“All the time on the face av the clock, if it’s a story. You mean this last trip? You never told me, Starr—and you promised it to me. Spit it out, old boy.” “It is some story, and but for that young chap I wouldn’t be here telling you today. Well, here goes. I told you how I found him up at Fort Reliance Hudson’s Bay Post, two hundred miles up in the Athabasca, on my way north after a half-breed wanted for murder, Guerrin by name. Told you how he got there with his Indian stepmother and two kids. Had the bad luck on my up trip to have to ditch my corporal—frozen foot—so had to play a lone hand. Got my man, though, and brought him back to Fort Reliance. Let me tell you that every minute of that trip, day and night, I had my hand on my hip. That half-breed Guerrin was an old friend of mine. Twice I had spoiled a little game of his, and this time I knew that with the prospect of a hemp-dance before him he would stop at nothing. So it was man to man every minute of the march. “When I got back to MacKinroy’s I found that the Indian woman had died and that Paul had arranged to leave the youngsters in the meantime at the Mission School and was keen to get back to civilisation. I struck a bargain with him to bring him out and find him a job if he’d help me out on the trail here. For the first three days all was serene. My prisoner apparently had thrown up the sponge, and was all in mentally, a case of collapse, with Indian stoicism accepting his fate and obeying orders like a whipped cur. At least, so I thought. At the end of the third day my cursed luck threw me into an ice crack, twisted my ankle, broke a small bone as a matter of fact the doctor here says, and there I was seventy miles or so from the Fort here, with a murderous prisoner, a deadly fighter, strong as a bull, cunning and cruel as a lynx, and with me a boy raw to this game, untried. I had to take to the toboggan, rations were cut fine, very fine, and the trail was getting more and more rotten every mile. I’ve had many more cheerful nights than that night, as I lay sleepless by my fire, planning my course and weighing my chances. My chances seemed slim enough, I confess to you. “Next morning I tied my bucko up to a tree and took the boy off for a council of war and set before him the facts—no neutral tints in the picture, I assure you. “‘He’s a devil in a fight,’ I told the boy. ‘Man to man on equal terms he could beat up either one of us.’ “I liked the cool, questioning look in the boy’s eyes. I learned afterwards that he had gone through the braves in old Wah-na-ta-hi-ta’s tribe and come out top dog. But he had never gone the full limit—never killed a man. “‘And this half-breed Guerrin has it in for me. He would rather get me than get free, I believe. He knows all the tricks too. Can we take him through, or will we have to let him go, Paul?’ I said, trying him out. He could not hide the surprise, the contempt in his eyes.