CHAPTER X.

"So you've captured the condemned parasite!" cried Jim Laurance, as the returning ones reached his yard.

"_Certainement_! tam sure t'ing," Pierre assured him, with a burst of good humor. "Wat Ah tell you?-we catch heem! _Saprie_, yes-on de leetle cache _par le_ Grand Reedge-_n'est-ce-pas_, Rex, _mon camarade_?"

"That's correct," laughed Britton, "we hit it just right! A little later and we should have had a stern chase. Make a jail, Laurance, to hold the rascal."

"Roll him in by the stove," ordered Jim. "He won't give us any ha-ha. I'll bet me best mukluks on that." Presently, as the man was taken inside and the bonds loosed, he added: "Don't calculate for a minnit you can vamoose-for you truly can't. Me Winchester'll stop such tom-fool notions." Laurance pointed to the sinister-outlined rifle above the door.

When the light fell upon the captive's features, the two men who had brought him in recoiled involuntarily.

"_Le diable_!" hissed Giraud, as if some hideously unpleasant truth were forcing its utterance in spite of him.

"The devil!" echoed Britton; "that's it, Pierre. No more fitting description could be given. Look at the high cheekbones, vulture-shaped features, and hellish eyes. Good Lord, Jim, did you ever see such an ugly man?"

Rex backed to a seat and began to divest himself of his outer garments, all the while regarding the cache-thief with critical eyes in which a light of discovery was dawning.

"Looks like a cross 'tween a 'Frisco wharf-rat and a Nome claim-jumper," Laurance averred. "Say, mister, was you ever forty-second cook round a scullery?-'cause you smells it!"

The captive vouchsafed no reply. He sat with his Satanic-shaped head buried between narrow shoulders. The firelight licked his face at intervals, strengthening its horrible grotesqueness.

"W'iskey mak' heem talk," Pierre declared. "Got de fire-wataire, M'sieu Laurance?"

"Yes," said Jim, "but it's too blasted dear to waste on that trash. I wouldn't give him Seattle sas'priller. Don't matter a crow-bait whether he talks or not. He'll get his own at Ainslie's to-morrer."

Britton came to the stove and gazed earnestly at the huddled heap on the floor.

"Look up, man," he said roughly, but the bloodshot eyes refused to meet his own.

"It's no use," Rex continued, with a cynical laugh. "I know you-Morris!"

The sudden revelation had its effect. The man sprang up with a snarl of rage. His eyes glittered malevolently--straight into Britton's now. He appeared about to fly at his captor's throat.

Pierre, ignorant of the cause of the thief's sudden activity, likened him to a gaunt wolf at bay before a big bull moose. So the pair seemed.

"I think he will talk," Britton said slowly. "He knows who I am now. Yes-I think he will talk."

"D-d if I do," came from the thief. The first words he had spoken sounded like a husky's gurgle when the collar nearly chokes him.

"Don't be so fast with denial," urged Britton, smoothly. "When you have heard the option, perhaps your opinion will suddenly change." He looked at Laurance for an instant, debating with himself. The Klondiker was in a deep and apparently uninterested silence.

"It's Morris, Jim! Christopher Morris-the man I spoke of, you remember? His attitude just now is suspicious. I don't know how long he has been in the Yukon, or what he is doing here, but I cannot understand his present escapade. There's something behind it." Britton paused and allowed his keen, searching glance to wander back to the repulsive figure of Morris.

"I was about to give you an option," he resumed. "I think Laurance will second my guarantee of a lightening of the punishment the miners will hand out. My proposition, in brief, is this: Tell us what you know, what your game is, who is behind you, and what is their object-tell us this, I say, and you'll only be flogged instead of hanged."

Britton's meaning came out clear and sharp to the victim of drink. He shivered a little and pulled himself to his knees. There was a hint of supplication in the position, but this his captor ignored.

Laurance coughed apologetically, in expiation of his silence.

"You want to make sure of that?" he questioned.

"Yes," answered Rex. "I know Morris through and through. In my long battle in the courts I came to read the man like a book. I can sense his subtleties and under-purposes. I learned to do that, Jim, in the hardest school of the world-the law-courts. I am almost certain that he is in league, or worse-in bondage. Shall we guarantee him this?"

Laurance consulted his pipe for a long minute. Then he flashed up his eyes in acquiescence.

"Go ahead!" he grunted. "I guess we can make it even with Anderson."

Britton confronted Morris once more, and drove his words home with sledgehammer effect.

