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Updated: May 1, 2025
That same night he boarded an east-bound train, and in an early hour of the morning, when the engine paused for water beside a tank that was the most conspicuous building of a little flat town in the heart of a peaceful farming community, he stepped unnoticed from the day coach and proceeded at once to the low, wooden hotel, where he was cautiously admitted through a rear door by the landlord himself, who was, incidentally, Lapierre's shrewdest and most effective whiskey runner.
Lapierre's glance flashed to her face and encountered the fishlike stare of the china-blue eyes, as he had encountered it once before. The eyes, as before, were expressionless upon their surface, but deep down far into their depths Lapierre caught a cold gleam of mockery. And then the Louchoux girl was speaking, and he turned upon her with a snarl.
He was on the point of hiring a special conveyance, and of driving through that night, when all of a sudden he had remembered that Lapierre's tavern was on the Millbrook and Spotswood road, and only three miles away.
A safe haven of refuge for the hard-pressed, and, in event of necessity, the one place in all the North where they might hope indefinitely to defy their enemies. The secret of this fort had been well guarded, and outside of Lapierre's organized band, but one man knew its location and few even guessed its existence.
There was a lightning-like jerk, and the automatic new into the air and dropped harmless into the snow. The same instant MacNair's grasp tightened about the other wrist. He released Lapierre's disarmed hand and, reaching swiftly, tore the other gun from the man's fingers.
Lapierre swung at his face, but MacNair leaned suddenly backward and outward, still grasping the wrist, Lapierre's body described a short half-circle, and he brought up with a thud against a nearby pile of stove-wood. Releasing his grip, MacNair crowded him close and closer against the wood-pile which rose waist high out of the snow.
She felt her knees grow weak and she glanced at the Louchoux girl, who knelt close, still staring into the upturned face, the while her red lips smiled. Closer, and closer crowded the Indians. MacNair deliberately reversed the gun, his huge fist still gripping the butt. The top of the barrel was turned downward, and the sight bit deep into the skin at the roots of the hair on Lapierre's temple.
But her wonder would have increased could she have seen the rows of loopholes that pierced the thick walls loopholes crammed with moss against the cold, and with their openings concealed by cleverly fitted pieces of bark. Lapierre's smile deepened. "Remember, you told me you intend to sell to all alike, while your goods last. I know what that will mean.
Lapierre's face became at once grave, and he gazed sombrely into the fire. "I have pondered deeply. Through the long hours, while the scow rushed into the North, there came to me a vision of my people. In the rocks, in the bush, and the ragged hills I saw it; and in the swirl of the mighty river. And the vision was good!"
A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre Lapierre but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few factors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided their time. One man knew him for what he was. One, in all the North, as powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spies in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him.
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