The North Star

THERE was a smell of burning spruce in the sharp air, and Corporal Bracknell, of the North-west Mounted Police, threw back his head and sniffed it gratefully. His team of dogs had been conscious of it for some time, and now, quickening the pace, they broke into joyous yelps as they turned inward towards the Saskatoon bushes on the left bank of the frozen river. The corporal smiled to himself.

“They’re wise dogs,” he muttered, “but not wise enough to know the trail’s end. I wonder if I shall find the man here.”

He followed the well-marked track towards the bank. The aromatic smell of the spruce grew stronger, but there was nothing to be seen save the shadowy woods, and the packed sled-road between. The road had been cut through the trees, and here and there a stump bearing the mark of the ax protruded above the snow. For perhaps three hundred yards it ran in a bee-line between the tall trunks, and then turned abruptly to the right. He reached the turning, and looked about him curiously. The road still continued, but the end of it was not in sight, for again it turned, as it seemed to him into the very heart of the forest.

[2]

“There’s a house or encampment somewhere about,” he said to himself, “but—”

He broke off abruptly as something caught his eye. It was a new-marked sled-trail debouching from the main track, and he stooped to examine it carefully. When he straightened himself there was an eager light in his eye, and curbing his impatient dogs he stood considering for a full two minutes.

“He may have a shack here,” so his thoughts ran, “but if there’s more than that, why this broad road?”

He considered the avenue made by the sombre pinewoods on each side of the road, and then shook his head. “Too much style for Koona Dick. There must be a homestead somewhere about, but if those are not the marks of his sled-runners I’m a dutchman.”

He spoke a word or two to his well-trained dogs, and slipping off his snowshoes turned towards the trail which led into the wood, and began to follow it carefully. As he walked, he unbuttoned the pistol-holster at his waist, and gripped the handle of the weapon in preparation for action. The man whose trail he believed that he was following was not given to being over-scrupulous. He had pursued him for nearly four hundred miles, and now that the end of the chase was in sight, it behoved him to be cautious, for if Koona Dick suspected his presence his resentment of it might even go to the extreme length of a rifle bullet. He left the trail, and began to move cautiously from tree to tree.

The short Northland day was almost over.[3] Dusk was coming on apace, and the gloom under the trees deepened, little misgivings awake in his mind.

Was it wise to follow the track into the heart of the wood? His dogs were good dogs, but—

The sudden sharp crash of a rifle echoed through the stillness, followed immediately by a second, and that by the sharp cry of a woman assailed by mortal terror, and then there came the quick yelp of dogs. He turned in his tracks and began to run back under the trees.

How long it was before he reached the main trail he never knew, but never in his life had he run so fast before. Fear was pounding at his heart. His dogs? If they were gone—

He reached the edge of the wood to find them still where he had left them, and his relief found expression in a quick “Thank God!” He looked round him, up and down the road and into the dark woods on either hand. There was nothing to be seen, and the coming of night had already shortened the range of vision. He stood listening intently. No sound broke the awful silence that had followed the shots and the curdling cry of fear. His hand, resting on the gee-pole of the sled, shook a little.

“It was a woman,” he whispered, “a white woman, at that. There’s some infernal mystery about. I wonder if Koona Dick—”

He did not finish the thought. Setting his face to the turn in the road, he gave the dogs the word and they moved forward. Somewhere at the end of the road there was a human habitation. Of[4] that he was convinced. He would find it, and perhaps at the same time find Koona Dick and the solution of that mysterious cry which had so suddenly startled the silent woods.

But he was not destined to reach the end of the road without further adventure. As he reached the turn he became aware of a narrow road on the left hand cut at right angles from the main track, and as he looked down it, saw a shadowy figure moving swiftly between the trees straight towards him. Against the fading light and the white background of snow he made out the form of a woman, and instantly halted his dogs with the intention of speaking to her. She was perhaps five and twenty yards away when he first saw her, and the distance between them she covered at a run, approaching him apparently without seeing him. Her line of progression brought her within four yards of the place where he stood waiting in the shadow of a giant spruce. Still she did not see him, and he was about to make his presence known, when the sight of her face checked him.

