CHAPTER XI.

A great commotion stirred Ainslie's camp on the following afternoon. The narrow passages, called streets, between ugly log and canvas buildings were thronged with heterogeneous concourses of miners and others. They moved back and forth along the pounded trail from restaurants and stores to the bunk-houses, from bunk-houses to dance-halls or riotous saloons, and an air of expectancy pervaded the movements of everyone within the camp's confines.

Outside Anderson's cabin the crowd began to concentrate, talking in incessant murmurs, while all eyes were fixed upon the closed door. A trial was going on inside. The news had spread through Ainslie's that the cache-thief had been taken and was now up before a miners' meeting. Word passed from man to man, and the throng continually grew in volume.

Presently Anderson's door swung open. Those who had sat in tribunal poured out with the prisoner in their midst.

Jim Laurance inhaled a deep breath and drew the fur cap down over his damp brow as he slouched along beside Rex Britton.

"That was a close thing," he growled. "Don't ast me no more to stick in me chin for a slim-finger! I don't much fancy these free-for-all fights."

It was evident that the discussion inside had waxed hot and that only a slender margin saved the neck of Chris Morris.

The latter walked, with bent head, inside the solid phalanx of grim miners, among whom burly Charlie Anderson was chief. The face of Morris showed ashy gray in fear, and his eyes rolled back like a negro's as he shambled along, gazing at the ground, because the thought of looking for an avenue of escape was worse than futile.

The waiting mass of people gave vent to long-suppressed expectancy when Morris appeared. A loud shout rose up, and everybody rushed after the cordon which surrounded the cache-thief. It moved to the centre of the camp, where a large hitching-post, bearing a red cloth sign advertising Laggan's dance-hall, stood up at the side of the winding trail that served for Main Street.

The impatient spectators ranged themselves in lines that broke and shifted as they strove for better vantage-ground. Some, to obtain a clearer view, ran and climbed upon the low roofs of the log cabins, upon the verandah of the dance-hall, and the porch of a store just opposite. Women were mixed in with the male gathering, some with knee-length skirts and fringed leggings, and others dressed outright in men's garments.

On every hand was unpitying condemnation for the thief. He was scowled at and spat upon, for pillaging is considered the most contemptible thing in the North.

When the cordon halted at the hitching-post, Morris received a rude jostling from the crowd till Charlie Anderson forced the encroachers aside.

"Lynch him! Lynch him!" was the cry, vociferated in a deep, guttural roar which made Morris tremble.

Anderson shook his head and bellowed at the bystanders.

"No, boys," he shouted, "we're going to do as Laurance says and give him a chance. Make room, there!"

The sullen onlookers obeyed, leaving an open spot at the post which held Morris and another man, a thick-set fellow with a walrus-hide whip in his hand. Tense silence oppressed the spectators, contrasting strikingly with their former growls of impatience.

"Strip!" commanded the hard voice of Anderson.

Morris removed his outer coat, or parka, and a woolen vest.

"Go on," was the curt order.

The buckskin shirt came off, and the thick Arctic undergarment. He stood, bare to the middle against the cutting breeze, shaking from both cold and fright.

"Now," said Anderson, nodding to the stout man with the whip, before he stepped back among the gaping people.

The man tied Morris to the post by his wrists, took up a position four feet from the prisoner, and applied the whining lash.

Half a dozen times it descended, flaying the flesh, while not a sound arose from the crowd. At the seventh stroke, Morris groaned, pitched forward, and hung limply in his fetters.

"That's enough," cried Britton, vehemently. "Can't you see he has fainted?"

A team of horses pulled up with a jangle of bells in the trail. Some woman's gauntlet, flying through the frosty air, struck Rex a stinging blow upon the cheek.

"Ho! ho!" laughed a coarse fellow at his elbow, "so the Rose of the Yukon's down on you, eh? Or maybe it's a love-tap."

Rex looked between the disordered ranks of roughly-clad miners straight into the flaming eyes of Maud Morris, where she sat behind Simpson's spanking grays, in Simpson's luxuriously robed sleigh, beside the fur-coated, well-groomed Simpson himself.

Her furious glance transfixed Britton and then darted off, tangent-like, to the clamorous group on his left, where three miners had revived Morris with a stimulant and assisted him to an erect posture.

The bare back of Chris Morris was a raw, red patch, and he quivered convulsively as the sifting hill-wind bit into the bleeding stripes, while his custodians replaced shirts, vest, and parka upon his body.

Maud Morris's second glove followed the first, striking Britton rudely in the mouth.

"You beast!" she screamed impotently. "This is your doing, I hear!"

Rex ground the gauntlets into the beaten, tobacco-stained snow under his feet.

