LITMIR.BIZ

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found them still consu­ming fat cigars in the luxurious smo­king-compartment of the Pullman and basking in the newfound joy of fresh­ly consolidated partnership.

      “Some getaway this time!” murmured Ben, lighting another panatela. “Speaking of narrow cracks, this latest riffle sure has all past performances riveted to the post. I seem to be sitting on a leather cushion, bo; but really I’m down on all fours, thanking Heaven!”

      Pod smiled, drew from his pocket a scented, lavender sheet of paper, set it afire with a match and with it fired up afresh his smoldering cigar. He held the paper carefully till it was but a crinkling bit of black, run through with crawling sparks.

      Then with great precision and gusto he dropped it into the cuspidor.

      Leaning back with a huge sigh of comfort and relief he exhaled a cloud of smoke and cheerfully contemplated the roof in eloquent silence.

      The pals’ great joy would without fail have leaped up one thousand per cent had they known this simple fact, viz.: that in the rice pudding on the table, back in the De Luxe, reposed at that moment enough chloral hydrate or knock-out drops to have put them sound asleep for many hours.

      The drops had been considerately added unto the pudding by said Birdy McCue, in view of a large prospective reward from the new night-clerk, who—let me tell you confidentially—was none other than William J. Shearns of the Cosmos Detective Agency, which had long “wanted” them for several little matters.

      “Where ignorance is bliss,” eh?

      You’re on!

EVEN IN DEATH

      Originally published in All-Story Cavalier Weekly, Dec. 12, 1914.

      CHAPTER I

      Harsh, clamant, wild, the braying of the long tin horn that hung by a rawhide lashing from the tamarack on the American shore of the Madawaska ferry hurled echoes over the far reaches of the river.

      At its second blaring call, imperatively eloquent of deadly haste, the door of the little ferry-shack swung wide and a girl looked out—a girl clad strangely and for rough toil, in faded blue overalls and a checkered mackinaw of felted stuff.

      For a moment she stood there in the fading light of that chill October evening, peering out across the waters that slid away, cold, dark, foam-streaked, toward the tumbling whirls of Tobique Rapids, four miles below—the white-lashed, thundering leap whose sullen roar never by day or night was still from shuddering through that northern air.

      As she gazed away over the swift swirl of the current, straining her eyes at the far bank where the road plunged steeply to the water’s edge, the winds of the north country fingered the black hair lying over her strong shoulders.

      Keen-visioned, this girl; of hardy, vigorous race. One hand held open the cabin door, the other rested on her lithe hip. Behind her, lamp-shine from within silhouetted her sinuous outlines.

      And ever the wind, wantoning with her bare, brown throat where the mackinaw gaped wide, flung her hair across her full bosom, modeled like a statue’s.

      Again the horn brayed its urgent call across the Rivière St. Jean; and now a far voice hailed—“Hal-loo-o-o! Hal-loo-o-o!” with wild insistence.

      “Comin’! Comin’!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Seems like you’re in a most amazin’ hurry!”

      Another horn, rust-red, dangled beside the ferry-house door. On this she blew a single, full-lunged blast.

      Then, waiting only to pull a coarse-knit lumberman’s cap over her shapely head—for the evening chill of the northland had already risen from the flood and breathed down from the spruce-cloaked mountains that raggedly notched the sky—she ran down the steep and curving road to where the cumbersome flat-boat nosed against its moorings on the bank.

      Far overhead, striding like a colossus beside the road—the trail, rather, so rutted, stony, and narrow it was—the three huge, rough-hewn firs that formed a tripod for the hempen ferry-cable rose against the darkening sky.

      To their iron-banded juncture stretched the manila, taut as a banjo-string, from its anchorage at the large steel ring-bolt let into a granite ledge.

      Then, far across the river it sagged away, away, till again it mounted on the other bank to meet the companion tripod there.

      The ferry-boat, fastened by two long ropes connecting with pulleys that ran upon this cable, lay in a little cove, safe from the incessant gripping tug of the current whose swift force, spent against rudderlike boards set at proper angles by rude levers, urged the craft ponderously back and forth.

      As the girl swiftly cast off the moorings, jumped aboard and, taking a pike-pole from its iron hooks, flung her supple strength against it to shove off, the mellow and flutelike insistence of a whippoorwill’s chant drifted from the haunch of Saddleback Mountain.

      An eerie sound, that, there at the deserted fringes of the wild with nightfall glooming down; a warning of ill omen and of death in the northern lore; nevertheless, Kate Fergus gave no heed.

      Daughter of the grim black forest, the forest resinous and ever murmuring, her blood the blood of pioneering breeds, for her the north woods held no fear nor any mystery.

      “But I wish pa was home from Pointe au Bouleau, just the same,” she murmured to herself, panting a little as the uncouth craft slowly yielded to the force of her rounded arms. “Seems kind of like I didn’t have the strength I used to. Ever since they took ’Polyte and caged him up like a varmint, I ain’t had no get-up-an’-get.

      “Of course, ’Polyte hadn’t oughta dynamited Long Pool for mascalonge, and he hadn’t oughta shot that there game-warden through the leg. And he used to be mighty rough with me, off an’ on. But no matter! They didn’t have no right to lock him up, that way, and that’s a fact. It’s sure death, I cal’late, puttin’ one of us north people in the pen. And ’Polyte—he loved the woods, you bet. Loved ’em a’most as much as he used to love—me.

      “Seems like I couldn’t get over it, nohow. I ain’t half the woman I was afore that!”

      Firm breast and muscled shoulder leaned on the long pike-pole as she shoved off.

      “Huh!” she muttered scornfully. “They had to catch him asleep, anyhow! Couldn’t take him in a fair an’ square fight, an’ they knowed it. ’Polyte could ha’ licked the bunch with one hand if he’d had a chance. I don’t care if he did use to get full sometimes, an’ once give me a black eye. Guess I deserved it that time, tryin’ to knife him ’cause I seen him kissin’ that there Céleste Laplante.

      “It don’t matter if he did skip out an’ leave me—and me with nary ring! Don’t matter if I would shoot him down, now, same as pa would, if ever we set eyes on him again! He was a real man, anyhow, and I cal’late in a fair fight he could clean up any six o’ them white-livers that have got him penned. A man, ’Polyte was, and he loved me—once!”

      She frowned blackly, there in the gathering dusk, as she poled the craft out into the river. Her crimson mouth grew straight as a knife-blade, when—the current now gripping the boat and tautening the pulley-ropes—she applied herself to the two windlasses that controlled them.

      The forward rope she shortened, and let the aft one out. Then she dropped the boards; and now with no more effort on her part the ferry began to crawl across the flood. Unevenly the big wheels jerked along the hempen cable.

      Now they lagged and stopped, now spun swiftly forward. The huge rope swayed and gave; but, stayed by the massive tripods, held the craft. And so it crept, slowly, steadily, toward the gloomy further shore.

      Kate stood with the pike-pole in her capable hands, and listened to the gurgling swash of the current, which blended overtones with the dull roar of the rapids below.

      Suddenly a motor-siren ca-hooted through the chill evening air, far down the river-road that edged the torrent. Wildly it screamed, seeming to shout tidings of strange, unusual

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