The White Desert | Page 9

bandages, which however, from their size, gave Barry little concern. The inventory completed, he turned his head at the sound of a voice--hers--calling from the doorway to some one without.
"He's getting along fine, Ba'tiste." Barry liked the tone and the enthusiastic manner of speaking. "His fever's gone down. I should think--"
"Ah, oui!" had come the answer in booming bass. "And has he, what you say, come to?"
"Not yet. But I think he ought to, soon."
"Oui! Heem no ver' bad. He be all right tomorrow."
"That's good. It frightened me, for him to be unconscious so long. It's been five or six hours now, hasn't it?"
"Lemme see. I fin' heem six o'clock. Now--eet is the noon. Six hour."
"That's long enough. Besides, I think he's sleeping now. Come inside and see--"
"Wait, m' enfant. M'sieu Thayer he come in the minute. He say he think he know heem."
The eyes of Barry Houston suddenly lost their curiosity. Thayer? That could mean only one Thayer! Barry had taken particular pains to keep from him the information that he was anywhere except the East. For it had been Fred Thayer who had caused Barry to travel across country in his yellow speedster, Thayer who had formed the reason for the displacement of that name plate at the beginning of Hazard Pass, Thayer who--
"Know him? Is he a friend?"
"Oui. So Thayer say. He say he think eet is the M'sieu Houston, who own the mill."
"Probably coming out to look over things, then?"
"Oui. Thayer, he say the young man write heem about coming. That is how he know when I tell heem about picking heem up from the machine. He say he know M'sieu Houston is coming by the automobile."
In the other room, Barry Houston blinked rapidly and frowned. He had written Thayer nothing of the sort. He had-- Suddenly he stared toward the ceiling in swift-centered thought. Some one else must have sent the information, some one who wanted Thayer to know that Barry was on the way, so that there would be no surprise in his coming, some one who realized that his mission was that of investigation!
The names of two persons flashed across his mind, one to be dismissed immediately, the other--
"I'll fire Jenkins the minute I get back!" came vindictively. "I'll--."
He choked his words. A query had come from the next room.
"Was that heem talking?"
"No, I don't think so. He groans every once in a while. Wait--I'll look."
The injured man closed his eyes quickly, as he heard the girl approach the door, not to open them until she had departed. Barry was thinking and thinking hard. A moment later--
"How's the patient?" It was a new voice, one which Barry Houston remembered from years agone, when he, a wide-eyed boy in his father's care, first had viewed the intricacies of a mountain sawmill, had wandered about the bunk houses, and ridden the great, skidding bobsleds with the lumberjacks in the spruce forests, on a never-forgotten trip of inspection. It was Thayer, the same Thayer that he once had looked upon with all the enthusiasm and pride of boyhood, but whom he now viewed with suspicion and distrust. Thayer had brought him out here, without realizing it. Yet Thayer had known that he was on the way. And Thayer must be combatted--but how? The voice went on, "Gained consciousness yet?"
"No." The girl had answered. "That is--"
"Of course, then, he hasn't been able to talk. Pretty sure it's Houston, though. Went over and took a look at the machine. Colorado license on it, but the plates look pretty new, and there are fresh marks on the license holders where others have been taken off recently. Evidently just bought a Colorado tag, figuring that he'd be out here for some time. How'd you find him?"
The bass voice of the man referred to as Ba'tiste gave the answer, and Barry listened with interest. Evidently he had struggled to his feet at some time during the night--though he could not remember it--and striven to find his way down the mountain side in the darkness, for the story of Ba'tiste told Barry that he had found him just at dawn, a full five hundred yards from the machine.
"I see heem move," the big voice was saying, "jus' as I go to look at my trap. Then Golemar come beside me and raise his hair along his neck and growl--r-r-r-r-r-u-u-f-f-f--like that. I look again--it is jus' at the dawn. I cannot see clearly. I raise my gun to shoot, and Golemar, he growl again. Then I think eet strange that the bear or whatever he is do not move. I say to Golemar, 'We will closer go, ne c'est pas?' A step or two--then three--but he do not move--then pretty soon I look again, close. Eet is a man, I pick heem up,