Sitka

*

Chapter 1

Jean LaBarge stopped beside the trunk of a huge cypress, scanning the woods for Rob Walker. By this time Rob should have reached their meeting place by the Honey Tree, so after only a momentary pause, he started to go on his way. Then he stopped abruptly.

The woods were very still. Somewhere, far-off, a crow cawed into the stillness, but there was no other sound except the faint murmur of wind in the high leaves. The boy felt his heart begin to pound heavily.

In the leaf mold just beyond the cypress was a boot print, its toe pointing southward into the deeper woods.

At fourteen Jean LaBarge knew the track of every man in the small village closest to the swamp, of the farmers who worked the fields nearby, and even the occasional cattle drovers who traveled the road along the swamp's edge. But this was the track of a stranger.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves and dappled the forest with light and shadow. No breeze stirred more than the topmost boughs, for at this place, deep within the Great Swamp, all the wind was shut out, as were the sounds. In this place one found oneself walking with stealth, moving in these lonely, secret woods as one might have moved in the days of the earth's first awakening. Under the feathered hemlock, beside the stagnant pools, upon the spongy, moss-green earth there was no movement but the flight of some small bird, or a butterfly on wraithlike wings suspended for an instant in a shaft of sunlight. Only the green golden twilight of the forest, only the rustling of a tiny animal among the leaves. This was a place lost, remote, unvisited, and this was home, the only home he had known since his father went to the far lands beyond the Mississippi, and his mother died.

No townsman came to the Great Swamp, nor used the trail through the deserted valley beyond, the trail known as the Shades of Death. Not many years before, during the War of 1812, soldiers had been ambushed here by Indians, and in both earlier and later years men had disappeared from that trail, leaving no evidence to explain their going. The old trail was grass-grown now, forgotten by outsiders, and the village people when passing either did not look at all, or darted hasty, half-frightened glances into the green, cavernlike silence. In the Pennsylvania villages along the nearby Susquehanna they believed the ghosts of dead soldiers marched endlessly here, mourning for homes to which they would never return.

The Great Swamp was a land untouched by plow, as lonely as upon the morning of the world's birth. Here was no columned corridor of mighty trees, no majestic avenue, but a dim, murky, silent place, dark even at noontime, shadowed except in the rare clearings or above the stagnant pools where lilies lay empty-eyed in the stillness, or forested themselves with cattails, or veiled themselves with green scum. A tossed stone into such a pool gave off few ripples, more the sodden gulp of something swallowed in darkness. One of the soldiers who survived that long-ago march spoke of it as "a horrid, rough, gloomy country." Yet there was life in the swamp, life other than the birds and small animals. Throughout the swamp and in the rugged highlands that backed it there were squirrels, muskrat and mink, but there were deer, wolves, panthers and black bear, also.

Where Mill Creek Road divided the world of people and farms from the jungle of the swamp, it also divided the world of Jean LaBarge, divided the one he visited from the one in which he lived and where he was wholly himself. The swamp had been his first playground, and since then a school as well, and source of a precarious living.

Beside the cypress he waited, listening. The forest is a place of silence yet it has its own small sounds, the sounds a hunter knows. A wind stirring among the branches, the creak of boughs, the drop of an acorn or a pine cone, the movements of small animals ... these sounds Jean knew and his brain accepted, catalogued and ignored, tuning itself for only the unfamiliar sound, the movement unnatural to the forest.

The man whose track he had seen was large, for the stride was long and the indentation left by his boot was deep, and he was a man not unaccustomed to woodland travel. This much became obvious as Jean followed along the trail the man had left, noting where he stepped and how he moved. Moreover, the man was neither hunting nor wandering at random, but moving directly toward some known objective, and his direction was generally south. Nobody knew the swamp as Jean did. He had grown up on a small farm at its edge, and before his mother died he had come regularly to the swamp to help her collect the herbs she sold in the village. Now that she was gone he continued to gather herbs and take them to the village to sell to old man Dean. Jean was a tall fourteen, a slender boy with large dark eyes and a shock of curly, almost black hair. Already his shoulders were broad, although his body was painfully thin. There was more than a hint of the man he would become in the size of his frame and the easy way he moved. Growing up in the forest he had early learned to move as silently as would a fox or panther. After his mother died his Uncle George had come to work the small farm, but Uncle George was a good-natured, gregarious man who liked people and hated the loneliness of the cabin. Moreover, he disliked work as much as he enjoyed loafing and idle talk. The boy accepted his coming, and when one day Uncle George failed to return from one of his longer absences, he accepted his going. Left alone in the cabin Jean carried on as always; there was nothing else to do. His uncle had gone but once to the village where Jean sold most of his furs and herbs, and his disappearance caused no comment: there were several villages within easy walking distance of the swamp, and he might be frequenting any one of them. Jean, a lonely, self-sufficient boy, had common sense enough to tell no one that his uncle had deserted him. The boy's coming and going had long since been taken for granted in the towns; and no one ever believed--or very much cared--that he was alone.

Of his father he remembered little except what his mother told him, that he had gone to the western mountains to trap and hunt, and that he would return eventually. To Jean he remained a vague, shadowy figure, bearded and in buckskins, who smoked a pipe and seemed always in a good humor. From time to time Jean heard mention of him in the villages, for he was that most fabulous of persons, a mountain man. And he was what Jean wanted to be. Jean LeBarge had no friend but Rob Walker. To the village people he was the son of "that gypsy woman" and the way he lived was regarded with suspicion by the mothers of tamer sons who wanted them kept tame, and felt that his might be a dangerous influence.

The other children of the village despised him as a poor boy and the son of a gypsy, and admired him because he lived in the dreaded and fascinating Great Swamp. To the children of the village Mill Creek Road was a boundary they had been warned never to cross. Not even the village men ever hunted in the swamp: game was, after all, plentiful along the fences, and much easier to get than in the depths of the swamp--where a man might easily become lost or disappear in the treacherous sinkholes.

There was no reason for any stranger to be in the Great Swamp, so far from the road. But this was a stranger who seemed to know exactly where he was going. It had been four years since Jean had seen any man's track in the swamp ... and then it was rumored that one of the Carters had returned to the country from which they had been driven.

To Rob Walker the swamp had been a dismal, frightening place, for he knew that even the older men, including his father, hurried along Mill Creek Road at the approach of darkness, and not without reason. Two years before a man had been severely mauled by a bear he had come upon in the night, and there was a story persistent in the neighborhood that a child had been carried off by a panther. Rob was older than Jean, but shy due to his small size. As other boys of his age grew bigger and stronger he turned more and more to books for companionship, yet his alert mind and imagination were fascinated by a boy several years younger than himself who came and went in the Great Swamp without fear. From time to time he saw Jean LaBarge come to town with his sacks of herbs and finally he began waiting at the store to watch Mister Dean sort them carefully into piles. From listening he learned the piles were of many kinds, but the largest were usually bloodroot, wild ginger, senega snakeroot and sassafras. The friendship between the boys began with a question. One afternoon old Mister Dean was totaling the amount owed to Jean. Rob watched him as he bent over the figures, peering through his square-cut steel-rimmed glasses, his great shock of iron-gray hair making his head seem much too heavy for his scrawny neck. Catching Jean's eyes, Rob asked, "Where do you get all those?"

Naturally shy, Jean recognized the even greater shyness of the smaller boy.

"Over in the swamp," he replied.

"Aren't you afraid?"

Jean considered the question with care. He was, he realized, afraid sometimes. But it was not when he was in the swamp. It was only at night, those nights when he awakened in the silent cabin and knew he was alone. Sometimes then he would lie awake straining his eyes into the darkness to see the fearsome creatures his imagination told him would be lurking there, in the corners of the room or just outside the walls. But he knew he must never speak of that fear because once the well-meaning people of the village knew he was a boy alone they would take him away from the cabin and the swamp and find a home for him, or send him to a workhouse, and he wanted no home but the one he now had. At least until he had a rifle. Once he had a rifle he would go west and become a mountain man like his father, and perhaps in some trappers' rendezvous in the mountains he might meet him, a big, powerful man who knew Kit Carson and lived among the Indians. But was he afraid of the swamp? "Not very," he said. "Folks say it's haunted."

"I never saw any haunts. It's wild, though, and a body better know where he's stepping or he can sink clean out of sight."

"How do you know which plants to pick?"

"My mother taught me." He knew what they said in the village about his mother being a gypsy. "She grew up in a house near a field where gypsies used to camp." Dean counted out a few coins, peering at Jim over his glasses when he had completed the payment. "I can use more of that sassafras, son, and when berry time comes around I can use all the blackberries and huckleberries you can gather. Don't know where you find 'em. Biggest I ever did see." Jean remembered those big, juicy berries. They grew in the thickest and most dangerous part of the swamp. Leaves fell there and rotted away in the dampness and upon their moldering remains grew the bushes with the fattest, sweetest berries. He had thought about that a good deal, and the place frightened him, but fascinated him also.

"Yes, sir."

"Ain't seen that uncle of yours," Dean commented, "the one who came here when your ma died."

"He goes to Selinsgrove," Jean told him. "Or to Sunbury." The question had been more in the nature of a comment, merely making conversation, and Dean turned to greet another customer, adding, "Don't you forget that sassafras."

Jean stood where he was, his fingers on the edge of the counter, soaking up the rich smells of the old store. There was the fragrance of tobacco, licorice, and dry goods, mingled with the smell of new harness leather, and all the aromas of the old-fashioned shop. Rob Walker waited until Jean started for the door. "That ol' swamp," he said, when they were outside, "I hear it's a mighty gloomy place."

"I like it."

"I'd think you'd be scared, out there alone."

"Nothin' to be scared of ... not if you know where to walk." Jean dug into his pocket for the rattles clipped from a snake he had killed. "Got to watch for rattlers, though. There's big ones in there."

"They say there's a new rattle for every year a snake lives." "Ain't so," Jean said. "There's a new rattle or button every time he sheds his skin, and they do it two, sometimes three times a year." "Would you take me sometime?"

"You'd be scared."

"I would not. I've almost gone in alone--lots of times."

"All right. You can come now if you want."

That was how it had begun, nearly three years before their planned meeting at the Honey Tree. United in their loneliness, the boys had discovered they shared a dream, the dream to go west, far across the plains where the buffalo were, far away to the land of the Sioux and the Blackfoot, and there to be mountain men. Around the village, wherever men gathered to talk, at the livery stable, the mill or the tavern or blacksmith shop, men talked of the mountains and dreamed aloud to each other, those men who often wish and never will, men who bound to business, job, or family, dream great dreams of the far-off lands and the wonderful adventures they may someday have. And those other men and boys without ties, who will never take the lone trail because they want but they will not do. Perhaps because subconsciously they know that every dream has a price, and the price for the wandering life is hunger, loneliness and danger, the blistering thirst of deserts and the icy crash of waves, the tearing winds and driving sleet far from hearthside and the warm arms of loved ones. Yet for Jean dreams would never be enough. The swamp became the training ground for that great day when he would be "big" and could go away. Yet in the secret places of his own mind Jean knew he would not wait for the remote time when he was big enough, a man grown. He would wait not longer than it required to save money for a good rifle, not the cumbersome old gun the cabin afforded ... and the money was almost half saved.

It had been midafternoon when he found the track of the stranger, and Rob would have reached the Honey Tree. If so, he would be waiting there when the stranger arrived, as the man had chosen a route that could not miss the clearing around the tree. Rob would be there and he would see the stranger and be seen by him. Jean's trap line was long and Rob had agreed to work half of it so they could hurry back to the village to listen to Captain Hutchins, who was in the village for a last visit before going across the Great Plains to the lands on the Pacific. He would be in the tavern that night talking of the fur trade and of his plans. Both boys knew about Captain Hutchins. He had made a fortune manufacturing shoes for the Army, as well as in the shipping business, and he was taking his capital west.

Jean had worked his trap line swiftly, finding little. It was time he moved his traps deeper into the swamp. Maybe he would move them over near the stone house; it had been long since he trapped that area.

Nobody else seemed to know about the house. It was very old, built of stones rolled down from the ridge behind it, and it stood hidden in a grove of hemlock, giant trees that kept the house invisible until one was almost at the door. Yet despite its seeming remoteness, Jean knew there was a place where Mill Creek Road bent within a mile of it. Of late he had not been so sure that he was the only one who knew of the house, although whoever did know of it was not anyone from the country around. Once he had found the ashes of a fire that he was sure had not been there when he visited the house before ... that had been the morning after they found Aaron Colby's body on Mill Creek Road. Jean descended into a hollow and crossed the creek on a fallen log, working his way up the slope through a thick stand of trees. When he reached a low hummock of firm ground he followed along its ridge, almost running, scrambling through the brush, hurrying to meet Rob. The Honey Tree was only a little farther on. Quite suddenly he saw the footprints again. The man had taken the same route Jean had chosen, but when in sight of the Honey Tree he had veered sharply away and leaped back across the tiny stream: Jean could see where his feet had landed after the jump, and where he had slipped in climbing the wet bank. Looking through the trees from where the stranger had suddenly turned, Jean saw Rob sitting on a deadfall waiting for him.

The tracks were very fresh; the stranger could be only minutes ahead of him. Obviously, the man had seen Rob and turned quickly away. Why should a man be afraid of being seen by a boy?

Jean walked into the clearing. "Hi," he said.

Chapter 2

The Honey Tree stood at the edge of a small clearing, its long-dead limbs stripped and bare in the late afternoon sun. A gigantic cypress, lightning-blasted and hoary with years, it was all of nine feet through and hollow to at least sixty feet of its height. In that vast cavity generations of bees had been storing honey, and to Jean LaBarge it had been a source of excitement and anticipation since the first day of its discovery by him. Not a week passed that he did not attempt to devise a plan for robbing it. Thousands of bees hummed about the tree, for not one but a dozen swarms used different levels of its hollow. Towering high above the clearing, it must once have been a splendid tree; now it was only a gigantic storehouse. When first Jean took Rob to the swamp, it was to the Honey Tree they had gone, and ever since it had been the focal point of their wanderings and explorations within the swamp.

Shortly after he arrived at the farm, Jean's Uncle George was shown the tree, and immediately plans were made to smoke out the bees and steal their honey. But that was before Uncle George realized that there was no way in which smoke could be made to affect all the bees simultaneously. Long before the smoke reached the bees near the top the wind would dissipate it, and to attempt the robbery would be to die under the stings of thousands of bees. Uncle George grumbled, threatened the bees and went away. He did not return to the Honey Tree and Jean did not mention his tree again, yet the thought of all that stored-up sweetness fascinated the boys.

"You going to smoke them today?" Rob was eager. "I'll bet there's bushels of honey!"

"Bushels?" Jean was scornful of such an estimate. "There's tons!" He stared up at the tree, awed by the thought. Then he hitched up his too-large pants, remembering suddenly what he had meant to ask. "Did you see him?" "See who?"

"The man ... there was a man came this way, just ahead of me. When he saw you he turned off into the swamp."

"Who was it?"

"I'll bet he's gone to the stone house." It was strange he had not thought of it before. The trail the man was making would lead that way, and this might be the man who had left those ashes there. "I don't know who it was," he added. Rob's eyes were big with excitement. Strangers were few along the Susquehanna in those years and most of them either passed by or occasionally stopped at the tavern for a meal or a drink. There was nothing to keep anyone in the village. And for anyone to leave the safety of Mill Creek Road for the dangers of the swamp was unheard of.

"Maybe he's one of the Carters."

Jean's heart began to pound heavily. The thought had not occurred to him before. The Carters were a band of outlaws known for their robberies, murders and brutality in all the regions near the Susquehanna in the early 1800's. The name was given them because the first of their number had worked as carters hauling goods along the high road. There had been some trouble at Sunbury and one of the cart drivers had killed a man in a most brutal fashion. Three of them had then looted the man's store and fled into the wild country along the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Later, they were believed to have shifted their operations to the Great Swamp.

In time their numbers had increased, although how many there were was never exactly known. A man caught stealing cattle had broken jail and joined them, and shortly after a farmer en route to the Mill had seen six of them gathered together at the bridge. A number of times in the months that followed travelers were beaten and robbed along Mill Creek Road, and two men were found murdered near Penn Creek shortly after they had been seen displaying money from a sale of cattle.

During succeeding years the Carters became notorious in all the country around. One was hanged, and another was shot and killed by an old soldier while attempting to steal a horse. By the time a concerted effort was made to deal with them they were already guilty of a score of murders. Two of them belonged to a family of evil character named Ring. It was said in the villages along the river that the Rings were all a little insane, but whatever else they were, they were also vindictive and dangerous men. It was believed the Carters had spies in the towns who warned them of impending trouble and let them know when prosperous travelers were on the road. The few attempts to capture them failed because the Carters knew the swamp and the villagers did not. Then after some fifteen years of terror the Carters suddenly vanished and for a long time travelers were safe again.

During those fifteen years the Carters had won a reputation as evil if not as widespread as those other murderers who haunted the Natchez Trace, far to the south. The stories of their crimes made exciting listening, and every lad along the river knew tales of the Carters and their bloody doings. "What will we do?" Rob asked anxiously.

"Let's go look."

Rob was frightened but he was even more curious, and moreover, was afraid to admit his fear. With Jean in the lead, the two boys started at once into the woods.

The afternoon was already late and in the forest it was noticeably darker. The direction taken by the stranger would take him nowhere but to the stone house or one of the several trails leading away from it. That stone house, Jean now realized, must have been one of the hide-outs of the Carters. If this stranger knew the swamp and knew of the house he could only be a Carter. There was no other alternative that made sense.

Rob was apprehensive. Not accustomed to shouldering responsibility for his actions, nor to being in the swamp this late, he was worried. He knew that if his parents ever learned what he was doing he would never hear the last of it, yet quite as much as Jean he wanted to know who the stranger was and where he was going.

"Maybe we should get somebody to come with us," Rob suggested.

"Nobody believes there's any Carters left hereabouts. They'd just laugh at us." This, Rob knew, was exactly what would happen. Everybody was sure the Carters were gone for good, and it was unlikely that anybody would go into the swamp to investigate a rumor started by two boys.

The forest grew thicker and darker. Twice Rob fell, and once off to their right, something fell into a stagnant pool with a dull plop and both boys jumped. It was cooler now ... the trees began to take on weird shapes and landmarks lost their identity as night made all things anonymous. Some small creature sprang from the trail ahead of them and darted off through the woods. Probably a rabbit. They came down to a creek bank, the water gleaming a dull lead color in the vague remaining light. They crossed another log and entered a narrow opening in the forest wall. About them the darkness made tiny warning sounds, and they listened, aware of a strangeness they had not known before. It gave them an eerie feeling as if some great dark thing lurked in the shadows ahead, peering out at them, waiting for them to draw nearer, watching for the moment to spring. A loon called, far off beside some lost pool, and the lonely sound made their flesh crawl.

"Shouldn't we go back?" Rob whispered.

They should ... Jean knew they should. He had no business spying on this stranger, and less business bringing Rob Walker into it, yet he could not turn back now. "You can if you want to; I want to see what he does." It was not bravado that drove Jean on so much as an innate sense of self-preservation. The swamp provided him with a home and a livelihood. The presence of an intruder could only mean trouble for him. If the Carters had returned he would no longer be able to move freely along his trap lines, and the source of his income would certainly be curtailed and might disappear. Young though he was, the idea frightened him, for the swamp was all the home he had ever known. He found nothing to attract him in the life of the village boys. Lonely though he was, often wistful with longing for the mother he had lost and the father he had scarcely known, he nonetheless loved the woods and would not have abandoned his free, easy life for anything. The boys pushed on for some minutes; then Rob stopped again. "Jean. Please, I think we should go back," he insisted in a hushed tone. "We should tell somebody."

"We've nothing to tell. Anyway, Dan'l Boone wouldn't go back, nor even Simon Girty."

