"Dat me--Joe Pete," came a familiar voice from beyond the door. "An' I'm t'ink dat tam we goin' back. She start to snow, an' I ain' lak we git los'. Too mooch no trail."

"Might's well git 'em started now as anytime," whispered Claw. "_We_ don't want 'em to git lost, neither. What we want is fer 'em to git to their camp an' then the snow an' the hooch'll hold 'em till we git there."

"Next thing is to git him woke up," answered the Captain. Aloud, he called to Joe Pete: "All right, come on in an' give us a hand, yer pardner's stewed to the guards, an' it ain't goin' to be no cinch to wake him up."

The door opened, and Brent's heart gave a leap as he felt the hand of the big Indian upon his shoulder. If anything should go wrong now, at least the odds against him were greatly reduced insofar as the occupants of the cabin were concerned. But, there would still be the crew--they could shoot from the cover of the igloos-- The hand was shaking him roughly, and it was with a feeling of vast relief that Brent allowed his head to roll about upon the stiffened muscles of his neck. A gla.s.s was pressed to his lips, and there was nothing feigned in the coughing with which he sought to remove the strangling liquor from his throat. His eyes opened, and the next instant a dipper of cold water was dashed into his face. The shaking continued, and he babbled feeble protest: "Lemme 'lone. G'way--le'me sleep!" The shaking was redoubled, and Brent blinked stupidly, and feigned maudlin anger as the Indian slapped him with the flat of his hand, first on one cheek and then on the other. "Who you slappin'," he muttered, thickly, as he staggered to his feet and stood swaying and holding to the table for support, "C'm on an' fight!" he challenged, acting his part to a nicety, glaring owlishly about, "I c'n lick y'all. Gi'me some water, I'm burnin' up." A dipper of water was thrust into his hands and he drained it in huge gulps, "What's goin' on here?" he asked, apparently revived a little by the water, "Gi'me some hooch!"

Claw laid a conciliating hand upon his arm: "Listen, Ace-In-The-Hole,"

he purred, "Not no more hooch right now. It's startin' to snow, an' you got to be hittin' fer camp. Look a here," he picked up a corked bottle and extended it to Brent, "Here's a bottle fer you. Wait till you git to camp, and then go to it. 'Twon't take you only a little while--but you got to git goin'. If she thicks up on you before you git to the mountains you'll be in a h.e.l.l of a fix--but you got time to make it if the Siwash will shove the dogs along. Better let him ride the sled," he said, turning to Joe Pete, "You'll make better time."

Brent took the bottle and slipped it beneath his parka: "How much?" he asked, fumbling clumsily for his sack.

"That's all right," a.s.sured Claw, "Tain't nothin' 't all. It's a present from me an' Cap. Shows we know how to treat a friend. Come over an' see us agin, when the storm lets up. Yer welcome to anything we got."

"Much 'blige, Claw," mumbled Brent, blinking with solemn gravity, as he smothered an impulse to reach out and crush the man's wind-pipe in the grip of his hand, "Didn't know you was good fren' of mine. Know it--now--an' you, too, Cap--an' you, too, Snaggs."

"Scroggs," corrected the mate, "Asa Scroggs."

"Sure--Scroggs--'scuse me--mus' be little full. My name's Ace, too--Ace-In-The-Hole--pair of aces, haw, haw, haw! Pair to draw to, I'll say. Well, s'long. Tell you what," he said, as he turned to the door, leaning heavily upon Joe Pete, "You come on over to my camp, when the storm lets up. Right on the river--can't miss it--b.l.o.o.d.y Falls--where Old Hearne's Injuns butchered the poor Eskimos--d.a.m.n shame! Bring over plenty of hooch--I've got the dust to pay for it--bring dozen bottles--plenty dust back there in camp--an' it'll be my treat."

"We'll come," the Captain hastened to accept, "Might's well be good friends. Neighbors hain't none too thick in these parts. We'll come, won't we Claw--an' we'll bring the hooch."

