Part 34 (1/2)
”How did you persuade Tim Ryan to lend you his huskies?”
”Why don't you take a paper and keep up with the news, son? These huskies don't belong to Tim.”
”Meaning that Mr. Gideon Holt is the owner?”
”You've done guessed it,” admitted the miner complacently.
He had a right to be proud of the team. It was a famous one even in the North. It had run second for two years in the Alaska Sweepstakes to Macdonald's great Siberian wolf-hounds. The leader Butch was the hero of a dozen races and a hundred savage fights.
”What in Halifax do you want with the team?” asked Elliot, surprised.
”The whole outfit must have cost a small fortune.”
”Some dust,” admitted Gideon proudly. He winked mysteriously at Gordon.
”I got a use for this team, if any one was to ask you.”
”Haven't taken the Government mail contract, have you?”
”Not so you could notice it. I'll tell you what I want with this team, as the old sayin' is.” Holt lowered his voice and narrowed slyly his little beadlike eyes. ”I'm going to put a crimp in Colby Macdonald.
That's what I aim to do with it.”
”How?”
The miner beckoned Elliot closer and whispered in his ear.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
While Kusiak slept that night the wind s.h.i.+fted. It came roaring across the range and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden with sleety snow. The howling storm snuffed out the moonlight as if it had been a tallow dip and fought and screamed around the peaks, whirling down the gulches with the fury of a blizzard.
From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Before morning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town in virgin white unbroken by trails or furrows.
With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into its working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that had tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again.
That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city made little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared, paths shoveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped to school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electric light.
Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridge gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make the affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought the favors in from Seattle and also the wines. n.o.body in Kusiak of any social importance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon Elliot. Even the grumpy old cas.h.i.+er of Macdonald's bank--an old bachelor who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was done--was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress suit of the vintage of '95.
The grizzled cas.h.i.+er--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down.
Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three gla.s.ses of wine. His brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read ”Don Quixote” by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading together would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped him halfway. The cas.h.i.+er stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a repet.i.tion of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of a file.
s.h.i.+vers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.