CHAPTER XVI.

"Sergeant, this is the devil's own country!" exclaimed Cyril Ainsworth, as he stood outside the Mounted Police post at the head of Lake Bennett.

Sergeant Church laughed heartily. It was late spring and just about the worst time for mosquitoes and black-flies.

"Your introduction to the country hasn't been an exactly pleasant one," he replied, "but it is better than the winter."

"I can't see why men will bury themselves here," the lawyer complained, "especially a man like Britton!"

"He struck it rich," Church said. "He's worth two millions. Yes, Britton's one of Dawson's big guns now!"

"That's no reason for remaining coffined," Ainsworth snapped. "Why doesn't he come back to England and live a civilized life? Then we would know where to find him when he is wanted, without crossing an ocean and a continent and traversing a God-forsaken wilderness as big as the motherland!"

A constable of the post came up from the lake.

"The canoe's ready, sir," he reported, with a salute.

Ainsworth and Sergeant Church moved toward the shore. The lawyer had come in over the summer trail from Dyea, the White Pass Railway from Skagway to Lake Bennett being as yet only a talked-of project, and his many experiences had been not altogether comforting ones.

"It is a pity you cannot wait for the steamer," Church observed. "Canoe travelling is very hard when one is not accustomed to it."

"D-n the steamer!" exploded Ainsworth. "I am told that these boats run weeks behind their schedules. What use is that to a man on urgent business? You inhabit a devil of a country, sir."

Sergeant Church laughed again, wondering silently how Ainsworth's system and precision would avail against the numerous unforeseen contingencies of that broad Northland.

They reached the landing, where a thirty-foot Peterborough waited in care of two brawny Chilcoot men, named Dave and Pete, who had lost the other sections of their respective cognomens, along with their former identities, somewhere in the place of long trails.

The canoe was a roomy one, moderately fast, and fairly light on the portage, a necessity for the Dawson trip. Pete trimmed the packs in it very carefully so as to give fine balance when he should take the stern, with Dave in the bow and their passenger between them.

"We put in the canned stuff an' the fly grease," volunteered Dave, with a sly wink at Sergeant Church.

The sergeant pulled furiously at his moustache to hide a smile, and mumbled some comment on the adverse wind over Lake Bennett.

The grizzled Pete, meanwhile, was scrutinizing Ainsworth's legs with an unappreciative eye. The lawyer had thought that English riding breeches would be a very suitable thing for roughing it on the canoe trip, and had donned a tightly-cut pair, together with the accompanying leggings.

"They'll git down the leggin' an' clean through them pants," Pete sagely observed.

"What?" asked Ainsworth.

"The flies," answered Pete, "they'll make mosquito-nettin' of them leg-o'-muttons. Git some overalls an' cruisers if you don't want to be drilled like a honeycomb."

Ainsworth recognized the wisdom of this advice, even if he resented its criticism, and went back to the post with Church. When he appeared again, he was attired in eighteen-inch cruisers, tough duck overalls, and flannel shirt with vest, to keep the bloodthirsty black-flies from stabbing through.

"You look some Christian-like," commented Pete, in a low tone. Then aloud he added: "You're fit to fight them black divils now! Let's hit her up!"

They did hit it up over Bennett, with Sergeant Church waving them farewell from the post.

Ainsworth had never been in a canoe, having ridden a ten-ton barge down from Linderman, and the apparent unstability of the craft appalled him, though he took particular pains to conceal his concern. It required considerable effort to preserve an unruffled mien, and Pete noticed that the lawyer's white fingers gripped the gunwale like a vise. Lake Bennett offered a thirty-mile pull, and with every mile the blustering headwind increased till it blew a smothering gale.

"This ain't no tug-boat," Pete growled, at last. "Git out yon extra paddle."

Ainsworth gasped. He had not expected that he would be ordered to help with the locomotion when he was paying his men ten dollars each a day and a bonus if they landed him in Dawson by the date upon which it was necessary for him to be there in Britton's interests. He began to wish he had waited for the steamer, and he made a mild protest to the grizzled stern paddler.

"This isn't in the bargain," he said confidently.

"No, nor this sea ain't in the bargain," returned Pete. "Paddle, durn you! Do you want to git swamped?"