"Be thankful that Morris lives," was his heated answer. "They swore he must swing and fought against the commuting of his sentence. It was a tight pinch, but Laurance and I managed to pull it off at last."

The miners led Morris past and bade him take the trail.

"Hit it fur the high places," they said, "an' don't never show yer mug in this camp agin, or, s'help us, we'll shoot ye like a dawg!"

It was justice, the stern, unsmoothed judgment of the North, and Morris, the derelict who had reached the lowest limit of his downward tendencies, stumbled along the trail in the direction of Dawson, a marked man in the eyes of all.

His wife by law looked to Britton as he had last seen her in her boudoir at the big English hotel on the Mustapha Superieure in Algiers. Her face was the same bright, hard mask of hatred, and her soulless eyes burned. He noted that she was looking older, her stamp becoming more brazen, her beauty lessening, because the dust of fascination no longer blinded his vision. The presence of the girl he had met by Indian River dwelt in Britton's mind, a presence moulded in a confusingly exact counterpart of Maud Morris. He remembered her fresh, childish innocence and pretty modesty, and he knew that in outward perfections alone the counterpart equalled the original. While he surveyed the woman before him, he was certain that the straightforward character of his unknown was as different from Maud Morris's deceptive disposition as chastity is different from shame.

The knowledge was very consoling to a heart still void, and Britton wondered, with an involuntary throb, if he would ever find the nameless girl who had saved his life on the Indian River ice-bridge.

"You look as if I were someone else with whom you are genuinely pleased," Maud Morris said savagely, shrewdly reading his expression.

Britton's whole countenance lighted as he smiled.

"Do I?" he asked pleasantly. "That is because I have found your superior!"

She bit her lip to check an unwomanly expletive, and the mantling red in her cheeks gave Britton full satisfaction. He strode to Grant Simpson's side of the sleigh and tapped the sleeve of his rich, fur-lined overcoat.

"By the way, Simpson," he warned, "don't try that game on Samson Creek. It was quite a frame-up you planned for those who have already staked in, but Morris gave it all away."

Grant Simpson squirmed among the bear robes in a startled fashion, and his thin, effeminate face lost color.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, scanning Britton narrowly.

"Only this-if you dare show your nose on the Creek for any reason whatever, I'll tell the miners things that will make them swing you higher than Moosehide Mountain. Of course, Morris can't go in on any strike now. They wouldn't countenance it for a moment!"

Simpson's awe gave way to blind anger. He struck at Britton with his silver-mounted whip, to find it promptly torn from his grasp. Rex touched the grays on the flanks with it, and the team dashed down the Dawson trail with Simpson sawing on their heads. Britton laughed harshly as they went, and slowly broke the whip to bits.

"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart have given the chump a lift," said a miner, watching in the roadway.

Rex saw that the occupants of the sleigh had taken up Morris and concealed him among the fur robes.

"Who did you say?" he asked the miner.

"Simpson and Miss Vanderhart," the man repeated. "They're big guns at Dawson. Know them?"

Britton laughed again at the alias, as he scattered the whip fragments with his toe.

"Yes," he said meditatively, "I know something of them."

Just then Laurance swung out with his dog-train, starting back to Indian River.

"I'm off, son," he cried to Britton. "Are you goin' to bolt for Dawson? It's five hours from here!"

Rex nodded at the sleigh, gliding leisurely along the trail in the distance, and observed:

"I'll wait! I'm not anxious for their company on the route, and morning will suit me as well. So she's the Rose of the Yukon!"

"Sure!" said Laurance, putting his dog-whip in his armpit in order to light the inevitable pipe. "Kind of romantic fiction, ain't it, to find she's your angelic ideal? Haw, haw!"

"She's not, for there's no bandage over my eyes now," Britton declared, with conviction. "But, by heaven, there is an ideal," he continued in strange triumph evoked without volition, "and I feel in my bones as if I'll meet that ideal some time again."

"Um!" puffed Jim Laurance. "Again? Yes, I may say again! But take an old-timer's advice, son, and see that you stick to one search at a time. You understand?"

"I couldn't forget that if I wished to," Britton replied, smiling rather bitterly. "I'm going up Samson Creek at once. If that search doesn't prove worth while, there won't be any necessity for the other."

Laurance gripped Britton's palm tightly, saying: "You know where to come if stranded, son."

The negative motion of Britton's head showed the pride that prompted his refusal; and Laurance shook out his leader.

"Best luck!" he cried cheerily.

"For what?" Britton whimsically asked.

"For the gold and for-the-the other," Jim Laurance called over his shoulder. "Why, d-n me, you deserve 'em both."