Part 16 (1/2)

Philip bundled himself in his coat and went out with the ax and pails.

”Ice!” he muttered to himself. ”Now what can he want of ice?”

He dug down through three feet of snow and chopped for half an hour.

When he returned to the cabin the wounded man was bolstered up in bed, and the doctor was pacing back and forth across the room, evidently worked to a high pitch of excitement.

”Murder--robbery--outrage! Right under our noses, that's what it was!”

he cried. ”Pierre Th.o.r.eau is dead--killed by the scoundrels who left this man for dead beside him! They set upon them late yesterday afternoon as Pierre and his partner were coming home, intending to kill them for their outfit. The murderers, who are a breed and a white trapper, have probably gone to their shack half a dozen miles up the creek. Now, Mr. Philip Steele, here's a little work for you!”

MacGregor himself had never stirred Philip Steele's blood as did the doctor's unexpected wards, but the two men watching him saw nothing unusual in their effect. He set down his ice and coolly took off his coat, then advanced to the side of the wounded man.

”I'm glad you're better,” he said, looking down into the other's strong, pale face. ”It was a pretty close shave. Guess you were a little out of your head, weren't you?”

For an instant the man's eyes s.h.i.+fted past Philip to where the doctor was standing.

”Yes--I must have been. He says I was calling for Pierre, and Pierre was dead. I left him ten miles back there in the snow.” He closed his eyes with a groan of pain and continued, after a moment, ”Pierre and I have been trapping foxes. We were coming back with supplies to last us until late spring when--it happened. The white man's name is Dobson, and there's a breed with him. Their shack is six or seven miles up the creek.”

Philip saw the doctor examining a revolver which he had taken from the pocket of his big coat. He came over to the bunkside with it in his hand.

”That's enough, Phil,” he said softly. ”He must not talk any more for an hour or two or we'll have him in a fever. Get on your coat. I'm going with you.”

”I'm going alone,” said Phil shortly. ”You attend to your patient.”

He drank a cup of coffee, ate a piece of toasted bannock, and with the first gray breaking of dawn started up the creek on a pair of Pierre's old snow-shoes. The doctor followed him to the creek and watched him until he was out of sight.

The wounded man was sitting on the edge of the cot when McGill reentered the cabin.

His exertion had brought a flush of color back into his face, which lighted up with a smile as the other came through the door.

”It was a close shave, thanks to you,” he said, repeating Philip's words.

”Just so,” replied the doctor. He had placed a brace of short bulldog revolvers on the table and offered one of them now to his companion.

”The shaving isn't over yet, Falkner.”

They ate breakfast, each with a gun beside his tin plate. Now and then the doctor interrupted his meal to go to the door and peer over the broadening vista of the barrens. They had nearly finished when he came back from one of these observations, his lips set a little tighter, a barely perceptible tremor in his voice when he spoke.

”They're coming, Falkner!”

They picked up their revolvers and the doctor b.u.t.toned his coat tight up about his neck.

For ten minutes they sat silent and listening.

Not until the crunching beat of snow-shoes came to their ears did the doctor move. Thrusting his weapon into his coat pocket, he went to the door. Falkner followed him, and stood well out of sight when he opened it. Two men and a dog team were crossing the opening. McGill's dogs were fastened under a brush lean-to built against the cabin, and as the rival team of huskies began filling the air with their clamor for a fight, the stranger team halted and one of the two men came forward alone. He stopped with some astonishment before the aristocratic-looking little man waiting for him in Pierre's doorway.

”Is Pierre Th.o.r.eau at home?” he demanded.

”I'm a stranger here, so I can not say,” replied the doctor, inspecting the questioner with marked coolness. ”It is possible, however, that he is--for I picked up a man half dead out in the snow last night, and I'm waiting for him to come back to life. A smooth-faced, blond fellow, with a cut on his head. It may be this Pierre Th.o.r.eau.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the man kicked off his snow-shoes and with an excited wave of his arm to his companion with the dogs, almost ran past the doctor.