It was an argument for which Rob had no answer. But sometimes he doubted that he would make another Boone. It was one thing to play at such things, but when the swamp grew dark Rob was no longer positive he wanted a life of adventure. Jean, on the other hand, seemed as much at home here as any young wolf or deer. He belonged to the forest and the forest belonged to him. Both boys had listened for hours to talk of Mohawk, Huron and Iroquois, of Simon Girty and Dan Boone, stories of hunting, Indian fighting and travel. They heard tales of the mountain men, and of the far lands of Mr. Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, lands yet known to few. Many of the stories had originated with Jean's own father, who like most mountain men loved to yarn away the hours when he found himself among the wide-eyed citizens of settled communities. The stone house huddled against the wall of the ridge that hemmed the swamp at that place, hiding itself in the deepest shadows under the ancient hemlocks. The boys crawled under a bush where no grown man could have gone and stopped just behind a huge hemlock, only a few yards away from the house. Jean tried to remember what it was like close along the wall. He did not want to step on anything that would cause even a whisper of sound. Rob moved up beside him and they crouched there, wide-eyed, listening and tense. From within came a murmur of voices and they could see a thread of light from a crack in the boarded-up window. A few inches below, a shaft of light streamed from a knothole.

They moved forward from tree to tree until within a dozen yards of the house, then stopped again. Now they could distinguish the words of the men inside. "You took long enough."

"Hutchins is there, and he's travelin' alone. Ridin' one horse, leadin' another.

From the way he bulges at the waist he's wearin' a money belt." "He's packin' two, three thousand in gold. Harry was there in the bank, seen him pick it up."

"Sam, I seen a kid out there. Settin' by the bee tree."

"He see you?"

"Nah ... but what's a kid doin' in the swamp?"

"Well, what was he doin'?"

"Settin' ... like he was waitin'."

"All right, then. He was waitin'. What more do you want? Maybe his pappy was huntin'."

"Nobody hunts in this swamp. Nobody."

"Probably LaBarge's kid. LaBarge built hisself a cabin over next the woods. I recall his woman used to collect bloodroot an' such to fetch down to the store. Made a livin' at it."

"You mean Smoke LaBarge?"

"You scared?" The tone was contemptuous.

"He never set much store by me. What you lettin' us in for, Sam?" "Forget it ... Smoke's dead and gone. Last I seen of him was on the Yellowstone, but at Fort Union folks were tellin' it the Blackfeet killed him." "Take some doin'."

"Well, they done it."

There was a sound of breaking sticks and then a fire crackled and a few sparks ascended from the squat chimney. The good smell of wood smoke came to the boys. Jean got carefully to his feet. If these men were mountain men as their conversation implied, they would be able to hear the slightest sound. But Jean had to look into that knothole; he had to see those men. Signaling for Rob to stay where he was, Jean crept forward in the darkness. At the window he lifted his head slowly, holding it to one side of the knothole. He peered through, first from one side and then the other, and saw not two men, but three. The third man lay on a bunk asleep, his face in the shadows. The stranger whom they had followed Jean recognized by the boots he wore and the size of him. He was huge, awkwardly built, and dressed as a farmer would be dressed. His face wore an expression at once stupid and cunning. The man called Sam was hunched over the table, a shorter, broader, thicker man than the big one. His was a brutally strong face, but it possessed a hard, cynical cast that indicated a certain grim humor. Jean shuddered to see as he turned his head that there was an inch-wide scar through his eyebrow.

The stone house was as Jean remembered it, the old fireplace, a table, two benches and a barrel chair. The floor was of hard-packed earth. On the wall there now hung various articles of clothing. Several guns were within view. The big man looked around the room. "This is a good place. Too bad we had to leave."

"It was time. We use some sense this time we can stay here for months before anybody gets wise. Hutchins, he's from out of state, an' he's headed west, so nobody will miss him."

"What about the body?"

"What d' you think? Right in the swamp where we should have put them all. The Rings was too careless."

Jean listened, his mouth dry with fear. Everybody in the village knew Captain Hutchins by sight. He had kin in the village and had visited there several times, but now he was going west to California and the lands on the Pacific, and he was carrying gold to buy furs along the way. He remembered hearing them talk about it in the village. "Country's growing out there," Hutchins had said that very day, "and I want to grow with it." "Ain't that Spanish land?"

"It is now," Hutchins agreed, "but unless I miss my guess it won't be very much longer. Someday the United States will span the continent. Might even cover all North America."

"Foolishness!" That was what old Mister Dean had said. "Pure foolishness! The country's big enough as it is. No sense taking in all that no-account land. Ain't worth nothin', never will be."

"There are folks who believe otherwise," Hutchins replied mildly. "And I know there's rich, black soil there, miles of fine grass, and a country that will grow anything. There's future in that country for men with the will to work and the imagination to see it."

These had seemed but the echo of words Jean had heard before. Had his father said them, long ago when he was too young to remember? Or had his mother repeated them to him? Whatever the reason or occasion, the words had struck fire within him and he listened avidly, knowing inside him that westward lay his destiny, westward with a land growing strong, westward with a new nation, a new people. And now these men within the house were planning to kill and rob Captain Hutchins.

Jean knew at once that he must get away to warn him, to tell him of these men and their plans. He got up, too quickly, and when he stepped back his foot slipped and he scrambled wildly for a foothold, then fell flat. Inside there was a grunt of surprise, and then a clamor of movement. The door slammed open as Jean got to his feet and he was touched, just barely, by the shaft of light from its opening. He darted for the brush .... once inside that brush, within its blackness ... he tripped and fell flat, then crawled, scrabbling in the grass to reach the undergrowth only a few feet away. He was just about to make a final lunge when a large hand grasped his ankle. He kicked wildly, but the hand was strong. Inexorably he was drawn back and jerked to his feet.

The man with the scar grasped his arm. "Snoopin', were you? We'll be larnin' you better."

Chapter 3

Sam grippped his arm and led the boy into the light from the open door. "This the one you saw?"

"Looks bigger," the big man said doubtfully. "I tell you, Sam, I ain't sure. He was settin' down. Could be, though."

Sam shoved Jean into the house and they followed him in, studying him thoughtfully. Jean stood very straight, his heart throbbing heavily. He was caught, and he had no idea what was to happen now; but he returned the man's stare boldly, although his mouth was dry and he felt empty. "You're the LaBarge kid, ain't you?" Sam asked. "I am Jean LaBarge." His voice was steady. For some absurd reason he was sorry his hair was not combed, that he was not wearing his other shirt. These men had known his father and he would not like them to think him unworthy. "What you doin', sneakin' around here?"

"I was not sneaking," Jean lied. "I was coming to the door. I saw the light and wondered who was there. Nobody," he added truthfully, "ever comes here." "What were you doin' in the woods?"

"I run a trap line." He tried to make his voice matter-of-fact. "And I collect herbs." From their attitude they apparently believed he had been alone, and therefore had no idea Rob Walker was outside. And they must not know. "Pretty dark for that, ain't it?" Sam's voice was mild. "I sold the herbs in the village. It is closer to the cabin if I come through the swamp."

"He's lyin', Sam." The big man had an ugly voice. "He lies in his teeth. When I seen him he was just a-settin'."

"What about that, boy?" Sam asked.

"I was studying the Honey Tree," he said. "I been aimin' to get me some of that honey."

Sam chuckled. "I studied some on that, too," he said. "It ain't easy." Sam ignored the bigger man, sizing Jean up with careful eyes, noting the shabby, often-patched homespun pants, the torn plaid shirt and the uncut hair. Sam found himself admiring the boy, for he put on a good show. He seemed wary all right, but if he was scared he managed to hide it. This was quite a boy. Old Smoke LaBarge would have been proud of him ... but too thin, much too thin, and poor as a Digger Indian.

"Ain't you afraid of the swamp?"

"I grew up in it."

Sam had an idea but he was a slow man with his thinking. He took his time now, turning the idea slowly on the spit of his mind, studying it from all sides. They could kill the boy ... that would be the easiest way, but it was a pity to kill a lad with his gumption. Also, if the boy failed to show up around the town folks would be sure to become curious and start looking for him. And Sam could stand for no snooping around. On the other hand, this boy was obviously very poor, probably making just enough to keep eating. A little extra money would look mighty big to him. If this lad was as smart as Sam was beginning to believe he would fit perfectly into their plans. Folks would become suspicious if an unemployed stranger hung about the tavern, but this youngster could go anywhere and nobody would think anything of it.

"Were you listenin' at the window, kid?"

"Not yet." Jean rightly guessed that frankness could hurt him none at all, and might win their friendship. "But I intended to. I'd have listened before I came around to the door."

Sam chuckled. "I'd have done the same, boy. I surely would." The big man shifted his feet impatiently. "Sam, this boy means trouble. We've got to do something."

Sam gestured irritably. "Take it easy. I think this boy's on our side, Fud, and I've an idea."

Jean sat very still, waiting. Outside Rob would be creeping away, until he got far enough from the house to climb to the top of the ridge without being heard. Once atop the ridge he could follow it along to the road, but what if he took the wrong direction and became lost in the forest? For the ridge was but an offshoot of the higher land back of the swamp, and there was forest there, almost untouched, without track or trail of any kind. Sam finished stoking his pipe and lighted it at the candle. The strings of his shirt were untied at the collar showing the thick black hair on his chest, and his big hands were thick and powerful. From time to time as he moved about he glanced at Jean. "Fud," Sam finally said, "you got to use your head. We can get rid of this boy a month from now as well as now, but on the other hand, he's not apt to run to the law, bein' he's dodgin' it himself. "Oh, yes!" Sam grinned wisely at Jean. "You might fool those folks in town, but Fud an' me, we know you're livin' alone in that cabin. Your Uncle George ain't home, an' what's more, he ain't comin' home. Now if those folks in town knew that they'd have you in the workhouse. I know these here good folks, they can get themselves mighty busy about a poor little boy livin' all by himself. I know them, lad, an' you know them, too.

"Those folks, they'd never figure you liked it here in the swamp. They'd want to mess up your life makin' a home for you. Now I ain't sayin' a boy shouldn't have a home. Mighty good thing, homes are, but these fussy folks they get to watchin' over a boy, expectin' him to make mistakes, or tryin' to make him somethin' he ain't. You, f'r instance, you're a woodsman. Anybody can see that. Take after you pa, you do."

Jean waited, his attention on Sam. Instinctively he knew his only hope lay in Sam's suddenly aroused interest. Moreover he was fascinated by the obviously brutal strength of the man, by his big, hard-knuckled hands, so broken and scarred from fighting. Fud was the bigger of the two, but when it came to strength he was not in the same class with Sam. Suddenly Jean realized that Sam had said Uncle George was not coming back. How could they be sure of that unless...?

"You get the idea, Fud." Sam was addressing his partner but he was talking to Jean also. "This here's quite a boy. He rustles his own living out of the woods, and as a body can see, he likes it. Of course, if folks knew he was alone they'd take him to a workhouse or 'prentice him to somebody. Either way they'd work the hair off him."

"Get to the point," Fud insisted irritably.

"Sure ... this boy's on our side. We could tell on him, too. We could get him sent to the workhouse, and if he tattled on us we could say he was lyin' to save his own hide, usin' his imagination, the way kids do. We could even tell he'd been sneak-thievin' around, and maybe see something was found in his cabin to prove it. And who's to deny it?"

People would believe it, Jean knew. They would believe it because it would make them seem right for denying him the companionship of their children. Yes, they would believe it all right.

By now Rob would be climbing the ridge, and it would not be easy, in the dark like it was, when a body had no chance to choose a way. Soon he would be passing by the cabin along the ridge, and what if a rock rolled down? "A boy like this," Sam continued, drawing deep on his pipe, "could do us some good. Got big ears, see? Good eyes, too. An' nobody suspects a kid. By now they're used to him comin' it around an' they would hardly notice he was there. He could find out who was carryin' money, how they traveled, and I'd bet he knows more hidin' places in this swamp than any catymount." The climb up the ridge was steep, and Rob might slip back several times. He might fall headlong and get turned around in the dark when he got up. It had happened to Jean ... but Rob had a good head and he had grit. He never took foolish chances. As soon as he got to Mill Creek Road, he would run. He would keep going, too: once Rob began on a thing he wouldn't let up. "You got any real good friends in town, boy?"

"No, sir."

"How about the youngsters?"

"They say my mother was a gypsy."

"Right." Sam chuckled. He was pleased with himself. He had guessed that a boy living like this one would be at outs with the town. He had been a poor boy himself. He leaned forward. "Boy, is there anything you want real bad? I mean something for your very own?"

"A rifle," Jean replied promptly. "I'd like a rifle so I could go west."

Sam's laughter boomed and he slapped his heavy thigh. "That's it! There it is! By the Lord Harry, Fud! There's the LaBarge cropping out in the boy! A rifle so's he could go west, now doesn't that beat all?" He sat back on his bench against the wall, puffing at his pipe. He held the pipe in one corner of his mouth and puffed from the other side. Fud looked bored and impatient, but the man on the bunk merely snored. Rob should definitely be on the ridge by now. He would be frightened and breathing hard from the climb so he would stop to catch his breath. Up there on the ridge it would be bright moonlight, stark and clear. Below him on this side would be the swamp, and on the other, the forest. All he had to do was pick his way carefully along the top of that comblike ridge until it played out at Mill Creek Road.

How long would it take him to get to town? Two hours? Three? Rob was cautious, and on the ridge he would take his time. Up there among the jagged rocks and brush it would be rough going and to hurry might mean a sprained or broken ankle. Once out of the woods and on the road he could run. But how far could a boy run without stopping?

Rob would be frightened up there in the moonlight with a vast sea of darkness below him, a sea whose waves were the moving tops of trees and whose bottom was swamp and forest. It would be very still up there, except for the wind, and a sudden noise would stop a man, make the hair prickle on the back of his neck. The air would be cool, but there would be that strange odor of dampness and decay, the smell from stagnant pools, of rotting vegetation mingled with the fresh smell of pines and hemlock. Somewhere a night bird would call, an eerie sound that would make Rob stop, shivering. But then he would hurry on, perhaps falling, skinning his knees, rising agajn and going on ... "So you want a rifle? Now that's smart. A good rifle is a thing to come by, and mighty handy, but a good rifle costs money. Now you try selling herbs to buy a rifle and it would take quite a spell. You stick with us, do what I tell you and use that noggin of yours, then we'll get a rifle for you, and the best of the lot, too."

"What would I have to do?"

Sam chuckled again. "See there, Fud? No nonsense about this lad, comes right to the point. Business, he is, strictly business." Sam leaned his hairy forearms on the table. "Do? Nothing but what you've been doing, boy. You take your herbs to town to sell. On'y sometimes you go to Sunbury or Selinsgrove, too. And you sell 'em ... what else? You listen. Just that. You listen. Sometimes folks passing through carry a sight of money, more'n is good for 'em. Well, we mean to he'p out, Fud, me, an' him.

"You see somebody with money, you just come to us. No townsfolk, mind you. Only travelers, folks goin' through on the pike or the river." "Those folks who travel," Jean suggested tentatively. "Don't they have rifles sometimes?"

"Now." Sam slapped his leg again. "There's a lad! Eye right on the main issue!" Sam chuckled, winking at Jean. "Make a team, you an' me. We might even go west together, that's what."

"I can see that!" Fud sneered. "Sam, you're talkin' fool talk." Sam lifted a thick, admonishing finger. "Don't take the boy lightly, Fud. Nobody in town is friendly to him, slurring his mother like they do, figuring his father no good, ready to clap the boy in the workhouse. No, sir! The boy's with us, aren't you, boy?"

"I hear things," Jean agreed, "an' folks don't pay me much mind." Sam puffed on his pipe, his mind far away. The fire crackled on the hearth and the man in the bunk turned over, moving uneasily in his sleep, like a cat. Jean's ears strained into the darkness, striving to hear sounds he did not wish to hear. Was Rob safely out of earshot? How much time had passed? "While you're doin' this plannin'," Fud's voice was sarcastic, "s'pose you figure what we'll do with him while we're gone. You goin' to leave him loose?" Sam shook his head regretfully. "Not that I don't trust you, boy, but for safety's sake we'll lock the door."

Outside the wind was lifting. Sam got out a deck of worn playing cards and shuffled them. The man on the bunk fumbled at his face with a lax hand, and then his eyes opened and he lay for several minutes adjusting himself to the scene, his eyes continually returning to Jean. He was younger than the others, a lean, savage young man with dark hollows beneath his eyes and a yellowish cast to his face. He sat up finally, watching Sam handle the cards. Fud gestured Jean from the chair and sat down himself. The younger man, scratching his ribs and yawning, joined them.

"You slept long enough," Fud commented.

The young man turned his black eyes on Fud but made no comment. Sam began dealing the cards and Jean guessed that Sam was wary of this man. Fud he treated with casual contempt but there was something about this young man no one in his right mind would treat casually.

"Who's the boy?" he asked suddenly, without looking up from his cards. Sam explained, taking his time and attempting to make all the details clear. The young man did not look up nor did he interrupt, he just listened. "We got to have information," Sam finished, "and we can't keep showing up in town. Certainly not you, nor me with this scar. There's men in town will remember how I come by this scar."

"They've never seen me."

"They know your family, Ring. They saw your father and brother, and you're like them as can be."

Jean's head nodded wearily, then jerked awake. The others still played cards. Sam glanced at him kindly, then nodded his head toward the corner. "Take a rest, boy, you'll need it."

There was nothing he could do. Wherever Rob Walker was, all was in his hands now, and Jean was terribly tired. His head no sooner touched the blanket than he was asleep.

A long time later he opened his eyes and the house was dark. He listened, but he heard no sound of snoring or breathing. Carefully, he sat up and looked around in the darkness. He was alone ... the stone house was empty but for himself. Rising quickly he went to the door. It was fastened on the outside. The earthen floor was packed hard, like cement, and he knew the stones of the house were sunk deep into the ground. Even if he had something with which to dig it would require hours to make a hole big enough for him to crawl out. The window was solidly boarded and too small, anyway. When he had exhausted all the possibilities of escape he sat down on the floor and stared at the small opening left by the knothole. Outside it was still night, but he must have slept a good long while. Soon it would be growing light.

Chapter 4

When Rob Walker reached Mill Creek Road he was sobbing with fear and exhaustion. The ridge had proved to be a wild tangle of bramble, broken rock and wind-wracked pines. Under the white light of the moon it lay lonely and desolate and nowhere could he find the path which Jean had mentioned once, months ago. Ghostly shadows of sentinel pines loomed about him, and he began scrambling over the jagged rocks and pushing through the brush toward the road. Branches tore at his clothing and twice he fell, skinning the side of his face on a rock. Briars snagged his clothing, yet he pushed on, knowing Jean was in danger, that he must bring help.

When at last he reached the road he was out of breath, his skin scratched and bruised, his clothing torn. The road lay wide and white in the moonlight with the black wall of the swamp on his right, on his left a rail fence bordering a pasture. Beyond the pasture was Mill Creek itself, and the air was damp and cool. He started to run, his short legs making hard work of it. Already breathless from his scramble over the ridge, pain stabbed at his side, but within him was a terrible fear that made a lie of his weariness. He had no idea of the hour. It had been late afternoon when they started to follow the stranger, and dark when they lay outside the cabin. To circle around and climb the ridge must have taken at least an hour, for he had crept some distance before he trusted the noise not to reach the men in the cabin, and it had taken another hour to creep by the cabin. It must have taken him at least two hours to reach the road, maybe more: he had stopped many times to catch his breath and listen for sounds in the night.

It was the first time he had been away from home after dark and his folks would be frightened. They were not lenient, and it was understood he must either be in the house or his own yard before dark. Finally, unable to run farther, he began to walk. He wanted nothing so much as to stop, to sit down, to lie down. Never had he been so utterly exhausted. This morning his mother had put out a clean shirt for him and now it was soaked with sweat, bloodstained and torn by brambles.

Far up the road he glimpsed a light. That would be the old Chancel house, and not a quarter of a mile beyond was the tavern, and only a little farther, a few steps only, was his own home. At last he ran up the path and burst into the door.

His mother started to her feet, her face tear-stained, and his father, who had been pacing the floor as he always did when worried, turned sharply, ready to scold. When he saw Rob's face and the condition of his clothing the words died unspoken.

