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Here he learned enough to convince him that Robert Lefroy had told him the truth in regard to what had there occurred. The people about the station still remembered the condition of the man who had been taken out of the car when suffering from delirium tremens; and remembered also that the man had not died there, but had been carried on by the next train to San Francisco.
Everybody might know it now. He had, he said, quite made up his mind about that. What was the good of affecting secrecy when this man Lefroy was in the country? In the afternoon, after service, Mr. Puddicombe came up to the house, and heard it all. He was a dry, thin, apparently unsympathetic man, but just withal, and by no means given to harshness.
"You've been drunk as often as him, I guess," said Robert. "I never gave nobody the trouble to bury me at any rate," said the other. "Do you mean to say positively of your own knowledge," asked Peacocke, "that Ferdinand Lefroy died at that station?" "Ask him; he's his brother, and he ought to know best." "I tell you," said Robert, earnestly, "that we carried him on to 'Frisco, and there he died.
The journey down the Yellow Knife was a nightmare for the quarter-breed, who momentarily expected an attack from MacNair's Indians. Upon their safe arrival, however, his black eyes glittered wickedly at last MacNair was his. Fate had played directly into his hands. He knew the attack was inevitable, and during the excitement well, LeFroy could be trusted to attend to MacNair.
She had already allowed herself to speak of the man as one whose life was a blight upon her own; and though there had been no word of out-spoken love from her lips to his ears, he thought that he might succeed if it could be made certain that Ferdinand Lefroy was no longer among the living. "I shall never know," she said in her misery. "What I do hear I shall never believe.
I knew it was useless to try to overtake them with my heavily loaded canoe, and so upon my arrival at the school, as soon as we had concluded the outfitting of the trappers, I dispatched LeFroy to hunt these men down, to destroy any liquor found in their possession, and to deal with them as he saw fit." He paused and gazed steadily into the girl's face.
It was untenanted except for the girl and the unconscious man on the bed. "LeFroy, it seems, has improved his time," ventured Lapierre as he accepted the proffered chair and drew from his pocket a thick packet of papers. "His complete list of supplies," he smiled.
All this the girl learned through her interpreter, LeFroy; and not a few of these Indians remained to take up their abode in dormitories or cabins, until the little settlement boasted some thirty or forty colonists.
She had been only sixteen when her father died, and not seventeen when she married Ferdinand Lefroy. It was she who afterwards came to England under the name of Mrs. Peacocke. Mr. Peacocke was Vice-President of the College at Missouri when he first saw her, and when he first became acquainted with the two brothers, each of whom was called Colonel Lefroy.
Then Lefroy had yielded, and had agreed to be put on board a German steamer starting from Southampton to New York. But an hour or two before the steamer started he made a revelation. "This is all gammon, Peacocke," he said, when on board. "What is all gammon?" "My taking you across to the States." "Why is it gammon?"
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