LITMIR.BIZ

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Jim Dunleath up and down.

      "Sorry we was away," he said. "But you look as if Bob had treated you all right."

      "He certainly did. I don't look like a sick man now, do I?"

      "No more'n I do."

      "Well," Dunleath laughed, eying the lean old frontiersman, "if I look as healthy as you do I guess I'm over the hump. The cold fact is that for the last week I've had all I could do to keep from eating Bob alive. I have an appetite like a wolf."

      "We'll fix that. Louis is rustling grub right now."

      "Did you have any luck?" I asked.

      "Same old thing—colors and float. One bar might pay a Chinaman to work."

      "I told you we took the wrong fork o' that crick," Hayes put in. "I told you when we was——"

      "Ah, shut up your face on dat!" Louis interrupted in a swift flare of exasperation, as if the other had been harping too long on one string. "I ain't been hear not'ing but about dat since t'ree week! If you know so moch why don't you pass yourself on dat odder fork when we come to her? For why don't you go prospec' by your lonely, hey?"

      "I sure will next time," drawled old Hayes. "When I'm by my lone I can keep clean. But campin' with a Frenchman——"

      "Ol'-timer," said Louis, "you want to go slow, or some day for sure I twis' your ol' neck so you spit on your heel!"

      "Quit that and sweeten up your stomachs with some sody," Ballou put in.

      "Pshaw! I was only foolin' with him," said old Hayes. "Louis can take a joke, can't you, Louis?"

      "I tak' a joke the way you mak' her," Louis replied enigmatically, and began to prepare dinner, while Ballou and Dunleath talked.

      "Did you ever hear of a man named McNab?" the latter asked a few minutes later.

      Louis was frying pork, which was sputtering great blisters of fat, and as Dunleath spoke he jumped as if he had been stung, and swore and wrung his hand.

      "Mo' gee!" he ejaculated. "Dat pork gr-ris she's burn comme le diable!"

      Old Hayes was lighting his pipe, and he held the burning match several inches from the bowl, while from force of habit he sucked vigorously at the cold tobacco, his lean old cheeks working like a bellows. Then the flame nipped his fingers, and he, too, swore. But Ballou asked:

      "McNab? There's lots of McNabs. What one do you mean?"

      "This one would be an old-timer. I think his first name was Angus."

      "How did you hear of him yourself?"

      "I think somebody mentioned the name when I was coming in. Or else I saw it somewhere. Somehow I got the idea that he was a rather hard citizen."

      "Lots of old-timers were hard citizens."

      "And that's no lie," Hayes put in. "Did you ever hear of this Angus McNab, Tom?"

      Ballou reflected, with narrowed eyes.

      "No, I don't think so. I knew an Archie McNab in Cariboo," and there was a Duncan McNab down in the Bitter Root once. That's all I remember. They wouldn't be the ones. I never heard of Angus McNab, did you, Louis?"

      "Nevaire!" Louis replied emphatically above his pork.

      Old Hayes, it appeared, did not know him either. It was a disappointment. I had made sure that one of them would have heard of McNab if he had been at all celebrated. We had dinner and went down to the canoe.

      "You headin' for the outside now?" Ballou asked.

      "Not immediately. I'm here for my health, and I may stay a month. If Bob's folks get tired of me I may ask you to let me camp around here somewhere."

      "No chance of our getting tired," I said.

      "If they do," said Ballou, "you know where to come. Come anyhow. We ain't got much, but you're welcome."

      A couple of hours afterward we reached home, and Peggy hugged me as if I had been away a year. We set up Dunleath's tent again on the old spot, and I resumed my daily tasks, which after my taste of freedom were more distasteful than ever. And Peggy and Dunleath resumed their long talks and walks. Even I could see that they did not want company, and so I let them severely alone.

      Uncle Fred could tell us nothing about Angus McNab, though the name seemed vaguely familiar, and I had given up hope of learning more when one night old McClintock, the factor at Carcajou House, traveling back from Neepaw by canoe, stopped with us overnight, as was his custom, for he and my uncle were great friends.

      "Angus McNab!" he exclaimed when he heard the name. "Did ever I hear of him? Aye, that I did. Ye'll be meanin' 'Nitche' McNab, Mr. Dunleath."

      "I don't know," said Jim Dunleath. "Who was Nitche McNab?"

      "He was a deevil," McClintock replied. "A dour, thievin', bluidy-minded deevil!"

      "A half-breed?"

      "Weel, I'll na go that far. Maybe an eighth. Ye'll understan' that man—and mair especially a Scotchman—wasna made to live alone, and in the early days white weemin were scarce. But on the male side he was Hielan' blood, and he was born in the Selkirk settlements of white parents. 'Nitche' was just a nickname, because he had Indian habits—bad ones at that. Also he was dark of skin—a swart deevil. But his brother was red as a fox."

      "He had a brother, had he?"

      "A younger brother, Alec, little better than himsel', but with less brain. Bluidy murderers, the pair o' them. First an' last they cost the company a fortune."

      "But what did they do?"

      "Suffeecient!" McClintock replied grimly, lighting the clay pipe that was his inseparable companion. "Ye'll be wantin' the yarn? Weel, it was this way: In the beginning Nitche was in the service of the company, and he rose to a small post on the Churchill. There he robbed the company with both hands, trading on his own account and stealing the best skins, and his brother helped him at it. Ye'll understan' that in those days—that'll be upward of twenty years ago—the company made its own laws and enforced them. When Nitche's thievin's were discovered he tried to get away. Inside fifty miles he was caught and brought back to be tried. He was flogged before all the Indians and the men of the post, and turned loose to leave the country—if he could."

      "Well, couldn't he?"

      "The company," McClintock replied, "wasna stakin' him to gun, canoe, or food."

      "Great Scott!" Dunleath exclaimed as the full meaning of this dawned on him.

      "It wasna intended as a humane measure, but as an example," said McClintock grimly. "In dealin' with Indians, ye'll understan', humanity is a mistake. The company was forced to punish its own men caught in wrong-doin' in the same way. But Nitche McNab was long-headed as weel as bluidy-minded. Against preceesely sic an eventuality he had cached a gun and food. A week afterward the man who laid the lash on him was found stabbed to death in his blankets. And two days after that Donald Murdoch, that had ordered the floggin', was shot from the dark as he sat in his chair."

      "Donald Murdoch?"

      "Aye, Black Donald Murdoch. A hard man. He was just wounded, and got over it. But na doubt Nitche thought he had killed him, for he seemed to vanish from the country. No one heard of him for a year or two. Then it was discovered that he was tradin' with the Indians across the divide on the Athabasca. Six men were sent to take him and his brother, and but one came back. The Indians say the brothers killed them, one at a time, from ambush. Then they disappeared, as they had before."

      McClintock paused, refilled his clay, and relighted it deliberately.

      "The rest," he continued, "is but little known, and at the time the company had its own reasons for silence. But at this date I'm violatin' no confidence when I tell ye. Nitche McNab, ye'll understand, knew the country an' the posts an' the customs of the company. And so he got together a small band

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