ling his
hands.

Then he looked.

Sheriff Flood was not to be seen. Neither was MacDonald. There seemed
to be no one. The day shift were going back in the tunnels below. The
windlass handle hung prone as a disused well. It had not flown back
broken. The cable had been cut. Then, he heard a groan. It was
Calamity lying on her face at the foot of the windlass, weeping and
reaving her hair. Stretched on the grass a few paces back from the
windlass with two bloody bullet holes full in the soft of the temple,
lay MacDonald, the sheep rancher, beyond recall.

Wayland stooped and felt for the heart.

It was motionless. The body was chilling and stiffening. He looked
back at the face. There was almost a smile on the lips; and one hand
hung as if fallen from the windlass handle. A suspicion flashed
through Wayland's mind. He could hardly give it credence. It was
preposterous, unbelievable, like a page from the lawlessness of the
frontier a hundred years ago! Yet hadn't this thing happened in
California, and happened in Alaska? They would never dare to murder a
man conducting an investigation ordered by the great Government of the
greatest Nation on earth! Yet had they not tried to assassinate
representatives of the great Federal Government down in San Francisco,
and shot to death in Colorado a federal officer sent straight from
Washington? And these murders had not been committed by the rabble, by
the demagogues, by the anarchists. They had been pre-planned and
carried out by the vested-righter, in defiance of law, in defiance of
the strongest Government on earth and up to the present, in defiance of
retribution.

Wayland tore open the coat and felt for the notes. They were gone. He
looked at Calamity. A darker suspicion came. Then, he caught the Cree
woman by the shoulder and threw her to her feet.

"Calamity who did this?"

"Th' trunk man, O'Finnigan! Flood, he lead heem up; an' t' trunk man
shoot, shoot quick close--lak dat," she said snapping her fingers round
behind Wayland's ear against the soft of his temple.

Wayland's suspicions became a certainty.

"They will blame you," he said, "do you understand me? They will prove
_you did_ it; and hang you! Ride for your life! Ride for Canada; and
hide!"

Was he thinking of Calamity or Eleanor? But where was Flood; and where
was the drunken man?

He fastened a stone to the end of the cut cable, and with a shout began
dropping it down