g for travel and
adventure, which his life as a post-trader had not. But it did not
satisfy his innate craving for excitement. Therefore, he cast about to
enlarge his field of activity. He became a whiskey-runner. His
profits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling in
his _repertoire_, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling upon
the ranges along the international boundary.

At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an
organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over
hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose
crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.

Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization--a born leader of men.
He chose his liegemen shrewdly--outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds,
trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers,
smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves--and these he dominated and
ruled absolutely.

Without exception, these men feared him--his authority over them was
unquestioned. Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning,
and because under his direction they made more money, and made it
easier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing a
lone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully. And such was his
disposition of the men who were the component parts of his system of
criminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could,
even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would have
seriously incriminated the leader.

The men who ran whiskey across the line, _cached_ it. Other men,
unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it to
the scowmen. The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all they
knew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their _cache_,
the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it in
some inaccessible rendezvous or _cached_ it where still others would
come and distribute it among the Indians.

Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader
_knew_. And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with each
of his various undertakings. Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed the
scriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
doeth." He confided in no man. And few, indeed, were the defections
among his retainers. A few had rebelled, as Vermilion had
rebelled--and with like result. The