AFTER Inspector Costello and Constable Downey had left him to his own devices, Bill Berry alternately sulked and raged in his cabin. Storm succeeded storm, and it was nearly three weeks after the departure of the officers before he dared attempt the journey to Mueller's Post on Many Point Lake. When be did arrive there, it was to find the store building tenantless, and two other cabins destroyed by fire. Digging under the snow, he uncovered the fire-blackened, twisted hoops of the liquor kegs among the ashes of the plague cabin, and when, after a thorough search of the store building, he realized that the liquor cache had been destroyed, he launched into a tirade of blasphemous anathema that included the whole North, and the inhabitants thereof, their progenitors, and their heirs and assigns forever. Then he calmed down and took stock of the situation. Here was a perfectly good trading post, fully stocked, and with no owner. He reasoned that Mueller's cabin had caught fire in the night, destroying its owner with it, and the flames had communicated to the plague cabin.
"Damn glad the store didn't ketch," he muttered. 'It's a bum wind that don't do no one no good,' as the feller says. Looks like I've fell heir to a hull damn tradin' post." Whereupon he spent hours clumsily imitating Mueller's handwriting which he copied off the account books. Satisfied, he drew a bill of sale, purporting to have been signed by Mueller, which conveyed to him, Bill Berry, for the sum of ten thousand dollars in cash, all right, title, and interest in the Many Point Trading Post. And, having established his legal tenure to his own satisfaction, he opened the post for business.
Indians, customers of Mueller's, came, demanding liquor. Berry explained that he had none, showed them the burned cache, and took their furs in exchange for other goods, and sent them back to their traplines with a promise to run in plenty of liquor when the rivers broke up in the spring.
Thus, Berry settled down to enjoy his newly acquired opulence, and thus young Downey found him when he appeared early in April.
Berry greeted him heartily, and with no hint of animosity.
"You're under arrest for havin' liquor in possession in prohibited territory," announced the boy, "an' I warn you that anything you say may be used against you.
"That's all right, Constable," agreed Berry, with alacrity. "I figgered you'd be along, sometime -- er someone would. I'm ready to go with you. Tradin's bad right now, but I want to git back agin the break-up, when the Injuns'll be comin' in fer the spring tradin'."
"How do you come to be here?" asked Downey, "instead of at your own cabin?"
"Well, you see, I bought Mueller out -- yup -- bought him out, lock, stock, an' bar'l, as the feller says. Here's the bill o' sale he give me when I forked over the cash."
Gravely, Downey studied the document: "I thought you said you were broke when we visited you in the cabin."
Berry grinned: "Yes, I said that -- thought mebbe you'd kind of take pity on me an' not smash them kags. But I had the money, all right -- ten thousan' dollars in bills right in my pocket."
"When did you buy Mueller out?"
"There's the date on the bill of sale, -- December the twentieth."
"Where is Mueller, now?"
"Mueller, pore cuss, he's dead -- yup -- burnt to death in his cabin -- an' I didn't know nothin' about it till next mornin'.
"It's like this: I slep' here in the store -- Mueller wanted I should bunk with him in his cabin till spring, when he figgered on goin' out. But, it was too dirty fer me, an' it stunk in there, so I slep' here in the store. Well, one night after supper, a few nights after I'd boughten him out, we set here talkin' an' smokin,' an' I says to him how I guess I wouldn't handle no licker. I says I got a big investment here an' I can't afford to take no chances with the police. He know'd about you bustin' them kags, but he says, how there's more in the licker than in the other goods, an' I says there's enough fer me in it without the licker, an' it hain't right no-how -- tradin' hooch to the Injuns. He laffed at me, but I stuck to it. I'd be'n doin' some studyin' sence you fellers was along -- an' 'taint right, is it?"
"No," answered the boy, "it isn't."
"There, wha'd I tell you? So, I says how I'm a-goin' to burn up the cabin that had the licker cached under the floor, an' it would be a good thing, 'cause it would git red of them dead Injuns -- you see, they was four or five Injuns died of the small poxt, an' Mueller, he had 'em corded up in the cabin agin' spring come so's he could bury 'cm. But I figgers burnin' 'em was better'n buryin' 'em. Well, Mueller he begged one kag offen me if I was goin' to burn it up, to last him till spring, so I give him one, an' he tuck it to his cabin. That's the last I ever see of him. It was a still night, an' I figgered it was a good time to burn the cabin, so I went out an' touched her off. I waited around till the roof fell in, an' then I went to bed an' let her burn. The wind come up in the night, an' it must of blowed sparks agin' Mueller's cabin, an' he probably had laid to that kag till he was soused, an' never woke up no more'n what I did."
As the man talked, Downey made notes in his note book. "When did this fire take place?" he asked.