"What is it, son? What's wrong?"

The story spilled out in sobbing gasps, and for the moment he forgot that he had been forbidden to go into the swamp or to associate with Jean LaBarge. His father listened, his eyes on Rob's face, seeing more than was being said. He knew his own son, and sometimes had wondered about the boy. Now he saw courage there, and if there was fear also, it was fear for Jean. Rob had always been frightened of his father, a quiet, stern man. Suddenly, for the first time, he felt they were on common ground. His father asked no foolish questions, wasted no time on angry complaints.

"You can take us back there? Do you know the way?"

"Yes, Father."

"Three men, you said? And Jean thought they were the Carters?"

"Yes."

"Come." Walker put his hand on his son's arm. "We'll go to the tavern." "But can't you take care of it without him?" Rob's mother protested. "The child hasn't eaten and look at his clothes! He ..."

"He will have to come with me. Anyway," Rob's father added, "it is his story and I believe he had better tell it."

Side by side they walked to the tavern. Rob had rarely been inside, only when he and Jean had slipped in to listen to stories being told, when some traveler was there from the west, or going west. It was a large room, low-raftered and smoky. On the right was a huge fireplace and near it a dozen men sat about a worn black table with mugs of beer or rum, smoking their pipes. The place had a dark, rich smell that was always exciting, and the glint of light on burnished copper. As they entered, all eyes swung to them. Across the table Captain Hutchins lifted his level blue eyes and looked at Rob, then nodded to Rob's father. "Hutchins," Walker said abruptly, "my son has something to tell you." Rob began to speak, hesitantly at first, and then remembering Jean he spoke more boldly and swiftly, telling the story from the beginning. He repeated what conversation they had overheard from within the stone house, and Jean's whispered report that three men were inside. Captain Hutchins listened without speaking, his eyes never leaving Rob's. When Rob finished, Walker got to his feet and knocked out his pipe.

"I believe that is plain enough," he said. "How many of you are with me?"

There were nine in the group who rode out from the village. Four were from the local company of militia, and even old Mister Dean, armed with a tremendous double-barreled shotgun, had come along.

"Will there be time to reach the cabin?" Hutchins asked, turning in his saddle to look at Rob.

"No, sir. I don't think so. And with so many men there would be noise."

Walker spoke up angrily. "By the Lord, Captain, if they've killed that boy ...

!"

"Hsst!"

They drew up sharply at the signal, stopping in the black shadow of a roadside tree. They heard a murmur of voices and an oath as somebody stumbled. Men were coming through the brush.

Hutchins swung to the ground, very cool, very businesslike. Rob's father tossed his reins to Rob and dismounted. "Hold the horses, Rob," he said, "and don't be frightened."

Breathless with excitement, Rob watched his father. He carried a rifle, and from somewhere he had gotten a large pistol which was thrust into his waistband. Moreover, he seemed completely at home with both weapons. Rob had noticed with pride the businesslike way in which his father loaded them. The four militiamen disappeared into the trees opposite the noise in the brush. Hutchins stood his ground, in the middle of the moonlit road. Some twenty feet farther along, standing partly in the shadow, was Walker. The other men had scattered themselves, two slipping into the brush, planning to come in behind the Carters and cut off any attempted escape.

Fud was the first Carter to reach the road. "Right across here there's a rock," he was saying. "We can wait there until Hutchins ..." His voice broke off sharply as he saw the slim, erect figure standing in the light of the sinking moon.

The others emerged from the woods, Ring pausing on the edge of the brush, warned by the sudden breaking off of Fud's speech.

"Stand where you are, men," Hutchins spoke clearly. "You're well taken."

A rustle of movement in the brush behind him made Sam start, then relax slowly. Fud was weaving uncertainly as his slow brain attempted to cope with the situation, a situation already beyond him. The shock of the trap was too much for Fud.

"You'll drop your weapons!" Walker's voice was crisp. "If you do not comply at once, we shall shoot to kill!"

Fud found his voice. "What's this?" he blustered. "Can't a man travel the high road 'thout bein' held up?"

"Our point exactly," Hutchins replied cheerfully. "I'm Hutchins, if you'd like to know. I understand you planned to meet me later. Now tell us: where's the boy?"

"What boy?" Fud tried to seem surprised.

"Don't pretend, man." Hutchins walked up to him. "You have been found out so you'd best tell us. If that boy has been harmed I shall personally attend to your hanging."

Rob's attention had been riveted upon the tense scene in the road's center. All at once his eyes swung to the edge of the road. Sam was still there, a man behind him with a gun at his back, but the third man was gone. "Father!" he called sharply. "The other man's gone!" Before anyone could speak, Sam lifted his voice. "Hutchins, you'd better get to the cabin and save that boy. Ring's got away and he hates the lot of you. He'll kill that lad. I know Ring. He'll kill him certain sure." Fud turned his heavy head to glare at Sam. "Why don't you keep shet?" he demanded.

Sam shrugged, smiling wryly. "You heard the man. If anything happens to that boy, we hang. Do you want to hang, Fud?"

"Did you say Ring?" Walker crossed the road to Sam. "I thought we'd killed the lot of them."

"This here's Bob Ring. You killed his father and brother. They were the first of the Carters."

Walker turned to his son. "Rob, can you take us to the cabin? I don't like to ask you. I know you're tired, but ..."

"I want to go!" Rob slid from his horse. "I know the way." Four men took Sam and Fud, their hands tied behind them, and started for the village. The others followed Captain Hutchins and Walker into the woods, and Rob led the way. Out there in the stone house Jean LaBarge waited for help, and he was bringing it.

The light outside the knothole slowly turned gray. Unless Rob had reached them in time Captain Hutchins would now be approaching the place where the Carters lay in wait for him on Mill Creek Road.

What if Rob was not believed? But he would be, for Rob was a serious boy, not given to pranks, and he had a way of making people listen to him. He knew how to talk, and had the words for it. That was because he read books. Jean made a mental resolution to read more ... if he got out of this. He got to his feet and went to the door. The cabin smelled of dirty clothes and stale tobacco smoke. He tried to get his fingers into the crack between the door and the jamb but there was no space for them, nor could he budge the heavy planks at the window.

Somewhere out in the woods there was a sound, and he went to the knothole, peering out. The grass of the clearing beyond the hemlocks was gray with morning dew; with the rising sun it would turn to silver. A bird came out of a tree and sat on a stump, preening his feathers. There was no sound, there was no other movement.

Yet there was ... a stirring of leaves, a branch that moved, and a man peering furtively out. The bird, frightened, took off in a low swoop for the trees, and the man named Ring came from the forest and started toward the house. Jean's throat tightened with fear. Ring was back and he was alone. He had been running: his breath came in ragged gasps and he walked with swift, jerky steps. That meant something had happened--

Ring hesitated, staring back at the forest and listening. His lank black hair hung around his ears, his eyes were wild and staring. There was a pistol tucked in his waistband. He ran on to the stone house and Jean heard him fumbling with the hasp on the door.

Frightened, his mouth dry, Jean hid where the opening door would conceal him until the last moment. They would be coming. Rob must have gotten help; Ring was being chased. If only he could...

The door slammed open and Ring stepped into the room, glaring about like a wild animal, looking for Jean. Gasping hoarsely from his run, the man was beyond reason, beyond thought, filled with murderous rage. He stepped on into the room, and instantly Jean ducked around the door and ran. Wheeling with amazing swiftness, the black-haired man grabbed for him. Jean felt the fingers clutch at his arm, slide off. Then he was out of the door and around the corner of the house. The man was like a cat. He sprang after him, but Jean ducked behind a hemlock and froze in place, eyes wide, fear choking him. Ring stood in the clearing before the house and looked around him slowly. When he spoke it was in an amazingly cool, almost conversational voice. "You surely needn't try to get away. I know these here woods better'n anybody. My name is Ring and I growed up here."

Jean looked toward the brush, judging the distance. The black-haired man would not want to use his gun and draw the pursuers to him. The brush was only fifteen feet away, yet for the time it took to cover that distance he would be in full view.

"I'm surely goin' to kill you, boy. They done kilt my daddy, an' I'm a-goin' to kill you."

Jean sprang out and leaped for the brush.

Ring swore, a shrill, whining scream, then lifted his pistol. Realization of what it might bring made him lower it again. He raced after the boy, but Jean LaBarge was already into the woods and once more in his own element. He ducked, dodged, then plunged out into an unexpected little clearing. Behind him Ring yelped a cry of triumph. And then out of the bushes ahead of them stepped Captain Hutchins. "It's all right boy," Hutchins said quietly. "Let him come."

Chapter 5

The hardest part had been saying goodbye to Walker, for they had always planned to go west together, and now he was going and Rob was staying behind. The next hardest part was to leave the swamp.

Before he left he walked alone to the Honey Tree, and he sat down there where he and Rob had sat so many times together, and where he had sat so many times alone. Around the towering tree millions of bees hummed unceasingly, and he watched them, a lump in his throat.

He told himself he would come back and take that old Honey Tree yet, but deep down inside he knew he never would, and suddenly he found himself hoping that nobody else would, either...

Neither Rob nor he had felt like talking. They just stood there, and he kicked a clod out of the grass on the Walker lawn.

"Guess you'll be seein' Indians, and everything," Rob said.

"I guess so."

"You going to write me? You going to tell me all that happens?" "I'll write ... maybe won't see any post carrier for a long time, but I'll write."

It was his first goodbye, and he did not like it. A long time later, sitting under the cottonwoods and watching the campfire on the little creek west of Independence, he thought of that. He missed Rob, and he missed the swamp, too, but he missed them only a little now because there was so much to see. Not that there was no trouble, for trouble seemed to go with him wherever he went. He remembered what had been said when the others of the westward-bound company discovered he was a boy. The objections had been violent and profane. But Captain Hutchins faced them, his feet a little spread, cool as he had been that morning when he killed Bob Ring. "The boy goes or I do not. I've a notion he's worth the lot of you, and he'll walk as far or trap as much fur as any of you."

Captain Hutchins owned most of the horses, and Captain Hutchins had been free about providing powder and ball and the others knew they would be a while finding a man to replace him. It finally simmered down until only one man objected and Captain Hutchins faced him. "If it's a choice between you or the boy," he said coolly, "I'd rather have the boy beside me. If you don't like his going, I'd suggest, sir, that you find a party more suited to your temperament." A man named Peter Hovey, leaning on his elbow against a wagon wheel, had said, "Was I you, Ryle Beck, I'd back up an' set down. I've a notion you've overmatched yourself."

Beck glowered and grumbled, but after a little bluster he shut up and went back to the fireside.

Captain Hutchins turned to Hovey. "Thanks, man. It'd be a bad thing to begin a journey with trouble."

"Aye, an' trouble enough for us all will be seen before we've found our bait of fur." He glanced at Jean. "Are you a trapper, boy?" "I caught my living at it, furs and herbs, more'n four years now," he said, "but it was swampland and not the mountains. I'd be obliged if you'd teach me." "You'll do." Peter Hovey grinned. "I've a thought you'll do your share."

And so it began.

Days later, moving westward, Captain Hutchins swung a wide arm at the country about them. "One man, Jean, a man with a vision, gave us this. If Tom Jefferson hadn't gone ahead, overriding the little men without vision, all the frightened little men, we'd not have this. By signing the Purchase agreement he risked his political future, but he doubled the size of the nation. You might even say he created a nation. Before the Louisiana Purchase we were a cluster of colonies; after it we became a world power."

"Is that good, sir?"

"Who knows, Jean? But nations and men are alike: they go forward or they stagnate and die."

There was new respect for him when it was learned he was the son of Smoke LaBarge. Peter Hovey had known him, had trapped with him on the Upper Wind River. Smoke had been killed by Blackfeet the following year, Hovey thought. But you could never be sure. He had a way of turning up. They went to Pierre's Hole and traded there, and for the first time the others began to see that young Jean LaBarge knew fur. He had learned it by selling his own, and had learned trapping, too. Although only a boy, his take for the season was almost as good as the men's.

With Captain Hutchins and a party of twenty mountain men they went up through the country along the Wind River and the Teton Peaks, and then floated down the Missouri to St. Louis. It was the biggest town Jean LaBarge had seen, and it was there, from old Pierre Choteau, that he first heard the magic name ... Alaska. "Alaska," Choteau said, "you know ... Russian America. Talked to a man who had been there to trade with Baranov. A rich land he said, the furs are thicker there because of the cold. Untrapped country. If I was younger ..." Alaska was an exotic name like Kashgar, Samarkand and Bagdad, but different, stronger, stranger. It was wild, untamed, lonely ... or so it sounded to him. That night he had written to Rob Walker about it, his first letter home, after so long a time. He told him, in pages of writing, what they had done, of the mountain men he had met--Jim Bridger, Milton Sublett, Peter Hovey. But he wanted to go to Alaska. Rob must meet him in San Francisco and they would go together. Was that when their love for Alaska began? Or had it begun in that other so-called wasteland, the Great Swanp? Others despised and feared it, yet Jean had lived there, made his way there, known its richness and its beauty. The experience made him wary of the term wasteland. Now he was seeing great western lands that old Mister Dean had disparaged. He was seeing millions of geese, millions of buffalo, streams with beaver, forests of splendid trees, and the waters of the Missouri. He remembered a big, hairy-faced trapper who grinned at him and said, "Takes a man with hair on his chest to drink from the Missouri. Cowards cut it with whiskey!" Rob had been away at school when Jean next heard from him, receiving the letter at Astoria, and a package containing a translation of Homer. Captain Hutchins had already given him a Bible. Later, a drunken trapper gave him a copy of Plato's Dialogues.

He read his books at night beside the campfire, and read them lying in his bunk at Astoria, and later in San Francisco. Several times after they arrived there he took trips with Captain Hutchins back into the Sierras or the Rockies, and each time he took a book with him.

At sixteen he had read just seven books, but had read them over and over, and at sixteen he was a veteran of nine battles with Indians, and victor in a man-to-man fight with a drunken trapper.

When his seventeenth birthday came around, he had read only one more book, but had read it, Plutarch's Lives, four times. He had a fight with Comanches under his belt by that time, carried the scar of his first wound, and had recuperated in Santa Fe.

By the time he was twenty he had covered the length of the Rockies and the Sierras, had nearly died of thirst, carried the scar of another wound and was over six feet tall, lean as any savage warrior, and stronger than any man he had so far met. That was the year he lost all his furs on the Green River when his canoe upset, and lived two months with Ute Indians while they made up their minds whether to kill him or not. By the time they decided he had chosen his horse and rifle, and the night before his captors came for him, an Indian who had befriended him loosed the rawhide bonds they had finally tied him with, and he slipped out of camp in the darkness and rode south until he struck the trail from Santa Fe to California. Two months later, broke, ragged and hungry, he had showed up at Captain Hutchins' office on the wharf at San Francisco. The following year he bought furs for Captain Hutchins, read twelve more books and tried prospecting in the gold fields without luck. Twice he made strikes but both petered out.

Returning one night from the wharf he heard a woman cry for help from an alley in Sydney Town. He rushed into the alley and something struck him a terrible blow across the back of his head. He came to, to find himself lying in a stinking bunk in the fo'c'sle of a windjammer bound for Amoy and Canton, China. The mate, a burly ruffian with tattooed arms and a heavy chest, came down the ladder with a marline-spike and jerked men from the bunks. Tentatively, Jean LaBarge swung his feet to the deck.

"Hurry it up, you!"

He looked up and started to speak and the mate hit him. His head still throbbed from the night before and this second blow did him no good. He painfully got to his feet, as tall as the mate when standing, lean and hard as a wolf, but he only choked back his anger and went on deck.

By the time they reached Canton he knew his way about a ship. He learned fast, paid attention to his job, and bided his time. Captain Swagert eyed him doubtfully, but the mate, Bully Gallow, shrugged it off. "Yellow. He's big, but he's yellow."

At trappers' rendezvous Jean LaBarge had won a dozen rough-and-tumble fights, and had lost one. He found that he liked to fight, there was something savage and wild in him that reveled in it. One of the trappers who worked for Captain Hutchins had once been a bare-knuckle bruiser in England, and he added his teaching to what Jean had learned the hard way. And now Jean's time came in Amoy.

It was a waterfront dive where sailors went, and it was filled with sailors the night Jean LaBarge went hunting. He knew all about the back room at the dive, the place reserved for officers, and it was there he found Captain Swagert, and beside him Gallow.

A big man, Gallow was, with two drinks under his belt and his meanness riding him like a devil on his shoulders. He saw LaBarge and LaBarge grinned at him. Gallow waved a hand. "Get out! This room is for your betters!" "Get up," Jean LaBarge told him. "Get up. Stack your duds and grease your skids because I'm going to tear down your meat-house!" Gallow left the chair with a lunge and learned for the first time the value of a straight left. It stabbed him in the mouth as though he had run into the butt end of a post, and it stopped him in his tracks. What followed was deliberate, artistic and enthusiastic. Jean LaBarge proceeded to whip Bully Gallow to a fare-thee-well, dragging him from the back room for the entertainment of the common sailors and when the job was finished he went into the back room again where Captain Swagert sat over a bottle and a glass. "Captain Swagert, sir," he said, "you'll be needing a new mate. I'm applying for the job."

The older man's eyes glinted. "You'll not get it," he said abruptly. "You'll not get it at all. One more trip and you'd be after my job. You're through, lad, and you're on the beach in Amoy, and I envy you not one whit." So that was the way of it. And Jean wrote to Rob from Amoy but he did not tell him he was on the beach there, only what the port was like, and that he was staying on awhile.

There was no love in Amoy for the white man since the Opium Wars, and for a month Jean LaBarge lived a hand-to-mouth existence, then signed on with a four-master sailing north to the Amur. It was a Russian ship, clumsy on deck and dirty below, but it was a ship, and when they had discharged cargo in the Amur they sailed for Fort Ross on the California coast. There, evading a guard who walked the decks by night, he slipped over the side into the dark water and floated ashore with an arm over a cask.

Once back in California, Jean had a long letter from Rob. His friend had gone far since the Great Swamp days. He had borrowed money and gone to college. He had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of eighteen and paid the money back by his own efforts. Then he had married the granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin and moved to Mississippi. A successful lawyer, he was now rapidly gaining eminence as a senator ... Rob had always had a gift for words and a way with people.

Jean LaBarge settled down in the growing city of San Francisco, buying furs and selling supplies to the Alaska traders and other seagoers. On the foundations of their first efforts Captain Hutchins had begun a thriving business, ignoring the gold rush and building for the future when the boom would be a thing of the past. Not only did Jean know furs, but his sea experience had given him the knowledge to talk equipment and supplies with the best of them. And always in the back of his mind was the thought of Alaska. It was waiting there, a great subcontinent, almost untouched, overflowing with riches, and all in the hands of a greedy, self-serving company under a charter from the Russian government, a company that kept out all interlopers despite regulations and international treaties. Yet soon Jean LaBarge discovered that nobody had any exact information about Alaska or the islands off the coast to the south. For the greater part they had never been explored and no proper charts existed. The smattering of Russian he had picked up was quickly improved by conversations with the few Russian shipmasters who came to Captain Hutchins' chandler's shop or to trade privately a few furs they had purchased on their own. From these casual conversations and further talks with seamen from the ships, he gleaned what information he could.

Later, on a ship of which Captain Hutchins and he were part owners, he sailed down the coast of Chile and to the Hawaiian Islands. There they picked up an old man, a survivor of Baranov's ill-fated attempt to capture those islands many years before. Relatives of the old man still lived near the abandoned Fort Ross, and on Jean's authority the old man was transported back to California. For hours each day and night Jean's interest kept the old man yarning about his own trading days in the vicinity of Sitka.

Not long after his return Jean learned that Rob Walker had led an attempt in the Senate to buy from the government of Mexico all of Baja California and fifty miles deep into Chihuahua and Sonora for a price of twenty-five million dollars. The Mexican government was prepared to sell, and Walker desperately urged the purchase, but an economy-minded Congress turned down the offer. Wasteland, they said.

