Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police | Page 4

his face grew dark. With a sudden movement he reached
up and took it in his hands, holding it for a moment so that the light
from the fire flashed full upon it. In the left side, on a line with the
eyeless socket and above the ear, was a hole as large as a small egg.
"So I'm ordered up to join Nome, the man who did this, eh?" he
muttered, fingering the ragged edge. "I could kill him for what
happened down there at Nelson House, M'sieur Janette. Some day--I
may."
He balanced the skull on his finger tips, level with his chin.
"Nice sort of a chap for a Hamlet, I am," he went on, whimsically. "I
believe I'll chuck you into the fire, M'sieur Janette. You're getting on
my nerves."
He stopped suddenly and lowered the skull to the table.
"No, I won't burn you," he continued, "I've brought you this far and I'll
pack you up to Lac Bain with me. Some morning I'll give you to Bucky
Nome for breakfast. And then, M'sieur--then we shall see what we shall
see."
Later that night he wrote a few words on a slip of paper and tacked the
paper to the inside of his door. To any who might follow in his
footsteps it conveyed this information and advice:
NOTICE!
This cabin and what's in it are quasheed by me. Fill your gizzard but
not your pockets.
Steele, Northwest Mounted.

Chapter II.
A Face Out Of The Night
Steele came up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Lac Bain on the
seventh day after the big storm, and Breed, the factor, confided two
important bits of information to him while he was thawing out before
the big box-stove in the company's deserted and supply-stripped store.
The first was that a certain Colonel Becker and his wife had left Fort
Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, to make a visit at Lac Bain; the second,
that Buck Nome had gone westward a week before and had not
returned. Breed was worried, not over Nome's prolonged absence, but
over the anticipated arrival of the other two. According to the letter
which had come to him from the Churchill factor. Colonel Becker and
his wife had come over on the last supply ship from London, and the
colonel was a high official in the company's service. Also, he was an
old gentleman. Ostensibly he had no business at Lac Bain, but was
merely on a vacation, and wished to see a bit of real life in the
wilderness.
Breed's grizzled face was miserable.
"Why don't they send 'em down to York Factory or Nelson House?" he
demanded of Steele. "They've got duck feathers, three women, and a
civilized factor at the Nelson, and there ain't any of 'em here--not even
a woman!"
Steele shrugged his shoulders as Breed mentioned the three women at
Nelson.
"There are only two women there now," he replied. "Since a certain
Bucky Nome passed that way, one of them has gone into the South."
"Well, two, then," said Breed, who had not caught the flash of fire in
the other's eyes. "But I tell you there ain't a one here, Steele, not even
an Indian--and that dirty Cree, Jack, is doing the cooking. Blessed
Saints, I caught him mixing biscuit dough in the wash basin the other
day, and I've been eating those biscuits ever since our people went out

to their traplines! There's you, and Nome, two Crees, a 'half' and
myself--and that's every soul there'll be at Lac Bain until the
mid-winter run of fur. Now, what in Heaven's name is the poor old Mrs.
Colonel going to do?"
"Got a bed for her?"
"A bunk--hard as nails!"
"Good grub?"
"Rotten!" groaned the factor. "Every trapper's son of them took out big
supplies this fall and we're stripped. Beans, flour, sugar'n'prunes--and
caribou until I feel like turning inside out every time I smell it. I'd give
a month's commission for a pound of pork. Look here! If this letter ain't
'quality' you can cut me into jiggers. Bet the Mrs. Colonel wrote it for
her hubby."
From an inside pocket Breed drew forth a square white envelope with a
broken seal of red wax, and from it extracted a folded sheet of
cream-tinted paper. Scarcely had Steele taken the note in his hands
when a quick thrill passed through him. Before he had read the first line
he was conscious again of that haunting sweetness in the air he
breathed--the perfume of hyacinth. There was not only this perfume,
but the same paper, the same delicately pretty writing of the letter he
had burned more than a week before. He made no effort to suppress the
exclamation of astonishment that broke from his lips. Breed