"Jest two or three nights after I'd boughten him out," answered the man, "an' this here licker in possession business -- them two kags that you fellers busted up on me in the cabin -- looks to me like they hadn't ort to go hard on me fer them two kags, seein' how I hadn't traded none of it to the Injuns, an' seein' how I burnt up them other ten, twelve kags that was in the cache. Looks to me like when you an' me comes to tell 'em just how everything happened they'd let me off easy, bein' the first offence, an' all. First, I want you should search the hull store an' fur room, so's you'll know I handed it to you straight -- an' if you find even a drop of licker I'll give you the hull outfit, jist as she stands."
Perfunctorily, the boy searched the premises and finding nothing, returned to the stove: "Wha'd you think?" asked the man, eagerly.
"I think maybe, you're right," he answered. "I think when they've heard the whole story, they won't bother very much about those two kegs in possession."
"That's usin' yer head, son," approved Inspector Costello, when the youngster had turned over his prisoner in Prince Albert, and related the man's fabricated story of the trading post. "Av ye'd of hauled off an' told um that Mueller was dead before ye left Many Point, ye'd av had an unwillin' prisoner on yer hands that might of give you a heap av trouble. But the way ut was, he was dead anxious to it back an' answer the charge. We got enough on um now to hold um fer a spell -- ut's the first time I ever heard av a man stealin' a whole tradin' post!"
Busy months followed for the young policeman. Detail after detail he drew, and performed his duty in a manner that showed not only a devotion to the best tradition of the Service, but a very high order of initiative as well. And, always, when not occupied with his official duties, the boy's thoughts were of Margot Molaire. The miles of long patrols were shortened by the endless fantasies he wove about her. His mind leaped the untracked wilderness to the little post, and he lived over each hour of his stay at Lashing Water. Each word she had spoken, each glance of her deep blue eyes -- but, most of all, the hour of their parting at the head of the Clearwater portage. His dream girl, he called her, and times there were without number when the heart within him seemed bursting with love of her, with the thought that one day she would be his very own.
Fate was very kind to young Downey during his first year in the Service. Pulsing with life, and youth, and love, he tore into the work with an avidity that won the respect and regard of all who came into contact with him. But, not once during the year did he draw a detail that took him anywhere near Lashing Water. For Inspector Costello, the wise, had noted other letters in the outgoing mail addressed to the girl at Lashing Water, and, too, there had been letters in the incoming mail addressed to Constable C. Downey, and written in a feminine hand. "He's too young fer such nonsense," said Costello, to himself. "Wimmin an' policin' don't mix, an' t'would be the spoilin' av the likeliest recruit in the whole blame Force."
The second year of his service was drawing to its close when Cameron Downey won his promotion. He was made a Corporal, and, with the promotion, came an order transferring him to "M" division, with headquarters on Hudson Bay. Costello growled at losing his best constable, but orders are orders, and the one note of comfort he got out of the matter was the thought that the boy would be farther than ever from Lashing Water. The Inspector really loved this youngster he had known from babyhood, and he determined that if it lay within his power, the boy should experience no duplication of his own shattered romance of years agone, when the inconstancy of a woman had driven him from the "owld sod" to find his life-work in the policing of the last great frontier.
The boy received his promotion with a vast pride in his heart, and his transfer with the stoicism of a born soldier. The night before he left, he indited a long long letter to Margot Molaire, and in the morning, finding a half breed outfit that was headed for Fort McMurray by way of the old Methey Portage, he intrusted the missive to one of their number, hoping thus to beat the regular northern mail by at least a month. That letter was never delivered. It lies rotting in the pocket of its bearer in the silt of a river bottom after his canoe had crashed on the saw-tooth rocks of a rapid.
Nine months later, Inspector Costello smiled a wry smile of satisfaction, when he heard from a passing trapper that old Molaire's daughter had married her father's clerk.
At the expiration of a year's service on the Bay, Downey again reported to Costello, and was ordered on patrol to Fort McMurray.
"An', be the way, son, ye'd better swing round be Owl River Post on yer way back, an' see av there's any complaints from the Injuns in there. Ye'd best hit up the Clearwater, an' make Owl River by way av Lashin' Water Post. Ye'll be raymimberin' old Molaire; av Oi recollect, ye stopped there an' vaccinated the outfit, on yer first patrol."
"Oh, yes, I remember him," answered the boy, "I'll stop there, sure."
The Inspector noted the eagerness in the tone, and his lips pressed hard: "Oi raymimber yer dog's feet was sore, an' ye laid over to doctor 'em."
"Yes"
"Well -- better luck, this time, son," he said, and when the boy had left the room, he brought his fist down on the desk top with a bang. "'Twill be hard on um -- but, ut's better to learn about wimmin now than later -- like Oi done!"