CHAPTER XI

_SAUT SAUVAGE_

The police shack at _Saut Sauvage_ was buried in the snows of the remote wilderness. A fitful storm of sleet was lashing southward from the arctic barrens. It was December 24, a squally, gusty evening, bitterly cold. The wind was many things that night: a child sniffing and sobbing outside the batten door; a scolding old woman; frightened puppies whimpering in the darkness; a pack of wolves raging howling around the ice-banked walls; a gang of bad boys, laughing and throwing missiles against the rattling windows.

Inside the plank and tar-paper building the confined air was close and oppressively hot. The sheet iron stove, big enough to take a pine stump at a gulp, was stoked until its round sides looked like a red apple and its tin chimney shot a column of sparks above the drooping, stunted trees without.

Constable Joe Cross was at home, spending Christmas Eve in his most civilized manner. He had combed his sandy hair and trimmed his stiff, blond beard and put on his best necktie and the clean flannel shirt that he had washed and mended for this occasion. At the present moment he sat astraddle a slab stool before a packing-box table, which held three dry-batteries and a small radio receiver. He held a pencil in his huge fist and a pair of ear-phones were clipped over his crimson, frost-bitten ears. A lantern, hanging overhead, helped the glowing stove to furnish the light for his writing.

The great radio stations at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Lincoln, Nebraska, both were ranging the continent to-night with Christmas messages for the boys of the Arctic Patrol. Constable Cross was switching the dials first from one wave length to the other, waiting breathless and expectant for his own name to come out of the stormy night.

Meanwhile he was picking off the greetings intended for luckier men. Sometimes he would jot down a line or two to be read over again to-morrow, sighing with vicarious satisfaction in the knowledge that Corporal Somebody’s sweetheart still loved him or that Constable Some One-else’s family was thinking of him somewhere at this very instant.

A couple of trappers, Jean Bruyas and Giffard the Runt, who kept hunting shacks somewhere in the neighborhood, had wound up their circles at the police post where they knew the radio would be working and a Christmas Eve mulligan would be stewing on the stove.

Bruyas was a great tree of a man, black and hairy, slow and thick of body and wits, unsmiling, unfriendly, utterly fearless, with remorseless slits for eyes and a loose-lipped mouth from which half the front teeth were missing. In contrast Giffard was small and wizened and active as a sparrow. At times he was overly talkative and too ready with his laughter, and again he went into long spells of sulky, touchy silences. The Chippewyans called him Giffard _Noondea_, which in their language meant “the weasel,” and was not a complimentary nickname. It was suspected that he would sometimes lift a fur from another man’s trap if he were absolutely certain that the other man was nowhere about.

Giffard and Bruyas had been running their trap line along separate branches of Great Owl Creek for a decade or more. They were well acquainted and kept out of each other’s way as much as possible.

Earlier in the evening three Yellow-Knife Indians had walked into the post. The Indians, as a rule, avoided the police when they could. But these three were civilized and Christianized, and wore neckties. They were known severally as Tom Salmonfish, Athu, which was short for _Athulejeray_, the musk-ox, and Pete Tomorrow. Salmonfish and Athu had been converted to two religions apiece, besides still keeping their faith in the old tribal gods. All of which, Constable Cross had remarked, should make them good enough to die young, and he hoped they would.

The three of them squatted together on a corner of the floor, uneasy and furtive in the presence of the law, muttering mysteriously to one another, while they waited for a hand-out.

At eight o’clock in the evening Constable Mark Devon returned from a short patrol he had undertaken during the last few days into the Slavey hunting grounds. Devon blew in with the storm, enveloped in a gust of snow that battered its way into the room as he opened the door and hastily shut it behind him.

It was impossible to see anything of Devon because of the sleety snow that clothed him from head to foot. He looked more like an icicle than a man.

“Well, boys, we’re going to have a white Christmas!” he announced as he limped to a stool in the corner and sat down to tug off his frozen boot-pacs. “Ain’t it nice for the kiddies?”

Constable Cross turned momentarily from his radio. “‘It snows!’ cried the schoolboy,” he sang out boisterously. “‘Hooray!’”

“Froze my foot again this morning,” remarked Devon as he tenderly peeled down his thick-ribbed sock. “Same as a year ago. I always lose a couple of toes for Christmas.”

“Are you maybe hangin’ your stockin’ to-night for Santa Claus?” inquired Jean Bruyas with his twisted, broken-toothed grin.

“Nope,” answered Devon. “I’m through. I hung it last Christmas and all I found in it next morning was the two toes that had come off with the sock.”

Cross started to make some remark, and then checked himself, raising his head and listening intently in the ear phones. Slowly his startled, incredulous expression yielded to a look of utter beatitude.

“It’s for me!” the others heard him gasp.

His pencil was feverishly writing on the paper. Presently he stopped, swept off his head clamps and stood up to flourish the scribbled sheet. “From my sister!” he announced breathlessly.

“Yeah?” said Devon.

“Two or three thousand miles through sleet and darkness,” the first constable declared proudly. “Can you beat it? And think of all the people who must have heard my name mentioned!”

