CHAPTER VII

IN THE ROYAL SCARLET

As though his doubts and difficulties were completely settled, Sergeant Tearl moved serenely to his sledge and began dumping blankets and duffle bags off into the snow. Kitchener scrambled to his feet.

“Hold on!” protested the younger brother. “You’re crazy!”

“You’ll have no trouble,” Jerry reassured him. “Constables Devon and Cross are holding down the _Saut Sauvage_ trick, and they know me only by reputation.” He turned with a deprecating laugh. “Just heckle them a bit and they’ll never dream that you’re not the sergeant.”

“But, Jerry, the whole idea is absolutely preposterous.”

“As for knowing police business,” said the older brother smoothly, “you could have qualified for a sergeancy when you were nine years old.” He came back to the fire, his features changed to an unwonted gravity. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this, Kit, if I could see any way out of it.”

“And you know I wouldn’t hesitate,” returned Kitchener, “if I really thought I could get away with it.”

“That part’s easy. Inspector Bowman isn’t apt to come up this way this winter. You ought to get friendly enough with Cross and Devon to persuade them to keep their mouths shut if I come back in the spring and resume my job. If I don’t come back all you need do is to slip quietly out of the picture, and the police can write another disappearance case in the records of the missing.”

Kitchener looked sharply at his brother. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“You remember the name of the Esquimau mentioned in the WBZ message?” Jerry asked.

“Kablunak, wasn’t it? Kablunak’s band of Ahiagmuit.”

“Do you know what Kablunak means in the Ahiagmuit lingo?”

“No.”

“White man,” said Jerry.

“Well?” said Kit, and then caught his breath as he felt a peculiar significance in the other’s manner. “What white man?”

“I wouldn’t ordinarily pay any attention to a message like that, sent by nobody knows whom,” said Jerry. “But it so happens that my own inquiries have brought facts to light that practically substantiate this information from WBZ. It came to me in a roundabout way from a Cree Indian, who had it from a Dog Rib, who had it from a Yellow Knife, who had it from a Bathurst Inlet Esquimau. It’s funny, but you can almost always believe the stories that reach you by moccasin telegraph. According to this yarn, which really is more definite than mere rumor, there is a tribe of Ahiagmuit up on the shore of Queen Maud Sea, whose chief man is a white.

“This man,” the sergeant added slowly and deliberatively, “is tall and lean, they say, and he has an eagle’s nose and a snowy-white mustache, and terrible gleaming eyes, and under his _artikis_ he wears a shining metal shield which, from its description, is the badge of the royal police.”

“My God!” said Kitchener’s lips, but his voice was suffocated.

“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “It may turn out to be a wild-goose chase. But I’ve got to go.”

“But Jerry--” Kit was staring at his brother with awe-stricken eyes. “You don’t think--you don’t believe it possible--?”

“Who can say?” Jerry’s weather-beaten face at that moment was tragic with wistfulness. “Most frightfully unbelievable things can happen to a man in the wilderness. It might be that this has happened.”

“Wait!” gasped Kit. “You said that a body was dragged through the brush and dumped into the creek--”

“I said it looked as though that had been done,” said the sergeant. “But we don’t know whose body it was.”

“You don’t mean--you think there’s a chance--?” Kit checked himself and faced his brother in a daze.

“Dad!” said Jerry. “Sounds improbable, doesn’t it? But I know I’ll never have a decent night’s sleep again until I go and find out.”

“It’s impossible!” Kitchener burst out. “A white man living for twelve years with a tribe of Esquimaux! What conceivable reason could he have? Why would he go away up there in the first place? Or if he did go, why would he stay? Why would he hide from his family? Why never a word from him?”

Jerry laid a quieting hand on his brother’s wet coat sleeve. “I can’t answer any of your questions, Kit. Only this much I do know: there has been evil talk and sly, vile whispering--going the rounds.” The sergeant’s eyes were stony and expressionless in the reflecting firelight. “The woman was shot with a .45 bullet, which is the gun the police carry. Her brother may have been shot and thrown into the brook. Inspector Bill Tearl disappeared. The sledge-load of gold disappeared. And as you know, and others have found out, Bill Tearl’s family have received from some anonymous source every January for twelve years an express draught for five thousand dollars.”

“Jerry!” The cry was wrenched from Kit in an agonized gasp as the full, dreadful import of his brother’s speech flamed into his brain.

“You know you could turn gold nuggets into an express draught if you wanted to.” The sergeant’s fingers closed tightly into the muscles of Kitchener’s forearm, but his voice was restrained and very quiet.

“If anybody so much as hinted any of this to me, I would kill him. They’re careful to keep their mouths shut when I’m near. But I know what has been said. Bowman and the other officers who used to know Bill Tearl--who knew what a clean, sweet, straight-shooting gentleman he always was--none of them has ever listened or allowed himself to believe anything except that a dark mystery was staged that day in the Great Owl woods. But others have had things to say. And none of us really knows what took place on that creek.”

