Chapter VII: The Hunted Woman

From the sudden, startling sounds in the direction of the brook, the corporal guessed that the hunted woman had stolen and mounted his horse, and the spirited Susy was bolting through the woods with her unacquainted rider. The intelligence reached him subconsciously; he had no time for actual speculation. The active part of his mind was fully preoccupied just then, as he found himself struggling in the dark with an unidentified someone who had crept upon him from behind and seized him in a crushing embrace.

A second before he was confidently ranging on the trail of the fleeing woman, believing himself the only man existent in that vast area of desolate forest. And without forewarning, he suddenly discovered himself in the grip of a powerful assailant. He did not stop to ask questions.

His arms were pinioned at his sides, and iron muscles were closing tight about his ribs. Instinctively he knew he was no match for the burly strength that held him, but he had wicked recourse in a trick that it behooves all light men to learn. With a deep breath he filled his lungs full, and then as suddenly let go and shrank to his least possible dimension. For an instant he gained the needed laxness, and his arms slipped free.

Before his heavier and slower acting opponent could anticipate the movement Dexter's left hand reached across and gripped the other man's right elbow at the precise spot where a tender nerve runs near the socket bone. Simultaneously his right hand shot over his head and clasped the tendons of a short and stocky neck. Then, with catlike quickness, he dropped crouching almost to his knees. The suddenness of the shift overbalanced the other man, and the wiry corporal took the weight across his left hip. A wrench and a heave, and he might send his victim sprawling with a badly twisted back. But as he gathered himself for the final effort, he noticed something strangely familiar in the texture of the sleeve his fingers were grasping. His hand slipped downward, and touched the metal buttons of a uniform jacket.

With a wondering exclamation he relaxed his body, and straightened erect. Then he squirmed about to confront the panting bulk behind him. He stared in the semi-darkness, and made out in blurred outline a square-shaped face and bristling mustache, shadowed under the brim of a regulation Stetson. For an instant longer he peered in tense questioning, and then he laughed a low, short laugh that wavered between relief and chagrin.

"Hello, colonel," he said.

The other man gazed uncertainly, but slightly let up on the pressure of his grip.

"Superintendent Devreaux of Fort Dauntless," remarked the corporal, grinning. "If you'll give me two more inches space I'll be proud to salute my officer."

The mustached man worked his heavy brows, and blinked in an owlish, nearsighted way. "It's--it's Corporal--" he muttered--"why, bless me, it's Corporal Dexter of Crooked Forks!"

He released his bearlike clutch, and stepped back a pace, gingerly rubbing the indented place in his elbow joint. "I'm just as well pleased that you didn't finish the last movement of the Nipponese spine cracker. I'm not quite as spry as I remember being once, and I suspect--I rather fear you would have had me." He cast a curious glance in the direction of the flaming cabin. "What's the trouble here?" he asked.

Dexter regarded his superior officer with the respect an eaglet might well feel towards a war-scarred eagle. Colonel Devreaux was a grizzled veteran of the R.C.M.P., with a record of two generations of police work behind him, and an ex-army officer of the World War. The commander of a great wilderness superintendency, he was known as a mighty criminal catcher wherever word of the law has traveled, from tide water to the plains beyond the mountains, from the big sticks of the middle country to the little sticks of the frozen Arctic.

Theoretically the superintendent belonged in his office at Fort Dauntless. But in actual fact, he was seldom seen at his desk. He wandered at large, in the thick of all troubles. Lonely constables by remote bivouac fires could never feel quite sure that the next moment might not bring the old man stalking casually into camp to demand pot luck and ask to know how business fared.

"Constable Graves is dead," said Dexter, watching his officer's face. "Ambushed and shot from behind. I found him lying in the snow a short distance down the valley."

Devreaux drew breath with an audible sound. "Young Graves!" he muttered. "Another added to the long score." He shook his head glumly. "I've seen so many go out--fine, strong, valiant boys! And the old man goes on year after year, just getting older. Fate's a queer thing, Dexter, and so unfair!

"Who shot him?" he asked, suddenly curt and business-like.

"A stranger. Never saw him before, and he wouldn't tell his name. Trailed him to a cabin yonder, where you see the fire blazing. Arrested him and a trapper named Mudgett."

"Well?" asked the superintendent, staring sharply.

The corporal gave a hurried account of recent events, telling of the murder of his helpless prisoners, of the woman's voice in the cabin where no woman was found, of the trail of small feet discovered near the clearing and followed in a circle back to the cabin, and finally of the fire, his unexpected encounter with the maker of the footprints, and her subsequent escape and flight.

Devreaux listened without interruption to the singular recital. And, characteristically, he showed no sign of wonderment. "You say this disembodied voice--seemed to be talking over a telephone?" he inquired.

"So I thought, until I had searched for the instrument But I didn't overlook a cubic inch of space anywhere inside or outside the cabin. And I found neither wires nor telephone. And no trace of any intruder, for that matter."

