The Gun-Brand Part 9

The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, while Chloe wrote her letters. He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-laden breeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sun between half-closed lids. Pierre Lapierre was happy.

"Things are coming my way," he muttered. "With a year's stock in that warehouse--and LeFroy to handle it--I guess the Indians won't pick up many bargains--my people!--d.a.m.n them! How I hate them. And as for MacNair--lucky Vermilion thought of painting _his_ name on that booze--I hated to smash it--but it paid. It was the one thing needed to make me solid with _her_. And I've got time to run in another batch if I hurry--got to get those rifles into the loft, too. When MacNair hits, he hits hard."

Chloe appeared at the door with her letters. Lapierre took them, and again bowed low over her hand. This time the girl was sure his lips touched her finger-tips. He released the hand and stepped to the ground.

"Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before I depart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to me at Fort Resolution."

"I will remember. Good-bye--_bon voyage_----"

"_Et prompt retour?_" The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed the question.

"_Et prompt retour--certainement!_" answered the girl as, with a wide sweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward the camp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a short distance above the clearing. As he disappeared in the timber, Chloe felt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, of loneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of the wall of the clearing. She fumed impatiently.

"Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until two weeks ago, and besides, he's--he's an _Indian_! And yet--he's a gentleman. He has been very kind to me--very considerate. He is only a quarter-Indian. Many of the very best families have Indian blood in their veins--even boast of it. I--I'm a _fool_!" she exclaimed, and pa.s.sed quickly into the house.

Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous. The son of a French factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he was sent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course; for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in some profession for which his education fitted him.

But the blood of the North was in his veins. The call of the North lured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of his father, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointed trader and a.s.signed to a post of his own far to the northward.

While the wilderness captivated and entranced him, the humdrum life of a trader wearied him. He longed for excitement--action.

During the several years of his service with the great fur company he a.s.siduously studied conditions, storing up in his mind a fund of information that later was to stand him in good stead. He studied the trade, the Indians, the country. He studied the men of the Mounted, and smugglers, and whiskey-runners, and free-traders. And it was in a brush with these latter that he overstepped the bounds which, under the changed conditions, even the agents of the great Company might not go.

Chafing under the loss of trade by reason of an independent post that had been built upon the sh.o.r.e of his lake some ten miles to the southward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastily summoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents.

Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traders killed, and the other captured and sent upon the _longue traverse_. In some unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hards.h.i.+ps, the man won through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought to book.

The Company stood loyally between its trader and the prison bars; but the old order had changed in the Northland. Young Lapierre's action was condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with a payment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turned free-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., the Indians, and the country, made largely for success.

The life of the free-trader satisfied his longing for travel and adventure, which his life as a post-trader had not. But it did not satisfy his innate craving for excitement. Therefore, he cast about to enlarge his field of activity. He became a whiskey-runner. His profits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling in his _repertoire_, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling upon the ranges along the international boundary.

At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.

Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization--a born leader of men.

He chose his liegemen shrewdly--outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds, trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers, smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves--and these he dominated and ruled absolutely.

Without exception, these men feared him--his authority over them was unquestioned. Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning, and because under his direction they made more money, and made it easier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing a lone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully. And such was his disposition of the men who were the component parts of his system of criminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could, even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would have seriously incriminated the leader.

The men who ran whiskey across the line, _cached_ it. Other men, unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it to the scowmen. The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all they knew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their _cache_, the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it in some inaccessible rendezvous or _cached_ it where still others would come and distribute it among the Indians.

Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader _knew_. And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with each of his various undertakings. Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed the scriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." He confided in no man. And few, indeed, were the defections among his retainers. A few had rebelled, as Vermilion had rebelled--and with like result. The man dismissed from Lapierre's service entered no other.

Moreover, he invariably contrived to implicate one whom he intended to use, in some crime of a graver nature than he would be called upon to commit in the general run of his duties. This crime he would stage in some fastness where its detection by an officer of the Mounted was exceedingly unlikely; and most commonly consisted in the murder of an Indian, whose weighted body would be lowered to the bottom of a convenient lake or river. Lapierre witnesses would appear and the man was irrevocably within the toil. Had he chosen, Pierre Lapierre could have lowered a grappling hook unerringly upon a dozen weighted skeletons.

Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge of murder. If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler, or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was a.s.signed, plans should miscarry--an arrest be made--this man would take his prison sentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with a word could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about his neck.

The system worked. Now and again plans did miscarry--arrests were made by the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested upon evidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute.

But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted his sentence--for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart was the fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.

With such consummate skill and finesse _did_ Lapierre plot, however, and with such Machiavelian cunning and _eclat_ were his plans carried out, that few failed. And those that did were credited by the authorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work of an intricate organization presided over by a master mind.

The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardest characters upon the frontier. Only Lapierre knew its exact strength, but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"--if he, by word or act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice--his life would be worth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to h.e.l.l."

A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre Lapierre--but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few factors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided their time. One man _knew_ him for what he was. One, in all the North, as powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spies in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him. The one man Pierre Lapierre feared--Bob MacNair. And he, too, bided his time.