The big, swinging waves drenched them, and Ainsworth fell to work with the extra paddle. They made some headway thus, though the lawyer had to alternately paddle and bail, but the gale grew worse and forced them to creep along the shore.

There the three men fought the squall, wading in the shallow water and pulling and shoving their canoe through the pounding surf. It was Ainsworth's first baptism, and the gods of the north had conspired to make it thorough enough.

That night they camped on Cariboo Crossing amid the black-flies and mosquitoes. These made a specialty of dining upon Ainsworth. He was a tender, fresh cheechako, much more inviting than the leathern-skinned, calloused sourdoughs, Dave and Pete.

While the Chilcoot men pitched the tent, Ainsworth batted the flies. They came in ravenous swarms, bent upon participating in a treat, and Ainsworth wrapped Cariboo Crossing and its environment in a haze of sulphurous expressions. Because he was in shelter where the wind could not reach them, the black pests covered his face and neck; they drifted from the thickets like mist wracks and made the camping hour unbearable for the lawyer.

Presently, however, Pete had the stringing of the tent all finished; had anchored the ends, ballasted the sides, and banked it about with moss to keep out the pests at night. Then, as Dave made a couch of pulled boughs for their passenger, he built a smoky fire.

"Git in that," he said to the lawyer. "It'll fix 'em."

Ainsworth found to his satisfaction that the dense smudge relieved him of his winged assailants. He stood in it so long that Pete, smiling to himself, built another fire, upon which he cooked bannocks and fried fish caught in the lake.

They ate their evening meal, protected by the smoke, and Ainsworth, lying back with lighted pipe, watching Pete bake flapjacks for the next day, experienced a comfortable, soothing sensation. The long twilight of the Northland died, and the dark marched over Bennett. Upon the clean rock they had picked as a camping place their twin fires shone with a ruddy glow against the dark green of the shrubbery and blocked out their canvas like some giant white moth among the bushes.

Northern insects and lizards sang and crooned in voices strange to Ainsworth; strange noises of the darkness echoed and ceased; the stars wheeled slowly, and the crimson camp blaze faded to amber coals.

"Put your head under the blanket an' keep her there," was Pete's warning, as they turned in.

Ainsworth tried to obey, but decided that the observance of such a decree would result in suffocation. He preferred to endure agony and live, for though the tent had been well prepared, it was impossible to keep out all the mosquitoes.

They sang in falsetto choruses above the sleepers' heads. Dave and Pete could hear the lawyer's stifled imprecations and vicious slappings till slumber overpowered them.

By morning Ainsworth was pretty well chewed, and stupid with loss of sleep. He bathed in the lake water while the others got breakfast, but the experiment was painful. The flies feasted on him while he undressed, whenever his head and shoulders rose above the surface, and when he dressed again. It seemed that they recognized no intermissions and countenanced no union hours.

On Tagish Lake an exasperating headwind baffled the canoeists as on the preceding day. Ainsworth soon caught the swing of the paddle, and his blade flickered and dipped in time with those of the steerer and the bowman.

Striking the sweep of the rolling waves, he had to bail until they could no longer make any advance. Along the shoreline they went overboard, Dave hauling ahead with the towline, while the lawyer and Pete pushed on the canoe through the nasty breakers. Hour by hour they struggled strenuously and unceasingly, the surf soaking them to their necks. Ainsworth did not like it, but the wet was better than flies.

A halt was made at Tagish Post for rest and recuperation, after which they pushed on with more favorable weather through Lake Marsh and reached the head of Box Canon. The strip of water between it and the foot of White Horse Rapids is treacherously bad, so they portaged where they could not line, and skirted the famous chutes.

Five Finger Rapids gave them a tough struggle, and snags capsized them twice, but they accomplished the descent on the third attempt and entered deep river water. Here the current ran tremendously strong, and only where they could not tow did they use the paddles. Towing was heart-breaking work, the ragged undergrowth, splintered rocks, and bays, necessitating ugly wading, proving drains on their strength. They fought the racing currents with the short, snappy Indian stroke and drove through swirling whirlpools, called eddies, at the expense of all their reserve power. At the Police post on the Big Salmon they slept like dead men, and started late the next day.

