The Golden Snare | Page 9

sort of way it reminded him
of other days, and he wondered what some of his old-time friends
would say if he could, by some magic endowment, assemble them here
for a feast on the trail. He wondered especially what Mignon Davenport
would say--and do. P-f-f-f! He could see the blue-blooded horror in her
aristocratic face! That wind from over the Barren would curdle the life
in her veins. She would shrivel up and die. He considered himself a
fairly good judge in the matter, for once upon a time he thought that he
was going to marry her. Strange why he should think of her now, he

told himself; but for all that he could not get rid of her for a time. And
thinking of her, his mind traveled back into the old days, even as he
followed over the hidden trail of Bram. Undoubtedly a great many of
his old friends had forgotten him. Five years was a long time, and
friendship in the set to which he belonged was not famous for its
longevity. Nor love, for that matter. Mignon had convinced him of that.
He grimaced, and in the teeth of the wind he chuckled. Fate was a
playful old chap. It was a good joke he had played on him--first a bit of
pneumonia, then a set of bad lungs afflicted with that "galloping"
something-or-other that hollows one's cheeks and takes the blood out of
one's veins. It was then that the horror had grown larger and larger each
day in Mignon's big baby-blue eyes, until she came out with childish
frankness and said that it was terribly embarrassing to have one's
friends know that one was engaged to a consumptive.
Philip laughed as he thought of that. The laugh came so suddenly and
so explosively that Bram could have heard it a hundred yards away,
even with the wind blowing as it was. A consumptive! Philip doubled
up his arm until the hard muscles in it snapped. He drew in a deep
lungful of air, and forced it out again with a sound like steam escaping
from a valve. The NORTH had done that for him; the north with its
wonderful forests, its vast skies, its rivers, and its lakes, and its deep
snows--the north that makes a man out of the husk of a man if given
half a chance. He loved it. And because he loved it, and the adventure
of it, he had joined the Police two years ago. Some day he would go
back, just for the fun of it; meet his old friends in his old clubs, and
shock baby-eyed Mignon to death with his good health.
He dropped these meditations as he thought of the mysterious man he
was following. During the course of his two years in the Service he had
picked up a great many odds and ends in the history of Bram's life, and
in the lives of the Johnsons who had preceded him. He had never told
any one how deeply interested he was. He had, at times, made efforts to
discuss the quality of Bram's intelligence, but always he had failed to
make others see and understand his point of view. By the Indians and
half-breeds of the country in which he had lived, Bram was regarded as
a monster of the first order possessed of the conjuring powers of the
devil himself. By the police he was earnestly desired as the most
dangerous murderer at large in all the north, and the lucky man who

captured him, dead or alive, was sure of a sergeantcy. Ambition and
hope had run high in many valiant hearts until it was generally
conceded that Bram was dead.
Philip was not thinking of the sergeantcy as he kept steadily along the
edge of the Barren. His service would shortly be up, and he had other
plans for the future. From the moment his fingers had touched the
golden strand of hair he had been filled with a new and curious emotion.
It possessed him even more strongly to-day than it had last night. He
had not given voice to that emotion, or to the thoughts it had roused,
even to Pierre. Perhaps he was ridiculous. But he possessed
imagination, and along with that a great deal of sympathy for
animals--and some human beings. He had, for the time, ceased to be the
cool and calculating man-hunter intent on the possession of another's
life. He knew that his duty was to get Bram and take him back to
headquarters, and he also knew that he would perform his duty when
the opportunity came-- unless he had guessed correctly the significance
of the golden snare.
And had he guessed correctly? There was a tremendous doubt in his
mind, and