CHAPTER XXVI

BOOT AND BOOTY

"You'd best behave, Karmack." Seymour accented the name of surprise that the girl might become convinced that their hunt was really done. "Your dyed pate don't fool me and I'm no longer bound by our slogan of 'never fire first.' You took a couple of first shots up in the Arctic, remember, and have just tried another here. One false move and you get yours."

Karmack stood very still. "What do you mean by that murder talk, Seymour?" he asked after a moment in which, evidently, he realized the folly of further denial of identity. "I may have squeezed a little from the grasping old Arctic to give me a start in British Columbia, but I swear I had nothing to do with the strangling of young O'Malley."

Moira still seemed puzzled. "I thought-- Didn't the jury say that Avic, the Eskimo--" She could not finish for emotion.

"It takes two men to use the Ugiuk-line effectively," Seymour explained to the girl. "I know, for I've had one around my own neck and barely broke out of the clutch. This fiend hired Avic to help him put your brother away--hired him with promise of a trip Outside to be tried for murder. Can you imagine! Now it will be ex-Factor Karmack who takes the trip--Inside."

Karmack moved restlessly, with the result of tightening the sergeant's grip. "But man, what motive could I possibly have had?" he begged nervously. "What motive?"

"From some outside source you learned that O'Malley had been sent to Armistice to investigate you and you knew that, despite your best efforts, he had succeeded in getting the goods. What you didn't know was that already he had sent out his report. I've been almost sure of your guilt ever since I learned that those black and silver fox pelts came from your old company's store room, two of the lot you held out on your employers."

Seymour turned to Moira. "Would you mind, dear, telling those Siwashes to get back to work? Please convince them who I am and that I've taken charge in the king's name. That always goes strong with Indians. Make them understand that none of them is to leave the diggings."

Moira seemed to shake herself together from this blow he had delivered with all possible mercy. "I don't exactly understand, friend, but I thank you." She stepped into the circle of wondering natives and repeated his orders in Chinook.

"But he wears no uniform," objected one in English.

"He needs no scarlet tunic," the girl replied. "_He is the law_." This also she repeated in their jargon of gutturals.

On order, Karmack led the way to the tent. Seymour followed close behind with his arm supporting Moira, who seemed a bit unsteady.

There was a groan from the pretended half-breed when he saw that the lid of the treasure chest was thrown back.

"Since when did the Force take to breaking the locks of honest men?" he snarled.

Instead of answering, Seymour slammed down the lid and motioned his old enemy to seat himself upon the chest. Then he crossed the tent and picked up the tell-tale boot. Returning with it, he made a comparison.

"Thought so," he murmured.

There was no need for further measuring and he tossed the gear under the table. Karmack had the biggest feet he had ever seen. By no possibility could one of them have been forced into the boot which he had just flung down.

Knowing nothing of the footprints Seymour had found near the scene of Caswell's killing, Moira O'Malley looked on at the comparison of boots in mystified silence. Karmack seemed to have a better grasp of the reason behind the test.

"I'm no murderer," he muttered, glowering at his captor.

"Wait until I get your latest partner, Kluger," said the sergeant.

Seymour seemed on the verge of enlightening Moira when she raised a hand of caution. "Listen," she whispered.

They heard hoof beats hammering into camp. Some one on horseback was coming at speed. The sergeant crossed to the tent front and peered out between the flaps.

"Guess we won't have to go for Kluger, after all," he said, still peering.

Karmack muttered an oath, his petulance directed against old lady Luck, who gets the credit for the best and blame for the worst that happens to illogical humans.

"Bonnie--Bonnemort! Where are you?" The deep-throated call came from outside.

"Where d'you suppose?" Seymour called back in a voice that he hoped would pass for the pretended half-breed's.

He turned to Moira, quietly directing her to crouch behind the treasure chest and keep her gun on the ex-factor.

"No more fighting with fists,--please!" she begged.

"There's no woman in this man's case," he whispered, and motioned for silence.

Phil Brewster walked into the tent a moment later, and Seymour realized it was the first time he had seen him on foot. The affable freighter stepped with a limp.

"What you sitting there for, you big boob?" Brewster put his question to Karmack before glancing about the tent.

