With MacNair safely lodged in the Fort Saskatchewan jail, he felt safe from interference, at least until late in the spring.  This would allow plenty of time for the melting snows to furnish the water necessary for the cleaning up of the dumps.  After that the fate of his colony hung upon the decision of a judge somewhere down in the provinces.  Thus Lapierre crowded his men to the utmost, and the increasing size of the black dump-heaps bespoke a record-breaking clean-up when the waters of the melting snow should be turned into sluices in the spring.

With his mind easy in his fancied security, and in order that every moment of time and every ounce of man-power should be devoted to the digging of gold, Lapierre had neglected to bring his rifles and ammunition from the Lac du Mort rendezvous and from the storehouse of Chloe Elliston’s school.  An omission for which he cursed himself roundly upon an evening, early in February when an Indian, gaunt and wide-eyed from the strain of a forced snow-trail, staggered from the black shadow of the bush into the glare of the blazing night-fires, and in a frenzied gibberish of jargon proclaimed that Bob MacNair had returned to the Northland.  And not only that he had returned, but had visited Lac du Mort in company with a man of the Mounted.

At first Lapierre flatly refused to credit the Indian’s yarn, but when upon pain of death the man refused to alter his statement, and added the information that he himself had fired at MacNair from the shelter of a snow-ridden spruce, and that just as he pulled the trigger the man of the soldier-police had intervened and stopped the speeding bullet, Lapierre knew that the Indian spoke the truth.

In the twinkling of an eye the quarter-breed realized the extreme danger of his position.  His wrath knew no bounds.  Up and down he raged in his fury, cursing like a madman, while all about him—­blaming, reviling, advising—­cursed the men of his ill-favoured crew.  For not a man among them but knew that somewhere someone had blundered.  And for some inexplicable reason their situation had suddenly shifted from comparative security to extreme hazard.  They needed not to be told that with MacNair at large in the Northland their lives hung by a slender thread.  For at that very moment Brute MacNair was, in all probability, upon the Yellow Knife leading his armed Indians toward Snare Lake.

In addition to this was the certain knowledge that the vengeance of the Mounted would fall in full measure upon the heads of all who were in any way associated with Pierre Lapierre.  An officer had been shot, and the men of Lapierre were outlawed from Ungava to the Western sea.  The intricate system had crumbled in the batting of an eye.  Else why should a man of the Mounted have been found before the barricade of the Bastile du Mort in company with Brute MacNair?