The letters were not many but they continued. No longer was there talk of the two going to Alaska together, although Rob did plan to come to California where he had clients, and there was some talk of a trip to China, but neither trip materialized as the growing demands on Robert Walker's time increased, and his own importance to the nation he served.

From time to time Jean LaBarge heard of his father. He was dead ... he was not dead ... he had gone to Canada ... had been seen in the Yukon country. The swamp on the Susquehanna seemed far away now, but Alaska was closer. What he needed was a ship.

Chapter 6

When the lighter came alongside the dock with its load of furs, the man in the blue jacket sprang ashore, then turned to look back at the harbor. Crowded with shipping though it was, he had eyes but for one vessel, a low-hulled black schooner that lay some three hundred yards off the landing. Jean LaBarge looked what he was, a man born to the wild places and the tall winds. The mountain years had shaped him for strength and molded him for trial, the desert had dried him out and the sea had made him thoughtful. His boyhood in the Great Swamp near the Susquehanna had given promise of the man he had become. His eyes traced the lean, rakish lines of the schooner, making a picture of her as she would appear against the fjords and inlets of the northern coast. She would do well in that trade where the number of skins one took was less important than the number one successfully brought away. With that color, and with her low silhouette and slim masts, she could easily lose herself against the changing greens and browns of the iron coast. And with her shallow draft she could hug the shore so closely as to be almost invisible from seaward. Jean knew that if he expected to trade in Russian America and avoid capture or sinking she was just the craft he required, and he intended to own her. The man suited the ship as the ship the man, for Jean had about him the same lean look, big though he was. His were the hands and shoulders of one who had worked much against the sea and wind. His eyes measured the schooner, studying her lines and guessing at her speed and capacity. She had come into the harbor and dropped anchor while he was bartering for furs aboard the Boston ship, and his first glimpse of her had come as he started for shore. Obviously she was strongly as well as lightly built, fashioned for speed and durability by a knowing hand.

It was a raw morning with a cold gray sky above a slate-gray sea, and a wind blew in through the Golden Gate with a hint of rain. Nevertheless, he remained on the dock studying the schooner. She lay too far off for him to make out the port of registry, but he remembered no such schooner in these waters since he had first come to San Francisco.

With such a schooner, if a man steered clear of the Russian capital at Sitka and its immediately neighboring islands he might trade along the Alaskan coast and be gone before the Russians were aware of his presence in the area. With luck he might slip in and out of that network of channels like a dark ghost ship, for the Indians were not apt to talk to their Russian masters, preferring to deal with the "Boston men" as all Yankees were called by them. The Russians were all too willing to let the Indians have a touch of the knout. Yet trading among the islands was not a simple thing, and within the past few years a dozen ships had vanished there, ships mastered by men who knew the waters, the bitter offshore winds and fogs. Furs were not coming out as they had been, and prices had risen. Now if ever was the time for a private venture. There are men who give their hearts to a horse, a boat, or a gun, men who are possessed by all these things, absorbed by them to the exclusion of all else. Jean LaBarge was such a man, but he was absorbed by a land. To the north lay a country vast and unpeopled, without cities, a land of glacier and mountain, of icy inlet and rocky fjord, of long grassy valleys and canyons choked with snow, of endless tundra and mile upon mile of mighty timber. It was a land with broken shores where the icy tongues of an Arctic sea licked at gaping mouths of rock, while above it the sky was weirdly lit by the vast play of color that was the northern lights. Long before he had seen the land he had loved it, for he had felt its strength and beauty in the richness of its fur, in its timber and gold. He knew of the gold. There had been a trapper who had come to him with furs, a man who had wintered with the Tlingit Indians north of Fifty-four. Jean had bought furs from him, wondering at their richness, and he asked the man when he was going back.

The trapper turned sharply around, his face flushed and angry. "Back? Are you crazy? Who'd go back to a country that freezes the eyeballs in your skull, the marrow in your bones, where the bears grow tall as horses and heavy as bulls? The Russkies can have it, and welcome. I wouldn't even go back for the gold."

"Gold?"

The trapper dug into his pocket and drew out a bit of tanned hide, unrolling it to reveal a nugget of walnut size. It gleamed there on his calloused palm, heavy as sin in the heart of a man. "If that isn't gold, what is it?" Jean remembered the feel of it in his own palm, the weight of it and the brightness. This was gold, all right, raw gold, of which he had seen plenty here in California. Yet this was from Alaska.

"Found it in the shallows of a mountain stream when my canoe tipped over. I was picking my gear off the bottom when I saw it lying there, and could have picked up a dozen more. Only the country was freezing up and my grub was gone. "Rough gold, see? Means it wasn't carried far from the lode or it would have been worn smooth by rocks and gravel. The Tlingits have gold but they value it less than iron." He made a brushing gesture before his face. "I'd set no value on it either, if I had to go to Alaska for it." Yet a year later Jean LaBarge heard the trapper had been killed in Alaska in a fight over a Kolush squaw. They were all the same, these men who went to the north country, they claimed to hate it, but they went back. And Jean knew it was not the furs or gold nor was it the wild, free life. It was the land. Thoughfully, he considered the problem presented by the schooner, her probable cost and the additional expense of outfitting her. Beyond the trim, black-hulled schooner was a big square-rigger flying the Russian flag--it was almost a challenge. He grinned thoughtfully, thinking of the places that schooner could go where the square-rigger could not hope to follow. Few Russian ships came to San Francisco since the closing of Fort Ross, yet occasionally they made their way down from Sitka to buy grain or other food even as they had done in the days of the Dons when they had bought much from the missions. The square-rigger had come into port only a short time ago. Giancing around at an approaching footstep he saw a short, thickset man with a captain's peaked cap shoved back on the hard knot of his head. Despite the damp chill the man had his coat over his arm and his shirt open at the neck. In his mouth was a short-stemmed pipe. "That schooner, now. She's a pretty thing, isn't she?" He slanted a shrewd, measuring glance at Jean. "And the beauty of it is, she can be had. In a week I'd make no bets on it, but right now, for hard cash, she'd be a real bargain."

He made a thrusting gesture, his pointing finger held waist-high, like a pistol.

"Right now her owner's got a touch of the yellow ... he's discouraged."

"Discouraged?"

There was a hard competence about the man, and a scar on his cheekbone, scarcely healed. His eyes, however, held a quizzical humor that belied the toughness. "Bad luck in the Pribilofs. The Russkies got him."

"They didn't take the schooner?"

"He hadn't the schooner with him. That time he was sailing a barkentine. They didn't take her, either, just the cargo. Six thousand prime sealskins. Six thousand mind you." The man spat. "And lucky, at that. Had it been Baron Zinnovy he'd have been lucky to be alive, to say nothing of ship and crew." "Zinnovy?"

"If you're in the trade it's a name you'll know soon enough. He's out from Siberia to command the Russian patrol ship, the Kronstadt. And none of your vodka-swilling scenery bums such as they've been sending out, but a tough man, one chosen to do a bloody job and put the fear of the Lord in such of us as sail north."

"He's already on the north coast?"

"He's right here ... in Frisco." He indicated the square-rigger. "He came aboard of her, but as a passenger, mind you.

"If I'm to fight a man, give me a brute every time, but this one is cold and he's smart, and fresh from the Russian navy with a lot of ideas. I've heard them say his idea is to end the free trading with a rope, a knout for the Indians and a noose for the Boston men, and the deep six for their ships." "That's a large order."

"Ay, but this one's man enough, don't you be doubting that. I say it as hate to, he's man enough."

The square-rigger had lowered a boat that was coming shoreward. Jean strained his eyes against the distance, making out but one passenger aside from the boat crew.

"You've been sizing up the schooner, and she's a likely craft, but you'll be needing a skipper, a man who knows the islands. You'll find none who know them better than myself, from Vancouver Island to the Circle." He gestured at himself. "You see me now, name of Barney Kohl, standing in the middle of my property. But wealth, man? 'Tis not property that makes a man rich, but what's in his skull, and I've a pretty lot upstairs. You'll be needing a man with more in his head. Jean LaBarge, than mincy ways and nancy talk. You'll be seeking a man who knows the way of a ship and the sea, and the tricks of the Kolush prominent among them. You'll be needing me, LaBarge, if it's yonder schooner you'll be buying."

Kohl was a name well known to shipping: a tough rascal by all accounts, not above cutting a corner or two, but a good man with a ship, and a fighter. He had bargained with the Kolush and dealt with the Eskimo, and had a couple of running battles with Russian patrol ships.

"You know the kind of man Zinnovy is and you'd still go north?" Kohl took the pipe from his teeth. "That's why I want to go. There was a ship lost up there, and I know what happened.

"You've heard of the mosquitoes on that coast? They'll cover every naked bit of a man and eat him alive. I've seen a man after being left naked by the Kolush, black with them, driven crazy by them.

"Well, there were six men left alive when their ship was taken, and Zinnovy had the six whipped with a cat until the muscles were laid bare and then tied them, bloody as they were, to trees. Then he left them for the mosquitoes, and I was the one found those men--or what was left of them." "You're hired," Jean said, "if I can buy the schooner."

"You'll get it. I'll see to that ... you'll have her within the week."

Chapter 7

The second lighter had now reached the dock, piled high with bales of furs. It bumped alongside and a heaving line was tossed shoreward. A dockside hand started for it, but LaBarge was nearer and snared the monkey's-fist on the end of the line with a one-handed catch, Barney Kohl grasped the line beside him and together they hauled it in, hand over hand, then the heavier line to which it was belayed. They threw three fast turns around the bollard and topped it off with a half-hitch to complete the tie. Stepping back, they grinned at each other.

"I've a thought where the owner may be," Kohl suggested, "so let me handle the deal. He knows I'm on my uppers and I can wrangle a better price than you." A dozen husky longshoremen moved toward the lighter and began tumbling bales within reach of the crane. Jean LaBarge ran an appraising eye over what he could see of the skins. Without breaking a bale he knew they were prime stuff; he had broken enough bales while he was aboard the Yankee ship to assure him of his judgment.

A few spattering drops of rain fell, and he stood on the dock, liking the feel of them on his face. Beneath the wharf the waves slapped against the piles, a pleasant sound, a sea sound. He liked the damp, chill morning and the salt air, the ships lying out there on the waters of the bay, the black-hulled schooner he hoped might soon be his own.

"Go ahead," he said finally. "You'll be sailing as mate." Kohl had started away, but the words brought him up short. "What?" Obviously he did not believe what he had heard. "Me? As mate? And. who'll sail as master?

What man is fitted to--"

"I'll be in command."

Their eyes met and held, measuring each other. Kohl was astonished, then angry. For fifteen years he had sailed as master of ships, and half that time aboard his own vessel. And now he was expected to take a back seat. "You've commanded before?" he asked skeptically. The thought of sailing as second-in-command to a man who, so far as he knew, had never gone to sea was not to be borne.

"I have. And I can use a mate if you've a liking for the job. If you haven't, I'll get another man."

"Oh, I'll take it!" Kohl was exasperated. "What else can I do? I've no liking for the beach, that's certain, and a man must eat. You've got me over a barrel." "I'll have no discontented man aboard my ship," LaBarge said flatly. "If you're shipping with me because you're broke, I'll stake you so you'll have no worries until you get another ship."

Kohl's irritation waned. "Well," he grumbled, "that's fair enough. It's more than fair. No, I don't want your stake, I'd rather have the job even if I am stepping down. I'll go to sea."

"Good ... you're on the articles as of now. Come see me tonight and sign them--or as soon as you've lined up a deal for the schooner." Kohl turned away, still a little angry, yet as he walked away, his irritation waned. He was going to sea again and in a schooner that was as sweet a bit of seagoing merchandise as he had ever seen. He was no dockside sailor who did his seafaring when talking to the girls, but a deep-water man who liked it out where the big ones rolled. Besides, around Frisco there was every chance he'd some night have a drink in the wrong place and wake up, shanghaied aboard the ship of some lubber who couldn't navigate a dory in a millpond. Anyway, he reflected with a grim pleasure, after a trip north LaBarge might lose his stomach for those waters and be only too happy to turn the ship over to him. Jean LaBarge smiled as his eyes followed Kohl's broad shoulders down the dock, then he turned to watch the crane swing shoreward with several bales of hides. As it swung in to the dock he saw one of the bales slip, realized instantly it was improperly slung, knew the whole load was going to fall. At that moment a young woman stepped around a pile of lumber directly into the path of the sling. The crane jerked and the bales broke loose and there was a shout of warning from the lighter, but Jean was already moving.

Scooping the girl into his arms he lunged for safety. One of the bales struck him a glancing blow that sent them both rolling. The bales of furs tumbled to the dock, and Jean sat up, shaken by his fall.

The girl sat beside him, flushed and angry. The scarf that bound her hair had come loose and the wind blew a strand of dark hair across her face. Angrily, she brushed it away, glaring at him. She was younger than he had first thought, and uncommonly pretty. At that moment, her face flushed and her hair blowing, she looked ... he leaned over and kissed her full on the lips. For an instant, startled, she stared at him. Then her lips tightened and she drew back her hand to slap him, but he rolled swiftly away and got to his feet, grinning. He offered his hand.

She took his hand and he drew her to her feet, and when she was standing properly she slapped him. There was a whoop of laughter from one of the men on the dock and Jean LaBarge turned. His hat had been knocked off by the fall and his dark hair fell over his brow. "If the man who laughed will step out here," he invited, "I'll break his jaw."

Nobody moved, all the faces looked equally innocent, and carefully they avoided each other's eyes.

The girl was brushing a few slivers of the dock from her clothing, "Ma'am," he said apologetically, "you were in the way of being hit by those bales, and--" She straightened to her full height, her chin lifted. Coolly, imperiously, she said, "I have asked for no explanation, and I expect no comment. You may go." He was puzzled. "Sure," he agreed doubtfully, "but if you'll accept a suggestion you'll take a carriage. This is no place for a woman to walk without an escort." Her eyes straight ahead, she said quietly, "You may call a carriage." Gathering the folds of her skirt, her chin lifted, looking neither right nor left, she walked to the edge of the street. Jean glanced at her profile, so perfectly carved, and her hair, rumpled now, showing dark from beneath her scarf. When the carriage for which he signaled drew up before them she disdained his offered hand and got into the carriage and drove off without a backward glance.

He stood alone on the edge of the street, staring after her. She had spoken with an accent faintly foreign. He knew of no woman, even in this town of San Francisco, who dressed so well. There was some vague difference in her manner, some inner poise and awareness that puzzled him. He turned his back on the street and walked slowly back to the growing stack of bales. There was no reason why he should think of the girl, yet he did. He knew many girls, for in San Francisco a rising young man as tall, ruggedly handsome, and as well off as he was, was naturally an object of attention. He had kissed her strictly on impulse, but the more he thought of it the more he was glad that he had done it.

The black-hulled schooner was stern-to now, and looking along the line of her hull he sharpened his eyes with genuine pleasure. What a craft she would be for the fur trade! How easily she would slide through the water in those narrow channels to the north!

From the beginning both Hutchins and Jean had looked to the furs from the north for their business. They had supplied the mines with equipment as they had supplied ships, but they knew the fur industry was the coming thing. Now, if ever, was the time to go. Rumors had been affecting the market, and he had an idea prices on fur were going to rise drastically. Just such stories as Kohl had told him were sure to have their effect. Theoretically there were no restrictions on the trade with Russian America. Actually, the Russian American Company exercised complete control over Alaska and the coast islands; the authority of the Company was subject only to the Czar himself, and as they said in Sitka, "God's in his heaven and the Czar is far away." The governor of Siberia was a stockholder in the Company, and like most stockholders concerned only with profits. The Boston traders had cut deeply into those profits, with better offers for furs, and with ways that were generally more considerate of the natives.

The claim of the Russian American Company to exclusive trading privileges in Alaska and the neighboring islands was a claim not many Americans were prepared to admit. The Boston men had been encroaching on the area for years just as the promyshleniki, those free-roving hunters and traders from Siberia, had been moving into Canadian or American territory when opportunity offered. Under Baranov, trading in the Russian-American area had been distinctly dangerous unless that trade was carried on with Baranov himself, then the government of Russia had interceded and opened Russian America to free trade. The ruling was still in effect, but it meant no more to the Company than many another, and they waged open war on all who dared trade in their territories. Restrictions of the Company, or even of a far-off Czar, had little effect on Americans, a people impatient of any restriction, and trade with the Pribilofs continued.

The seal islands did not interest Jean LaBarge. The risk was great for the profit involved, but the coastal islands were a veritable maze. Charts of the area were sketchy and inadequate and what knowledge of its waters existed was only in the memories of those ship masters who had cruised the channels and traded in the islands, or among the Indians themselves. With such a schooner as the one in the harbor a man might slip in and out of those channels with small chance of encountering a Russian patrol ship. The furs of the coast were excellent and Jean had made it his businesss to learn which villages were outlets for the furs of the interior. Tonight he would learn more. Tom Herndon's parties were a clearinghouse for news. Whoever was somebody in San Francisco might be found there on Tuesday nights. Herndon's wife came from the Carolinas with southern ideas on entertaining, and with money enough to gratify her every whim, she entertained on the grand scale. The face of the girl on the wharf kept forcing its way into Jean's thoughts. A connoisseur of accents, as everyone in San Francisco must eventually become, he could not place hers. There were many German and French settlers now, but her accent was not German or French. Suddenly, he remembered the square-rigger recently arrived in port. But what would a girl, and such a girl, be doing on a ship from Sitka? During the Russian occupation of Fort Ross there had been several girls of good family there, and others had visited with their husbands or fathers, but Fort Ross had been long abandoned. Disturbingly, her face remained in his mind, and the feel of her body in his arms. There had been that brief instant when she rested, passive, in his arms, an instant when it seemed natural and right, as if she would always be there. When she had realized the situation she had straightened quickly away from him.

Yet for that moment...

The Herndon party was an hour old when Jean entered the crowded rooms. Hutchins was there, a tall, handsome man of soldierly bearing with a shock of pure white hair and a dignity few could match. Royle Weber was there, too, a small, fat man, very busy and very talkative, always gesturing and smiling. Weber was an agent for the Russian American Company, buying and selling for them locally. Perhaps, Jean suspected, a spy for them also. That might explain the disappearing ships.

As he was passing Sam Brannan, the latter stopped him. "We've been wanting to talk to you, LaBarge. We may need your help."

"Thanks, no. I appreciate the problem, but I'll skin my own cats." "There is power in organization, LaBarge," Brannan said seriously. "Alone, a man is helpless."

"They've not bothered us so far."

Brannan nodded. "You've been fortunate. The hoodlums from Sydney Town are growing bolder every day."

From the beginning Sam Brannan had been one of the most intelligent and far-seeing citizens of the town, and one of the few willing to stand up to the Sydney Town thugs. He had been one of the original leaders of the first Vigilante organization, and it had been successful largely because of the men Brannan had selected, and because it had been no incoherent and hastily assembled mob. The men he had chosen were solid citizens as well as men of courage and integrity.

When LaBarge had passed them, Brannan turned to his companions and said, "If there's trouble again, I want him with us."

Charley Duane lifted his eyebrows. "Why? I've not seen any of his graveyards."

Brannan knew enough about Duane not to like him. "No? Next time try Nevada."

Royle Weber was emphatic with his nod of agreement "I know the story, Charley. It was an attempted claim jumping, and two men lost out in a gun battle with LaBarge, but LaBarge didn't stop there. He went to town to see the man who sent them."

"And ... ?"

"He sent him out of town--walking. He had only what he stood up in, and a broken arm."

Duane was thoughtful. His friends from Sydney Town had been wary of LaBarge, and this might be the reason.

"I hear he's growing wheat," Herndon commented.

"He bought property from you, didn't he, Sam?" Weber asked.

"I handled the sale. Yes, he's growing wheat, which more of us should be doing. He'll sell his crop this year for much more than many a miner will get from a claim. If you're doing business with them it isn't a good idea to underrate anything either Hutchins or LaBarge are doing." Weber turned a cigar in his fingers, then bit off the end, his manner thoughtful. "What," he asked then, "is all this interest in Alaska? I hear he's forever asking questions about it."