CHAPTER VIII

A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

As Lapierre made his way to the camp of the Indians he pondered deeply.

For Lapierre was troubled. The fact that MacNair had twice come upon him unexpectedly within the s.p.a.ce of a month caused him grave concern.

He did not know that it was entirely by chance that MacNair had found him, an unwelcome sojourner at Fort Rae. Accusations and recriminations had pa.s.sed between them, with the result that MacNair, rough, bluff, and ready to fight at any time, had pounded the quarter-breed to within an inch of his life, and then, to the undisguised delight of the men of the H.B.C., had dragged him out and pitched him ignominiously into the lake.

Either could have killed the other then and there. But each knew that to have done so, as the result of a personal quarrel, would have been the worst move he could possibly have made. And the forebearance with which MacNair fought and Lapierre suffered was each man's measure of greatness. MacNair went about his business, and to Lapierre came Chenoine with his story of the girl and the plot of Vermilion, and Lapierre, forgetting MacNair for the moment, made a dash for the Slave River.

For years Lapierre and MacNair had been at loggerheads. Each recognized in the other a foe of no mean ability. Each had sworn to drive the other out of the North. And each stood at the head of a powerful organization which could be depended upon to fight to the last gasp when the time came to "lock horns" in the final issue. Both leaders realized that the show-down could not be long delayed--a year, perhaps--two years--it would make no difference. The clash was inevitable. Neither sought to dodge the crisis, nor did either seek to hasten it. But each knew that events were shaping themselves, the stage was set, and the drama of the wilds was wearing to its final scene.

From the moment of his meeting with Chloe Elliston, Lapierre had realized the value of an alliance with her against MacNair. And being a man whose creed it was to turn every possible circ.u.mstance to his own account, he set about to win her co-operation. When, during the course of their first conversation, she casually mentioned that she could command millions if she wanted them, his immediate interest in MacNair cooled appreciably--not that MacNair was to be forgotten--merely that his undoing was to be deferred for a season, while he, the Pierre Lapierre once more of student days, played an old game--a game long forgot in the press of sterner life, but one at which he once excelled.

"A game of hearts," the man had smiled to himself--"a game in which the risk is nothing and the stakes---- With millions one may accomplish much in the wilderness, or retire into smug respectability--who knows?

Or, losing, if worse comes to worst, a lady who can command millions, held prisoner, should be worth d.i.c.kering for. Ah, yes, dear lady! By all means, you shall be helped to Christianize the North! To educate the Indians--how did she say it? 'So that they may come and receive that which is theirs of right'--fah! These women!"

While the scows rushed northward his plans had been laid--plans that included a masterstroke against MacNair and the placing of the girl absolutely within his power in one move. And so Pierre Lapierre had accompanied Chloe to the mouth of the Yellow Knife, selected the site for her school, and generously remained upon the ground to direct the erection of her buildings.

Up to that point his plans had carried with but two minor frustrations: he was disappointed in not having been allowed to build a stockade, and he had been forced prematurely to show his hand to MacNair. The first was the mere accident of a woman's whim, and had been offset to a great extent in the construction of the trading-post and store-house.

The second, however, was of graver importance and deeper significance.

While the girl's faith in him had, apparently, remained unshaken by her interview with MacNair, MacNair himself would be on his guard.

Lapierre ground his teeth with rage at the Scotchman's accurate comprehension of the situation, and he feared that the man's words might raise a suspicion in Chloe's mind; a fear that was in a great measure allayed by her eager acceptance of his offer of a.s.sistance in the matter of supplies, and--had he not already sown the seeds of a deeper regard? Once she had become his wife! The black eyes glittered as the man threaded the trail toward the camp, where his own tent showed white amid the smoke-blackened teepees of the Indians.

The thing, however, that caused him the greatest uneasiness was the suspicion that there was a leak in his system. How had MacNair known that he would be at Fort Rae? Why had he come down the Yellow Knife?

And why had the two Indian scouts failed to report the man's coming?

Only one of the Indians had returned at all, and his report that the other had been killed by one of MacNair's retainers had seemed unconvincing. However, Lapierre had accepted the story, but all through the days of the building he had secretly watched him. The man was one of his trusted Indians--so was the one he reported killed.

Upon the outskirts of the camp Lapierre halted--thinking. LeFroy had also watched--he must see LeFroy. Picking his way among the teepees, he advanced to his own tent. Groups of Indians and half-breeds, hunched about their fires, were eating supper. They eyed him respectfully as he pa.s.sed, and in response to a signal, LeFroy arose and followed him to the tent.

Once inside, Lapierre fixed his eyes upon the boss canoeman.

"Well--you have watched Apaw--what have you found out?"

"Apaw--I'm t'ink she spik de trut'."

"Speak the truth--_h.e.l.l_! Why didn't he get down here ahead of MacNair, then? What have I got spies for--to drag in after MacNair's gone and tell me he's been here?"

LeFroy shrugged. "MacNair Injuns--dey com' pret' near catch Apaw--dey keel Stamix. Apaw, she got 'way by com' roun' by de Black Fox."