SHORT STORY
FROZEN TRAIL
HF dogs strained hard at the Peterboro
sledge, and the breath of the man run-
in ning behind came sharp, expended. gasps. The woman sitting on the heap of furs twisted round and looked into his strained Lace.
"Gene, don't kill yourself. Don't--" The man's voice came back to her mut- ed by frost and wind. His breath froze as it left his mouth. Tiny icicles hung to the woollen scarf topping his thick parka. "Got to make Bell's Landing, Deila, Got him, to." Fear, determination gripped moulded his face into iron lines. "That damn' Mountie won't let up. It's hell. but we got no choice."
The woman turned her gaze back to the frozen waste over which the sure-footed huskies were pounding their way, steam then dispersing rising in dank clouds, rapidly in the cold atmosphere. Here and there the landscape was broken by a group of tufted firs; pines struggling for Ilfe in small valley bottoms, But nothing moved save that sledge, the man Recing. capture, and the straining dogs.
The sun, that had been an orange ball in the frosty heavens, was blotted out. It was a white world, and the keen northern wind following their running dusted over their trail with quick, furtive fingers.
"Will that Mountie know where you're heading for. Gene?" the woman asked.
The man laughed bitterly, a soughing round.
"He'll know." He bit off the words. "Bell's Landing is our only hope. 'It's that or ..meet a wolf pack."
As he spoke he stumbled, and all but fell. The woman rose quickly, jumped from the sledge, and hauled at the lead- reins.
"Hold it, Ungatt Stop, Brown Boy!" The dogs hesitated, slowed, dragged to a stop and stood panting, licking their wide jaws with pink tongues, and -rum- bling deep growls in their Ican throats.
The woman ran to the man's side. Gene Hartınan was leaning against sledge pole, pain twisting his face,
"I can't help it, Della. It's that damn' bullet wound. It-it's giving me hell."
Pity and fear. strove in the woman's eyes, but were ousted by a light of deeper as she Her glance caressed emotion. watched his drawn face and noted its greying pallor.
"'You're riding, Gene. I'll mush the dogs."
He strove to pull himself together.
I know the trall. "No. girl, it's no use. I'm running blind-a chance in a hun- dred,
A gloved She stayed his words with hand, and pulled him towards the sledge, forced him down, and covered him with a blanket.
"I'm mushing, Gene," she said quietly. and he knew she meant it. He made a futile gesture with his hand, but she took no notice.
"Just point, right or left when I've got to swing the dogs, Gene. That's all," said her quiet voice, now empty of fear, trusi- ing only in something she did not under. She loved that man-now stand.
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than ever, and he needed her.
She swung to the poles, lifted her volee in a throbbing call to the dogs.
"M, Ungat, Brown Boy; Mush f". The qs. glad to be moving, leaped for-
rling their joy.
ward,
The idge slid forward over the hard, rock-fruen ground, feathering, the surface snow and gathering speed with every yard.
Night was drawing a curtain over the Arctic day as the tired dogs tore into the lower grade that would bring them to level The man on the of the frozen river. sledge painted with his left arm, and the girl ran ahead, tugged at the leader's har- ness, and hauled him round, yapping, close, to rebellion. In half an hour it would be a black and white world. .-
It seemed an Interminable half-hour, but it ended abruptly. The sledge swung down to the cleared, deserted space, of Bell's Landing, and the woman hauled 'the team to a noisy standstill.
She helped the man from the sledge, the built a fire, hotted food, and fed tethered dogs. She was tired, weary in soul and body, but she kept to her work. She had to, and always when she spoke her voice was low, breathing hope.
"Tomorrow, Gene, we'll be across the river, and then.
She slept close to the man, fearful of the cold, the danger following them, and what lay before. They had burned their boats. They.