"Thinking it over, perhaps." From a point back of Brewster, where he had stood unnoticed, Seymour broke in before the pretender could speak for himself.

Brewster whirled, and with the move his gun appeared from handy concealment. But the sergeant had expected some such desperate act and was ready. His left hand caught the freighter's right at the wrist and swung it upward. Brewster's bullet let a look of blue sky through the canvas roof, while the muzzle of the Mountie's revolver prodded the ribs of his suspect. The freighter saw fit to obey a command to drop his weapon.

"Sorry I haven't more bracelets with me," Seymour said. "Moira, if you'll look under the clothes rack, where I found that boot just now, you'll find a length of rope."

"What's all this about, you high-binder?" Brewster demanded.

"You remind me--I neglected to introduce myself when we met yesterday and the day before. Karmack, there, might tell you that I call myself Seymour, sergeant of the Royal Mounted."

"But he's dead!" blurted out Brewster.

"Not that he knows of," Seymour assured him quietly; "but you have a very good reason for thinking so. Now, if you'll oblige by putting your hands behind you--"

When Brewster obeyed, perforce, the sergeant directed Moira to tie the wrists. After he had inspected the knots and recovered the fallen gun, he suggested that Brewster sit down on one of the cots until they were ready to start back to Gold. The freighter, in doing so, swung his right leg over his left knee. From his seat on the opposite cot, Seymour saw on the exposed sole one of the peculiar leather-saving metal plates in which he was so interested--the one that had made its impression in the soil near the scene of the murder. Reaching under the table, he retrieved the spare boot he had thrown there and saw that they matched in every particular.

"Just to make everything according to Hoyle, Brewster," the sergeant said, "I now place you under arrest for the murder of Bart Caswell, alias Sergeant Seymour."

Brewster seemed stunned at the charge. His eyes, as if by instinct, avoided Seymour's steady gaze. He looked at the scowling Karmack, starting slightly at his first glimpse of the nickeled wristlets the man wore.

"Who's the boob now?" snarled Karmack. "Leaving tracks with your bad foot for any fool Mountie to read!"

"Shut up, you fool!" A look of fright crossed Brewster's handsome face. For a second he seemed about to spring upon Karmack. Then, as quickly as it had come, the spasm passed. He turned his eyes on Seymour. "If you ever press this ridiculous charge," he said, "I'll prove it false to the jury. I've done some freighting for the B. & K. outfit, nothing more. Rode in here to-day to collect a bill. Down at the cañon, Kluger passed me on to Bonnemort. I ran into you--and trouble."

After a moment's pause, Brewster continued: "Say, if you really are Sergeant Seymour, who was the uniformed bird that came to Gold as Bart Caswell?"

"Bart Caswell's widow is ready to tell the court why he killed Ben Tabor in robbing the B.C.X. stage of my uniform and papers," the sergeant answered somewhat cryptically.

"Poor Ruth," murmured Moira. "She really believed."

"Well, I'll be----" Brewster began.

"Told you Caswell was a crook," whined Karmack. "No yellow legs would have let himself be caught the way I got him that day up here on the creek."

Seymour waited for Moira to speak. When she came toward him her face wore the bravest smile he had ever seen on a woman.

"What next, pardner?" she asked whimsically.

"The first step," he told her, "is to rig up some sort of an M.P. seal for that treasure chest I broke open."

Without ceremony, the sergeant lifted Karmack to his feet and ushered him to the left-hand cot. From that seat, the disfigured ne'er-do-well might glare more conveniently at Brewster.

"But that chest holds only frog-gold," Moira reminded Seymour. "The Siwashes have all the real gold, and it belongs to them."

"You don't really think that a close and crooked corporation like Brewster, Kluger and Karmack would supply food, dynamite and expert management for a bunch of Indians only to take their pay in pretty specimens, do you, Moira?"

She studied the proposition from the new angle which his question presented. "It doesn't seem reasonable, but----"

"It isn't reasonable," he interposed, raising the lid of the chest that she might feast her eyes upon its heaping gray store. "This frog-gold, as your father calls it, happens to be platinum--worth six times its weight in gold."