Читать книгу Never Fire First - James French Dorrance - Страница 3

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From the "dig-in" of the snow-bank where he had spent the blizzard night in comparative comfort, Constable La Marr of the Royal Mounted looked out upon a full-grown day. The storm that had driven him to shelter had passed, or at least was taking a rest. For once he had overslept and where days, even in winter's youth, are but seven hours long, the fault caused him chagrin.

That a "Mountie" in close pursuit of a murder suspect should have made such a slip was disconcerting even to one so young as La Marr. He found little consolation in the fact that when he had enlisted in the Force he had not dreamed of an Arctic assignment, but had expected one of those gayly uniformed details in Montreal or Quebec.

His concern, if the news ever leaked out, was of the reaction upon his immediate superior, Staff-Sergeant Russell Seymour. But small chance of that leakage unless he himself weakened—or strengthened—and tested the adage that confession is good for the soul. Seymour, a grimly handsome wolf of the North in command of the detachment post at Armistice, was now two months absent on an irksome detail of snow patrol, one that should have fallen to the rookie constable, except for his inexperience.

La Marr stamped out of the snow-hole that had sheltered him and restored circulation by vigorous gymnastics. Light as was his trail equipment, being without sled or dogs, he had not suffered, having learned rapidly the first protective measures of the Arctic "cop."

He was about to make a belated breakfast from his emergency pack when his glance chanced toward the north and focused upon a furred figure headed down the snow ruff on a course that would bring him within easy reach.

"Aye, not so bad!" he congratulated audibly. "I get me man by sleeping on his trail!"

He chuckled as he watched the snow-shoed Eskimo stumble directly toward the trap that was set for him by chance of Morpheus.

Yet the young constable took no chances.

A murder had been committed two days before at Armistice, almost within the shadow of the police post. The crime seemed a particularly atrocious one to him from the fact that a white man, a trader's clerk, had been the victim. Any Eskimo who would go to such lengths was either desperate or insane. La Marr felt called upon to be very much on guard as he waited within the shelter of the snow-trap.

He had not a doubt that the native approaching was his quarry, any more than he had of that quarry's guilt. He wondered if the slogan of the Mounted applied in case one had to deal with an insane native. It would be easy—and providentially safe—to wing the oncomer, undoubtedly unaware of the nearness of a Nemesis.

But the training at the Regina school of police that a "Mountie" never fires first is strict and impressive. Constable La Marr could not take a pot shot even with the intent only to wound the flounderer.

Next moment surprise caught him—surprise that Avic, the red-handed culprit, was fighting his way back to camp. But wait, he'd have to revise that thought for this particular murder had been done in a peculiar native fashion that shed no blood. Anyhow, why should one so obviously guilty of killing a white man in a bronze man's country be headed toward the police post from which he had made a clean get-away?

No answer came to La Marr. He merely waited.

The Eskimo floundered on.

The constable's concealment was neat enough in a country where all is white. It was better even than bush or shrub, for they were so rare as to be open to suspicion. At just the right second he lunged forward and took the native entirely by surprise. The two went over in a flurry of snow.

For a moment the Eskimo struggled fiercely, possibly thinking that his fur-clad assailant was an Arctic wolf. But his resistance ceased on recognizing he was in human grip.

La Marr yanked his captive to his feet and searched for weapons, finding none. Then he remembered the rules of the Ottawa "red book" and pronounced the statutory warning.

"Arrest you, Avic, in the name of the king; warn you that anything you say may be used against you. D'ye understand?"

As he asked this last, which is not a part of the official warning, he realized that Avic did not.

"Barking sun-dogs, why didn't the good Lord provide one language for everybody?" he complained. "Anyway, there ain't much chance of my understanding anything you may say against yourself. I'll tell it all over to you when I get you to the post. Now we'll mush!"

"Ugh—yes," grunted the Eskimo, seemingly undisturbed.

The young constable was puzzled by the prisoner's demeanor. He stared at the man, whose stolid expression was heightened by thick lips and high cheek-bones. Perhaps the native did not know he was in the hands of the police and on his way to pay for the dreadful crime.

Raising his parkee, La Marr disclosed the scarlet tunic which he wore underneath. It was the color of authority in the far North; no Eskimo who ever had seen it before could doubt it.

There was no gleam of intelligence in the dark eyes that stared from behind narrow, reddened lids. There dawned upon the constable a possibility. The Eskimo was snow blind under the curse of the Northland winter which falls alike to native and outlander, at times. That would explain his back-tracking. Rather than wander in circles over the white blanketed tundra until a miserable death came to his rescue, he was hurrying back, while a glimmer of sight yet remained, to take his chances with the mystery called "Law."

"Not a bad choice," thought La Marr as he stepped out ahead to break the trail that the night's blizzard had covered.

After locking his prisoner in the tiny guard room, a part of the one-story frame structure that sheltered the small detachment, the constable started for the post of the Arctic Trading Company a few hundred yards away. He was young, La Marr, and pleased with himself over his first capture of importance. He anticipated satisfaction in discussing the arrest with Harry Karmack, the only other white man at Armistice now that Oliver O'Malley had passed out.

But he did not get across the yard.

The report of a rifle from down the frozen river, which flowed north, halted him. He saw a dog team limping in over the crust, unmistakably the detachment's own bunch of malamutes. The man at the gee-pole could be none other than Sergeant Seymour, returned at last from the long Arctic patrol.

Here was a vastly more important auditor for his triumph. He sprang forward to offer salute and greetings and to help with the malamutes, for an Eskimo dog team always arrives with a flourish that is exciting and troublesome.

Once the animals were off to their kennels and before Seymour fairly had caught his breath from the last spurt into camp, the young constable was blurting out the details of Oliver O'Malley's untimely end.

"But I've captured the murderer!" La Marr exclaimed in triumph. "I've got Avic, the Eskimo, hard and fast in the guard room. Come and see."

With interest the sergeant followed the lead of the one and only man in his command.

The native had been squatted on the floor with his back against the wall near a stove, the sides of which glowed like a red apple. On their entry, he rose muttering in gutturals that meant nothing to the constable. Seymour gave one glance of recognition, then turned.

"You've got a murderer, sure enough, La Marr," he said with that slowness of speech so seldom accelerated as to be an outstanding characteristic. "But his name's not Avic and by no possibility could he have had anything to do with the killing of O'Malley."

"Then who the hell——," the constable began.

"This is Olespe of the Lady Franklin band. For three weeks he's been my prisoner. On the sled out there are the remains of the wife he killed in an attack of seal-fed jealousy."

The chagrin of Constable La Marr was written in gloom across a face so lately aglow.