Stumbling and mumbling, Brent negotiated the narrow ally and the steep flight of stairs in the wake of Joe Pete. At the head of the ladder that led down the ship's side, he managed to stumble and land harmlessly in a huge pile of snow that had been shoveled aside to make a path to the igloos, and amid the jibes of the two sailors who were cutting blubber, allowed Joe Pete to help him onto the sled.

The wind had risen to half a gale. Out of the northeast it roared, straight across the frozen gulf from the treeless, snow-buried wastes of Wollaston Land, driving before it flinty particles of snow that hissed earthward in long cutting slants.

Heading the dogs southward, Joe Pete struck into the back-trail and, running behind, with a firm grip on the tail-rope, urged them into a pace that carried the outfit swiftly over the level snow-covered ice.

Upon the sled Brent lay thinking. Now that the necessity for absolute muscle control no longer existed, the condition of cold hate into which he had forced himself gave place to a surge of rage that drove his nails into his palms, and curses from his lips, as he tried in his unreasoning fury to plan extermination of the two fiends who had plotted the soul-murder of his wonder woman. He would tear them to shreds with his two hands. He would shoot them down from ambush without a chance to protect themselves, as they searched for his camp among the rock-ridges of b.l.o.o.d.y Falls.

Gradually the fume of fury cooled and he planned more sanely. He was conscious of a torturing thirst. The bottle of hooch pressed against his side, and carefully so as not to disturb the covering robe, he drew it from beneath his parka. He was cold sober, now. The shock of what he had heard in the cabin of the _Belva Lou_ had completely purged his brain of the effect of the strong liquor. But not so his body. Every nerve and fibre of him called for more liquor. There was a nauseating sickness in his stomach, a gnawing dryness in his throat, and a creeping coldness in his veins that called for the feel of the warm glow of liquor. Never in his life had the physical desire for drink been more acute--but his brain was cold sober.

Nothing of the heart-sickening remorse of his first moments of consciousness a.s.sailed him now. What was done was done. He knew that he had yielded to his desire for drink, had weakly succ.u.mbed to the first temptation, as he had always weakly succ.u.mbed--an act, in itself contemptible. But with an ironical smile he realized that his very weakness had placed him in a position to save from a fate a thousand times more horrible than death, the girl who had become dearer to him than life itself. But, with that realization, came also the realization that only by the merest accident, had the good been born of evil, that the natural and logical result of his act would have had its culmination at b.l.o.o.d.y Falls when he and Joe Pete would have sunk down dead upon the snow at the moment he produced the gold to pay for more hooch. Claw had laid his plans along the logical sequence of events. "He played me for a drunkard, as he had a right to," muttered Brent. "And his scheme would have worked except for one little mistake. He forgot to figure that physically I'm a better man than I was back at Dawson. He thought he had me gauged right, and so he talked. But--he over-played his hand. An hour ago, I was a drunkard. Am I a drunkard now? It is the test," he muttered, "The war is on," and with a grim tightening of the lips, he thrust the bottle back under his parka.

Three times within the next two hours he withdrew the bottle. And three times he returned it to its place. He thought of tossing it into the snow--and a moment later, angrily dismissed the thought. "_She_ wouldn't ask odds of the hooch and I won't either! I'll keep this bottle right with me. I'll fight this fight like a man--like a Brent! And, by G.o.d, when I win, it won't be because I couldn't get the hooch! It will be because I wouldn't drink it when I had it!"

And, the next moment, to the utter astonishment of Joe Pete, he leaped perfectly sober from the sled, and took his place at the tail-rope with a laughing command to the Indian to take a rest on the robes.

An hour later, Brent halted the dogs and aroused Joe Pete. "We ought to have hit sh.o.r.e by this time," he said, "I'm afraid something's wrong."

The snow had thickened, entirely obliterating the trail, and forming an opaque wall through which the eye could penetrate but a short distance beyond the lead dog.

