Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

cried. it, and you must feel as I do. office, killed before the fire started, and the . door was locked on the inside.” “Yes,” Alan answered dully, “ and yet he told us the truth. I know he did.” He turned at once and went out the door. As anxious as he had been to see Helen, he wished now only to avoid her that she might not suspect the despair into which this last bit of evidence had plunged him. But he had not reached the gate in the picket fence before he heard his name called and saw her running after him. “Don’t let Macleod do this to you!”’ she ‘“T heard what he said, but there isn’t any evidence that will make me believe Don’t you see? Our only chance to save him is to believe he is innocent.” “But a man’s mind won’t let him get around some of those facts,” he told her. “Don’t listen to your mind!” she pro- tested. ‘‘ Listen to your heart, and mine, What is it that makes a successful fur trad- er, Alan? You know it isn’t always think- ing. The big things come from intuition, feeling and sensing what the other man is doing. A good fur trader must have that strange sixth sense.” “TI know what you mean, but we need something else,’’ Alan interrupted. ‘‘ We’ve _got to get down to bare facts. Macleod says he hates to do this, that he doesn’t want to believe your father is guilty, but he says he’s helpless. In the face of that evi- dence he must act. , : ‘ Take Bicknell’s story and then the find- ing of that skull. That in itself is bad enough, but there is the finding of the fur in your father’s room.” ‘“ But father never stole that fur!”’ Helen protested so fiercely Alan glanced at her questioningly, ~ “You mean you feel that he didn’t,” he said. “Yes, and something more. That night IT was mending a hole in his shirt. It was a new one, and he had torn it on a nail. Just before we went to bed I hung it on a hook in his closet. There was no fur there then. And that afternoon I got some things from his chest. There was no fur in it.” “ But a lawyer would say your father got up after you were asleep, went out to set —- 618 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, the fire, and brought the fur back with him.” * But he couldn’t have done that. He went to bed early. He was tired out. [I sat up reading, or pretending to read. I knew something of what the Indians were saying about Mee-sa-bee. I hadn’t told him, and I was worried. “Then I saw a light in your house. I put mine out and sat at the window watch- ing, for a long time. I didn’t know what might happen. It was very late when at last I went to bed, and I had barely gone to sleep when I heard you call ‘ fire.’ And all that time my father never left his room, Those are facts.” “Why haven’t you told this before?” ‘I thought the charges were so ridiculous at first, and then, when they found those bones, I guess I just stopped thinking.” ‘Why, it not only proves he didn’t steal the fur, but that he didn’t set the fire.” ‘He didn’t steal the fur any more than he stole that fur you cached.” * ‘You know that to be true?” Alan de- manded. “T do because I never told where it had been cached, not even to father. The trip- per who went out picked up my trading outfit and was gone a week.” “But your father knew it had been cached.” ‘Of course. I told him and Henry that noon. But there is something more. A lot of our fur has been stolen, all the valu-, able pieces. They have been selected well. Only those pelts were taken which, when baled, could be easily transported and yet would be most valuable. ‘““ My father never did that. I have been with him too much of the time. I have helped him run the post. I have been in the fur loft. That fur was all there two weeks before the fire. I checked it my- self. And from that time on I was with father so much he did not have the oppor- tunity.” Before Alan could comment Macleod called to Helen that her father wished to see her. | “Don’t you believe he is innocent?” she pleaded. “Yes, and you know I am.” = COPMICLOOOKS ae, ge a, EO