CHAPTER XXIII

WHEN MORNING CAME

The rope proved long enough but there was no overhang. And the ledge was a path down the face of the cliff, but so fragmentary that many times the hold of his fingers forced into crevices alone made it passable. At the very start, an apparently solid piece broke off under his weight and almost cast him into the depths. After that lesson, which came so near to being his last, he sidled along the wall so that his toes might set as near the face of it as possible.

Fifty feet from the bottom of the gulch the ledge ended. He was forced to stake all on a hazardous leap into the top of the nearest fir tree. While the upper branches gave under his hundred and eighty pounds and countless needles pricked him, his fall was broken and eventually stayed by the stouter limbs below.

In the gathering dusk he gained the burial ground of which O'Malley had spoken. Familiar as he was with the native customs of the Northland, he felt thankful, when this settlement of the dead loomed up in the gloom, that he had been prepared for the spectral effect. Built on stilts above each grave were huts of bizarre woodwork. In each, he knew, were housed the particular personal treasures of some departed brave, but nothing of intrinsic worth.

Seymour was not superstitious and, much as he might have preferred other habitation for the night, he did not hesitate to borrow a lodging here. Selecting the most commodious of the "hatches," he climbed under its roof. Although this particular 8x10 boot-box boasted both a spire and a dome it was open on one side, presumably for the purpose of exhibiting a black bottle, an alarm clock from which the works had been removed, and other heirlooms of some Siwash gone to happier hunting grounds. It offered a measure of protection, however, against the chill that came with darkness. As he had no blanket and dared not light a fire, this "spook roost," as he thought of it, was more than welcome.

A short distance up the creek from his refuge and on the opposite bank lay an Indian camp of four or five families, to judge by the number of supper fires. He watched the natives through their meal, the while munching a tasteless emergency ration that was guaranteed to be rich in calories.

The Indian camp proved unusually quiet. He had heard Eskimo hunting parties make far more of a powwow around their night fires of blubber. There was no ribald song or laughter, no fighting, which were to be expected if the despoilers were supplying the natives with liquor, as Moira had told the sergeant.

The yelping of many hungry dogs warned him of the folly of trying to scout the camp under cover of darkness. He decided to stay where he was and to begin his explorations in the morning when work was under way. Gradually, with the fires, the noise of the camp died out, as if the sleeping mats were superattractive to the natives after a hard day's work on the placers.

Politics made strange bedfellows, Seymour had heard. Well, he stood ready to testify that police duty in the Argonaut Valley brought one to strange beds, too. His first night in a jail bunk; his second in a Siwash mausoleum! And on both occasions, nothing softer than his hat for a pillow!

But the murmur of the rushing creek and the soughing of the firs invited sleep; he yielded to the lullaby.

A crash like thunder awoke him at one time in the night, but he found the sky clear on looking out. Not until a second report came could he locate the source--the glacier in which the creek had its source. The green monster was sloughing off its ice. There came variations in the alarm whenever new crevasses were split with a terrific, smashing noise.

The worst start of the night, however, came in a sense of falling and landing with a thump that shook every bone in his body. That he had fallen and landed, not dreamed the sensations, became clear when he found himself on the ground and looking up at the hut. He had rolled out of "bed."

Seymour was up the next morning with the klootchmen, and they arose with the sun. Before the Indian camp was thoroughly awake, he had slipped out of the burying ground and gained the cover of the timber fringe along the south wall of the gulch.

From what he could see now of the formation, he determined that Glacier Creek was not as inaccessible as reputed. There were other possible entrances, at least one of which appeared less hazardous than that by which he had come. In the past, the natural entrance to the cañon had always been open and no one had ever found it necessary to work out another.

Refreshing himself at a spring upon which he had stumbled, he turned first to an investigation of the cañon a quarter of a mile below. So nearly did the wings of the rocky spur meet that there was scarcely a hundred feet between walls at the narrowest point. Through this gap, Glacier Creek poured without hindrance. Along the opposite wall ran a wagon-width trail.

At a point about halfway through the cañon stood two tents, the canvas of which still was white. Doubtless this was the camp of the guards and, perhaps, that of the promoters of the steal. Just now he was satisfied with placing this camp; close investigation could wait until he learned what "richer than gold" was being gleaned up the gulch.

Slowly he worked up the stream, keeping back from the bank and well screened by the brush. Breakfast was over at the camp near which he had spent the night. Twenty Indians, men and women, were at work picking and shoveling in a near-by bench and wheeling loaded barrows to a long wooden sluice box into which a small stream of water had been diverted. The onlooker was puzzled that they were working with such seeming good-will. In fact, he had never seen natives so industrious. Nowhere was any whip-armed master visible.