“After that one big experience,” remarked Devon, “anything else that comes over the radio to all those people will just be a lot of applesauce.” The tall policeman was very cutting about his comrade’s Christmas message, but he could not quite hide his envious look as he eyed the slip of paper. “Well,” he asked grudgingly, “what’d your sister say?”

Constable Cross threw out his chest and moved closer to the lantern. Wrinkling his forehead over his own scribbling, he read in a loud voice:

Constable Joseph C. Cross, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Saut Sauvage, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Dear Joe:

We are all well and hope your health is good too. Wish you were to be with us at our big turkey dinner to-morrow.

Your affectionate sister, Eleanor.

“Humph!” said Devon. “Is that all?”

“That’s enough, ain’t it?” said Cross contentedly. “It’s just supposed to be a greeting.”

“Seems to me like they’re sort of ritzing us with their turkey.” Devon sniffed the savory atmosphere of the police shack. “What are we having?” he demanded.

“Ptarmigan and moosemeat all mix’ togedder,” said Bruyas.

“No rabbits?” asked Devon with a suspicious glance towards the singing pot.

“On Christmas Eve!” exclaimed Cross. “Rabbits?”

Constable Devon pulled off his steaming parka, and then turned back expansively to face the other men. “Turkey!” he snorted contemptuously. “Can you imagine anybody wasting radio juice to blow about a turkey, and here we got moose and ptarmigan and no rabbits!”

Giffard the Runt had sidled over to the packing-box seat the moment Cross vacated it, and was listening in the ear phones. Suddenly he looked around with a wry expression. “I don’t hear no voices,” he declared. “It sounds more like mosquitoes in a muskeg.”

“Mosquitoes?” Constable Cross turned questioningly.

“Maybe somebody’s cut in with a key,” suggested Devon. “It might be C.W. stuff from Edmonton.”

Cross pushed Giffard off the box and resumed his place at the receiver. “It is!” he said after a moment, and turned his dial knobs. “Edmonton official calling for somebody. From Inspector Bowman.” He cocked his head on one side, and those who were watching saw his eyes blink. “It’s for us!” he cried.

Constable Devon hurried across the room and shoved a pad and pencil under his comrade’s fist.

Cross was able to read code if the sending did not come too fast. He was writing painstakingly, with his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth. The message was coming through slowly, and from the look of his face the news must have been somewhat disconcerting. Once he frowned and shook his head.

“What is it?” demanded Devon when the pencil finally stopped moving.

Constable Cross pushed away from the receiver and looked uneasily at his comrade. “It was sent,” he declared, “to Sergeant Buck Tearl, _Saut Sauvage_.”

“What?” demanded the other.

“It must mean he’s on his way here to take command,” said Cross limply.

“Gosh!” mourned Devon. “Why can’t they let us alone?”

“What did you expect?” returned Cross. “That they’d let two bum constables loaf here through the winter without sending somebody to boss ’em?”

The pair exchanged a sobered glance. It was no light matter for two men to be snowed-in together through long months of blackness; and the arrival of a third man would multiply the dangers of friction and discord: particularly when the newcomer held the authority to make the lives of the first two as disagreeable as he pleased.

“What’s he like?” groaned Devon.

“Tearl? I don’t know. He was on this side when I was in Alaska, and when I was in Alaska he had been sent somewhere else. It just happened that way. So far we haven’t run across one another.”

“I have heard o’ dis Sergean’ Tearl,” put in the bearded Bruyas. “Dey say he is wan bad feesh.”

“Everybody’s heard of Tearl,” said Cross.

Giffard’s squinty eyes turned maliciously from one policeman to the other. “They say he’s a devil,” he remarked.

Constable Devon silenced the runt with a lengthy stare. “I’ve heard myself that he’s bad medicine for trap thieves and whiskey blanc peddlers and other little slinking ferrets of the woods.” He turned back casually to Cross. “On the other hand,” he added consolingly, “he may not be so bad. You know Jimmie Poe? Poe says he’s all right.”

“Weren’t they up at Herschell together a couple of winters ago?” asked Cross reflectively.

“Yes. The two got caught in a storm and had to coop-up in an igloo for three weeks. Each had a quarter’s pay in his pocket and nothing much else. They were eating mittens before they got out, and on top of it all, Jimmie Poe had gone snow-blind.”

Devon grinned. “But Buck Tearl kept him entertained. The sergeant--he was a corporal then--had found a walrus tusk somewhere, and he carved out a set of ivory dice. And the two spent three weeks in a snow-hut shooting craps by the light of a blubber lamp--”

“And Poe was snow-blind?” interjected Cross. “You mean he couldn’t see anything?”

“Nothing at all. He couldn’t see Tearl or his own bank roll or the dice or the spots on ’em. Maybe Tearl didn’t even bother to draw the spots on ’em. Maybe he left his dice blanks. I don’t know. What I’m getting at is to show you what a good guy he was.”

Cross licked his lips meditatively. “I’d have liked to have been in that game.”