The Indian noted the course, and the direction of the wind. "Mebbe-so win' change," he opined, and even as he spoke the long sweeping lines of snow were broken into bewildering zig-zags. A puff of wind coming at a right angle from the direction of the driving gale was followed by another bl.u.s.tering puff from the opposite direction, and they came thick and fast from every direction, and seemingly from all directions at once. The snow became powder-fine and, in a confusion of battering blasts, the two men pushed uncertainly on.

CHAPTER XIX

TRAPPED

For three days the Arctic blizzard raged and howled, and drifted the snow deep over the igloos that were grouped about the hulk of the _Belva Lou_. On the morning of the fourth day Claw and the Captain made their way across the snow-buried deck and gazed out toward the distant ridges of the Copper Mountains.

"Might's well git started," opined Claw, "Have 'em load a week's grub onto my sled, an' you an' me, an' the Dog Rib'll hit out."

"Will a week's grub be enough?" growled the Captain, "It's goin' to be a h.e.l.l of a trip. Mebbe we'd ort to wait a couple o' days an' see what the weather'll do."

"Wait--h.e.l.l!" cried Claw, "What's the use waitin'? The b'rom'ter's up, an' you know d.a.m.n well we ain't in fer no more storm fer a week er two.

What we want to do is to git over to b.l.o.o.d.y Falls before Ace-In-The-Hole takes a notion to break camp. An' what's the use of packin' more grub?

We'll have his won't we?"

"He ain't goin' to break camp till we come along with the hooch," argued the other, "Couple days more an' this snow will be settled an' the goin'll be easier."

"If you don't want to go, you kin stay here," retorted Claw, "Me--I ain't goin' to take no chances. I an' the Dog Rib kin handle them two, if you don't want none of it. An' then we'll shove on to the Injun camp an' git the girl, an' I'll jest slip on over to Dawson with her--a thousan' dollars is too cheap, anyhow. If I hadn't of b'n lit up I'd never offered her to you fer no such figger."

"A trade's a trade," interrupted the Captain. "If yer so h.e.l.l-bent on goin', I'll go along." He shouted the necessary orders to the sailors who were clearing the snow from the doorways of the igloos, and the two turned to the cabin.

"I'll take that five hundred now, before we start, an' you kin give me the balance when we git back with the girl," suggested Claw.

"Ye said there'd be five hundred apiece in Ace-In-The-Hole's sack,"

reminded the Captain, "I'll pay the first installment with that."

"You will, like h.e.l.l! You'll pay me now. We ain't got that sack yet.

Come acrost."

"I'll give ye an order on----"

"You'll give me an order on no one! You'll count out five hundred, cash money--dust, er bills, right here in this cabin, 'fore we budge an inch.

You've got it--come acrost!"

After much grumbling the Captain produced a roll of bills and counting off five hundred dollars, pa.s.sed the money reluctantly across the table to Claw, who immediately stowed it away. "Don't forget to have 'em put a keg of rum on the sled," he reminded, "We'll need it when we get to the Injuns. Not half water, neither. What we want this trip is the strong stuff that'll set 'em afire."

"You got to stand your half o' the rum. We're pardners on this."

"I stand nothin'. You put up the rum, an' the grub, an' a thousan'

dollars fer the girl. My contract is to git her, an' deliver her on board the _Belva Lou_. The only thing we're pardners on is Ace-In-The-Hole's dust. A trade's a trade--an' you got all the best of it, at that."

Late that afternoon Claw and the Captain, and the renegade Dog Rib reached the b.l.o.o.d.y Falls of the Coppermine, and searched vainly for Brent's camp.

"Pulled out!" cried the Captain, after an hour's search along the base of the upstanding rock ledges.

Claw shook his head: "They never got here," he amended, "The storm got bad before they hit the ridges, an' they're lost."

"Where's the camp, then?"

Claw indicated the high piled snow: "Tent was only pegged to the snow.

Wind blew it down, and the fresh snow buried it. We'll camp an' hang around a couple of days. If they weathered the storm, they'll be along by that time. If they didn't--well, they won't bother us none with the girl."