CHAPTER X

HARD KNUCKLES

If it is true, as Kipling says, that "single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints," it is doubly true of the same in lonely detachment shacks of the Royal Mounted scattered about the Arctic foreshore. Living week upon week with the thermometer at the breaking point, with the momentary sun blackened out for days in swirling snow, with a sameness of grub that fairly gnaws the appetite, the wonder is that they carry through with even members of their own outfit.

Suddenly mix in with this condition of life an attractive, unattached, unexpected white woman and you have a yeast more potent than dynamite. Let some outsider stir the mixture with the ladle of false witness and surely the dough overflows the pan.

As he descended upon the trading post and the tricky factor, Russell Seymour was scarcely a staff non-com of the Royal Mounted. For the moment he was simply a he-man who happened to be encased in the king's scarlet. Even as he was accustomed to express regard for the rights of others, so was he ready to defend his own. A dangerous man for the time being and one with an initial advantage over Karmack, for Seymour's nerve was backed by morality and right.

He did not trouble to knock on the door of the factor's living quarters, but yanked at the latch-string. Finding no one in the comparatively luxurious living room, he stamped into the store, a low-ceilinged 36 x 24. Along one wall were shelves on which were displayed the "junk" that goes to make an Arctic trader's stock. Protecting these notions, generally more than less unsuited for customer's use, was a counter. From the ceiling along the other wall, depended the furs and pelts that had been taken in barter and not yet baled for shipment to the marts of trade where women would pay whatever price the market exacted that they might adorn themselves.

Harry Karmack was there, gloating over some fox skins just taken at a fraction of their value from one of the Indian hunters who had come up from the South. If he was surprised at the unannounced visit by way of his living quarters, his face did not betray it. It was a perfect mask.

"You've been making yourself quite a stranger, sergeant," he said, his tone pleasant enough. "It's the very devil what a havoc woman can make of man-to-man friendships up here in the Frozen North. Is it possible you've come to whimper at my success with Moira--Miss O'Malley, the finest woman----"

"Not to whimper, Karmack," Seymour cut in.

"Best take your medicine, sergeant. As a mere Arctic cop, on next to nothing a year, you never had a chance to be anything more to her than an entertaining decoration. From now on, you won't even decorate."

Under this insult-to-injury, Seymour held himself with his stoutest grip.

"I came," he declared with an ominous outward calm, "to learn just what you said to Miss O'Malley when you broke our pact of silence about Oliver's murder."

"Oh, I said just that--told her as gently as possible certain facts. It was high time she knew. Did you expect me to ask your august permission after what has happened?"

The factor put away the pelts he had been examining on Seymour's entry and, with casual manner, came from behind the counter. On the open floor of the store the rivals faced each other.

"You told her more than the facts in this case, Karmack," the sergeant said, his words dragging with earnest emphasis. "I'm here to know what you said and know I will--even if--I am compelled to bash you up."

Karmack laughed harshly, perhaps to show a confidence which he just may have felt, knowing how long-suffering the Mounties are by hard training and practice.

"Threatening violence, eh?" said the factor with a sneer. "Thinking of using your police power to repair your shattered romance? Dear eyes, what a blooming bone to pull!"

"I'm not here as a policeman and I'll lay aside the tools of my trade."

Unhooking the belt that held a holstered revolver to his hip, he placed the accouterments upon the counter at the end nearest the front door. Beside them he laid a "come along," a small steel article with chain attachment useful in handling refractory prisoners. With his long arms swinging loosely at his sides, he strode back to face the factor.

"Now, Karmack, what else did you tell the girl?"

"Perhaps I showed her how careless kind you are to Avic, named by the coroner's jury as her brother's murderer." The handsome factor was enjoying himself. "Of course it would be likely to please her, seeing the only suspect yet named wandering about the camp at will, living in idleness on your bounty, likely to slope off into the snows and never be heard from again."

"The Eskimo is under open arrest--regular enough under the circumstances. I'll stand----"

Seymour caught himself. He did not need to defend his official conduct to this trouble maker. Moreover, he felt that Karmack must have gone further with his insinuations. The matter and manner of Avic's custody might have carried the girl to him in protest, with demand for an explanation; but it was not enough to have brought about an utter break without a word.

"Let's hear the rest of it, Karmack--the whole damnable misrepresentation." Fingers twitching beside the yellow stripe of his trousers showed his tension.

"Perhaps I told her about the foxes--the silver and black!" The factor's tone was triumphant.

Seymour's expression was too well schooled to betray any surprise at this unexpected thrust. "What about the fox pelts?"

"They disappeared, didn't they, most mysteriously? They were in the hut when you left it under seal the night of your return and Moira's arrival. The hut still was sealed when you took the coroner's jury there the next day, but the pelts were not. The jury never saw them. That's what about the fox pelts."

