he could escape any time he desired, but until now there had been no reason why he should. Within a quarter of an hour he lifted the iron-grilled sash bodily from the frame and crawled through the window.

  He found Paget and Strong waiting for him in the shadows of a pine outside the yard
of Selfridge.

  "To begin with, you walk straight home and go to bed, Peter," the young man announced. "You're not in this. You're not invited to our party. I don't have to tell you why, do I?"

  The engineer understood the reason. He was an employee of Macdonald, a man thoroughly trusted by him. Even though Gordon intended only to right a wrong, it was better that Paget should not be a party to it. Reluctantly Peter went home.

  Gordon turned to Strong. "I owe you a lot already. There's no need for you to run a risk of getting into trouble for me. If things break right, I can do what I have to do without help."

  "And if they don't?" Strong waved an impatient hand. "Cut it out, Elliot. I've taken a fancy to go through with this. I never did like Selfridge anyhow, and I ain't got a wife and I don't work for Mac. Why the hell shouldn't I have some fun?"

  Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "All right. Might as well play ball and get things moving, then."

  The little miner knocked at the door. Wally himself opened. Elliot, from the shelter of the pine, saw the two men in talk. Selfridge shut the door and came to the edge of the porch. He gave a gasp and his hands went trembling into the air. The six-gun of the miner had been pressed hard against his fat paunch. Under curt orders he moved down the steps and out of the yard to the tree.

  At sight of Gordon the eyes of Wally stood out in amazement. Little sweat beads burst out on his forehead, for he remembered how busy he had been collecting evidence against this man.

  "W-w-what do you want?" he asked.

  "Got your keys with you?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Come with us."

  Wally breathed more freely. For a moment he had thought this man had come to take summary vengeance on him.

  They led him by alleys and back streets to the office of the Macdonald Yukon Trading Company. Under orders he knocked on the door and called out who he was. Gordon crouched close to the log wall, Strong behind him.

  "Let me in, Olson," ordered Selfridge again.