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It was too late even to snatch for it: Marcia had read it! She held it up to me now, and Tatiana Paulina Valenka, black on the yellow of the scorched paper, hit me on the eyes. "Who was right, Nicky Stretton?" she demanded triumphantly. "I told you I'd seen Paulette Brown before! Only I never thought of the Houston business. I could kill Dudley; how dare he bring me out here with a thief!
A death so premature, and above all so cruel, since it was not an enemy's bullet which struck him, was deplored by the whole army. Presented to her, he prepared to begin work. "Monsieur," said a charming young man in a wrapper, negligently lying on a sofa, "take care, I pray, what you do. I feel a great interest in the teeth of my Paulette, and I hold you responsible for any accident."
My dream girl, who had two names and belonged to Dudley anyhow, said nothing at all. She and I, who had really nothing to do with one another, if I would have laid my soul under her little feet, stood still in the cold moonlight, looking inimically into one another's eyes. We must have stood silent for a good three minutes. I think I was furious because Paulette did not speak to me.
She had no earthly reason to connect him with Dudley's death, except the scraps of conversation she had overheard from Paulette and me; she knew nothing of the bottle of wolf dope that had been meant to smash in my wagon, or that Dudley so full up with drink and drugs that he could not have smelled even that mixture of skunks and sulphide could easily have been sent out reeking with it, into bush that reeked of it too.
Paulette strayed to the fireplace, and I saw her handful of papers blaze up before she moved away. I was thankful when that signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka was off the earth, even if Macartney had gone out of the room. Paulette said good night, and went out on his heels.
I was turning away, whistling at being rid of the stuff, when he called me back to hand over a bundle of letters for La Chance. There were three for Marcia, and one in old Thompson's back-number copperplate for Dudley. There were no letters for Paulette Brown or myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected any. I know I hadn't.
I say again, let's get a sheriff and posse at Caraquet, and come back here and get Macartney! We could do it, if we took Miss Paulette and hit the trail to-night." "And Macartney'd get us, if we tried it!" I had thrashed all that out in my head before, while I was tying up Macartney with Charliet's clothesline.
And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out of Thompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for Miss Paulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway." I felt him staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hard ride and a fight?" he demanded irrelevantly, in a voice that sounded oddly far off.
If I had looked behind me, when Paulette would not let me carry her snowshoes, I would have seen the tails of them dragging a telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they sagged from her tired arm. But my eyes were straight before me, on the door of Macartney's lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung, but I only glanced in to make sure it was empty.
We were on the blind side of the house for Marcia and Dudley, but we were in plain view from Charliet's window, and I was not going to have even a cook look out and see Paulette talking to a man in the middle of the night. Her despair cut me; I had never seen her anything but valiant before, and I had a lump in my throat. But I spoke roughly enough.
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