“Whiskey from my storehouse!” The girl’s voice rose to a scream, and MacNair interrupted her savagely: 

“Aye, whiskey from your storehouse!  Brought in by Lapierre, and by Lapierre cunningly and freely given out to my Indians.”

“You are crazy!  You are mad!  You do not know what you are saying?  But if you do know, you are the most consummate liar on the face of the earth!  Of all things absurd!  Is it possible that you hope by any such preposterous and flimsy fabrication to escape the punishment which will surely and swiftly be meted out to you?  Will, you tell that to the Mounted?  And will you tell it to the judge and the jury?  What will they say when I have told my story, and have had it corroborated by your own Indians—­those Indians who have fled to my school to seek a haven of refuge from your tyranny?  I have my manifest.  My goods were inspected and passed by the Mounted——­”

“Inspected and passed!  And why?  Because they were your goods, and the men of the Mounted have yet to suspect you.  The inspection was perfunctorily made.  And as for the manifest—­I did not say it was your whiskey.  I said, ‘whiskey from your storehouse.’  It was Lapierre’s whiskey.  And he succeeded in running it in by the boldest, and at the same time the cleverest and safest method—­disguised as your freight.  Tell me this:  Did you check your pieces upon their arrival at your storehouse?”

“No; Lapierre did that, or LeFroy.”

“And Lapierre, having first ascertained that I was far on the caribou trail, succeeded in slipping the whiskey to my Indians, but he——­”

“Mr. Lapierre was with me!  Accuse him and you accuse me, also.  He brought me here because I wished to see for myself the condition of your Indians—­the condition of which I had so often heard.”

“Was LeFroy, also, with you?”

“LeFroy was away upon a mission, and that mission was to capture two others of your ilk—­two whiskey-runners!”

MacNair laughed harshly.  “Good LeFroy!” he exclaimed in derision.  “Great God, you are a fool!  You yourself saw LeFroy and his satellites rushing wildly for the shelter of the timber, when I unexpectedly appeared among them.”  The light of exultation leaped into his eyes.  “I killed two of them, but LeFroy escaped.  Lapierre timed his work well.  And had it not been that one of my Indians, who was a spy in Lapierre’s camp, learned of his plan and followed me across the barrens, Lapierre would have had ample time, after the destruction of my fort, to have scattered my Indians to the four winds.  When I learned of his plot, I forced the trail as I never had forced a trail, in the hope of arriving in time to prevent the catastrophe.  I reached the fort too late to save my Indians from your human wolf-pack, their homes from the flames, and my buildings and my property from destruction.  But, thank God, it is not too late to wreck my vengeance upon the enemies of my people!  For the trail is hot, and I will follow it, if need be, to the end of the earth.”