"Radio?"

"No. Impossible. The equipment couldn't have been spirited away so quickly."

"Most people would advise you to consult an ear specialist," remarked the superintendent. "But I'm credulous about--well, anything at all. I've observed so many strange happenings in my time that I've learned to believe the wildest and weirdest things are possible, and I've lost all sense of amazement. What do you think about it all?"

"I honestly don't know what to think."

"It wouldn't surprise me if this business hitches up somehow with the errand that brought me into the mountains," remarked Devreaux musingly. "Poor Graves and I came up here together from the fort. We separated this morning, he to beat along the course of the brook, and I to swing across through the timber. We had planned to meet to-night farther up the valley. Coming through a while ago, I caught the glint of fire, and of course turned aside to investigate. I heard some one coming this direction, and effaced myself. A man came along, and I grabbed him to make him account for himself, and he was you.

"What was the man like whom you arrested?" he asked abruptly--"not Mudgett, the other?"

"Undersize, swarthy, hawk-beaked, glittering black eyes."

"No," interrupted Devreaux. "The one I'm thinking of has light red hair."

"'Pink' Crill?" asked Dexter, mentioning a name that for some reason had stuck disagreeably in his thoughts.

"Where have you heard of Crill?" demanded the officer.

"I found a Bertillon photograph in Graves' jacket."

"I see. Yes--'Pink' Crill! I shouldn't have been sorry if he were the one. Saved us future trouble."

"Yes?" said the corporal expectantly.

"A Chicago safe expert. Killed an officer on his way to jail, and got away. Was traced into Canada, and we were asked to pick him up. We heard later that he was on a Grand Trunk Pacific train, traveling for the coast. But when a constable jumped the train he learned that the red-haired passenger had dropped off between stations and taken to the woods.

"Later we got word that our man had plunged into the uninhabited wilderness, and was making this direction. I decided to make a long patrol myself, and took young Graves along. This Crill is no woodsman, mind you, yet he's outdistanced and outwitted me. And until now I've rather prided myself on being a voyageur."

Devreaux spoke with a peculiar grimness of voice. "Crill of course has had help," he went on. "Oddly, there seems to be quite a crowd of people at large on this side of the ranges. Who they are, what their business, I don't know. But I've touched their trails, seen their ax-blazes on the trees, found their dead camp fires. In this country where nobody ever comes!

"People who always managed to keep out of sight!" added the superintendent moodily. "With all the ranging and stalking we've done, Graves and I haven't clapped eyes on a single human face. Yet I know positively that there are men in this valley--six or eight or ten of them."

"All men?" asked the corporal with a sidewise glance.

"I have seen only the tracks of men's boots. Crill's, undoubtedly--and others." Devreaux cast a quick glance about him. "This unknown woman you speak of--she came this direction?"

"I heard a galloping horse at about the time you jumped me. I have an idea she's taken my pony."

"It sounded that way," observed the officer quietly. "I guess it's up to you, Dexter. How long will it take you to catch her?"

Devreaux spoke with serene assurance, and the corporal nodded coolly in acceptance of what amounted to a command. Both had learned by experience that a man afoot can walk down any horse in a prolonged chase. And Susy was jaded from days of hard travel.

"Can't say," answered Dexter. "That pony doesn't like strangers, and she'll shake her rider off if she can. But in any event, if it doesn't storm again, I should catch her to-morrow afternoon, or by evening at the latest."

"I'll camp here and wait for you," volunteered Devreaux. "Bring the woman with you." The superintendent shot an approving glance at the upright figure before him. "Give you anything I've got," he said.

"Trade flashlights with me, please. My last battery's burned out."

The exchange was made, the two nodded briefly in farewell and Dexter once more set forward on his trail.

Tracks of small shoes led him to the gulley where he had left his horse for the night. The girl must have heard the neighing and turned over that way in hope of picking up a mount. The scuffled snow indicated that there had been a struggle before she succeeded in climbing on the pony's back. Afterwards she had ridden away without a saddle, using a halter rope instead of a bridle.

By the hoof marks Dexter saw that he had correctly interpreted the sounds he heard a few minutes before. Susy had broken into a run the moment she felt the weight on her back. With features unnaturally grave, the trailer followed through the underbrush. In a couple of minutes he reached the bank of the brook and found that the filly had not checked her stride here, but had plunged downward and crossed the ice at full gallop.

The shod tracks swerved abruptly on reaching the opposite embankment, traveling southward along the brook course over a stretch of stony and pitted ground. Dexter walked onward at a fast pace, swinging the shaft of his light, his intent gaze searching before him with ominous expectancy.

And a quarter of a mile farther down the stream the trail ended, as he had known that sooner or later it surely must end. In a hollow of ground, beyond an outcropping shale of rock, he found his pony stretched flat and motionless among the stones, with her head flung backward and her forelegs doubled limply under her body. And a few paces farther on a slim-built, girlish figure was lying prone upon the snow.