It was a young face, and beautiful, but as he saw it, it was a picture of incarnate terror. The eyes were staring as in horror. There was a stony look about the cameo-like features, and he caught the gasping intake of breath as she passed him. He had seen terror in feminine faces before, once when a drunken half-breed had lifted a knife to slay, and once on the face of an Indian girl, swept towards the White Horse Rapids on the Yukon in a frail canoe, and he had no doubt[5] whatever as to the emotion which found expression in that stonily beautiful face. The girl was badly frightened. He was quite certain of that, and the fact of her passing both himself and his team without observing them was further evidence that she was in great stress of mind. As she hurried by something in her hand caught his eye. It was a rifle carried at the trail.

For a moment he stood there undecided what to do. Once he made as if to follow the girl, and then checking himself again, stood considering. Those two shots which he had heard—what did they mean? They had sounded quite close, and now there came this girl, clearly badly frightened, carrying a rifle and hurrying from the wood. He looked up the narrow path between the gloomy pines, his trained mind and his instincts working together. Something had occurred in the wood, something tragical, or it had not brought that look on the girl’s face. What was it?

Tired as he was with the day’s travel, and certain though he was of the nearness of some house of rest, he could not leave the problem unsolved. For the moment he even forgot Koona Dick, and again leaving his dogs he turned into the path from which the girl had emerged. He moved cautiously, with the service pistol in his hand. He did not know what to expect, and he was not inclined to be caught unprepared. Once, as he walked in the darkness of the trees, he paused, and throwing back the ear-flaps of his fur-cap, stood listening. No sound reached him, though a moment before he had caught a noise[6] which had seemed like the snapping of a dry twig. Thinking he must have been mistaken, he resumed his way. As he did so, a shadowy form behind him slid from one tree trunk to another; and as he progressed the form in the wood followed, evidently stalking him.

Corporal Bracknell, however, remained unconscious of the shadow, and moving quickly but silently on his way, came suddenly upon something which brought him to an abrupt halt. In the snow not three yards from where he stood lay the huddled form of a man. For a moment he stared at it as if fascinated, and as the man did not move, when the moment had passed he stepped swiftly forward, and bent over the inanimate form. The man was lying on his side, and a dark stain in the snow the corporal divined was blood. Apparently the man was dead, and as it was now too dark to see his face, the corporal felt in his pouch and produced a tin box of sulphur matches. Striking one, he waited until the sulphur had finished spluttering, and when the wood was fairly alight, he bent over the prostrate form, shading the match with his hands so as to throw the light upon the man’s face. Then suddenly he dropped the match and stood upright.

“Koona Dick!” he muttered, and then whistled softly to himself.

He struck another match and looked again in order to make sure. As for the second time the flickering light fell on the face in the snow, every doubt vanished. The man who was lying there was the man whom he had followed for four hundred[7] miles through the waste, the man whom he had hoped to make his prisoner, but who now, if appearances were to be trusted, had finally escaped him. Dropping the match as it burned towards the end, he thrust his hand inside the man’s fur parka to feel if the heart were beating. He could detect no movement, and as he withdrew the hand, he stood upright, and as he considered question after question went through his mind at the gallop.

Who had killed Koona Dick? The girl whom he had met with that look of frozen terror on her face? Who was she? Had she shot the man lying at his feet? Why had she done so? Where did she live? As the last question shot in his mind he knew that the answer to it was in his grasp. He had seen the direction she had followed, and he guessed that whatever homestead lay at the end of that road cut through the forest would be her dwelling place. As this conviction surged into his mind the whining of his dogs came to his ears. They were evidently growing restless, and since he could do nothing by lingering there, after one glance at the still form lying in the snow, he swung on his heel, and made all speed back to where his team awaited him. They yelped with delight as he appeared, and when he gave the word, bounded impatiently forward along the well-beaten track.

Four minutes later, a turn in the road unexpectedly brought into view the homestead that he was seeking. It was set in the midst of a large clearing, and from its outline in the darkness was of considerable proportions for a Northland lodge.[8] Lights shone in three of the windows, and just as he reached the wooden fence which ran round the house, a door opened, and a light within streaming through outlined the form of a man in the act of entering.

Corporal Bracknell shouted to him, and the man turned round and peered into the darkness, then he rested something against the wooden wall of the passage, shut the door, and moved towards the policeman.

“Who are you?” he asked, as he came nearer.

“Corporal Bracknell—on Dominion service,” replied the policeman.