"Take your choice!" he said. "Keep silent and hang-you know they'll do it at Ainslie's-or speak and get off with a flogging. Which? And be quick! We want to sleep here. Half the night has already gone."

Morris, the derelict, instinctively felt himself on the edge of things. His wits were not yet so liquor-dulled but that he could see the fate awaiting him at the camp. He knew the stern code of the North-rough but effective. Fortune had played him a miserable turn, and, if he did not catch at the proffered hope, she would sing his death-knell, rollicking heartlessly.

He collapsed suddenly from his kneeling posture and half lay on the rough floor within the stove's circle of warmth.

"What do you want to know?" he asked doggedly.

"Are you prepared to speak plainly and truthfully? No lies, remember!"

"Yes, that is-"

"No parleying," roared Britton. "I want some sleep for the trail to-morrow. You have to tell all I want to know in five minutes or not at all. Ready?" His words dropped bullet-like.

"Go on," Morris cried, with an assumption of recklessness; "d-d if I care. And hell take the other fellow. It's a case of life or death. Open up, Britton!"

"When'd you come?"

"By boat last summer to Dyea and thence to Dawson."

"Wife with you?" Britton's teeth ground over the sentence.

"Yes," was the sneering answer.

"For what did you come?"

"Gold!"

Rex Britton laughed harshly. "To be picked up anywhere, anyhow!" was his comment. "By man and wife-mostly by the wife!"

His tone, however, changed to a cold, metallic timbre when he asked:

"Who planned this cache game?"

"Simpson."

"Good heavens!-he's here, eh? Still," with another harsh laugh, "I might have known that when your wife was in the vicinity."

Turning to Laurance, he explained: "Simpson is a lawyer-counsel for Morris in the case against me-and an especial friend of Mrs. Morris."

"What does Simpson want?" was his next question to the tool.

"Money," said Morris.

"That's a lie," cried Britton, advancing fiercely. "He wanted the goods and supplies for a purpose. Money's procured by him in an easier way. But stampeders' supplies have no pecuniary equivalent in Dawson now. You see there hasn't been a steamer up-river for long enough. They tell me Dawson has been lately iron-bound. Now let us know what Simpson was going to do with the goods. You'll swing if you don't."

"He's going to prospect."

"Where?"

"On-on Samson Creek, where the rest are going."

"Big outfit for one man, isn't it? The contents of three caches!" Britton's casual remark held a taunt and a hidden meaning.

"He's taking men with him-to stake other claims for him. That's why-"

"Ah! I see," Britton interrupted. "When does he leave?"

"Right away."

"Funny act, that," put in Laurance, with a smile and wink.

"Yes," Rex agreed, the smile reflecting itself on his wholesome face. "Morris, you're only a fool in this country, and you can't see much significance in your statements. I take the liberty of telling you that there is a great significance in those few words. Old-timers have no difficulty in seeing far. Simpson, by the way, must have become more rapidly acclimatized-or else he has been at the game in other mining territories. Pierre, what motive has the man who organizes a toughs' stampede ahead of the spring rush to ground which is partially staked?"

"He t'ink he joomp de claims," asserted Pierre, promptly. "Dat tam sure t'ing!"

Laurance laughed at the sudden start and guilty shrinking of Morris.

"Why, a kid could spot that," the old Klondiker assured him. "Simpson, this law-juggler as Britton speaks of, gets the nerve to jump likely claims on Samson Creek. It's just as well he's found out. If he had per-sum-veered he'd surely got jumped hisself-at the jumpin'-off station. I'm certainly certain of that! How-sum-do-ever, as me friend here goes vamoosin' into Dawson shortly, he'll put a handspike in Mr. Simpson's choo-choo gear."

Britton got up and shook himself as a great, shaggy bear stretches its muscles.

"That's all for to-night," he yawned. "The saggy trail made me sleepy. But take my advice, Morris, and cut away from Simpson. You're not bound by ties unbreakable-yet you soon will be. And that's saying a good deal if you stop to analyze it. Let's roll up, Pierre!"

"_Oui_," cried Giraud, slinging out the blankets. "Ah dream w'at Ah get wit' dat five hondred." In the height of his buoyancy he broke forth in song, and, while Britton dropped to sleep, Pierre's voice rang up to the ceiling in the tune:

"En roulant ma boule roulante, En roulant ma boule- Derrier' chez-nous y-a-t-un 'etang En roulant ma boule!"