“Sure you would,” returned Devon. “You’d have made your killin’ in about fifteen tosses. But not Buck Tearl. He’d call out the numbers that Jimmie couldn’t see. ‘Seven’, ‘eleven’, ‘big-Dick’, ‘box-cars’, ‘little Jodie’, and sometimes they’d roll up right for Jimmie.

“Now if it had been you,” mused Devon, “you’d have forgot Jimmy was playing too. Then he would have had nothing but time left on his hands for three weeks.”

“You don’t mean,” broke in Cross, “that Jimmie won?”

Devon ignored the interruption. “For twenty-one days Corporal Buck Tearl sat there helping Jimmie to amuse himself. In the end, just before the storm broke and they were able to travel again, Tearl had a phenomenal run of luck and made forty-two passes and cleaned Jimmie for the works. But where another man would have mopped up in an hour Tearl squatted patiently and let Jimmie have his three weeks of fun. That’s the kind of a pal Buck Tearl was.”

Devon lifted the pot lid to peer into its bubbling interior, sniffed once or twice, and turned back to Cross. “What was that message about?” he suddenly remembered to ask.

“About a Yellow Knife up yonder being murdered a while back. The word must have gone down the other direction through Fort Resolution and Simpson, and finally reached the inspector. He was just telling Sergeant Tearl to send somebody to investigate.”

“Is that all?” said Devon. “And I suppose Tearl’ll be sending you or me up through a blizzard to make notes on a dead Boogie.”

Cross looked resentfully towards the three Yellow Knives in the corner of the room. “Any of you know about a murder up your way?” he asked.

The Indians exchanged solemn glances and said nothing.

“You, Tom Salmonfish!” exploded the constable. “You know anybody who was murdered?”

“Nop,” said Salmonfish indifferently.

Cross dropped his head menacingly and was about to start the tortuous process of extracting information from an Indian, when something arrested his attention. He raised his head and looked towards the frosted window, listening.

For five seconds he held motionless with one ear tilted upward. His companions likewise had frozen to silence and were watching Cross. There were no audible sounds save the howling of the wind outside and the bubbling of the kettle on the stove within. But the constable’s companions waited expectantly, knowing that his woodsman’s instincts had apprised him of some unusual note in the bellowing of the storm.

All at once Cross’ alertness was backed up by a dog coming to life and sending a challenging bark through the outer darkness. The first husky was joined by a bass-throated friend, by a dozen, by forty savage, yelling brutes that aroused themselves from their nests in the lee of the barracks wall to fill the night with their frenzied babel.

“Wolves?” suggested Devon.

“Don’t think so--” Cross stopped his speech and lifted a silencing finger.

In the other direction, from somewhere to the southward, they heard something breaking its way through the underbrush. Then, for a full minute, the wind sank fitfully and almost died. In that brief lull the sounds of a man’s voice reached the shack. He was crossing the clearing in the storm. And then they heard him raise his tones higher, and a queer, sing-song tune came to them out of the night:

“Down in the woods lived a squaw and her old Injun. Their only blankets were the cold frost and snow--”

The words of the song drifted to the shack in a melancholy baritone, and then the singer changed to a lugubrious minor key and repeated his dismal refrain, this time with full tremolo effects:

“Down i-hin the woods li-hived a squaw and her old In-jun. Their o-honly blankets we-here the coooooold frost and snooow.”

The crowd of huskies had charged around the barracks, flinging themselves at the stranger in a raving circle. But, whoever he was, he would not let the dogs flurry him until he had rounded off the full, last period of his song. Then he turned upon them with violent words, and the men inside heard the thud of something on hollow ribs.

The two constables stared at each other, and Devon moved towards the front entrance. But the newcomer was quicker. The latch rattled, the draw bar was pushed up, and an icy blast of weather filled the room. A muffled figure stumbled across the threshold. He was a slender, rangy, easy-moving individual, who had turned negligently to force the door shut behind him. As the latch caught he swung around to confront the occupants of the shack, and he appeared to take in every detail of the place with a single, flickering glance.

His head and shoulders were covered with drifted snow and a beading of ice had formed upon his eyelashes. The austerity of his features, the severe line of his mouth and his ascetic, high-bridged nose, was relieved by the mocking glimmer of his dark eyes and the sardonic expression of one upcrooked eyebrow. He ignored the Indians and the trappers as he curiously inspected one and then the other policeman.

“Which is Cross and which is Devon?” he asked.

Without waiting for a reply he bent flexibly at the hips and proceeded to pull his hooded parka over his black head. He dropped the white encrusted garment to the floor and stood erect, a trim, nonchalant figure clad in the royal scarlet of the Canadian police.

A glimpse of the chevrons on the tunic sleeve sufficed to wipe every vestige of expression from the faces of the two constables. They drew themselves up, stiff and soldierly, before the ranking uniform.

“I’m Cross,” said the shorter, lighter-skinned man. “You’re Sergeant Tearl.”

“Right!” The newcomer broke into the constrained moment with a quick, infectious grin. He pulled off his mitten and impulsively held out his hand. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you boys,” he said. “How are you? Merry Christmas! When do we eat?”