The rest of the canoe route into Dawson was not so trying. They made up some lost time and reached Dawson City on the date Ainsworth had set as the limit within which he had promised the bonus.

"You win, men," Ainsworth said, as their trim craft rocked in the swell of a steamer which had just cast off her shore-lines when they neared the wharf.

"We do, sure," grunted Pete, with a complacent smile. "When we calculate on doin' somethin' by a set time, it's generally done, ain't it, Dave?"

"It is, sure," Dave agreed, his interest being more attracted by the bustle on the landing than the discussion of what they had done.

The bank was lined with Dawson's inhabitants, for the boat service was the most vital part of their existence, and their attention hung on the arrival or departure of every steamer. A mixed assemblage covered the small dock, and in it were Indians, traders, capitalists, prospectors, dog-mushers, and women. The boat itself carried a number of passengers, and a great cargo of outgoing baggage and freight littered its decks. The big paddle-wheels churned fiercely in the stream, and a dinning clamor of farewell rose up from those on the shore as the Yukon boat swung with the middle current.

The Peterborough took the place alongside the wharf which the steamer had vacated, and the three occupants at once became objects of inspection.

"Hullo, Dave! Hullo, Pete!" their friends among the crowd greeted.

"Where ye bin?" asked Old Jim Parsons, a famous and ancient musher. "Bin sort o' travellin' some, hain't ye?"

"Runnin' against time," Pete grinned, "an' we win! Where's that big gun you call Britton?"

"Gone down the river just afore ye come," answered a voice in the throng. "Seen him take his canoe! He ain't gone more'n five minutes."

"Ah!" mused Ainsworth, "so he doesn't ride in a launch now!"

Old Jim Parsons shuffled his feet irritably on the landing.

"Launch!" he ejaculated in high scorn. "Don't ye know he's the best blade on the river? No dod-blasted sputter-boat fur him!"

The old musher's snort of indignation followed them down the stream, and Ainsworth chuckled in a satisfied manner. After all, a man who preferred his canoe to a launch was man enough to listen to sound reason.

They ran upon him suddenly in a little bay some distance down stream. He had paddled easily, being out for an evening hour, and beached his canoe on the shingle of a half-submerged river bar. He sat upon a rock at the water's edge, smoking and looking into the depths.

As they approached, Ainsworth discerned another figure near Britton.

"He's not alone," he commented. "Do you know the person who is with him?"

Pete stared under his hand, for the evening sun slanted over the wooded ridge with a dazzling glare which prevented easy vision.

"No, by gad," he said in a loud whisper, "fur it wears skirts!"

The bowman was startled, and his brown palm also shaded his dark eyes.

"It does, sure," Dave gasped. His serenity was so disturbed that, he thumped the gunwale with the paddle grip.

"Blast you," snarled the outraged Pete, "do you want him to think we're a pair of bloomin' skiff-rowers?" Dave subsided in discomfiture at the deserved reprimand.

Britton had caught the thump, and looked up.

"Ye gods," he cried, "a miracle! A miracle has come to pass!" Beneath his flippancy there ran a vibrant tone of delight.

"Yes, a miracle of exertion!" Ainsworth asserted. "I've undertaken a cursed journey for your sake, Britton; I have been pounded, devoured, and drowned in the effort to get here by the thirtieth of July. Take my word for it that I don't want another similar trip. It has been a devilish task. Ask the men!"

"It has, sure," the Chilcoot men said in one voice, without waiting to be questioned.

The Peterborough had drawn in close to the perpendicular rock upon which Rex Britton sat, and they could not then see the woman who was sitting on the lower beach near the other canoe where it rested on the bar.

"And why this haste, O prophet?" Britton laughed. "And why this trip, at all?"

"When a man buries himself alive and his resurrection becomes necessary, someone has to attend to that rising," Ainsworth said. "The someone is very often his legal adviser!"

Britton smiled with a touch of tenderness. He loved Ainsworth for his odd, swift manners of action and speech and for his unalterable fidelity. An inkling of the trend of events had come to him, but he could not show it, and Ainsworth's solicitude was comforting.