"You'll have to ask him," Brannan replied shortly.

Jean LaBarge moved from group to group, pausing only briefly here and there. More than one pair of feminine eyes lingered on his broad shoulders and his dark, lean face with its high cheekbones and scar. His manner and dress was that of a gentleman, but his face was that of a pirate. He was carefully dressed: well-tailored suit, ruffled shirt and a black tie; but no matter how carefully he combed his hair it soon resumed its natural tumbled curliness. His boots were of Spanish leather, handmade. Turning away from the group where Hutchins stood, he came to an abrupt stop, audibly catching his breath. Before him, wearing a satin evening gown surely from Paris, was the girl from the wharf ... and as his eyes found her she turned slightly and saw him. For an instant their eyes held, then moved away as if by agreement. Jean felt a queer excitement. His mouth was dry. He turned to answer some comment from Hutchins, and replied to the question without really knowing what he said. The man who stood beside the girl was tall, much older, with iron-gray hair and the thoughtful face of a scholar. There was something about his poise, his dignity that commanded attention. But it was the other man who immediately drew Jean's attention so that he scarcely noticed Royle Weber, who stood between them. He was an inch taller than Jean's six feet two inches, as broad of shoulder as Jean himself and somewhat heavier in the body. His hair was blond clipped high on the sides and close-cropped on top. His eyes were gray-white and closely set. He carried himself with a military bearing; his white uniform coat was ablaze with decorations. His trousers were black with a thin white stripe down each leg and he wore black boots. Yet the insignia he wore, despite the uniform, was of the Navy. This could only be Baron Paul Zinnovy. "Mr. LaBarge?" Weber spoke loudly. "May I present Count Alexander Rotcheff? You were asking about wheat, sir. Jean LaBarge is one of the few, these days, who think of planting. If anyone will have wheat to sell, it will be Mr. LaBarge." The older man bowed slightly. "It is good to know, Mr. LaBarge. It is the reason for our visit. We must have wheat at Sitka."

"Well, we have the wheat," Jean answered. At once his mind seized upon the idea. Wheat for Sitka? Free, unquestioned access to the islands? It was just what he had been hoping for, planning for. "I am sure we can reach an agreement." Rotcheff turned to include the girl and the tall blond officer. "Mr. LaBarge?

May I present my wife? And Baron Zinnovy, of the Imperial Russian Navy." Some of his dismay must have been evident, for there was something in her eyes that responded to his ... was it regret?

"Baron Zinnovy," Rotcheff continued, "is in command of the patrol ships at Sitka."

"To a dealer in wheat that will not be important. If Mr. LaBarge dealt in fur it might be very important indeed."

Jean smiled, but his eyes held a challenge. "But I am a dealer in furs, Baron Zinnovy! Wheat is just a sideline with me. My real business is in fur. In fact, Captain Hutching and myself are among the largest buyers of fur on the coast." "No doubt," Zinnovy said, his voice arrogant, "you have bought many Russian skins. For the future, if I were you, I would put no trust in that source." "Russian skins?" Jean furrowed his brow with exaggerated perplexity. "You have the advantage of me, Baron. I have taken the skins of fox, marten and mink, but so far I've never had to skin a Russian."

The girl laughed outright and Count Rotcheff smiled. "Let's hope you never do," he said agreeably. "There are furs enough for us all without our skinning each other. Don't you agree, Baron?"

"I think," Baron Zinnovy replied distinctly, "this merchant is insolent." Count Rotcheff started to interrupt, obviously uncomfortable and hoping to turn the conversation. Jean spoke quickly.

"You use the term 'merchant,'" Jean said, "as if you considered it an insult. I think of it only as a compliment, for it was the merchant adventurers of the world who opened the roads and discovered continents and developed the riches of the earth while, if Count Rotcheff will forgive me, the titled lords were mainly concerned with waging petty wars or robbing priests and women." Zinnovy's face was pale. Never had he been spoken to in this manner, and although he despised Count Rotcheff for his diplomacy and political views, to be openly insulted before him was insufferable.

"If we were not guests--"

"But we are!" Rotcheff interrupted sharply. "We are guests, Baron Zinnovy, and this visit is of great importance to our colony at Sitka. We can have no quarrels here."

Zinnovy bowed slightly, his eyes coldly furious. "I regret my haste, Count Rotcheff. As for Mr. LaBarge, I hope he makes no further attempt to open his merchant roads to Russian America."

Jean feigned surprise. "But Baron, you forget! Count Rotcheff has just been discussing a purchase of wheat. If he buys my wheat I'll have to deliver it." "It will be a delivery I shall watch with interest." His cold gray-white eyes met Jean's. "Who knows but that we shall meet when neither is a guest of the other?"

"I'll look forward to it." Jean turned, "Countess ..." "The name," Rotcheff interposed, "is Princess. My wife is the Princess Helena de Gagarin, niece of His Majesty, the Czar of Russia." "Oh ... of the Czar?"

"And the niece of the Grand Duke Constantin also--you may have heard of him." "A lot of us Americans admire the Grand Duke for his liberal views ... naturally, they would be popular here."

"If you approve of the Grand Duke," Zinnovy suggested, "then you must approve the policies of Muraviev?"

"If he were an American I might approve. As he is a Russian, I do not." "You approve his territorial claims against China? As you might approve of your own government if they laid claim to Russian America?" Jean shrugged. "I don't know anything about statecraft, Baron, but I have heard of no claims made by the United States on Alaska. As to purchase, that is another thing. We might be interested in that question." Count Rotcheff studied Jean more carefully. This young American was no fool ... or did he speak with information of some sort? There had been talk in St. Petersburg of a bargain with the United States. It was most interesting that it should be mentioned here.

Rotcheff had been listening to the discussion with irritation. The Russian colony at Sitka was dependent on foodstuffs from California and Hawaii for its very existence. Russian ships were received without undue warmth and any dispute might bring an end to trading; the success of his own mission depended on friendship with the business interests of San Francisco. He seized the moment to change the subject. "My wife is very interested in your country, Mr. LaBarge, and I would be honored if you could show her something of the state outside the city."

Rotcheff led Zinnovy aside, anxious to break up the circle and avoid a discussion that could lead to trouble. The music started and Jean led Helena de Gagarin out on the floor. For a time they danced without speaking, each content with their own thoughts. She danced lightly, gracefully, moving easily to the waltz. And he could only think that being a princess as well as a wife she was doubly lost to him.

The thought brought irritated amusement to his eyes: he had never before thought of a woman in terms of marriage, and now he had chosen someone as remote as a star. Yet he had never seen a woman so beautiful and desirable. She looked up at him. "You've not said you were sorry."

"That you're married? Of course I'm sorry."

"I did not mean that. I meant for what happened on the wharf."

He grinned cheerfully. "Sorry? I'm not a bit sorry. I liked it!"

Late that night, Jean LaBarge climbed the stairs to his rooms and opened the door. He felt gay and more excited than he could remember, and although it was two o'clock in the morning he was not in the least sleepy. All the way home through the poorly lighted streets he had thought of nothing but Helena. Throwing off his coat he sailed his hat to the settee against the wall and as he lighted the lamp he glanced at the map that covered the wall. Not even Captain Hutchins knew of his map. It was on canvas and was six feet wide by nine feet long, and it had been pieced together, bit by bit, fragment by fragment, for six years. It embodied information acquired from ship's masters, common seamen, hunters, trappers, traders and occasional Indians. Each day or so Jean added another bit of information to the map or checked something already there.

In his business of buying he had occasion to do much listening and to ask many questions, and most of the traders or mariners were eager enough to talk of their successes or discoveries. Yesterday he had added an inlet to the map, two days before it had been a rocky ridge with pine trees at the tip. Beside the map, on a small desk, was an open book. It was one of a number of such books, and each item of information on the map was also entered in the books, along with much more. Descriptions of landmarks, tides, currents, timber, people, customs, weapons and living conditions. Without doubt his knowledge of Russian America was greater than the knowledge of men who had lived there for years. Each of those who lived in Alaska knew their own area and perhaps a little more, but Jean LaBarge's books contained knowledge gleaned from thousands of men, and it was gathered by himself, who knew how to ask questions, how to make leading remarks, and who could ask those questions from a broad base of already acquired knowledge.

He knew the depth of water and best anchorage in Yakutat Bay, the best place to anchor and trade on Kassan Island. He knew by name the Indian in each village who was the best trapper and therefore most likely to have furs. He knew each chief by name and reputation, and knew his relations with other tribes. He knew of a fine salmon stream that flowed into Hump backed Bay, and of the waterfall about a half mile back from the beach. He knew the channels where tidal currents were most dangerous and where lay hidden rocks likely to rip the bottom from a ship.

Most of all he had made discreet inquiries about landlocked harbors, hidden channels, portages, and places likely to offer concealment from a patrol ship. Not one of the men to whom he talked knew very much, but in the aggregate they could tell him a great deal. No hunting story was too long to listen to, and any drunken trader or trapper found LaBarge a willing audience. The few charts of the Sitka area were woefully inadequate, but he secured copies and studied them. No day passed that he did not review the information he had gathered, for it was not enough that he had it in books; all he had gathered must be in his own head. Only one other man knew of that map, and that man was Robert J. Walker.

After all these years, the two friends still occasionally corresponded, keeping track of each other's progress. Rob Walker's success continued to be striking. After his term in the Senate he had returned to his law practice, but always with a strong interest and influence in political circles. Jean LaBarge knew that Walker's interest in Russian America was different from his own, which was strictly commercial. To Jean, the Alaska fur trade offered a great chance for wealth, and once the country was opened to American interests, there might be much more that could be done. He already knew of the gold; there was no way of guessing what else the cold land might ultimately yield. Rob Walker thought of Alaska in terms of their childhood dreams, as another potential Louisiana Purchase. Jean LaBarge's view was simpler and more immediate: Alaska meant money and adventure. That was enough for him. Now, after all his planning, it looked as if he would at last gain access to that northern land. If Rotcheff bought wheat from him he would himself transport it to Sitka or it would never leave the farm. It was for just this sort of opportunity that his wheat had been planted. True, he was always sure of a local market, but north was where his interest lay, and a cargo of wheat was a sure passage to Sitka.

This was his chance, and there must be no mistakes. A cargo of furs in San Francisco three months or even two months from now would bring premium prices, but he must be wary ... Baron Zinnovy would be sure to keep him under his eyes. Yet much might happen in those northern fogs and that maze of channels. He must select the most likely places for a quick cargo of furs, slip in and out and then run for it, a fast voyage south, and--

He got up and paced the floor, considering tonnage, arms, trade goods. His thoughts turned to Helena. He remembered the gray eyes, the dark hair drawn back, the quiet poise and beauty of her ... he was a fool to waste thought on her, even for a moment. She belonged to another man. She was a niece of the Czar! Yet he did think of her, and he was not likely to stop thinking, for he was, he realized it suddenly, he was in love.

There was a light step on the stair outside his door. Jean dropped his hand to the pistol he always carried, and waited. The Sydney Town toughs had broken into more than one home, robbing and murdering as they would. Outside the door there was a creak, then a light tap. With his left hand, he opened the door. It was Barney Kohl.

He was grinning widely. "I think we've got it! I've bought us a schooner!"

Chapter 8

Count Alexander Rotcheff folded his Alta Californian and placed it neatly beside his plate. He was a tall old man, finely featured, with graying hair and a pointed beard. He glanced thoughtfully at his wife. Helena, he observed, was unusually quiet this morning.

Moreover, she was up earlier than usual. She seemed younger, somehow, and fresher. The ribbon around her hair was attractive, and he wondered absently how she would look with her hair disarranged, and decided the effect would be even more charming. If only he were a few years younger... He sighed. Unfortunately some things did not comport with the dignity of an aging diplomat, courtier, and emissary of the Czar. It was a pity. He smiled, remembering that some philosopher, he could not recall the name, had said that no wise man ever wished to be younger. Obviously the man who made such a remark had not seen Helena in the morning, fresh from the bath. And this morning there was a glow in her eyes as well as on her cheeks. A pensive glow. Whatever else the years had taken from Count Rotcheff they had not taken his knowledge of women. His marriage had come late in life, and had been largely a matter of expediency, joining two powerful families in an even more powerful alliance. The marriage had served him well and had been successful in itself, beyond expectation, and that success had been due quite as much to Helena as to himself.

She had given him companionship, tenderness, and a well-managed home, she had given him intelligent understanding of his problems, approaching their life together with a maturity of judgment that would have been surprising in one of her years to any other person than Rotcheff. The Count, although this had been his first marriage, had successfully survived numerous less formal attachments, and had learned thereby. He was aware that it did not necessarily take years to make a woman practical, or experience to make her wise. To a fool time brings only age, not wisdom.

Helena's understanding of diplomacy and statecraft was scarcely less than his own, and it is a business in which a beautiful and intelligent wife is the greatest of assets. She had used her talents, her knowledge and connections to a superlative degree. She listened well. Men talk easily of their plans to a beautiful girl, and Helena had the faculty of making the most horrendous bore feel brilliant. What was even more important, she could remember what she heard, and no one could guide a conversation more skillfully without seeming to do so. She was warm, lovely and exciting, yet beneath it there was steel. It was one thing, he reflected, to love a woman. It was quite another to admire her and respect her judgment. Yet he admired her most of all because she was successful at being a woman, she was always and forever feminine. He tasted his coffee and found it too hot. Putting down his cup, he got out his pipe. That young man ... what was his name again? LaBarge ... Jean LaBarge. For an American he seemed uncommonly well informed. The other Americans he had met were absorbed in their own affairs, their own country to the exclusion of all else, knowing little of the problems of other countries and peoples. That was one of the benefits of being a secondary power, for it is only when a nation becomes a world power that it becomes imperative to understand other peoples or fail in its objectives. One rules by knowing. Russia had never learned and that was why Russia had always remained on the outer fringe of world affairs. England, France, Germany, and Spain, even Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands, all helped to shape the destiny of the world while Russia sat astride a great and integrated empire and was rarely consulted. LaBarge had been correct, of course, in his comment on titles of nobility. Too often such a title was won by a man of energy and used thereafter to mask the indolence and complete uselessness of his descendants. In the United States a man could not rely on a family name to carry him through, although that unhappy time might come as it did to all aging countries. In his own Russia too many of the old families were producing effeminate, idle, and extravagant young men more preoccupied with fashion and gaming than with the destiny of their nation. He smiled ironically, realizing that none of this was true of his political opponent, Baron Zinnovy, nor of Muraviev of Siberia. Say what one might of them, they were able and dangerous men. And Zinnovy was basically more dangerous because he was a man without honor or conception of it. He lived to win, and cared not one whit how it was done nor who suffered from his actions. It was a credit to LaBarge that he had faced Zinnovy so calmly. Not many either could or would dare to do so.

"I believe," he commented aloud, "the Baron would have challenged LaBarge in another minute. I have never known him to anger so quickly." "What do you think of him?"

Rotcheff put down his pipe, smiling to realize that they both understood of whom she was asking. "LaBarge? A damnably handsome man, and an able one, I'd say." There was something about that lean, dark face with its scar that sent a thrill of excitement through her. The way he had looked at her!--she flushed at the thought. But she had been most impressed by the confidence with which he replied to Zinnovy. "He is a dangerous man," she said thoughtfully, "and a man who knows where he is going."

Something prompted Rotcheff to say, "Dangerous to Zinnovy, you mean? Or to me?" "You?" She looked up quickly, then gathering his intent, she blushed again. "No one is dangerous to you, my love."

He was embarrassed. "I am sorry." He waved a hand, dismissing the comment. "I had no reason to say that. Only, he is very handsome, such a man as any woman would notice."

"I did not believe you saw such things."

Rotcheff laughed lightly. "When a man has a beautiful wife he had damned well better!" Dropping the bantering tone he added, "He can help us. Weber informed me that the wheat LaBarge has to sell is the only wheat available." "He will bring it to Sitka?"

"I doubt if other ships will be available. We have no real right to trade here, you know."

Rotcheff drank his coffee and smoked, the paper at one side. There was more to his trip than even Baron Zinnovy guessed. Reports had reached St. Petersburg that the Company was victimizing the natives, inflicting many cruelties upon them and hesitating at nothing in their grab for profits. If these rumors were proved true then the charter of the Company would not be renewed, nor would another charter be granted.

Alaska had long represented a problem to Russia, lying outside the continental limits as it did. Russia was a land rather than a sea power. War would leave Alaska exposed to seizure, and it was well known that Great Britain looked upon Russian America with acquisitive eyes. If war with Britain and France should again develop Alaska would be vulnerable and its loss a serious blow to Russian prestige in the Far East.

Rotcheff believed as did the Grand Duke that it was better to sell Alaska than risk its loss with the accompanying loss of face. And he knew California might be just the place to lay the groundwork for such a sale. There were men here accustomed to thinking on the grand scale; to men who have crossed a continent, won a state, and ripped open the earth for gold, the buying of Alaska would present no great problem.

LaBarge ... the man might actually be a government agent. No, he was thinking like a Russian again. The Americans were naive, something only time would cure, time and some great hurt. As yet they were unaccustomed to intrigue on the great scale. All but that man Franklin; too bad he was dead. The old Quaker had been a master in the field, perhaps the equal of Metternich. But in general American diplomatic success had so far been largely due to their bluntness of manner and the obviousness of their motives. It was a method calculated to cause the more subtle Europeans to suspect them of hidden objectives. It would be wise to talk to that young man again, even at the risk--he glanced at Helena--but it was no risk. The cynics said a man was a fool to trust a woman. Perhaps. Yet he trusted her.

"My husband?"

"Yes?"

"Be careful of the Baron. I have a feeling he knows why you are here, and that he has been sent here for the express purpose of defeating you." "You could be right." He pushed his empty cup away. "Helena, I wish you would arrange for me to talk to that young man ... in private." She was thoughtful. "Alexander, does it strike you at all that it might be significant that he owns wheat? The only wheat available?" He glanced at her curiously. "What do you mean?" "I am foolish, of course. But in a place where all seem to think of seeking gold or raising cattle it is surprising to find a man growing wheat on such a scale. And such a man. Suppose he wished to make a trip to Alaska? He must know that we buy supplies both here and in Hawaii, and what better way to come to Alaska unsuspected?"

Rotcheff rubbed his chin. Helena was thinking in European terms herself. On the other hand, in the case of LaBarge it might be the right way. "Are you merely surmising?" he suggested. "Or have you something on which to base this feeling?" "Mrs. Herndon told me her husband tried to buy wheat from Mr. LaBarge, and he would not sell. And the offered price was good." "I see ... of course, as he himself said, he is in the fur trade." "To let his wheat be wasted? No, I think he had other reasons. He might be saving his wheat for a wedge."

It was easy to understand a man who wanted something. Those were the obvious ones with whom it was simplest to deal. It was the idealists who worried him. He said as much.

"What of the idealists who pursue profits along with their ideals?" "They are worst of all," Rotcheff said. "The worst to deal with, I mean. They drive a hard bargain."

LaBarge ought be just such a man, but the only fact they possessed was that he was a fur trader, and without doubt there was fur in Russian America. That was motivation enough.

"Mrs. Herndon was telling me that Jean LaBarge has an obsession: he asks qustions about Alaska."

"She told you that?"

"It's common knowledge. And there is something else. Mr. LaBarge has a very old friend with whom he corresponds, a former senator named Robert J. Walker." The Count was pleased--pleased to have the information, pleased with his wife for discovering it, and pleased at finding here in America what seemed to be some genuine European duplicity. This innocent young man, who looked like a professional duelist and who bought furs, this young man was an associate of one of America's ablest politicians.

"You know the name?"

"Robert Walker," Rotcheff said quietly, "is one of the least appreciated of American statesmen, but one of the most able and tireless." "Mrs. Herndon said he was no longer in office." "My dear"--Rotcheff filled his coffee cup again--"such a man is never out of office. Once tarred with that brush they are never free of it. I've no doubt that politics is Mr. Walker's lifeblood, and his country is his life." He chuckled. "It pleases me that our young friend is not so naive as one might suspect."

