The Lady of North Star

“Don’t!” snapped the voice. “Put them up, or by – ” Bracknell recognized the folly of resistance, and as he raised his hands above his head, his eyes swept the cabin for the speaker. A slush lamp against the wall, and the glow from the roaring Yukon stove gave light to the middle of the cabin, but the corners were in comparative darkness, and it was a second or two before he located the owner of the voice. Then, in a bunk in the corner furthest from the door, he caught sight of a man propped among furs and blankets. On the edge of the bunk rested a hand which held a heavy pistol pointing at himself. The face that he looked into was that which he had last seen in death-like repose in the snow near North Star Lodge – the face of Koona Dick. The eyes of the latter glittered wickedly in the firelight, and whilst the officer waited the voice spoke again, mockingly.

“The end of the long trail – hey, bobby?”

The corporal did not reply. Apparently his cousin was alone and comparatively helpless, or he would scarcely have waited his entrance lying in the bunk. His eyes measured the distance between them and he speculated what chance there was of the success of a sudden spring proving successful. But the man on the bunk evidently divined what was passing through his mind, for a second later he broke the silence again.

“I wouldn’t try it, officer, not if I were you. I may be a sick man, but I can still shoot.”

Roger Bracknell looked at the hand resting on the edge of the bunk. It was perfectly steady. He recognized the hopelessness of any attack proving successful, until the sick man was off his guard, and nodded casually.

“I give you best,” he answered, speaking for the first time.

The man on the bunk gave a chuckling laugh. “You seem wise,” he replied, “and if you do just what I tell you you’ll prove you are. You’ve got a gun, of course, in that holster of yours? Well, when I give the word, you will unbuckle the belt, and fling it pistol and all under the bunk here. No tricks, mind you. If your hand strays an inch from the buckle, I fire, and I warn you that I am a dead shot… Now you can get to work.”

The corporal dropped his hands to his belt, and as his fingers worked at the stiff buckle, wondered if he might run the risk of trying for his pistol.

“Quick! You’re too long!” cried the man in the bunk. Roger Bracknell hesitated for a second. His fingers fumbled at the buckle, then the belt swung loose in his hands.

“Throw it!” came the command in a peremptory voice.

The corporal threw it along the floor and it slid to the edge of the bunk, then his cousin laughed again.

“‘Wisdom is justified of her children.’ If you had a pious upbringing, bobby, you will recognize the Scripture. And now having got rid of your arsenal, you can sit down at the table, and put your hands upon it. That will be easier for you than standing there trying to touch the roof, but I warn you again – no monkey tricks or – ”

The pistol moved significantly, and the corporal moved towards the rough table, constructed out of a packing case.

“Keep your hands up, and shove that stool forward with your feet.”

The “stool” referred to was a log of wood, which as the corporal recognized, would prove a very good missile if a man had time to lift and throw it. Evidently his mentor realized that also, and was taking no chances, so, still at the pistol point, Corporal Bracknell pushed the log forward to the table, and then on his captor’s instructions seated himself with his arms resting on the table.

“Now,” said the sick man, with a short laugh, “we can talk in peace.”

“Talk away,” answered the corporal cheerfully.

“I will,” replied the other sharply. “There’s a question that I want to ask you… Why did you pot me in the wood at North Star Lodge three nights ago? That sort of thing is against the rules of your service, isn’t it?”

“It is,” answered the corporal, “and the answer to your other question is that I didn’t pot you.”

“You didn’t, hey? Then who the devil did?”

“I would give a goodish bit to know,” was the corporal’s reply. “The thing is a mystery to me.”

“But it’s no mystery to me,” answered the other, a trifle passionately. “You did it, and it’s no use trying to bluff me. I know you’ve been on my track for weeks, and that you were determined to get me by fair means or foul. If you think that lying is going to help you – ”

“I am not lying,” interrupted Roger Bracknell. “I give you my word of honour that I am telling you the truth – and I say that not because I am afraid. It is true that I was trailing you, and that I was close at your heels at North Star. But I never shot you, I found you lying in the snow, as I thought, dead, but I’d nothing whatever to do with the shooting.”

“The devil!” cried the sick man, and from his tones the corporal knew that he was convinced. “Then who did it?”

The corporal saw a chance of further surprising his questioner – and took it.

“Well, there was the person whom you went to meet – your wife, you know.”

“My wife!” There was amazement in Dick Bracknell’s tones, and for a moment after the exclamation he stared at the officer like the man who could not believe his ears.

“Yes, your wife, Joy Gargrave,” answered the corporal steadily. “You went to meet her in the wood, didn’t you?”

Dick Bracknell did not reply. His lips pursed themselves and he began to whistle thoughtfully to himself the while he stared at the man whose question he left unanswered. The corporal smiled a little, and continued —

“I should think that you would be the first to admit that Joy Gargrave was not without grievances sufficient to warrant extreme action on her part.”

“You can put that notion out of your noddle, at once,” replied the other harshly. “If you know Joy at all, you know that the idea of shooting me is the very last thing that would enter her head. She’s not that sort.”

The corporal remembered Joy’s confession and smiled whimsically at the unconscious irony of her husband’s testimony, then, still trying to move the other to some indiscretion of speech, he answered quietly, “You believe in Joy Gargrave? But have you thought what she must feel like? There are plenty of women who – ”

“Drop it,” broke in the sick man harshly. “The motion is preposterous. I won’t listen to it; and I warn you, I don’t share Joy’s scruples about shooting.”

“Nor about anything else, I imagine?” answered the corporal with a short laugh. “But we can easily settle whether Joy did it or not. Which side did the shot come from?”

“Now you’re asking me something,” answered the wounded man. “There were two shots, and they came from both sides of me. It was a regular ambuscade, and whoever fired meant to get me.”

“Where were you hit?” asked the corporal.

“Left shoulder! Drilled clean through,” was the reply.

“And which way were you facing when the thing happened?” asked the corporal. “Think carefully. It is rather important.”

“I was facing up the path, with my back to the main road. I had heard something moving and had turned round, just at the moment.”

“That settles it,” answered the corporal emphatically. “It was the shot from the left that did for you, and your wife was on the right.”

“But who was on the left? Tell me that if you can, my Solomon.”

Corporal Bracknell shook his head. “There you hit one of the mysteries of this business. I don’t know, I wish I did, but as sure as my name is Roger Bracknell – ”

“As sure as what?” The interruption came like a pistol shot, and the wounded man leaned forward with amazement showing in his face. “What name did you say you called yourself?”

“Roger Bracknell!” answered the corporal quietly.

“H’m!” responded the other, peering at him thoughtfully, then he said suddenly, “Take off that chapeau of yours!”

The corporal removed his fur cap, and sat with it in his hand, whilst the other searched his face with inquisitive eyes. There was a moment’s silence, and then the wounded man spoke again.

“It beats the band. You are my cousin Roger right enough, and this is a nice dramatic meeting. Drury Lane isn’t in it with us, though what the blazes you are doing as a ‘Mounter’ beats me. I thought you were at the bar.”

“And I didn’t know you were Koona Dick until three nights ago. I had your description given me, and that cut across your cheek bone was particularized. That and the beard you wear are acquisitions since the old days at Harrow Fell, and even when I looked at your face the other night I never associated Koona Dick with Dick Bracknell.”

“How did you come to know?” asked the other curiously.

“I picked up that note which you sent to your wife asking her to meet you, and naming the place. You had begun to write your surname and then crossed it out. That gave me the first inkling that you and Koona Dick were one and the same, and of course when I talked to Joy Gargrave I knew that what I suspected was the fact.”