10 Short Novels Magazine — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_ who followed a dozen paces in the rear was Constable “Jinx” Herbert. “Damn it all!” Herbert growled. “This “Take it easy, old-timer,” the other shouted into the storm. “We got lots of time. They can’t get away.” : Her spat with the wind. He growled, “Don’t be simple, Phil. We’re out 0’ luck an’ you know it. No grub. No ammunition. And, since I stepped in that damned hole and twisted my leg, they got two hours’ edge on us, easy.” “Don’t you believe it,” Robinson en- couraged. “We're right on their tails: We—” “Horse feathers!” Herbert snapped. “They've made monkeys out of us. It was ten days ago when they dropped down on us. Five of ’em. We don’t even know who they are. In ten days they’ve stolen one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fur, three dog teams, an’ they’ve killed three men. “Right now they’re over the border and in Alaska. Out of our territory for keeps. Won’t the inspector take us for a ride though. And it’s all my fault. Jinx Herbert, that’s me. Always the jinx. Ex- pect I hadn’t ought to kick though. Last time—on that Cougar Notch assignment —I broke an arm; time before I fell through the ice and collected pneumonia. This time I only sprain a leg. Not bad. Damned if it don’t look as though this jinx business was kind of petering out. Maybe next time—” Herbert’s mournful soliloquy was in- terrupted by the crashing report of a rifle. The sound, carried to them by the wind, might have traveled a hundred yards or a mile. was no way of telling. There were more shots as the two young policemen with one accord headed away into the blizzard in the direction from which those shots had come. Q DENSE was the curtain of driv- ing snow slanting down into their faces that they almost ran into the big log cabin on the shore of the little creek before they saw it. The rear wall of the building was already a sheet of wind- blown flame. It was Robinson who stumbled over the fur-bundled body of a man huddled in the snow thirty feet from the cabin. Rifle locked under an arm the officer dropped on a knee. With a mittened hand he pawed the wet snow out of the man’s whiskered face. All one side of that face was smeared with warm blood. A bullet had struck just over a cheek bone, had mushroomed upward and pierced the brain. The man was Yance Fifield, a trapper, and he was dead. The Frozen Empire * * * 103 A shout from Jinx Herbert made Rob- inson look up. Herbert was lifting the limp body of another man from just in- side the doorway of the burning cabin. “It’s Ab Clam!” But Ab Clam also was beyond the need of medical attention. The old trapper’s head lolled limply as they laid him on blankets behind a sheltering boulder. Jinx Herbert’s strong face was gray with frustrated rage. He swore steadily. “Two more,” he rumbled. “And we were too late—” The words suddenly choked back into Jinx Herbert’s throat. He saw a flurry of sudden movement and a pair of twinkling legs disappearing behind the wall of hurrying snow. “A girl!” the big policeman muttered incredulously. “Young, Phil, and a down- right beauty. No flat-faced nitchie. And she wasn’t a breed. A white girl, Phil.”’ “How much do you suppose she saw?” Robinson mused. “Maybe she could identify—” “That’s just what we’re going to find out,” Herbert snapped. “No sense in tryin’ to overtake the devils which fin- ished old Ab and Yance Fifield; like I said before, they’re probably in the United States of America right now. They ain’t clean away, 0’ course; but what can we tell the United States marshal to look for? We don’t know. Mebbe this girl can tell us.’ With only a passing glance at the burn- ing cabin, Herbert headed away at a limping run in the direction taken by the fleeing girl. HE International Boundary Line be- tween the United States and Canada follows a straight line from the Arctic Ocean southward to the Gulf. of Alaska. Simple as this appears from a map-reader’s standpoint, there are many spots along that seven-hundred-mile stretch which have never been trod by the foot of man. The boundary line is elastic at best. At old Sam Dillard’s Halfway House, however, the International Boun Line was, by tacit consent of both the United States and Canada, accurately de- fined. For miles the line followed the straight, turbulent course of Madman’s Run. Halfway House had been built at a bend in Madman’s Run and carefully placed so that half of it was in the United States and half in Canada. Dillard himself was a decent sort but it was well known that Halfway House harbored fugitives from the law hailing from both Canada and the United States. it was here they aimed when hard _ pressed; Dillard outfitted them, loaned GComichboo (c So!