CHAPTER XXVII

BRIGHT WITH PROMISE

With his astonishing declaration of the real richer-than-gold wealth of the Glacier Greek placers, Seymour turned to Brewster for confirmation. "What is the current quotation on platinum?" he asked.

But the freighter no longer was affable. "I'm no bureau of information," he growled.

"Try me," offered Karmack with a return of his old-time effrontery. "Dear eyes, at the present time that platinum is worth a hundred and fifteen simoleons an ounce--was up to a hundred and seventy during the war!"

"And the purest gold brings a trifle over twenty dollars," the sergeant reminded the girl. "You see I was nearly exact."

With a quick glance, as if the presence of such a store of wealth frightened her, Moira lowered the lid.

"Then the Glacier Mission Indians are----" she hesitated.

"Rich--for them," he supplied. "What's more the O'Malley claims between the cañon mouth and the Cheena are heavier with frog-gold than those up the creek, or I don't know my mineralogy. You and your father and Miss Ruth will be near-millionaires."

Seymour would not have cared to explain the worried look that came unbidden into his eyes, had he been taxed with it. Complications foreseen were responsible.

He improvised a flimsy fastening to replace the lock he had broken, and pinned over the chest crack a sheet of paper on which he had written "Officially Sealed, R. Seymour, Sergeant, R.C.M.P." Then he made a young Siwash, picked by Moira, vain for life by swearing him in as a special constable and placing him on guard at the tent door. His instructions were to permit no one to pass until Seymour returned, and he was entrusted with Brewster's gun to support his authority.

Inspection showed that the Siwashes had gone back to work under "king's orders." Seymour had no thought of telling them how rich they were making themselves, until their status was fixed by the proper court. Meantime they'd be best off, continuing their labor, for "all the gold" allotted them by the spoilers.

With Brewster tied to his saddle and Karmack, still handcuffed, on foot, the prisoners were started down creek under the guns of the sergeant and his volunteer aid. Beneath the non-com.'s arm was a worn boot for a lame right foot, his prize "Exhibit B." First honors in the evidence line were in the commissioner's vault back in Ottawa--"Exhibit A," a pair of fox pelts, one silver and one black. Of the three murders he had solved, that of poor Oliver O'Malley would always have first place in his personal record book.

On the down creek tramp, Seymour told Moira what he knew of the wonder story of platinum. Her missionary father had not been the first to call this occasional associate of gold a nuisance and to throw it away, not knowing what else to do with it. In less than a generation the gray metal had emerged from the lesser metals, crept past silver and then raced beyond gold into the limelight of popularity. Whatever the ultimate fate of the ore it was certain to remain a treasure-metal until long after Glacier Creek had been mined out.

For his own satisfaction, as well as hers, he outlined the plot against the Indians as he now saw it. Phil Brewster, he believed, had recognized platinum in the frog-gold which the Siwashes were discarding. The freighter had sent back to Montreal for Kluger to direct the harvest. Knowing at least something of Karmack's plight, Kluger had brought the Armistice murderer with him as an assistant and had posed him as a half-breed as part of the disguise. Whether or not the latter knew that the father of the youth he had caused to be slain in the Arctic lived in the immediate vicinity of the platinum bed was a question. At any rate, the criminal probably figured that he would be safer in a sealed British Columbia cañon than in the cafés of the city that lately has become the gayest in North America. Brewster undoubtedly had been riding guard outside under cover of his established freighting business.

The trio had corralled the Indians on their own claims in the easiest possible way--by giving them all the gold that was sluiced, while they took the six-times richer platinum. Their discovery that Bart Caswell had recognized their precious metal had sealed his death warrant. Its execution had been prompt, as she knew. He could only hope that the official executions which seemed called for would not be too long delayed.

After some persuasion and the reminder that Moira was a persistent young person, he sketched the steps by which he had walked through the local mystery. His conviction that Bart had robbed the stage, based on recognition of the uniform, had given him a "head start" and had proved a lever with the widow Caswell. She had started him on a "richer than gold" search. Moira herself, with her tip about the frog-gold, had spurred him, for he suspected it to be platinum. The squaw tale that the Siwashes were getting all the gold had helped, and the shaking of a platinum nugget from the ore sack had completed his enlightenment. As for the black-hearted Karmack, whose hair had turned red--well, that was an excellent piece of dyer's art, but one Scarlet Seymour would be long forgiving himself for not having recognized it as such that memorable night at the Venetian Gardens.

"Do you suppose my being there had anything to do----" began Moira.

"Why, most wonderful girl alive, I particularly wanted to get him to close the books with----" He interrupted himself at thought of the platinum wealth at the mouth of the creek.

They passed the graveyard diggings without disturbing the Siwashes at their labors. At the tent camp in the cañon, Seymour surprised Kluger, sacking platinum for the get-away which Brewster had warned him was imminent. The little man was so preoccupied with his delightful task, and in such fancied security, that the sergeant had a gun to his back before he looked up from the booty. Two additional saddle horses were annexed here, which Moira and Seymour mounted.

At the "gate" they surprised one of the two hired guards in controversy with O'Malley. Anxious about his daughter, the old missionary was trying to talk his way into the gulch. At seeing his employers under arrest, the guard resigned on the spot and could not hand over his rifle soon enough. On the ride into Gold, the other guard was encountered, headed back to his "work." Single-handed, Shan O'Malley made the last necessary capture, adding another prospective witness for the king's case.

Not until Seymour had gone through the formality of borrowing the town jail from Deputy Hardley, and the prisoners were safely immured, with the ice-box door really locked, did Moira seem to remember her costume. A signal sent from her seat in the saddle brought the sergeant out of the curious crowd about the log calaboose.

"I can't stay to celebrate your victory, Russell," she informed him. "I've got to get back to my tribe--my scrubbing brush. I've just realized that I must look a--a scandal in this rig. Even in Gold, B.C., I have a social standing to maintain."

Her threatened departure surprised him, left him suddenly confused. "Your standing as a heroine in Gold couldn't be disturbed by a blast of dynamite after what you've done to-day," he assured her. "And have you forgotten--don't you realize what it means that at last I've got my man? I've got to go back to Glacier to-night, you know. I'd thought of dinner and an official escort home."

For a moment she considered, then the eyes which he once had likened as being "smudged in by a sooty finger," flashed him all the love in their world.

"Sorry I can't wait in this rig, Sergeant Scarlet," she teased, "but there's nothing to hinder your coming to the mission on Glacier as soon as you're ready." She started her horse. "But be sure," she called back to him, "be sure not to forget to bring my father with you. He's the only parson in these diggings."

She had gone before he could thank her; but all the platinum on Glacier couldn't buy from him the memory of those recent crowded hours.

The crowd remembered that he was a member of the Force, even if he had momentarily forgotten that fact. They clamored about him for details of the crime clean-up, few of which they would hear from him. There was Deputy Hardley to be put straight about the B.C.X. holdup; and Mrs. Caswell to thank for her "richer than gold" help, and special constables to be selected and sworn for service at the borrowed jail and on the creek. Indeed there was much for Staff-Sergeant Seymour to do in his new domain, but when at last he was free he saw to it that the Rev. Shan O'Malley brushed stirrups with him all the way to Glacier.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Never Fire First, by James French Dorrance