"It may be a coincidence."

"He has wheat which he will not sell to a friend, but will sell to Alaska. He has a political friend to whom he writes. He asks questions about Alaska, and he has a friend who would gladly see the Yankee flag flying over the whole continent. I think, Helena, this young man may help us. He may help us very much indeed."

Chapter 9

Jackson and Kearney Streets met at an intersection known locally as Murderers' Corner. The Opera Comique faced Denny O'Brien's Saloon across this corner and there was but little to choose between them. The saloon was the hangout for Sydney Town hoodlums and later for those toughs known as the Barbary Coast Rangers. It was burned and rebuilt with few added features and no change in clientele. In the cellar beneath the saloon were other forms of entertainment than the usual drinking and gambling. In a pit situated in its center dogs were fought against each other or a variety of other animals. A man who had a job to be done by tough men could be sure of finding them at O'Brien's. On the Tuesday following the meeting between LaBarge and Zinnovy, three men sat at an inconspicuous table in O'Brien's. Charley Duane, Royle Weber and the Baron Zinnovy had scarcely seated themselves when O'Brien himself appeared. Weber and Duane he knew very well, especially Duane who was a fixer, a politician, and a man with a hand in a number of illegal pies. These two were enough of a magnet; but the elegantly cut clothing of the Baron smelled of money, an odor calculated to draw immediate attention from Denny O'Brien. He went to the table rubbing his fat hands on his vest front. "Somethin' for you, gents?" "A bottle of Madeira," Zinnovy said. He measured O'Brien with his cold eyes. O'Brien smiled. "Yes, sir! We have just what you want. We cater to all tastes an' kinds, don't we, Mr. Duane?"

He brought the wine and the glasses himself and lingered over the decanting, for Denny O'Brien was a knowing man and these three had not come here without a reason. O'Brien had had his dealings with Duane and Weber. He was, after all, known to them both as a man who could be counted on to deliver five hundred votes at election time, provided several of the boys repeated their voting. He could also be counted upon to deliver almost anything else. O'Brien leaned his fat hands on the table. "Girls, maybe? Got any kind you want.

You just name it, and--"

"No," Duane came to the point. "We want to talk to Woolley Kearney." O'Brien did some fast thinking. Kearney was a former Australian convict who made his boast that he could whip any man alive in a brawl. He had killed a fellow prisoner, then killed a guard in escaping, and in San Francisco he had killed at least one man publicly, with his fists. If it was Kearney they wanted it was a beating somebody was to get.

Kearney would hog all the money and O'Brien would never see a red cent of it.

"Kearney?" he said doubtfully. "The man's not been seen around, last few days." He lowered his voice. "Who be the gent you want called upon? I know just the lads for it."

Weber shifted in his seat. He was sweating a little. Duane glanced at Zinnovy and the Baron shrugged. "It will be Jean LaBarge." Zinnovy was surprised at O'Brien's sudden change of expression. The saloonkeeper drew back a little and touched a tongue to his lips. "LaBarge, is it? You'd want Wool Kearney, all right. Or maybe three of my boys." "Three?" Zinnovy lifted an eyebrow.

"He's a skookum man, that LaBarge. Most of those about town will have no part of him, but I know three lads who'll do just the job for you, and no kickback." Zinnovy's eyes were chilled. "If there is a kickback, as you phrase it," he said quietly, "I'll have you shot."

Startled, O'Brien looked at Zinnovy again. The man was not joking. "Is it a beating you'll be wanting?" he asked.

"I want him out of business for a while." Zinnovy did his own talking now. "A beating, but a broken arm or leg included. Also, I want the warehouse that holds his wheat burned to the ground."

O'Brien hesitated. "It will cost you one thousand dollars," he said at last. Baron Zinnovy looked up, his gray eyes showing no interest. "You will be paid five hundred. If LaBarge gets a very severe beating, five hundred more. If the warehouse is destroyed, another five hundred."

O'Brien took a long breath. "It'll be done tomorrow night." Zinnovy pushed a small sack across the table. It tinkled slightly as O'Brien's fat hand closed over it. "See to it," Zinnovy ordered. Duane lingered as they started for the door, and whispered, "Don't slip up. He isn't playing games."

"When did I fail, Charley? Ask yourself that--when did I fail?"

Chapter 10

Captain Hutchins stood at the window of the small office above the warehouse. It was late afternoon and a dismal, rainy day. Now, for a few minutes, the rain had ceased and the waterfront lay wet and silent The sea in the harbor was a dull gray and the hulls of the vessels had turned black. Here and there a few anchor lights had appeared. There were two windows in the office, and the one at which Hutchins stood, hands clasped behind his back, looked out over the edge of the dock and the bay. The other window looked across the street and up the length of the dock to where the shore curved away into distance. The office held little furniture. A roll-top desk, a swivel chair, a bank of pigeonholes on the wall, each stuffed with invoices or receipts, a black leather settee and two captain's chairs, very worn.

From the window there was noboby in sight but a tall man who stood looking out over the water, yet several times he turned and glanced back at the warehouse. Hutchins frowned. In a city practically ruled by hoodlums such a fact was not to be overlooked. Behind him, Jean was outlining his plan for the trip north. The man at the dock edge turned again and for the first time Hutchins got a brief glimpse of his face. "Jean, do you know Freel? The fellow who hangs out with Yankee Sullivan?"

"I know him."

"What would he be doing on the dock at this hour?" LaBarge got up and walked toward the window. Freel, one of the Sydney Ducks, was known to him as a thoroughly vicious character, figuring in a number of knifings and assaults. He stepped closer to the window and noticed a flicker of movement farther up the waterfront. After a moment he saw that two men stood in the shadows near a darkened warehouse about a block away. "He's not wasting his time looking at sunsets. He's got something else on his mind." "They've left us alone so far."

Jean walked back to the center of the room and drew his pistol, checking the loads. "If they start trouble, Cap, I'm taking it to them. We've been lucky so far, but if they start it--" "That's quite an order, son."

"Coyotes run yellow in the pack. I've hunted them before." He turned to his lists. Spare sails, heavy cable, lines. He had never done this for a ship of his own, and it was a wonderful feeling. Item by item he went down the list. The heavy gear was his own idea. Kohl had questioned the usefulness of the heavy blocks and wire rope, but Jean had been adamant. What lay before them they could guess, but there was always the unexpected, and they might need to make repairs somewhere in those strange channels to the north. He wanted to be prepared for any emergency. And if a man had enough blocks and tackle he could move the world.

The men on the dock came briefly to mind. Ben Turk and Larsen would be staying in the warehouse, and neither was a man to back up from trouble. "It's late, Jean, and that work will keep."

"Are they still out there?"

"Yes."

The door opened and Larsen came in, followed by Ben Turk. Larsen was a rawboned Swede with thick blond hair that fell over his brow and curled over his collar at the back of his neck. His shoulders and arms were massive and blue anchors were tattooed at the base of thumb and forefinger of each hand. Ben Turk was a man of slight build, a compact and swarthy man with a black, handle-bar mustache. He was lean, alert, and dangerous. He had served on whaling ships and had made three voyages to the sealing grounds of the Pribi-lofs. He had trapped in Canada and Oregon.

"Where's Noble?"

"He's strutting it around Bartlett Freel, trying to egg him into a fight."

"Get him in here."

Briefly, he gave them their instructions. One was to keep awake at all times. Hutchins' carriage came and Jean walked to the door with him. Hutchins hesitated with a foot on the step. "Sure you won't come with me?" "Later." LaBarge glanced at Freel who was looking unconcernedly across the bay. "I'll walk up." He deliberately spoke loud enough for Freel to hear. If Freel wanted him he wanted him to know exactly where he could be found, but if Freel followed Hutchins, LaBarge could be right behind. There was nothing reckless about Jean LaBarge. He avoided trouble when he could, never sought out a fight until the proper moment for it. He considered the situation tactically. The men up the street, and there seemed to be two of them, were at least sixty yards away. Freel was close. There are times when trouble cannot be avoided, and he knew that if they wanted him, they could get him. The thing to do was to choose his own ground, and he was ready now. The way to be left alone was to let them know what the alternative was.

He knew that Larsen, Turk and Noble would relish a fight. None of them had any love for Freel and his crowd, who frequently shanghaied and robbed seafaring men, but Jean did not want help. This was a situation he wanted to handle himself. He wanted it understood that he did not need help, even when it was ready to hand.

"You fellows sit tight," he told them when he was back inside. "Watch if you want to, but don't interfere. And stay inside." "There's at least three of them out there." Turk looked at him curiously. "That Freel is bad with a knife."

LaBarge dropped his hand to the latch. Suddenly he felt very good. He felt better than he had for a long time. There was too much fear in San Francisco, too many people were afraid of the hoodlums, of their beatings, their murders, of their looting. "Just stay out of it, boys. This one's my show." He pulled the door shut after him, and stood on the dock.

The edge of the wharf was perhaps fifteen steps from the door of Hutchins & Company. And Bartlett Freel was standing over there under a dock light. A light rain was falling, a fine mistlike rain. The hour was not late but due to the clouds it was already dark. There was a faint light showing from the front window of the warehouse, and besides the light under which Freel stood, there was another light on the street corner a dozen yards away, and there was a light up the dock, perhaps a hundred yards off.

Obviously they would not attack near the warehouse where help waited, but would follow him up the street into the darkness. They would have no reason to doubt their success and little reason to expect retaliation, and certainly there was nothing to fear from the law or the corrupt political machine behind it. Since the Vigilante movement the town had shown little disposition to fight back. Without too much reason Jean decided the attack had been instigated by Baron Zinnovy. Freel moved to the dictates of Yankee Sullivan who was a henchman and friend of Denny O'Brien, and O'Brien was a man who would arrange beatings, murders, disappearances for a price. Neither LaBarge nor Hutchins had had trouble with the hoodlums, neither had antagonized any of them, and neither had any local enemies. The attack that he could see shaping up came immediately following his trouble with Baron Zinnovy. True, there had been only a few words passed between them, but Jean's hunch was that Zinnovy had other motives. Suppose Zinnovy, for reasons of his own, did not want wheat shipped to Alaska?

Or did not want Jean LaBarge taking it there.

As Jean LaBarge moved away from the building Freel turned. Up the street the two men started to move; Jean heard a foot scrape up there in the darkness. The reading of Greek history might seem a dull occupation, but there is an axiom to be found there that suggests the military principle of "divide and conquer." It was a good thought ... Jean started for the corner and when Freel moved to follow Jean turned quickly and faced him, his hand gripping his left lapel. "Looking for me, Freel? The name is LaBarge. Jean LaBarge."

Freel hesitated. Why didn't those fools huriy? "And if I am?"

"Who sent you, Freel?"

Harriett Freel was a lean, savage man, surly even among those who knew him best, but more intelligent than most of his kind. He had a flaring temper and he both envied and resented LaBarge. "You won't know," Freel said, "you'll never know.

You been comin' it mighty big, and now--"

There was a time for words, but the other two men were coming swiftly now. LaBarge's left hand gripped his lapel lightly and when he struck he struck from that position and he stepped in with the punch. He felt Freel's nose crumple under the blow but before the man could even stagger, Jean hit him hard with his right fist.

The other men ran up. Grabbing Freel, who was badly hurt, Jean turned swiftly and threw him into their path. The nearest of the oncoming men tripped and fell and Jean kicked him in the head, and the second man, holding a knife low down in his right hand, took the moment to move in.

Jean struck swiftly with the barrel of his pistol, hastily drawn. The descending weapon caught the knife-wrist and the knife clattered on the dock, the man dropping to his knees clutching a broken wrist. The man he kicked was on his feet now but Jean had him stopped with the gun muzzle. "Can you swim?" Jean asked pleasantly.

"Huh?"

"I hope you can," LaBarge continued, "because you're jumping in."

"I'll be damned if--!"

"Jump." LaBarge spoke conversationally. "If you can't swim, you can drown, but don't try climbing back on this dock or I'll part your hair with a bullet." "You won't get away with this!" The man was impotent with fury. "Yankee will--!"

"Jump ... I'll talk to Yankee."

"He'll smash yer!" The man shouted from the dock edge. "He'll blind yer! He'll bash yer bloody fyce! He'll--" The pistol lifted and drew a line on the man's head. The water would be cold but a grave was colder still. As Jean's arm straightened the fellow jumped. There was a splash and then the floundering of a poor swimmer. Jean LaBarge turned and walked to the others. Freel was sitting up, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. The knifeman clutched his broken wrist, moaning. "Yankee shouldn't send boys to do a man's job," he said, and catching Freel by the coat he jerked him to his feet. Twisting him around, Jean began to go through the hoodlum's pockets.

Freel tried to pull away but Jean threatened him with the gun barrel. "You can take it standing still or lying on the dock with a split skull. Make up your mind."

"I'll stand," Freel said hoarsely.

There were several gold coins in his pockets, and the coins were Russian. Jean pocketed the lot, then went to the man with the broken wrist. "Yours, too." "I ain't got a thing!" he protested. "They wasn't to pay me--" "Stand up!"

Shakily, the man got to his feet. There were three gold coins in his pocket. The man began to curse bitterly.

"You didn't do the job," LaBarge told them. "I'll return these to Yankee."

"I wish you would!" Freel's voice was bitter. "I just wish you had the guts."

That area of San Francisco of the 1850's and 60's that lay back of Clark's Point was a hellhole of dives and brothels. Robbery was too frequent to warrant mention, and murder a nightly occurrence. To walk that area in safety one must be a pimp, a prostitute, or a thug, and along such streets as Pacific, Jackson, Washington, Davis, Drum, Front, Battery and East (the Embarcadero) moved some of the choicest rascals unhung. The shanghaiing of sailors was a major industry, engaged in by at least twenty gangs who worked in close association with keepers of brothels and cheap saloons.

Another closely allied gang was that which specialized in claim jumping within the city. The absent owner of a lot might return to find a thug in possession who enforced his point of possession with a pistol. Litigation was a long-drawn-out affair and more often than not decided in favor of the claim jumper. All of this Jean LaBarge knew and like most residents accepted it as part and parcel of a booming seaport with gold in the back country. Trouble had so far avoided him and he had avoided trouble.

Freel and his men had acted, without doubt, as directed by Yankee Sullivan. Now the lads of Sydney Town must be taught, once and for all, that action against Hutchins or himself would meet with immediate reprisal. One sign of weakness and they would be stripped of all they possessed. He could move against Denny O'Brien, but such a move would not be nearly so effective as against Sullivan himself.

Yankee Sullivan, born James Ambrose, in County Cork, Ireland, had grown up in the slums of East London. As a hard-fisted young Irishman in Whitechapel he won a reputation by defeating Jim Sykes, Tom Brady and a man named Sharpless in brutal bare-knuckle prize-ring battles. On a brief trip to the United States he defeated Pat Connor, then returned to England to whip the great Hammer Lane in nineteen grueling rounds. After a term in Australia as a convicted criminal he escaped and appeared in New York where he whipped Vie Hammond in fifteen minutes, fought his great fight with Bill Secor and beat him in sixty-seven rounds at Staten Island. He won four other fights and then was soundly beaten in his own saloon by Tom Hyer, son of a former heavyweight champion. However, this was a rough-and-tumble brawl, no more, and the unsatisfied Sullivan met Tom Hyer in a ring at Rock Point, Maryland, for ten thousand dollars as a side bet, and lost again. Later, a losing fight with John Morrissey, soon to be heavyweight champion, broke up in a riot after thirty-seven rounds. Throughout this period Sullivan had been a criminal and an associate of criminals. In Sydney Town he carried an authority backed by his own malletlike fists and his former Limehouse and Whitechapel associates. Whatever else he was, Yankee Sullivan was a first-class fighting man. Powerful, brutal, and without either scruples or mercy, there was no man in Sydney Town more influential than he. He was a known center of criminal activity. Jean LaBarge had no doubts that the job he had set for himself would involve him in the most brutal fight he had known, yet the fighting of fur traders' rendezvous had been the dirtiest kind of rough-and-tumble fighting. Opening the door of the warehouse, he stuck his head inside. "Slip a couple of pistols under your jacket and come along, Ben. We've a job to do." Turk glanced at the men on the dock. "I'd say a job had been done. Will it take more?"

Denny O'Brien's was in full swing. At the bar were a dozen of the Sydney Town toughs, and among them Jean could see the massive shoulders and bull neck of Yankee Sullivan. He looked as invulnerable as a battleship. Also at the bar, talking to a sour-faced man in a stained canvas jacket, was Barney Kohl. Ben Turk stopped beside the door and leaned against the jamb, a cigarette between his lips. A music box was jangling and somebody in a corner was singing an old sea chantey in a loud, off-key voice.

Jean LaBarge walked across the room and took Yankee Sullivan by the shoulder and spun him around. Yankee threw up a hand an instant too late. Jean hit him. The blow was unexpected, and it had been years since anyone had tried to hit him outside a prize ring. He was stunned by that quite as much as by the punch. The man facing him was big, lean and tough-looking, his black eyes blazing. The blow slammed Sullivan against the bar and before he could get his hands up, LaBarge knocked him down.

In an instant they were surrounded by a milling, shouting mob. Jean drew back and gave Sullivan a chance to get up. It was foolish to give the man any break at all, and he would get none. At that instant there was a pistol shot. Ben Turk had a gun in either hand and he was smiling. A thin thread of smoke lifted from the left-hand gun. "Let 'em fight," he said. "If anybody interferes or gets between the fighters an' me, I'll kill him." Sullivan got up slowly. He had been hit, and hit hard, harder than John Morrissey had hit him, harder than Tom Hyer. The man before him looked like a rough evening. Yet Yankee had whipped some tough men. He came up fast and went in, punching with both hands. Shorter than Jean, he was wider and thicker, and aside from his prize-ring skill he was a brutal barroom fighter. As Sullivan attacked, Jean met him with a left to the mouth, and then struck again as Sullivan went under his left and hooked viciously to his ribs. They clinched and Sullivan back-heeled him to the floor, trying to fall on him and drive his knees into his belly. Jean rolled away and got swiftly to his feet and met Sullivan as he came in. The blow landed hard and Jean saw Sullivan go white around the eyes. Sullivan lunged, landed a glancing blow and Jean went under him, throwing Sullivan over his head to the floor. This had won many a fight at Pierre's Hole but the Irishman had the agility of a boy. He had tucked his head under and taken the fall on his shoulder. With blood streaking Sullivan's face they fought for several minutes, smashing, kneeing, gouging. Both men went down but neither could be kept down. Yankee's lips were puffy from stabs to the mouth and Jean had a swelling on his cheekbone half as large as an egg. He felt better. He could never really fight until he had been hit hard, and now he walked in, finding he could punch a little faster than Yankee. He feinted a side step and smashed the Irishman in the mouth with a right.

There was little sound but the heavy breathing of the fighting men, the dull smack of blows and an occasional grunt. For the first time the Sydney toughs were seeing their hero in a fight he might not win. There was something grim and terrible about LaBarge. Yet it was grueling and bitter. LaBarge's years of living in the forest and on ships stood him well now. He absorbed the punishment that came his way, hooked and smashed and heeled. Sullivan, boring in, thought he saw a good chance at Jean's chin and put all he had into a right-hand. Something exploded in his mid-section and he grunted with pain as his knees buckled. Setting himself, LaBarge swung both hands at Sullivan's unprotected face. Sullivan swung a hand to wipe the blood from his face and Jean caught the wrist and with his other hand, grabbed Sullivan's wide leather belt. He bent one knee, turning slightly, then threw Sullivan bodily into the crowd. The fighter lit on his face and skidded with a jolt against the wall. LaBarge's shirt was torn, revealing the powerful muscles of his arms and chest.

He wiped a smear of sweat and blood from his face. "I wanted no trouble," he said, "and he sent trouble to me." Jean LaBarge lifted a hand. "Ben!"

Turk slid a pistol behind his belt and tossed a bowie knife. Jean caught it in mid-air and faced the crowd. "Anybody else? I'll open any of you lads to the brisket if you want to back the Yankee's fight." Nobody spoke. Jean held the knife low, cutting edge up. Somebody sighed and shifted his feet and LaBarge turned to Denny O'Brien. The saloonkeeper had never seen steel that looked so sharp, and he was a man who had seen many knives, and seen them used.

