ptness of her confession, for as one of the
working factors of the long arm of the police he accepted it as that.
He had scarcely expected her to divulge her name after the cold-blooded
way in which she had attempted to kill him. And she had spoken quite
calmly of "my brigade." He had heard of the Boulain Brigade. It was a
name associated with Chipewyan, as he remembered it--or Fort McMurray.
He was not sure just where the Boulain scows had traded freight with
the upper-river craft. Until this year he was positive they had not
come as far south as Athabasca Landing. Boulain--Boulain--The name
repeated itself over and over in his mind. Bateese shoved off the
canoe, and the woman's paddle dipped in and out of the water beginning
to shimmer in moonlight. But he could not, for a time, get himself
beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that
he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it.
Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He
whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman
ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her
hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation swept
over him, disgust at his own mental impotency. And the dizzying
sickness was brewing in his head again.

"I have heard that name--somewhere--before," he said. There was a space
of only five or six feet between them, and he spoke with studied
distinctness.

"Possibly you have, m'sieu."

Her voice was exquisite, clear as the note of a bird, yet so soft and
low that she seemed scarcely to have spoken. And it was, Carrigan
thought, criminally evasive--under the circumstances. He wanted her to
turn round and say something. He wanted, first of all, to ask her why
she had tried to kill him. It was his right to demand an explanation.
And it was his duty to get her back to the Landing, where the law would
ask an accounting of her. She must know that. There was only one way in
which she could have learned his name, and that was by prying into his
identification papers while he was unconscious. Therefore she not only
knew his name, but also that he was Sergeant Carrigan of the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. In spite of all this she was apparently not
very deeply concerned. She was not frightened, and she did not appear
to be even slightly excited.

He leaned nearer to her, the movement sending a sharp pain between his
eyes.