Jerry dropped his brother’s arm, moved off restlessly for a few paces, and then came back again. “You know now, Kit, why one of us has to trail Simeon Bent and throttle the truth out of him if need be, while the other goes to Queen Maud Sea, where the white man with the police badge lives.”

“Yes,” said Kitchener. “Of course.” He raised his head impulsively. “But why change jobs? You have your own assignment. Why not see it through yourself? Bent’s going your direction. You stick with him. Let me find Kablunak’s tribe.”

Jerry regarded the younger man affectionately. “You’re a great man, Old Crow, but what chance would you stand on the far northern tundras? In mid-winter. Living off the country. Did you ever stalk a caribou or run with the dogs for a thousand miles in the seven months’ night? I’m an arctic man, my boy, and you--” He punched Kit in the chest with his thumb. “Our little five-mile breather almost did you in this morning.”

Kit looked sheepish and ashamed. “Try me a week from now,” he suggested.

“I’ll be two hundred miles north of here a week from now,” said Jerry, and unfastened the tie string of his parka. He pulled off his outer garment and started to unbutton his police tunic. “Strip!” he commanded.

Kitchener hesitated for just a second, and then with a wry grin he began taking off his clothes. It was so foolish of him to balk at his elder brother’s decisions. He always gave in, and Jerry was always right.

“Will you be able to make it?” he asked as he shed his stag shirt.

“Ought to.” Jerry’s coat was in the snow and he was hauling his uniform shirt over his head. “There’s only one thing can stop me. That would be the lack of meat. If I run across a caribou now and then I’ll come back.”

Kit had kicked out of his trousers and stood in his undergarments--a straight-backed, lean-shanked figure silhouetted against the curtain of falling snow.

“I’ll give you all my police equipment,” Jerry said--“sledge, blankets, guns--everything excepting the dogs. Those muts of yours would crumple up like paper, out on the barrens.”

Kitchener drew on his brother’s beautifully tailored shirt, stepped into the thick, warm trousers, and buckled the belt. With a feeling almost of reverence he slipped his arms into the scarlet tunic. He strapped on his side arm and stepped back to the fire. The coat was a trifle too roomy under the sleeves, yet Kit squared his shoulders with a sprightly sense of ease and self-confidence. Belted tight at the waist, the tunic seemed actually to fit, and with a queer, thrilling emotion he felt somehow that he belonged in it.

Jerry’s eyes were full of mockery, but when he spoke there was a faint choking in his throat. He stiffened, and his hand went up in salute.

“Officer,” he said, “may you never miss your man!”

His manner changed, and he curtly motioned his brother to sit down again. He squatted cross-legged and, with a stick in his hand, he began tracing a network of lines on the snow-covered ground.

“We’ll say that this is our present position,” and made a cross. “Strike northeast three days’ march across the ridges, and you’ll run into the Vermilion River. A swift stream, bowlders and rapids. Way back in the spruce hills. Follow it down past the mouths of one, two, three, four, five tributary creeks. The sixth will be Great Owl Run. It comes in from the northeast between two steep, granite banks. There’ll be a tall, pine lobstick on the opposite shore that you can’t miss. Travel up this creek about seven miles, and you’ll reach the scene of the old tragedy. Twenty miles farther on is the police barracks at _Saut Sauvage_. Devon and Cross will probably be there. You go in and tell ’em the sergeant has arrived. You got it straight?”

He got up again and beckoned Kit to help him unpack the sledges. They exchanged almost all of their luggage, and reloaded and fastened down the lashings. They traded sledges, but each kept his own dog traces. Kit was driving tandem. Jerry used the fan hitch, which gave the huskies greater freedom on the open arctic prairies, and which was more easily slipped if a polar bear attempted to pounce upon the animals.

The older brother chuckled as he caught sight of the old, red, Hudson’s Bay blankets. “Shades of the ancient mariner,” he exclaimed--“I’m darned if you didn’t bring granddad’s last testaments with you. I’ll sleep with a ghost to-night.”

He looked around to make sure that nothing was forgotten, and then faced Kit with a troubled scowl. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” For the first time he seemed to have misgivings.

“I’ll be all right.”

“I mean, take care of yourself.”

“I hope you take your own advice,” returned Kitchener.

“Don’t stay long enough to go snow-blind,” said Jerry. “I don’t mean the eyes, but the soul.”

Kit looked up alertly, on guard against one of his brother’s flippancies. But this time he found no sign of laughter in the hard-lined face.

“Down in your country,” Jerry resumed, “they call dope, ‘snow.’ Up here the snow is the dope. They get you the same way. There’s something about the dazzling white country that worms into you and creeps around you and enslaves your heart and your brain like an insidious drug. We northern men are all of us a little cuckoo. You can come up here for a year and go back and forget. You can stay two years and still keep the will-power to break away. Three years, and you’re lost.

“I call it going snow-blind.” The policeman’s voice was quiet and impersonal, but the corners of his mouth were drawn in jaded furrows and in that moment his depth of feeling was betrayed by his haggard, haunted eyes. “This frozen world becomes a part of you, and you a part of it. It blinds you to all save its own harsh, wild enchantments. You want to go out, but you can’t stay out. You love it and hate it. You can’t be happy anywhere else, and you can’t be happy here.”