"I've a thought, Denny O'Brien, that you've taken some Russian money. Don't ever spend it, Denny, for I'll hear of it and have your heart out and lying on your own bar. You hear me, Denny?"

O'Brien, swallowed, muttering something inaudible. Jean flipped the point of his knife ... once, twice. Each move slashed a suspender and O'Brien's trousers fell around his boots, yet he did not move, breathing hoarsely, knees trembling, his face yellow-sick. Sweat stood on his brow and cheeks, it dripped from his fat chin.

Jean continued to smile, a wolfish smile that turned O'Brien's insides to jelly. With flick after flick of the knife he took the buttons from O'Brien's waistcoat. It was a moment long-treasured on the coast, a story told many times in Sydney Town, and in the fo'c'sles of many a ship outward bound. It was a story men loved to hear, of the click of falling buttons and the sweat dripping from O'Brien's fat jowls.

"And Denny," LaBarge warned, "tell Charley Duane to be careful. Tell him if he crosses me again he'll be getting his tail in a crack. You hear me, Denny? You tell him that."

Chapter 11

By noon of the following day the story of the battle at O'Brien's was being repeated in excited whispers in every boudoir on Rincon Hill, where the name of Jean LaBarge was well known in other fields of endeavor. At the Merchant's Exchange they could talk of nothing else, and the click of those falling vest buttons was heard wherever even two people happened to meet. Count Rotcheff even found a brief reference to the fight in his Alta Californian. "Your friend LaBarge seems to possess a variety of talents," he suggested.

Helena looked up quickly. "The maid told me while I was having my bath." She paused. "She also told me something else. There is a rumor the original attack was paid for by a Russian."

Rotcheff rustled his paper angrily. "The man's a fool! Why would he get involved at a time like this?"

Helena put down her cup. "Do you actually believe he would do something of that kind merely because he was angry?"

"You think it was done because LaBarge was to sell us wheat? But why would he do that? The wheat was for the Company."

"And we both know he is interested in a new charter, for another company."

He was too trusting--though not of foreign diplomats, only of his own countrymen. It was a fault from which all the Russian liberals suffered. Alexander knew how to cope with duplicity, but the Renaissance type of violence used by Paul Zinnovy was beyond the realm of his consideration; this Helena told herself. Her husband was a gentle man, and Paul Zinnovy was cold, efficient, deadly. "Another thing," she warned, "you must yourself be careful. Paul wants two things: to get a charter for the new company and to return to St. Petersburg with a brilliant coup behind him. You stand in the way of both goals." She put her hand on his. "Alexander, you must be very careful! Your report can ruin him, and he knows it!"

Kotcheff shook his head. "You exaggerate, my dear. He would not dare use violence against anyone as close to the Czar as I am." "You are a thousand miles or more from any Czarist official, you are many thousands of miles from St. Petersburg. Who is to know what happens out here?" Somehow the idea had not occurred to him, yet instantly he saw that she was correct. He was far from the capital and no longer young, and accidents could be arranged. If he were murdered out here it would be months before the Czar even heard of it, and years before any investigation could be conducted to a conclusion. For the first time he was uneasy, less for himself than for Helena. "Why, Alexander, was Paul Zinnovy sent here? Stop for a moment and think of that."

"He was in trouble"--Rotcheff was worried now--"and of course, he is a capable officer."

"Do you remember Paul's last duel? Rodion announced he was going to demand an investigation into some of the Company affairs, and three days before he was to appear before the Czar he was challenged to a duel by Zinnovy over some fancied slight. And Rodion was killed."

Rotcheff was silent. There was much to be said for Helena's interpretation of the situation although he was hesitant to admit that Paul Zinnovy might have been sent out for the express purpose of removing him. Three groups were involved in the affairs of Russian America. The Grand Duke's party, of which he was one, wanted to sell the territory of Alaska to the United States, if they could be induced to buy. The Russian American Company were bleeding the Indians white to pay dividends, but they were also bleeding their own stockholders and the government as well. The third group, of whom some were stockholders in the present company, wished to secure the lucrative charter for their own group who were establishing a new company with even greater dividends in prospect. Suppose he were murdered by a drunken native? Or fell overboard in a storm? Or was suddenly taken ill? Who but Zinnovy would prepare the report? Even at Sitka, it would be Rudakof, who would do what Paul Zinnovy told him. Count Rotcheff knew that if the investigation he was conducting brought out the evidence the liberal party believed it would, if it substantiated the complaints the government had received from parties in or visiting Russian America, then the Company's charter would not be renewed nor would another be granted. "Helena," he said abruptly, "I believe you should return to St. Petersburg. If the situation is as serious as you believe, this is no place for you." "On the contrary, it is all the more reason I should be with you." She glanced over her teacup. "Have you thought of Jean LaBarge? He might help us."

In his rooms, Jean sat over the books spread out on the table before him. He ran a finger over a small map, searching for Kootznahoo Inlet. He had checked all the reports of furs bought in San Francisco in the last four months and nothing had come from Kootznahoo. He listed it as a likely call, then added four more names to the list.

This first trip must be fast. The places he visited must be near the accepted route but where he could lie at anchor in concealment, and every stopping place must have more than one opening so that if discovered he could get out fast. The deal for the schooner had been consummated, the rifles, ammunition and trade goods had been loaded. Kohl wasted no time, and the schooner was a tight, shipshape craft, easily handled and loaded. She would carry but one gun, and despite her strength and capacity she was a "light" ship with none of the bulky, overweight gear that characterized so many ships. The sour-faced man who had been in the saloon at the time of the Sullivan fight appeared and was signed on as second mate, and the last two members of the crew were signed. Gant was a broad-built man, and Boyar was tall, stooped in the shoulders, and spoke fluent Russian.

Kohl looked at him without favor. "You a Russky?" "I'm a Pole. But I worked for the Company." Kohl turned to Jean. "Cap'n, you sure you want this man?"

LaBarge turned. "Take off your shirt, Shin." Shin Boyar shucked off his shirt and turned his back for Kohl and Captain Hutchins to see. Scars lay like livid bands across his back, scars like twisted cords of white. Kohl glanced at them, then at Boyar's face.

"I served in the Navy under Zinnovy. That was ten years ago." The tall man pulled on his shirt. "I have a good memory, sir, a very good memory." "We can use you," Kohl said.

"After that I was promyshleniki for the Company, and I smuggled gold out of Siberia to China for a while. I was thrown into prison, but escaped." "No argument," Kohl said. "You'll do."

"After Monday," LaBarge told Kohl, "I want the crew kept aboard. No more than two men ashore at any time, and ready to sail at a moment's notice. When a man goes ashore, you know where he'll be, just which place. No last-minute delays." When all were gone he concealed his invoices under a board behind a bookshelf. Then, finally, he wrote one of his rare letters to Rob Walker. He was, he told Rob, going to Alaska himself. When he came back--

Behind him there was a slight rustle. An envelope had been slipped beneath his door.

He ripped it open. From the feminine handwriting and perfume he knew at once who it must be.

Can you come to see us? It is important.

* Helena

"Us" she wrote. She wanted him to come and see them both, but nonetheless, it was signed Helena.

He got up and walked to the window. Outside the street was empty and still. It was now Friday, and by Monday he wanted to be at sea, sailing north, and the master of his own ship. To Alaska ... to Sitka. They would be leaving soon, and he might even see them there. He remembered how Helena had looked that first day, flustered, mussed, and angry. He grinned at the thought. And then how prim, with her lifted chin, her too precise English.

She was charming, and so lovely, and he was in love with her and it would do him no good at all. She was married, and to a good man, a man of her own kind, her own rank.

He was a fool ...

But on Monday there would be the sea, the wind and spray in his face, and beyond there the places where nobody would mind, and where at night in the lonely hours, watching the seas roll aft, he could remember or forget.

Chapter 12

The tawny slope of the hill lay before them, dull gold in the afternoon sun, and beyond the hill the blue Pacific waters rolled to the horizon. When the two riders reached the trail's end high above the waters, Jean drew rein and relaxed in the saddle.

It was their second ride in two days, and might be their last. When riding Jean wore a tight-fitting Spanish-style jacket of buckskin, fringed in the Indian manner. It molded itself against his wide shoulders and was, Helena decided, most becoming.

"You ride like a vaquero," she said.

He pushed his flat-crowned Spanish sombrero back on his head and hooked a knee around the saddle horn. Filling his pipe, he watched her profile against the sky. "What about the plans for Alaska?"

"It is really the Baron who interests you, isn't it?"

"Of course. But when Count Rotcheff leaves, you will leave."

"We have more reason to fear the Baron than you, Jean. He is our enemy also."

"But you are the niece of the Czar!"

"You know what they say? 'God's in His heaven and the Czar is far away.' " Far out at sea a windjammer was beating in toward the Golden Gate, and they watched it for several minutes without speaking. There was intimacy in the silence, and it was such moments they had come to treasure above all else. There was no need to use words to build a fence about their emotions; during those long silences the barriers were down and something within each of them reached out to the other.

"You see, Jean, any investigation of what happens in Russian America would require a great deal of time. And any investigator they might send from Siberia would be corrupt, and whoever came from St. Petersburg would have to ask questions of the very people who have most to conceal. Paul has power even in St. Petersburg, Jean. Actually, he was sent out here because he was in trouble, but it is temporary only, a mild punishment, a means of keeping him out of the way for the time being. I believe he was sent here for other reasons as well. I believe his friends decided to accomplish two objectives with the one move. Get Paul Zinnovy out of the way of more severe punishment, but also place him where he could be of use to them."

She paused. "You know, in Russia he is considered very dangerous. He has killed several men in duels. And sometimes these duels are not exactly what they seem. Often it is not a case of offended honor but simply that some powerful person wishes to be rid of a man."

"Suppose," Jean suggested tentatively, "the charter is not renewed, nor another granted. What will become of Alaska then?"

"Who knows? It might be sold, but certainly not to England. Perhaps to the United States."

Jean lit his pipe, which had gone out. "I suppose it could be done if the negotiations were handled carefully. But it wouldn't be easy. There are a lot of Americans who think that Alaska's only a wasteland, not worth a penny." The sailing ship was closer now, making slow time of it against the strong current and a wind that helped little. They watched the ship while the afternoon trailed away like distant smoke, fading slowly. Soon it would be dusk. "You've never married, Jean? I wonder why?"

He swung his horse a little. "For a long time I couldn't find a girl I wanted, and when I did find her she was married to another man." "But there must be others, Jean. You're very attractive, you know."

"Oh, I've known girls ... here and there."

"You would lose your freedom, and a man like you should be free, free to fly far and high, like an eagle. A wife would tie you down, she would hold you." "Maybe. It might not even be so bad. I've been alone all my life, never known a real home. If you want to find a man who will love his home, find a man who never had one."

"I should think a man would always long for freedom. It is hard, I'd think, for a man who has known freedom to give it up."

He watched the ship. "Hard? With the right woman most men will settle down easy enough. Oh, sure! They look at the geese flying south, or maybe some night their eyes will open into the darkness as they lie in bed beside their wives, and they'll lie awake in the darkness and remember how native drums sounded, or the surf along a rocky shore, or how the bells ring from the temples ... but they stay where they are."

"Why?"

The ship was taking in sail now, approaching the passage gingerly, for many a fine ship had been wrecked in the Golden Gate.

"Because they've ... accepted their destiny, I suppose. They might think about the great world outside, but they wouldn't trade it for home." "Not you ... I believe you would go."

"I'd be the easiest of all, Helena. I've never known a home, so even the faults would seem virtues to me. As for love, who doesn't want it? To love and be loved in return?"

"I think, Jean, you will find what you want."

"Will I, Helena?"

The sea was darker now. The last of the color was deepening reluctantly into darkness.

"We'd best be going back."

Swinging their horses they put the sea behind them. Jean's gelding tugged at the bit, eager to be running. Helena's mare started and then both horses were running. Over the tawny hillside, still faintly tinged by rose from the sun that had set, a hill that changed as their horses ran to an inverted bowl of burnished copper against which drummed the racing hoofs. Laughing together, they cantered down the long hill and something trailed off behind them like whispered laughter. Abruptly, as they rounded a bend, the city lay below them and a column of smoke lifted from the waterfront. Jean drew up sharply, standing in the stirrups "It's my wheat, Helena," he said. "They're burning my wheat. The warehouse is going and everything in it."

He touched the spurs to his horse. The gelding left the ground in a tremendous leap, and with Helena beside him they raced neck and neck down into the city and through the empty streets. Their hoofbeats echoed from the false-fronted buildings and thundered in the empty channels of the town, stripped of people by the demands of the fire.

Helena rode magnificently. Rounding a corner he caught the glow of reflected flames on her flushed cheeks and parted lips, and then they were running their horses down another chasm between buildings. As they thundered out upon the dock he knew this must have been a planned effort to destroy the wheat. Squads of men with buckets were wetting down the buildings around, and two long bucket brigades were passing water from the bay to the fire. One engine was working its pump near the wharf, another in the street behind the warehouse, yet he saw at once the building was doomed.

Swinging down from the foam-flecked horse, he pushed through the crowd and saw Captain Hutchins shouting to Ben Turk above the crackle of flames. Close by, Larsen and Noble were busy with a bucket brigade. "Anybody in there?"

"No ... thank God!"

The roar of flames all but drowned the reply, and Jean watched his wheat go up in flames, the black smoke shutting out the stars and sending the dark banners of its anger streaking across the bay, shrouding the silent ship in sudden clouds, then whisking away to leave the ship standing, amazed at the sight before it.

There was no wind. Had there been wind the whole of the waterfront would have gone, and nothing could have saved Sydney Town or any part of the city back of dark's Point. Yet no wind blew, and there was only the crackling flames beating their great red palms together above the bay's black water. His first impulse was to find Zinnovy for a showdown, but this would lead to nothing and might close all doors to Russian America. Wheat was the answer. The importation of wheat into Sitka was obviously something Zinnovy wished to prevent, but it was also his own open sesame to the northern fur trade. Staring at the fire, he began to think.

Sutler had grown wheat but had none now. How about Oregon? Many farmers had settled in those fertile valleys and they would need bread. Despite its proximity less news reached California from Oregon than from Hawaii; still there was a chance. The settlers of Oregon were a more substantial lot than most Californians. There would be wheat there, there had to be wheat. Swiftly, he pushed through the crowd, searching for Barney Kohl. When he found him Kohl was standing with the new second mate. "Tomorrow night," Jean said. "You sail tomorrow night."

"Without a cargo?"

"Fitzpatrick has some goods for Portland and has been looking for a vessel for a month. I don't care how you do it, but be loaded and under way by five tomorrow afternoon."

"If you say so," Kohl said. "Damn it, man. I was ready for Alaska. I was all ready."

"You'll go ... but meet me in Portland first."

Oregon ... Jean watched the wall of the warehouse fall in, saw the flames and the smoke puff up, saw the great smoldering ball of his wheat. Sparks showered upward. No need to think of that. What was done was done. He went swiftly to his horse and swung into the saddle. "Helena"--he turned the gelding--"I'm taking you home. Tell Count Rotcheff he'll have his wheat in Sitka as promised. Tell him not to worry."

"But how?"

"Leave that to me." They were walking their horses away from the fire. "I wish I knew I'd see you again. I wish--" "So do I," she said simply. "Oh, Jean! I do, I do!"

At the door of the house on Rincon Hill he helped her from the saddle and watched the boy lead the horse away. For a moment they stood together before the empty eyes of the dark building. He could hear her breathing, smell of the faint perfume she wore and which he would never forget. Together they looked back at the red glow of the dying fire. "It's been a good day," he said at last, "a good, good day."

"Even with that?" she gestured.

"Even with that."

He gathered the reins. If he looked into her eyes he knew he would take her into his arms, so hastily he stepped into the saddle. She took his hand briefly. "What is it they say here, Jean? Vaya con dios?" He felt the quick pressure of her fingers before she released them. "I say it now, Jean. Go with God. Go with God, Jean."

At his rooms he paused only a moment, throwing things into his saddlebags, packing some small bags of gold, filling a money belt. He took his rifle and his spare pistol, then for a long moment he stared at the map. He would not see that map for a long time.

There was a rush of feet on the stairs. Hand on his gun, he swung wide the door.

It was Ben Turk.

"I knew it!" Ben was ready for the trail. "You're riding! I'm comin' along." "I'll travel faster alone. You go to the schooner." He stuffed extra ammunition into the saddlebags.

"Nothing doing. I ride along or I quit. There's nowhere you can go that I can't."

Turk was a good man, a very good man, but ... "All right. We leave our horses at the river landing. We're taking the first boat for Sacramento, and if you can't ride a thousand miles you'd best head for the schooner." Ben Turk stared at him. "Mister LaBarge ... Cap'n, you ... you ain't goin' to ride to Portland?"

"It worries you?"

"There ain't no trail, Cap'n! The Modocs will kill a man as fast as look at him!

That's outlaw country. Why, man--I'm comin' with you!"

"You're inviting yourself. You're a damn fool."

"Why, now." Ben chuckled. "I just figure we're a couple of damn fools."

The riverboat was already moving when they raced their horses onto the dock. Jean swung his horse alongside and tossed his saddlebags. Then, rifle in hand, he sprang for the boat's deck and lit, sprawling. It was a bare four feet of jump, but both horse and boat were moving. Ben Turk hit the bulwark, caught it with his hands and swung himself over to the deck. Together they looked back. The fire was only a sullen red glow now. McCellan yelled at them from the pilothouse. "Law after you, is it? I been expectin' it for years!"

"Shut up!" Jean yelled genially. "Get a move on this crate! I've business in Knight's Landing!"

"Turn in," he yelled. "I'll call you!"

The last thing Jean LaBarge recalled as sleep took possession was the pressure of Helena's hand, the expression on her face. He remembered how she had ridden beside him through the dark streets, how she had waited to be with him after he realized his wheat was destroyed, his hopes ruined. She had waited for him as a man's woman would, only she was another man's woman. He opened his eyes. "Don't forget, Mac. Knight's Landing."

Chapter 13

A rough hand on his shoulder awakened him. Mac's florid face and blond hande-bar mustache bent over him. "Rise an' shine, boy. We're comin' up to the Landing now."

Ben was already on his feet rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Through the murky light the Landing was visible, right ahead.

Jean LaBarge got to his feet and hitched his gun belt into position on his lean hips, then threw the saddlebags over his shoulder and took up his rifle. McClellan peered over his shoulder at him. "I hope you don't need those guns, boy."

"We'll have to be lucky."

If anyone had ridden the route they were to follow La Barge was unaware of it. There would be settlers here and there and a trail of sorts, but it would be sheer luck if they got through without fighting. Thirty minutes later they rode out of Knight's Landing headed north. The day was bright and clear, the horses eager. A few hours from now they would be less eager, Jean reflected, yet the horses proved gamer than he expected and it was almost midnight when they sighted a fire ahead of them. As was the custom of the country they drew up and hailed before approaching. A shadow moved but for an instant there was silence, then a cautious voice called, "What do you want?"

"Name's LaBarge. We're hunting a couple of fast horses. Can you help us?" Walking their horses into the firelight they waited. There was a wagon here, and a small camp, such a camp and wagon no outlaw would be expected to have. Six head of mules were in sight and some good-looking saddle stock. Two men, both armed and spread wide apart, emerged from the shadows. At the edge of the brush LaBarge could see two women who no doubt believed themselves concealed in shadows.

"You ridin' from the law?"

"No." LaBarge got down on the far side of his horse. A man could shoot better from the ground and there was no telling what might happen. "But we need horses mighty bad."

The bearded man was a thin, high-shouldered fellow in torn shirt and homespun jeans, but he looked like a man who could use the rifle he carried. He sized up their horses with shrewd, appraising eyes. "Reckon I'll swap. You got boot to offer?"

