The Lady of North Star

“You will like to change your socks and moccasins,” he said politely. “I will go and inform Miss Gargrave, and return for you in ten minutes or so. It should be almost dinner time.”

Corporal Bracknell nodded, and when the man had departed looked round the room with some curiosity. Nowhere in the wild region where his work was done was there another such room, he was sure. Even the commandant’s rooms down at the Post were poor beside it. The furniture was of excellent quality. The wall was match-boarded, hiding the outer logs, and there were furs everywhere. Pictures too! Something familiar in one of them caught his eye, and moving towards it he saw that it was a photograph of Newham College, Cambridge.

He stood looking at it, whistling softly to himself. He himself had been at Caius, and having a sister at Newham, had once or twice had tea in its precincts. He wondered what the picture was doing here in this lodge in the northern wilderness, and he was still wondering when a gong sounded. Hastily he began to change his socks, and the operation was scarcely completed, when the man who had introduced him to the house appeared.

“Ready, Corporal?”

“Almost,” he replied, and half a minute later stood up and nodded.

“This way,” said the other laconically, and led the way out of the room and across the wide passage. The policeman was prepared for surprises, but the appearance of the room into which he entered almost took his breath away. Except for the roaring Yukon stove, and the fur rugs on the polished floor, it was a replica of the typical dining-room of an English country house. The furniture was Jacobean, the table was laid with the whitest napery, and silver and glasses gleamed on its whiteness. He had a quick apprehension of oil-paintings on the wall, of a long-cased clock in the corner, and of two girls standing together near the stove, then his companion’s voice sounded.

“Corporal Bracknell! Miss Gargrave! Miss La Farge.”

He bowed to the two ladies in turn. The second he knew as he glanced at her was of French Canadian extraction, with perhaps a dash of Indian blood in her veins; but the first was a golden-haired English girl, tall, blue-eyed, with face a little bronzed by the open-air, and – the girl who had passed him with her face the index of mortal terror and her rifle at the trail. It was she who spoke in a voice that had the indescribable accent of culture.

“We are pleased to see you, Corporal Bracknell. No doubt, if you have been long on the trail, you will be ready for dinner.”

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

FEELING like a man in a dream, the corporal took his seat at the table, and when the soup was served by an Indian youth, he was too much amazed to attempt conversation. Miss Gargrave looked at him and casually asked, “You have never been to North Star before, Mr. Bracknell?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I am new to this district. I was transferred from Edmonton four months ago.”

“Then you did not know of our existence?”

The corporal smiled. “I had heard something of it; but the truth is I had forgotten all about it.”

The girl nodded. “I can understand that. We are so far out of the track of things that it is easy for the world to forget us.”

Bracknell would have liked to ask why such as she should continue to live in the wilderness; but he repressed his curiosity, and looking round smiled again.

“Your solitude is not without its amenities. I did not think there was such a room as this anywhere in the north. It reminds one of home!”

“You are English, of course?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “I come from Kendal, in Westmorland.”

“Kendal?” There was an accent of surprise in her voice.

“You know Kendal?” he inquired quickly.

“Yes,” she answered. “I have stayed in the neighbourhood. Are you any relation of Sir James Bracknell of Harrowfell?”

“My uncle and guardian,” he smilingly replied.

Joy Gargrave looked at him thoughtfully. “I have met your uncle,” she said slowly. “I should scarcely have looked for his nephew in the Mounted Police.”

“Why not?” he demanded, with a laugh. “The Force is a packet of surprises. My sergeant at Edmonton was the heir to an Irish peerage, and I know a trooper down at Alberta who is the second son of a marquis.”

“But Sir James!” she murmured. “He did not seem to me the sort of man who would approve – ”

“He does not know,” interrupted the corporal.

“It is very likely that he would not approve if he did. But that does not greatly matter; as before I came out here we quarrelled, and the relations between us are likely to continue strained.”

“Is it permissible to ask the cause of this quarrel?” inquired the man on the other side of the table, whose name the corporal had not yet learned.

Bracknell frowned at the directness of the question and was about to administer a snub, when he caught Miss Gargrave’s eyes fixed upon him expectantly. He laughed shortly as he replied, “Well, Mr. – ar – ”

“Rayner is my name,” said the other. “I forgot I had not introduced myself.”

The corporal nodded. “I was about to say, Mr. Rayner, that it is a private matter; but there can be no harm in saying that my uncle had a matrimonial scheme for me of which I did not approve, so here I am.”

He laughed to hide his embarrassment of which he was conscious, and looked at Miss Gargrave to whom the explanation had really been offered. There was a thoughtful look upon her face.

“Sir James is rather dictatorial,” she said, and then turned the conversation. “Do you like the service?”

“Yes,” was the reply, given wholeheartedly. “It is a man’s work, and the open-air life, with all the many hazards of the North, is infinitely preferable to stewing in chambers waiting for briefs; or devilling the K.C. who wants to keep all the crumbs on his own table.”

The girl nodded. “I can understand that,” she commented, and for a moment she sat there crumbling her bread.

The thoughtful look on her face was accentuated. Remembering what he had seen there when she had passed him in the road, the corporal found himself wondering if there was any connection between the two. Then Miss Gargrave spoke again.

“I suppose you are in this neighbourhood on professional business?”

“Yes,” he answered readily enough. “I have been following a man for a month and have trailed him something like four hundred miles.”

“That is a long journey in winter,” said the girl a trifle absently.

Corporal Bracknell smiled. “Nothing to boast of. There have been many longer trails in the Territory by our men. Did you ever hear how Constable Pedley took the lunatic missionary from Fort Chipewayn to Saskatchewan down the Athabasca River in the very depth of winter?”

“Yes,” answered the girl. “That was an epic. The constable lost his own reason in the end, didn’t he?”

Bracknell nodded. “Yes, but he’s better again now; though naturally that experience has set its mark on him. And if I had got my man my return journey would have been much harder than the journey up, as I should have had to look after him; and sleep with one eye open all the time.”

“You speak as if you had lost your man,” said Rayner. “Is that so?”

“Yes, I have lost him finally,” answered the corporal slowly.

“Who was he? What had he done? Was he a very desperate character?” inquired Miss Gargrave, and to the corporal as he turned to her it seemed as if there was a look of troubled expectancy in her face.

“He was an Englishman,” answered Bracknell quietly, his eyes fixed on the beautiful face. “I do not know that he was a particularly desperate character, but he certainly was not scrupulous, and he was suspected of selling whiskey to the Indians in the reservation, which is a serious offence in the Territory.”

“What name?” asked Miss La Farge.

“His proper name I do not know, but he has been known through the North as Koona Dick!”