ask you to
drive us back to Fort Smith, and if you so much as look the wrong way
out of your eyes I'll blow off your head. You and your friend are to
answer for the killing of Pierre Thoreau and for the attempted murder
of this young man, who will follow us to Fort Smith to testify against
you."

It was evident that the half-breed did not understand, and the doctor
added a few explanatory words in French. The man on the floor groaned
and struggled until he was red in the face.

"Easy, easy," soothed the doctor. "I appreciate the fact that it is
pretty tough luck, Dobson, but you'll have to take your medicine.
Falkner, if you'll lend a hand in getting me off I won't lose much time
in starting for Fort Smith."

It was a strange-looking outfit that set out from Pierre Thoreau's cabin
half an hour later. Ahead of the team which had come that morning walked
the breed, his left arm bound to his side with a babiche thong. On the
sledge behind him lay an inanimate and blanket-wrapped bundle, which was
Dobson; and close at the rear of the sledge, stripped of his greatcoat
and more than ever like a diminutive drum-major, followed Dudley
McGill, professor of neurology and diseases of the brain, with a bulldog
revolver in his mittened hand.

From the door Falkner watched them go.

Six hours later Philip returned from the east. Falkner saw him coming up
from the creek and went to meet him.

"I found the cabin, but no one was there," said Philip. "It has been
deserted for a long time. No tracks in the snow, everything inside
frozen stiff, and what signs I did find were of a woman!"

The muscles of Falkner's face gave a sudden twitch. "A woman!" he
exclaimed.

"Yes, a woman," repeated Philip, "and there was a photograph of her on a
table in the bedroom. Did this Dobson have a wife?"

Falkner had fallen a step behind him as they entered the cabin.

"A long time ago--a woman was there," he said. "She was a young woman,
and--and almost beautiful. But she wasn't his wife."

"She was pretty," replied Philip, "so pretty that I brought her picture
along for my collection at home." He looked about for McGill. "Where's
the doctor?"

Falkner's face was very white as he explained what had happened during
the other's absence.

"He said that he would camp early this afternoon so that you could
overtake them," he finished after he had described the capture and the
doctor's departure. "The doctor thought you would want to lose no t