A blast from upstream did not concern him greatly, as he thought the glacier was cutting daylight capers. But when other reverberations crashed out at regular intervals, he felt certain that dynamite was being exploded. This would explain why the Siwashes were able to work so freely in the frozen gravel and gave color to Bart's report that the claims were being "stripped."

Exercising the utmost caution, he worked his way eastward until he crouched opposite an exaggerated "ant hill" of activity, undoubtedly the scene of major operations. There were three sluices here, near a bench that had been shattered by a recent explosion. No crew of white miners could have shown greater industry or fewer lost motions than the natives at work there. And as below, he saw no sign of a white oppressor.

Then, from a tent near the Indian encampment, there emerged a brawny man who answered the O'Malleys' description of Bonnemort, he who nearly had done for Bart. Six feet two or three and built from the soles up, he stood looking over the busy scene.

In a flash, Seymour recognized the red-headed man who had insisted on sending wine to the young Mounties in that Montreal cabaret. Something of a change of scene, this; but not so surprising in Canada--land of far-flung opportunities.

The sergeant surmised this to be the alleged breed's first appearance of the morning. Confirmation came with the appearance of a young squaw bearing a tray of breakfast which she spread on a rough table before the tent. Indeed, this breed must have a "way" with the Siwashes, thought the sergeant, to command from them such competent service. From his reserved seat in the brush, he envied him the cup of steaming coffee and, later, the cigar which the autocrat of the wild lighted. This last was particularly tantalizing to one whose pipe must perforce remain cold.

Presently came a small man on horseback, all-white, puttee-clad, and, on reasonable supposition, one Kluger by name. Dismounted, the new arrival, reputed to be the "brains of the outfit," did not come to his partner's shoulder; but from the rapidity of his movements, Seymour judged that his small frame concealed a dynamo of energy. The two conferred a moment, then started toward the sluice box.

Peering from behind the bushes, Seymour felt as though he were watching some well-lighted motion picture. He saw Bonnemort call a couple of Siwashes to them; but no word of their conversations reached him.

For an hour he watched them as they directed the morning clean-up of the treasure gathered on the riffles--cross cleats of wood on the bottom of the sluice troughs--from the pay dirt washed the previous day. One departure from the regular placer practice stood out. The gleaners carried two sacks, one twice the size of the other. At every riffle, contributions were made to each.

If this was a division of the yield between the managing sharpers and working owners, it seemed unnecessarily clumsy. Why did it need to be done on the dump in such piecemeal fashion? Both parties to the proceeding seemed satisfied, however. There was no haggling, not even discussion over the division, if such it really was.

In the end, the two whites, between them, carried the larger and heavier sack to Bonnemort's tent, while the two Indians who had made the cleaning carried off the smaller bag to one of their wickiups.

After spending several minutes within the tent, behind closed flaps, the partners came out and started down-stream, Bonnemort walking with long strides beside the mounted Kluger. To the sergeant, the supposition seemed reasonable that they were bound for a clean-up at the lower diggings and that, for a time, the upper creek would be free of whites. He decided upon a bold stroke, the success of which would depend upon how far the Siwashes had been taken into confidence.

Going down the creek bank in the brush until he was out of sight of the camp, he gained the trail and started back. He walked as openly as though he belonged to the outfit; stopped at several points to look critically at the work being done, then strode on with a nod or grunt of approval. None challenged his advance; not even a look questioned him. He entered the tent as though he had every right to do so, as, indeed, he had, although it was a right of a different sort than any who observed him might have imagined.

As the canvas flaps fell behind him, he made a rapid survey of the interior--two folding cots with bedding, camp stools, a table built of empty dynamite boxes with the labels of the "Kingdom Come" brand much in evidence, and an improvised clothes horse hung with an assortment of masculine apparel. His particular interest settled on what looked like a carpenter's tool chest, but which, for want of any likelier container, he took to be the camp's treasury box. Without much hope; he stooped and tried the lid. It was locked.

In the act of kneeling to examine this, the tent was suffused in sunlight from the opening of a flap. He straightened and turned as a young squaw entered, her head bound in a bright-colored bandanna. Possibly she was the fastidious Bonnemort's chambermaid, he thought, come to make the bed. His heart was pounding. An alarm would ruin all.

"_Kla-how-yah!_" she grunted the usual Chinook greeting, but evinced no surprise at finding him in the tent.

"Don't mind me," he managed to reply with a well assumed assurance, hoping she at least could understand English, even though she did not speak it.

But she spoke it, and to his utter consternation. "Right good make-up if it fools a Mountie," she said with a lilting laugh that was controlled not to carry beyond the canvas. "How do you like me as a _klootch_?"

"Moira!" he whispered.

"None other, Sergeant Scarlet."