Seymour's lips were as white as the freshly drifted snow outside and his voice as cold as the temperature when he asked what the factor meant to insinuate.

"Perhaps the kindest interpretation for you," Karmack began with gloating insolence, "is that those fox pelts are buying an easy winter for Oliver O'Malley's slayer with an ultimate get-away in the spring. In other words, Seymour, you're a disgrace to the uniform you wear--the first I've ever met with. You're a low-down, grafting bribe-taker and to show you how I respect----"

Instead of finishing his tirade, the factor flashed out with his right in a vicious upper-cut. Seymour sensed rather than saw it coming. Having developed a cat-like quickness, he might have dodged and let the blow slide past; but preferred to take it on his jaw of iron. He needed, he felt, the sting of it to release for the deserved punishment of his detractor all the latent powers within his rangy frame.

At once, the hard-knuckled mill was on--a furious battle of males, for this session, primitive males. Science, if either of them knew aught but the rough and tumble tactics of the outlands, was forgot. Blows were exchanged with a rapidity that must have been beyond the scoring of ring-side experts had there been any present. In the States, thousands pay their tens of dollars to see fights that were so little like this one as to seem primrose teas. There was nothing gentle about it. Not until Karmack sprawled his length on the rough board floor was there the slightest breathing space, unless you'd call breathing the insucked breaths between clinched teeth that sounded more like exhausts from wheezy locomotives.

Seymour stepped back to give the factor time and space to rise if fight still was left in him. Great as was his provocation, he insisted on fighting fair. That there are no rules for rough-and-tumble made no difference to him. He couldn't hit a man who was down.

Karmack came up with a surprising show of strength, his eyes gleaming dangerously. One of these the sergeant closed with a body-wrecking jolt. In turn, he was knocked heavily against the counter. The sharp edge of this caught him across the small of the back, a terrific kidney blow. The surge of pain seemed to open the hinges of his knees.

At that vital moment, when he must have been hard put to keep his feet in any event, the factor fouled him with a vicious kick on the shin. It was inevitable that Seymour go down. In falling, though, he managed to lunge his body forward, gaining a clutching grip on his opponent's torso, and carrying him along.

There on the floor they rolled over and over like a couple of polar bears in deadly combat. First one and then the other was on top and in position to jab. Claret splotches marked their irregular course. Fingers tangled and untangled, now in the factor's black mop, then in the sergeant's brown one. The latter's uniform was tattered; the factor's tweeds were shredded. Punishment, however, was well distributed and the battle, so far, a draw.

But this winter, Karmack had held close to his store and spent long hours with his pipe; Seymour had roamed the open and seared his lungs with the vital air of the North. In the end, this difference which leather-pushers know as "wind condition" told its tale. The factor was rasping when the Mountie was still breathing with comparative ease. Longer and longer on each turn was the policeman holding the uppermost position.

Suddenly Karmack, underneath, ceased violent struggles. It seemed he had weakened.

"Had 'nough?" demanded Seymour. "Ready to tell the girl the truth?"

For answer, he felt the press of steel against his ribs. He realized in a flash that the factor had drawn a gun from some handy concealment and that his seconds probably were numbered unless he rolled instantly out of range.

Roll he did just as the pistol growled.

The bullet grazed a button from his official tunic, then thudded into the plasterboard that covered the log wall. Next second, with a bone-breaking wrench, he twisted the weapon from the trickster's fingers. Scrambling to his feet, he threw down upon his opponent, meaning to cover him, just as the front door of the store was thrown open.

With the rush of icy air from without came a shrill feminine cry more startling than any previous happening of the contest.

"Don't shoot!" was the command that followed. "Don't you dare shoot, you uniformed brute!"

Seymour turned to see Moira glaring at him from behind an automatic pistol of her own, a blue-black little gun that was held as steady as a pointed finger. The sky-pilot up at Mission House was a pacifist, the sergeant knew. Doubtless he had told the girl the direction his anger had taken him.

"At last I believe," the girl went on, passion in her voice, but not the slightest waver in her aim. "Well chosen was the name I gave you, Sergeant Scarlet!"

The stress she gave her nickname for him startled Seymour. "Just what do you mean, Moira?" he asked, keeping one eye upon the prone factor who seemed as startled by the intrusion as himself.

"That I've found the murderer of my brother and don't propose to see him claim another victim."

So that was what Harry Karmack had told the girl. That was why the light of her wondrous eyes had gone out for him. Any added hate of his enemy that might have grown from this was lost in her statement that she believed. To make certain that she considered him guilty, he put the direct question.

"After what I've just seen--on top of all that was pointed out to me--I'm forced to believe," she said brokenly. "Go, before I take a vengeance that is not mine to take, but the Law's. Go--go!"

As broken as the gun he flung at Karmack, Sergeant Seymour gathered up his sidearms from the counter and stalked out of the Arctic's store room.