"Still, I am completely in the dark," he persisted.

"Then you haven't much perception," the lawyer growled. "The Honorable Oliver Britton is dead, and he has left you Britton Hall!"

Rex sprang upright on the rock in his astonishment; then laughed shortly, as he resumed his seat, stuffing nervously at his pipe.

"That won't go down," he observed sardonically. "I remember what my uncle said to me that last night in Sussex."

Ainsworth leaned out of the packs in the middle of the canoe, speaking in an eager, intense voice.

"Can I read testaments?" he asked. "Do I know law?"

"As none other in England," Rex replied softly.

"Then believe what I have told you," the lawyer said. "I play with no one, and I wish no one to play with me. Your uncle died last month of pneumonia. Britton Hall is willed to you!"

Rex thrust a muscle-wrapped arm over the rock. "Come up," he said, "and tell me all about it. Tell me what they are doing at home. How's Trascott and-and the old place?" His eyes were alight because the sea-girt downs of Sussex still had a spell for him.

Ainsworth stood up carefully in the centre of the Peterborough while his men balanced it against the granite with flattened paddles. He put the toe of one scarred cruiser in a crack of the perpendicular wall, and grasping the outstretched hand, he was lifted to a seat beside Britton.

"Trascott's fine," the lawyer said, "and the old place is as green as ever. We both had a grand run over it with the hounds just before your uncle was stricken. The fox was started in that bit of furze by Bowley Creek, where we used to snare rabbits when you were a kid and I was proud of my 'teens,' and went away with the pack in full cry over Cranston Ridge.

"A good many of the hunters came croppers at that marshy brook and high hedge fence, but Trascott and I stuck on with the best of them. We were first in at the finish beyond Bramfell Heath, and we got the brush."

"It must have been a good run," Rex breathed. "I can see every stick and stone of it now. Yes, I could ride it blindfold if I were back there."

The lawyer put his hand on Britton's thick, brown arm.

"You're going back with me," he said calmly. "It's not a matter of desire but a case of responsibility; yet if you would rather follow desire, there are enough attractions over home.

"Who wouldn't want to be lord of the finest estate in the county? Then there is the yacht-it goes to you-and the stables of hunters and polo ponies; there is the London mansion which is part of the property; the pheasants are a prime lot, and the trout streams have been lately stocked."

Ainsworth paused to let stirring memories work their effect.

"And the responsibility?" Britton asked after a moment's silence.

"That clinches things," Ainsworth declared. "It is incumbent upon you to fitly fill your uncle's place. They want you back home! The servants are awaiting their young master; the cricketers and polo players have you already on the teams; the sailors rejoice because you will command them; hostesses all over the county have sent me social invitations in view of your return to England. You must go back, Britton, for the sake of the Britton name. You must perpetuate the name and the lineage!"

The lawyer became so earnest that he gestured with his arms in an unaccustomed fashion, while Rex gazed thoughtfully at the broad river swirls laving the white shore-line and spraying overhanging bushes. The sun showed a half disc of crimson above a distant bluff, sending a last flood of ruddy light over the spot where the two friends reclined; below them the tired Chilcoot paddlers nodded in their motionless craft lying close against the seamed wall of ironstone; the curve of the rock shoulder still hid the woman, who had not moved from the beach.

"Suppose I don't go back," ventured Britton, dreamingly.

"If you don't, it all goes to the auctioneer's block. Your uncle put a condition and a date in his will. You either take possession within two months or they sell the estate for charity."

Rex sprang up a second time, spurred by Ainsworth's announcement.

"Sell Britton Hall!" he cried. "By my soul, they had better not think of it. I would come from the grave to prevent that!"

"Thank the Lord," breathed Ainsworth, in immense relief. "I haven't labored in vain!"

He arose also and seized Britton's hand. "Swear on this handshake!" he ordered, and Rex took the vow.

"Now that you have promised, I can tell you something else," the lawyer observed. "I am glad that I did not have to use it as a means of influencing you. Boy, listen! They want you to represent New Shoreham."

Ainsworth made the declaration with a tinge of paternal pride.

