The smoke from the fire swept down into their faces in a choking cloud. Toppy looked toward the stockade. By this time the whole end of the great building was in flames. The men in pursuit of Reivers were howling as they gained on their quarry, and Toppy lurched after them. “Bob! Mr. Treplin!” Toppy stopped. “I mean—Mr. Treplin—you—don’t go down there—you’re hurt—please!” Toppy moved toward her. Was it true? Was it really there the note in her voice that he yearned to hear? “What did you say—please?” he stammered. And now it was her turn to be confused. The sobs came back to her. Toppy took a long breath and nerved himself to desperation. “Helen!” he said hoarsely. “Bob! Oh, Bob!” she whispered. “Don’t leave me—don’t leave me alone.” Once more Toppy filled his lungs with air and ground his teeth in desperate resolution. He tried to speak, but only a gurgling sound came from his throat; so he held out his big arms in mute appeal, and suddenly he found himself whispering incoherently at a little blonde head which lay snuggled in great content against his bosom. A maddened yell came from the men who were after Reivers. But Toppy and the girl might have been a thousand miles away for all the attention they paid. One end of the stockade fell in with a great roar and a shower of flame and sparks; but the twain did not hear. “Aye, aye!” Old Campbell moved swiftly away. “He’s a grown man now, and so he’s a right to have his woman.—Aye. A real man he had to be to take her away from the Snow-Burner.” Down by the river the pursuing men gave tongue to a cry with the note of the wolf in it. Campbell turned from the young couple and stared with gleaming eyes in the direction whence came the cry. “Ah, Reivers!” he murmured. “Ye great man gone wrong! How goes it with ye now, Reivers? Can ye win through? Can ye? I wonder—I wonder!” And as Toppy and Helen, holding closely to one another, entered the office building, the old man hastened to join the throng by the river where the fate of the Snow-Burner was being spun. PART TWO: THE SUPERMAN CHAPTER XXII—THE CHEATING OF THE RIVER “It’s got him! The river’s got him. He’s drowned! ‘Hell-Camp’ Reivers—he’s gone. He’s done for. The ‘Snow-Burner’ is dead, dead dead!” Like wolves in revolt the men of “Hell Camp” lined the bank of the rushing, ice-choked river and cursed and roared into the blackness of the night. Behind them the buildings of the camp, scene of the Snow-Burner’s inhuman brutality and dominance over the lives of men, were going up in seas of flame which they had started. Before them the tumultuous river, the waters battling the ice which strove to cover it, tossed black and white under the red glow of tumbling fire. And somewhere out in the murderous current, whirled and sucked down by the rushing water, buffeted and crushed by the grinding ice, a bullet-hole through his shoulder, was all that was left of the man whose life they had cried for.