"Look, friend," Jean smiled, "we want horses, but not that bad. I'll trade our horses for that Roman-nosed buckskin and the gray. You can throw in a couple of sandwiches and some coffee."

The man glanced at the horses, both fine animals. "I reckon it's a trade.

Sal"--he looked toward the woods --"fetch these men some supper." While Ben switched saddles, Jean faced the fire and the two men. The bearded man had been studying Jean's expensive boots and drawing conclusions. The boy could be no more than half-witted and the women were hard-faced. The coffee was black as midnight and scalding hot, and the sandwiches were slabs of bread inclosing hunks of beef.

"Anbody comes along," the man suggested slyly, "what should I say?" Jean grinned at him. "Tell 'em you saw two men nine feet tall riding north with fire in their eyes. Or tell 'em whatever you want. If anybody was chasin' us, we'd stop an' wait for the fun, wouldn't we, Ben?" "Those who know us well enough to come after us," Ben agreed, "are too smart to try."

Ten hours out of Sacramento, they rode into Red Bluff, and ten minutes later rode out again, their extra saddlebags stuffed with food. Twenty-five miles farther they stopped at a lonely cabin for coffee and when they rode out they were astride two paint Indian ponies.

The air was cool and damp. Twice they glimpsed campfires but their horses seemed no more tired than at the start and they pushed on farther into the night. Once a dog rushed out to bark, amazed and angry that anybody should be moving at all. The night air, cool as a freshwater lake, washed them as they dipped into a hollow of the hills, and then for twenty miles they saw no one, nor any human sound save their own.

At daylight, for forty dollars, Jean swapped for a black stallion with three white stockings and a trim bay gelding. The stallion had an edge on his temper but distance robbed him of his urge for trouble. They were climbing steadily through country where they saw few houses and no settlements. Before them and on their right was Mount Shasta, sending chill winds down across the low country, winds that blew off the white, white snows of her peak.

This was Modoc country and they rode with rifles across their saddlebows. The Modocs had been slave traders among the Indians long before the coming of the white man. At nightfall they reached Tower House, beyond which point there was no road and little trail. At daybreak, on fresh horses, they were moving again. Glancing back, when farther along the trail, Jean saw a rider at the edge of the trees, and later after they had crossed a clearing, he watched long enough to see three riders come out of the trees, then swing back under cover. "Look alive, Ben. Trouble coming up behind."

A dim trail suddenly turned into the trees, a trail that by its direction might intersect with their own somewhere beyond the valley. They turned off, then obliterated their tracks as best they could in the few minutes they could afford and rode down through the forest. When their path turned off in a wrong direction they cut through the trees until they reached the main north-south trail once more.

At Callahan's they switched horses again, and Jean found himself with a tough line-back dun. Taking the old Applegate wagon road, they reached the mining village of Yreka just seventy hours of Knight's Landing. Putting their horses up at the livery stable, Ben nudged Jean. "Look," he said, low-voiced.

Two men were riding into town on blown horses, one wearing a short buffalo coat they remembered as worn by one of the men seen behind them on the trail. As they watched the third man rode into town and the three went along the street, examining all the horses.

Jean led the way into the saloon and they stood at the bar, cutting the dust from their throats and some of the chill from their bodies for the first time on the trip. At a casual question from the bartender, Jean explained, "Riding north, buying wheat for a ship that will meet us at Portland, and there are three men following us, hunting trouble."

A man in a dark suit standing near them, backed off. "Not my fight," he said. Taking his drink, Jean motioned to Turk and they crossed to a table and sat down, facing the door. The bartender brought steaming white cups filled with coffee and, of all things, napkins. Jean slid his Navy pistol from his belt and laid it under his napkin. The other gun was in plain sight in his holster. When the three men pushed through the door they glanced sharply at LaBarge and Turk, then walked to the bar. The three were obviously thieves, trailing them to rob and murder. No honest man ducked off a trail as they had. After a quick drink they turned and started out.

"You in the buffalo coat!"

The three stopped abruptly at Jean's call and turned slowly, spreading out a little as they turned. They could see the gun in LaBarge's holster. Ben's gun was belted high and out of view.

The last man in wore a fur cap, the one in the buffalo coat had a thin, scarred face. The third was short with a wide, expressionless face. "You talkin' to us?" he asked.

"You followed us out of Scott Valley, and you followed us into town. Now get this. If we see you anywhere close to us again, we'll kill you." "G'wan!" he said irritably. "You ain't seen nobody! We ain't even goin' your way."

"How come you know which way we're going? Look, when I see men dodging in and out of the brush on my back trail I get suspicious, and when I get suspicious, I get irritable, and when I get irritable I'm liable to start shooting, so just to avoid trouble, stick around town a few days."

"We'll go where we like!" The man in the fur cap was growing red in the face.

"We wasn't dodgin' in no bush, either!"

Jean smiled pleasantly. "And I say you're a liar!" The man's face seemed to swell. "By God!" he shouted. "You can't call me a liar!"

"I just did," Jean replied coolly. He was determined to bring the matter to an issue now, on ground of his own choosing. "Furthermore, you're a couple of thieves." He took a wild gamble. "As for you," he looked right at the man in the fur cap, "you stole that red horse you're riding at Callahan's." The man in the fur cap was a coward, but he could see Jean with a cup of coffee in his right hand, and Jean knew the instant he started to reach for his gun. "You called me a liar!" he shouted. "And by the Lord--!" The gun cleared leather as Jean shot. He fired with his left hand, from under the table. The man jerked sharply with the impact of the bullet and dropped his gun. He fell, rolling over on his side with his knees drawn up. Ben Turk was on his feet, watching the man in the buffalo coat. Jean gestured at the third man. "Take your hand off that gun. I never like to kill more than one man while I'm eating."

The fat man seemed about to speak but Jean interrupted. "Bad company for you, mister. They'll get you into trouble."

"I guess you're right."

The wounded man was cursing now, in a low, monotonous voice. Gingerly, the others picked him up and helped him from the room. At the bar the man in the dark, suit turned to face them. "That was mighty cool," he said to Jean. "I don't know whether I like it or not." "I don't like dry-gulchers trailing me."

"We don't know they were dry-gulchers."

"You'll have to take my word for it, and if you have any thinking to do, do it quietly. I'm hungry."

At the bar there was subdued muttering and glances cast in their direction. More men drifted into the bar, but a difference of opinion was obvious. Jean knew there would be no chance to sleep here now. They must ride, and at once. The man in the dark suit turned on them. "You two stay in town until we decide what to do about this, you hear?"

LaBarge got to his feet. "Listen to me, mister. You said before this wasn't your fight, so don't make it yours. Those men were trailing us to rob us, and if any of you want to keep us here, you just stand out in the street. In ten minutes we'll be riding out with our rifles across our saddlebows." He paused, letting it sink in. "And, mister, if you feel lucky, you just try stopping us."

Ten minutes later, mounted on a horse loaned him by Charley Brastow of the stage company, Jean LaBarge rode out of town with Ben Turk beside him. The man in the dark suit stood on the steps of the saloon chewing on a cigar, several men around him, but he made no move.

"I seen them come in," Brastow had said, "an' I can smell a bad one further'n most. They sized up your horses and asked where you went." He looked over their horses. "I'll credit you with fifty apiece for the horses and you can leave mine at Johnson's Camp on Hungry Creek. Tell him you're to have the two grays."

Johnson met them at the corral as they rode up. He was a tall man with no chin and he came from his clumsily built log cabin on the run. "Get the grays for us, will you? Brastow said we were to have them. We're riding on to Portland."

Johnson's Adam's apple bobbed against his frayed collar. "That's crazy, stranger! Pure dee crazy! Them Modocs killed a trapper up the crick yestiddy, and burned a couple of farms! Mister, you two wouldn't have a chance against 'em!"

Jean took a rope from the corral post and shook out a loop. One of the grays shied but he swung his loop and made an easy catch. Both were magnificent horses, and as he roped them, Ben stripped their gear from the others. Still protesting, Johnson watched them mount up and ride off. Both men were dead tired. Their plan to sleep in Yreka had been blasted by impending trouble. Jean's eyelids felt thick and heavy, and he rode as did Ben, in a sort of stupor.

Hours later they were walking their horses along Bear Creek bottom when a bullet struck water ahead of them and whined away into the brush. Glancing around they saw five Modocs come out of the trees on their right rear, and fan out as they came down the meadow at a dead run, whooping shrilly. "Make the first one count, Ben." Jean lifted his rifle and looked down the barrel. He was wide awake now. He took a long breath, let it out easy and tightened his finger on the trigger. The rifle jumped in his hands and the foremost Modoc fell face forward from his running horse. The report of Ben's rifle was only an instant behind his own, and a horse fell, spilling its rider. Both men were using the Porter Percussion Turret rifle, .44 caliber, firing nine shots. Steadying himself, Jean fired twice more and saw Ben's second man swing away, clinging to his horse with only a mane-hold, his body slumped far forward. The Modocs drew off, two men gone, another wounded, and shaded their eyes after Jean and Ben Turk. Accustomed as they were only to single-shot rifles, the burst of firing was too much for them.

At Jacksonville they stopped for coffee and sandwiches, and an hour farther along they mounted a tree-covered knoll and caught an hour's sleep, trusting the horses to awaken them if Indians approached. Twice more they exchanged horses, giving up the grays with reluctance, knowing such horses were rare. They passed the place called Jump-Off Joe, and later, crossing Cow Creek, they saw more Indian signs. At Joe Knott's Tavern they exchanged horses again. After a meal and a short rest they pushed on.

An hour out of Knott's it began to rain and with less than two hundred miles to go they spotted a cabin, barn, and corrals. Beyond was some forty acres of stubble. They rode toward the cabin, hallooing their presence. A man with yellow side-whiskers stood in the door, rifle in hand. "Light an' set, strangers," he invited, "you're the first folks we seen in two weeks." "Modocs are raiding," Jean explained, then jerked his head to indicate the stubble. "What was that ... wheat?"

"Uh-huh."

"I'll buy it. How much have you?"

"Done sold it, mister. Feller name of Bonwit from Oregon City bought wheat all through here. Why, he must have upward of two thousand bushels headed for the Willamette."

A meal and thirty minutes later they stepped into the saddle. Bonwit of Oregon City was the man to see.

He was a stocky man in a store-bought suit and a cigar clamped in his hard mouth. His face was wide, his hair sparse and rumpled. He rolled his dead cigar in his jaws and spat into a brass spittoon. "I'll sell," he said flatly, "for cash!"

"I'll take two thousand bushels, delivered in Portland," LaBarge said, and began counting out the gold.

Bonwit rolled his cigar again and shot a glance at LaBarge from astonished eyes.

"You carried that over the trail ... just you two?"

"Part of the way we had Modocs with us."

They sold their horses in Portland and pocketed the money. They had ridden six hundred and sixty-five miles in one hundred and forty-four hours.

Chapter 14

Baron Paul Zinnovy sat at his desk in a San Francisco hotel. The wheat had been destroyed but LaBarge had vanished, and it worried him. A close watch had been kept on the schooner until it sailed; LaBarge was not aboard. He paced the floor, scowling. Rotcheff seemed willing to remain right here in San Francisco, and as long as he did so, he would be safe. He had his instructions as to Rotcheff but nothing could be done here. If Rotcheff was lost at sea farther north there would be no investigation but his own. Or at a landing on one of the lesser islands they might be attacked by the Kolush... Officially, the Russian American Company was losing money, but actually a few key men were doing very well indeed between paying low prices to the promyshleniki and padding expenses in stockholders' reports. If Rotcheff succeeded in getting wheat to Sitka conditions would be alleviated and prices could no longer be held down.

It was dangerous to leave Rotcheff unwatched. There were Boston men here in San Francisco who could offer evidence on the cruelties of the Company, and Rotcheff could choose his own time to come north--perhaps one inopportune for Zinnovy. None of his agents had learned anything of LaBarge. On the evening of the fire he had been seen riding with Helena de Gagarin, but had dropped off the world right after that, and whatever she knew she was keeping to herself. Without wheat LaBarge could not really cause any serious trouble, and yet it was strange that he should have disappeared. Still, the thing to do was to take one thing at a time and the first was Rotcheff.

The Susquehanna, as Jean LaBarge had renamed the schooner, arrived in Portland only a few hours after he did. Knowing that if he reached Sitka before the Baron Zinnovy his chances would be greater to get the cargo of fur he wanted, he laid his course for Queen Charlotte Sound as soon as the last of the wheat was aboard.

Clearing the mouth of the Columbia with a cold wind kicking up whitecaps around them, the Susquehanna lay over on her side and took the bone in her teeth, pointing her bows into the cold northern seas as if anxious for the green water that lay ahead.

LaBarge, his wind-brown face wet with flying scud and spray, stood beside Larsen at the wheel, watching her move along under a full head of sail. His sea boots and oilskins were shining wet, the sky was gray and lowering with clouds, but the wind was good.

"How was the trip up the coast?"

"Flying fish sailing ... it was good time."

"How about the Russian ship?"

"I think she go to sea soon. We see her loading stores." He went below to study the charts again, glancing at Kohl asleep in his bunk, his body moving slightly to the roll of the schooner. If the wind held... Hours later when he came down to shake Kohl awake, the mate opened his eyes at once. "How is she?"

"Holding steady, and we're making knots." He took off his sou'wester. "She's raining a little, and we're catching some spray, but the wind is right. Just what the doctor ordered."

Kohl shrugged into a thick sweater. "You figuring on trouble in Sitka?" "Not if we can get out before Zinnovy gets there. Sitka should be glad to see the wheat."

"What then?"

"We discharge as quickly as possible, stock with whatever we can get of food and water, then lay a course for Cross Sound. With luck we'll have our furs and be on our way south before Zinnovy can get his patrol boat to watching us." "We'll be lucky to find furs that fast. There'll be ships ahead of us." Jean grinned. "Don't worry about it. I know where there's furs to be had ... plenty of them."

Kohl cocked an eye at him. "Seems to me you know a lot." LaBarge shugged. "I know enough. Listen, Barney, I hired you because you're one of the' best men with a ship on the west coast. I hired your ability, all your knowledge, but this much I know. You may know things I don't about particular bits of this northwest coast, but I know more about the whole coast than any man alive. I've made it my business to know."

"That won't help if Zinnovy gets you."

"One thing at a time."

LaBarge rolled in his bunk. Outside the hull, just beyond his ear, he could hear the whispering wash of the sea, rustling by with its strange secrets, its untold tales. On deck the sky would be gray with the last of the day's light, and there would be phosphorus in the water. There would be no stars tonight, or if any, a mere glimpse between rifted clouds. Yet he was strangely content. This was the world he wanted, this was the way. Sailing north in command of his own ship to trade along that coast that had so long held his thoughts.

Rising some hours later, Jean shrugged into a sweater and his oilskins and went topside. A pale-hearted moon hung above the fo'm'st and the sea rushed past in the half-darkness. Spray blew against his face and he put out his tongue, tasting the salt.

Walking forward along the deck he watched the black, glistening water as the great waves rose and then slid away beneath the hull. Aft there was no sign of anything else upon the sea; they were a tiny microcosm, a little lost world of their own, moving upon the sea with their own heart beating in time to the sea's great rhythm and the talking of the wind in the shrouds. Far behind him there was a girl with green eyes and dark hair, a tall and regal girl who had walked beside him briefly, a girl who was not his and could never be his, yet a girl who held his heart now and would hold it always. He walked aft and found Kohl, wide as a door in his bulky clothes, standing by the port rail.

"How does she go?"

"She's a dream ship, this one. If the Russkies get her, I'll shoot myself."

"See anything back there?"

"Once I thought I saw a light ... probably a star." For a long time Jean LaBarge watched the sea behind them, and saw nothing; if there was a ship back there it was almost certainly the square-rigger. If Zinnovy was following him, would he have Helena aboard? Could that light Barney thought he had seen be hers?

Helena. He wished he could drive her out of his mind. Wanting her did no good. She belonged to somebody else, and that was that. He had never thought of himself as a lonely man before, but Helena had made him realize just how alone he was.

No man should have to walk the earth alone. A man should have a mate, to share his luck and his strength, but his sorrows as well. He had seen a Blackfoot squaw fight to her death beside the wounded body of her mate, and he had come upon a Chinese woman alone in the hills, giving birth to her child while her man worked five hundred feet underground to earn money to support them. Life had flavor when people had such courage. Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone.

Perhaps there was a life hereafter, a man thought of those things at sea, but he had never worried much about it because if he was not himself--this same collection of good, evil, bone, muscle, and blood--it wouldn't matter anyway. This was what he was, the bad with the good, and if he was anything less than this he wouldn't be himself, not Jean LaBarge.

He knew his faults, or most of them. Knew the kind of sinning he liked and where to put his salt and he did not want to get acquainted with new likes and dislikes. As for sinning, most of the things he enjoyed were sins in the eyes of somebody. Except for reading ... and most of his books were written by pagan authors.

He was what he wanted to be, a free man. With luck he would not only keep his liberty but sail south with a cargo of furs, all the more precious because he'd taken them from under the nose of Zinnovy. He shrugged ... here he was wasting his watch below. That was the trouble with the sea and the mountains, they made a man think. It was always the little men who huddled together in cities who believed themselves important, and they had a conspiracy among them to keep up the illusion. They huddled in cities because a man at sea, in the desert or mountains had time to know himself, to examine what he was ... so they stayed in their cities, knowing they could not stand to ever really look at themselves. Spray blew over the rain and against his face. It had a fine, briny taste to it.

No wonder the great countries were seagoing countries.

It was late, and it was his watch below...

Chapter 15

On the morning of the eleventh day the Susquehanna was skimming along through a bright blue sea with the sun just above the horizon when Jean came on deck. Barney Kohl came down the port side to meet him. "Cape Burunof is just astern, and that's Long Island over there."

Jean took the glass and studied the horizon astern, but there were no sails in sight. Evidently they were arriving well ahead of the Russian ship. "Barney, we'll have to work fast and smart. I'll go ashore and see Governor Rudakof and try to get things moving." He studied the islands ahead. "As soon as I'm in the boat, start getting that wheat up. I'll try to have a lighter alongside before noon."

"They won't move that fast," Kohl advised. "We'll be lucky if we start discharging cargo before tomorrow afternoon." A glance at LaBarge's jaw line made him qualify the remark. "Unless you think of a way to start them moving." "I will ... I've got to. But in the meantime I want a man on deck with a rifle at all times. Nobody is to come aboard without written authorization from me, and I mean nobody. The crew is to stand by at all times--we may have to get out of here at a moment's notice."

"Suppose they try to keep you here?"

"They couldn't unless they arrested me on some charge, and we haven't done anything wrong yet."

"Suppose they arrest you anyway?"

"It could happen ... then you head for Kootznahoo Inlet and I'll join you there."

"If not ... what?"

Jean chuckled. "If I'm not there in two weeks, come back and break me out. I'll be ready to leave."

For a man who had never sailed these waters LaBarge knew a lot about them. Kootznahoo was a likely spot. A ship could lie there for weeks and never be observed. Of course, LaBarge had said he did know this coast better than anyone; it might not be just a boast.

Ordinarily American ships had no trouble in Sitka. The government's friendship varied according to its needs, for the diet in Sitka, even on Baranof Hill, was often restricted, and famine a risk. Rudakof had been friendly on the surface, and now, with grain purchased by Rotcheff, they should be welcome. The Susquehanna dropped her hook in nine fathoms off Channel Rock. At this distance from the port LaBarge knew he would at least have a running start for open water.

The sunlight was bright on the snow-covered beauty of Mount Edgecumbe, and it shimmered over The Sisters, and to the east, over Mount Verstovia. Moving down the channel, LaBarge could see the roof of Baranof Castle, built in 1837, and the third structure on the site. The Baranov era had been a fantastic one, for the little man with the tied-on wig had ruled some of the world's toughtest men with a rod of iron, and had just barely failed to capture the Hawaiian Islands. Jean wore a smoke-gray suit with a black, Spanish-style hat. His boots were hand-cobbled from the best leather, and he looked far more the California rancher and businessman than a ship's master and fur trader. And he chose to look so.