"They want me!" Britton exclaimed. "I couldn't do it. I-why-"

"Never mind," interrupted his friend, "I know your objections by heart, the depreciation of your abilities and all the rest of it. Let that pass, and give ear to common sense! The community of New Shoreham has gone from bad to worse since Oliver Britton chucked its representation for the diplomatic service. The name of Britton was a power there with the lower classes and the aristocracy alike, but during the last few years, its want has been felt. The place has been torn by political strife, rival factions, and unscrupulous candidates.

"They want a Britton to lead them again. After your uncle's retirement, the big men pleaded with him to enter the arena once more, and I believe he would have yielded to their entreaties had death spared him.

"Now they clamor for you in his stead. Only a Britton will satisfy them. Commercial interest as well as political prosperity hangs on that name. Don't offer refusal! I won't hear of it; Trascott will not listen to it; and no member of the place can bear its mention."

Ainsworth's vehemence wakened the paddlers, and they slapped the water idly with their blades. The crimson disc of the sun had vanished. The river surface changed to a perfect violet hue.

"It's a big thing," said Britton, slowly-"tremendously big, and it has come like a Bennett wind!"

"The day of nomination is the same date that your uncle fixed for the condition of taking possession," Ainsworth remarked. "Thus there was a double reason for my haste, and the reasons still hold. We must make a start for home immediately. Delays may arise, and we can't run the thing too fine."

Rex knocked the dead tobacco from his pipe on the heel of his prospecting boot.

"Yes," he mused, "we'll go back to the downs, but my comprehension is still slow."

"If you serve well, they'll put the word 'Honorable' before your name," his friend commenced in a lighter vein. "Then you know there's the daughter of the Duchess! You used to be sweet on her when you were attending Oxford."

Britton started suddenly at a recollection, though not at the one Ainsworth had prompted, and looked toward the river bar.

"Yes, tell me what the woman is doing there," the lawyer begged, following his glance. "I have refrained from asking any questions."

"She is painting a sunset scene," Rex replied in a hard, overstrained tone. "She likes to be quite alone when sketching."

Then he called out: "Mercia! Have you finished?"

"One moment, Rex," a bell-like voice answered from the shingle. "I am nearly through."

"Let us go down," Britton suggested, offering no explanation as to who the lady was.

They crunched down upon the gravel, and mental association of an unconscious variety brought Ainsworth the remembrance of another woman, the woman who had come across their course at Algiers.

"Where are Maud Morris, her husband, and Simpson?" he asked.

"Maud Morris is in Dawson," Britton replied. "The other two are dead."

"Dead!" echoed the lawyer, in genuine amazement.

"Yes," said Rex, "Morris succumbed from drink and exposure at Samson Creek two days ago. He had taken some winter side-trip which was too much for his constitution. They said his wife had the decency to go to him on his death-bed."

"And Simpson?" eagerly inquired Ainsworth.

"Pierre Giraud shot him for insulting Giraud's wife, last winter."

"Jove!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Your North believes in swift justice. What was done with the voyageur?"

"He escaped to the wilds," Rex said, "but returned later, and was arrested by the Mounted Police."

Ainsworth indulged in no comment because they had reached the woman painter. She turned, smiling, at their footsteps, and the lawyer stared dazedly at the image of Maud Morris.

"Mercia," said Britton, "this is Ainsworth, the friend of whom I have so often spoken. Ainsworth, let me present my wife!"

The beautiful, girlish figure held out her hand, but the lawyer recoiled, glancing angrily at Rex.

"What trick is this?" he cried, but when he studied the sweet face before him again, his senses received a shock.

He bent forward, using his keen eyes more searchingly, and surveyed her with a scrutiny well nigh rude. It gradually dawned on him that this was not Maud Morris but someone moulded in her likeness with a purer, intensified beauty.

"Forgive me, forgive me!" he burst out impetuously. "I mistook you for a woman who is-who is not fit to be any man's wife." He seized her both hands now and pressed them respectfully and penitentially.

Britton took his wife's arm with an air of jealous ownership while she gazed up at him, a tremulous expression of wonder in her eyes as if the action were new to her and unexplainable.

"No," said Rex, somewhat passionately, "this isn't the other woman whom you know, Ainsworth. Mercia is the soul which the other never had!"