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Havel has a good horse, the horse has a good rider, you have a good servant in me. I, Madame, have a good mistress in you I am content. I am overjoyed I am proud I am ready, I, Pierre Lapierre." The churlish official had gone back to the natural state of an excitable habitant, ready to give away his heart or lose his head at an instant's notice, the temptation being sufficient.
Instinctively, Lapierre knew that the hands within the heavy mittens had clenched into fighting fists. For an instant she faced him, and then, drawing away as if he were some grizzly, loathsome thing poisoning the air he breathed, she spoke. Her voice trembled with the fury of her words, and Lapierre winced to the lash of a woman's scorn. "You you dog!" she cried. "You dirty, low-lived cur!
And at the end of that trail will lie a dead man myself or Pierre Lapierre!" "And at the beginning of the trail lie two dead men," sneered Chloe. "Those who started for the timber " "And, by God, if necessary, the trail will be paved with dead men! For Lapierre, the day of reckoning is at hand." Chloe took a step forward, and with blazing eyes stood trembling with anger before the man.
Her hatred for MacNair was real enough now. That hatred, the shame and humility, and the fact that Lapierre was pleading with her as he had never pled before, were going far to convince the girl that her previous estimate of the quarter-breed had been a mistaken estimate, and that he was in truth the fine, clean, educated man of the North which on the surface he appeared to be.
There were vague rumours about the Hudson Bay posts, and in the barracks of the Mounted, that Lapierre maintained such a fort, but its location was accredited to one of the numerous islands of the extreme western arm of Great Slave Lake. Bob MacNair knew of the fort, and the rifles, and the whiskey.
Then, swift as the question, flashed the answer: It was not to avenge MacNair they came, but, knowing he was helpless, to strike the blow that would free themselves from the yoke. Had Lapierre known this? Had he left, knowing that the man's own Indians would finish the work his bullet had only half completed? No! Lapierre would not have done that.
It was some time before the good lady succeeded in convincing her auditor that such a ridiculous fraud as she described had actually been perpetrated. But there was M. Lapierre and there was Madame Valerie Reddon sitting in the office as living witnesses to the fact.
"If I were you fellows I wouldn't overlook any bets," he answered meaningly. "Why New Year's Day any more than Christmas, or any other day?" "Because," answered Lapierre, "on Christmas Day, or any other day before New Year's Day, you won't find a damned thing but an empty hole that is why. Well, I must be going." He fastened the throat of his parka and drew on his cap and mittens. "So long!
With his mind easy in his fancied security, and in order that every moment of time and every ounce of man-power should be devoted to the digging of gold, Lapierre had neglected to bring his rifles and ammunition from the Lac du Mort rendezvous and from the storehouse of Chloe Elliston's school.
"For even if it were not damaged, it would be of no further use to us. Tonight the lake will freeze." "What are we going to do?" cried the girl. "There is only one thing to do," answered Lapierre quickly. "Walk to the school. It is not such a long trail a hundred miles or so. And you can take it easy. You have plenty of provisions." "I!" cried the girl. "And what will you do?"
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