He ended with a shortened breath and looked away, as though in embarrassment. “Finish your business here, Kit, and get out fast. One of us is enough.”

Abruptly he changed the subject. “Take your time with Bent. After last night’s stroll he won’t travel far to-day. A man softened by prison. Cross the back lots as I told you and you’ll strike his trail again somewhere along the Vermilion River. After that stick close. He’ll be watching for you. Look out! But don’t let him unearth that sledge without your being on hand to jump him. Got it all straight?”

“Perfectly,” Kit reassured him.

“You’d better get some sleep then. If you and your dogs cork off for a few hours now you’ll travel farther and faster in the end.”

“When do you leave?” asked Kit.

Jerry had gone back to his sledge and he was stooping with his back turned. He did not look around. “When you’re ready to go,” he mumbled.

Kitchener unrolled the blankets of the service issue which, in the future, were to be his own. As he passed the sledges on his way to pick a sleeping place in the lee of the rocks, Jerry stood up and without warning clamped his brawny right arm around his brother’s head.

“It was good to see you once more, old pioneer,” he said in a thick, gruff voice.

Kitchener waited motionless, feeling a lump come into his throat and almost choke him. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he was abashed by his own sentimental longings, and he stood tonguetied, and said nothing.

“Remember the last time we changed clothes?” asked Jerry--“the day I induced you to put the kitten’s collar on the little black and white striped animal, which the scientists call _mephitis mephitica_, and the Indians call _Sikak_ the skunk? And Dad made me wear your clothes and sleep out in the woods.”

Jerry laughed gently. “Go to sleep, Cocky-bird. It’ll all come out right in the end.”

“See you later, Jerry,” said Kit. He stumbled off behind the rocks, rolled up in his blankets in the gray, snowy dawn, and within three minutes was soundly slumbering.

The snowfall had almost ceased when Kit awakened. It was a dull, sodden day, windless and utterly quiet. The clouds were hanging low over the forest, black and ominous, overcasting the wilderness with a strange, uncanny twilight. For a minute or two after his eyes were open Kitchener lay in warmth and drowsy comfort. But all at once it occurred to him that there was something foreboding in the complete absence of sound.

His body went taut in the middle of his langorous stretching, and he threw off the blanket and sat up. The campfire was still smoldering, and somebody was bending over it.

“Hello, Jerry--” he said, and then stopped short. The figure in the smoke had turned, and he saw that it was not a man. He scrambled to his feet, rubbing his eyes, staring in astonishment. The fire-tender was a woman--Diane Durand.

“Good morning,” said the girl coolly. She emerged from the suffocating haze of the fire, which she evidently did not understand how to manage, coughing and shaking her head as though to rid herself of the smoke.

In the daylight he noticed that her touseled hair was not the flaming red the fire reflections had imparted last night, but verged into softer tints of bronze. The eyes which regarded him steadily were deep and luminous and flecked with a golden brightness. There was something impudent and unflattering in the way she looked at him.

He regained his breath and faced her suspiciously. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“It’s not my fault,” she returned. “I came back because I had to. Blame your friend’s high-handed interfering. By the time I had reached my uncle’s camp he was gone.”

“Gone where?” exclaimed Kit.

“On northward. Without dogs I can’t hope to overtake him. You’re going up that direction, aren’t you, sergeant?”

Unwittingly Kitchener’s shoulders straightened. It gave him a queer, uplifting sensation to have her think that he was an officer of the Royal Canadian Police.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m going north.”

“Then you’ll have to take me with you,” she announced calmly. “When we catch my uncle you can get rid of me.”

Kit looked around uneasily. “Where’s my--my friend?” he asked.

“He’s gone,” said the girl.

“What?”

She fumbled in the pocket of her mackinaw and brought out a folded slip of paper, which she handed to Kitchener. “Here’s a note he left for you. I picked it up and read it.”

With a sense of impending evil he opened the sheet and found a few lines of pencil-script in Jerry’s careless scrawl. He read:

Dear Kit:

Don’t forget there are a million of ’em as pretty as this Diane. I saw a funny look in your eye this morning. I’m just warning you, that’s all. Don’t let her make a sap out of you and I have no fear about anything else. So long, old crow. The things I like least about life are its repetitions. You get your hair cut or mow your lawn or paint a house or cook breakfast or shave or wash a shirt or kiss a girl, and it’s all to be done over again to-morrow or next week or a year from now. The only thing I know that stays done is to have your teeth pulled. Cheerio, Cocky-bird. Always exit on a laugh.

Jerry.

With eyes grown suddenly misty Kitchener turned and gazed around the glade of evergreens. On the opposite hillslope he found the trail left by sledge runners and trotting dogs’ feet and a pair of big, slashing snowshoes. The tracks ran straight north and apparently were several hours old. Jerry was well on his way towards the dreadful darkness of Queen Maud Sea.