Thought was useless.
drawing But the danger behind, was closer every hour. Corporal: Dan! Soames,. of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, had a reputation, like his fellows, for. get- ting his man, and he was determined that Gene Hartman, wanted for the killing of Bruce Chandler, should not escape him. He was out to get his man, spurred on by the thought of what he carried in a fur- covered bundle. This run would make history, he knew. Two hundred and fifty' miles he and his dogs had stuck to the trail, drawing closer with each day's end. There was a relentless urge in the Moun- tle's veins. His code, what he stood for, was the one thing in his life-it was his .life. One of that handful of men who take the law to the nor ernmost wastes of the globe, he was proud of the tradition of which he was a living part and symbol.
Gene Hartman should be brought - Inte headquarters, a handcuffed prisoner:
That was all that mattered to Dan Soames. It was the one thought in his mind as he drove through the night, hur- ling encouragement at his prize dog team;- stayers every one of them, dogs he had nursed from pups and trained himself. They would keep going, is long as he, and he could keep going a long as Gene Hart- man was in front of him,
But not far in front now. Every hard- Avon half-mile every frozen half-yard, was
real conquest.
The new day was two hours old when Hartman's dogs rose, crying shrilly.
The woman got up from the sledge. ""Gene! Can it be wolves?"
Her voice trembled. The man turned a drowsy head. He was, parched and flame encircled his body where the bullet had entered. He was licked, but could not admit it.
יז
"Not wolves, Della. It-it's hin." Their fire was dead. The woman drag- ged a rifle from the sledge pack.
"No," said the man weakly. "Not that, Della. Not now-when you're safe."
"But, Gene," she pleaded, "you didn't do it You're not guilty. It was his gun..........'
Fever burned in the man's, eyes, and words choked in his throat, but he forced them through his clenched teeth.
"That's why. Della," he muttered.""We'd lose out if-if we resorted to murdor~~~- now."
His tired, aching head fell back, and the woman stood by, the rifle unlifted, its butt against the glass-smooth earth.
cutting away frozen Resh,
and dressing
-the rent in flesh and muscle..
"You're lucky," he announced. 'Only the cold saved you, Hartman."
"Lucky!" said the woman "Saved!".
bitterly.
be
After dawn had it the sky the southern run across the river and through the Wld- more Hills began. Dan Soames took it easy. He had his man, and he had to keep him alive now, so that the hangman could do his job and another lesson read to the lawless. For three more days. they held to the trail. Hartman mended. the fever loft, his body, cleared the false, brightness from his eyes. After a week he was on his feet. A few more dayɛ. and they would be pulling in to head- quarters, and then..
But fate dealt a different hand. Crossing a sinall frozen river on a high
ripped. plateau, the Mountie's sledge through surface ice, tipped over, and cold black water suddenly swirled over Dan Soames' fur-shod feet. He cried to, the dogs, but too late. The sharp tug mercly dislodged loose tackle, sent it rolling into the black water between the curved edges of broken ice,
The fur-covered bundle slipped into the inky waters, and the Mountie saw his precious et dence vanish. For a moment he stood paralysed by thought. Five hundred miles of rough going, almost won through. 'and..
He took the plunge-literally.
He went down into the numbling ice- covered water, groping with both hands. Above "Hartman stood, an 'expression of wonder on his square face, calling.
The corporal came up, grasping his pre- clous bundle.
fool!" shouted Hartman.
will be your death !" Soames' face was pinched and blue, He grinned tightly.
"You damn "That fool tr
"That would-would let you-out," he chattered between teeth that would not clench.
1
"Hell, corporal, I'm not, He choked.
"Della," he called, "help me get this foot into dry things, and then boil up some coffee. What the devil is so impor- tant about that damned bundle?” he asked. The chattering, shivering Mountie smil- ed ironically..
"That little bundle, Hartman, is your— fate," he muttered.
For a moment Hartman stood undecid- ed. Here was a God-given opportunity to win clear, to beat this dogged policeman. He was sorely tempted, but he knew that to leave Soames now would be to leave -him to his death. It would be nothing short of murder--of another kind, And Soames had treated his prisoner well.
A
The Mountie, shaking in every limb, watched the struggle for mastery in his, prisoner's face, saw Hartman plumb to the depths of self and come up victor of a fight that had made cruel battle- ground of his soul.
"I-I guess my fate's to play doctor right now," he said with false lightness, and got to work changing Soames' clothes. The next three days little was said be tween Gene Hartman and the woman he had--sald--was his wife. Their thoughts and feelings were too bitter, to be put into words and trusted to speech. And they had a job on their hands, Soames went down with pneumonia, and his mind raved with delirium. Hartman set his teeth and kept to the grim frozen trail. The" Words muttered by the raving Mountie wove pat- terns of doubt and despair in his mind,. but he saw his purpose clearly now. The roles were reversed. He had to get Soames in to headquarters, alive...
It was his justification for everything he had done, for the visit to Chandler's shack on the frozen gold-field;; for his flight; and taking the woman he had loved and whom he had seen, suffer at Chandler's. brutal hands until he had no longer been able
Corporal Dan Soames ran down with histo stand by. team, rifle aimed at the ready. He was surprised to meet no resistance.
"Hartman," he said, "I arrest you for the murder of Bruce Chandler, and any- thing you say will be used as
against you."
He turned to the woman:
"And you, Mrs"
evidence
The man on the sledge interrupted, "Hartman-my wife."
The corporal's eyes widened.
"I didn't know you were married, Hart- man.I.heard Chandler was, and that-" "My wife, I tell you," said the man; on the sledge fiercely, "You hear?"
The Mountie looked at the man, noted. the fever apots on his face, turned to the woman, and saw her lifted chin, stubborn, dominant, and shrugged.
"Okay, as you say. It makes no differ- ence to me, Hartman. You killed Chand- ler."
The woman's eyes filmed, then blazed. "He didn't. I tell you there was a fight. It wasn't murder. You're wrong-wrong, I tell you. It was Bruce himself"
She stopped, aware that use of that, Christian name had, betrayed the truth." that she really was Bruce Chandler's wife. But the Mountie shrugged again. He was - puzzled," but he had his man. He had: heard the fight was about a woman. "It didn't make any difference which woman, Chandler was dead, and he had his evid ence.
But
"Bure, sure," he said smoothly
sure, we'll leave that for the court, ident
The woman's tongue lashed him. "You won't have to bother with a court if you don't fix your“ prisoner. He'a hurt -bad."
The pain in her voice registered a new impremión: "In the Mountie's mind. He sat to work on his -prisoner, swabbing wound;"
It was as though those days provided a crucible for the breaking down and re- making of Gene Hartman, the man who had drifted before the stray winds 'of life, who had squandered his youth, and then : "found a clear path to happiness in a land most of the world had forgotten if it had ever known.
Her
The woman sensed his struggle, eyes gave him courage, while her lips were silent. She nursed the Mountie, worked hard with the second sledge, to enable the man who had claimed' her as his'to make good time across the frozen wastes.
They pulled into Dan Soames' head- quarters base about midday, the dogs dead- beat, hungry as wolves, Sergeant Smithson Histened to the tale. Hartman had to tell.' and his eyes widened. He was a hard- bitten law officer who had brought in his own prisoners over hundreds of miles, but he had never heard a story like this be fore. Soames was unconscious. ;*
"Mean to say you've brought yourself in under arrest," Hartman?”
The man who had finished the Mountie's Journey for him 'smiled...⠀
'I'm not guilty of murder, sergeant. I fought with Chandler after he fired at me. In the struggle his arms got twisted round and when he pulled the trigger the bullet" entered his own body. That is how he died," kata
The sergeant, pondered this, "Anything to substantiate II?!! "My own wound."
The sergeant examined it, but shook his head. DAO
"Might have, beda' self-inflicted. Proves nothing, Hartman. 1 The notes in Sosthe's notebooks are clear enough; but he men tions something about bonclusive evidence: Know what he micans?”
(Continued on: Page 17)