cabin, like a very thin and headless man.  In this gloom, indeed, but one thing shone out white and distinct—­the skull on the little shelf above the fire.  As his eyes rested on it, Steele’s lips tightened and his face grew dark.  With a sudden movement he reached up and took it in his hands, holding it for a moment so that the light from the fire flashed full upon it.  In the left side, on a line with the eyeless socket and above the ear, was a hole as large as a small egg.

“So I’m ordered up to join Nome, the man who did this, eh?” he muttered, fingering the ragged edge.  “I could kill him for what happened down there at Nelson House, M’sieur Janette.  Some day—­I may.”

He balanced the skull on his finger tips, level with his chin.

“Nice sort of a chap for a Hamlet, I am,” he went on, whimsically.  “I believe I’ll chuck you into the fire, M’sieur Janette.  You’re getting on my nerves.”

He stopped suddenly and lowered the skull to the table.

“No, I won’t burn you,” he continued, “I’ve brought you this far and I’ll pack you up to Lac Bain with me.  Some morning I’ll give you to Bucky Nome for breakfast.  And then, M’sieur—­then we shall see what we shall see.”

Later that night he wrote a few words on a slip of paper and tacked the paper to the inside of his door.  To any who might follow in his footsteps it conveyed this information and advice: 

Notice!

This cabin and what’s in it are quasheed by me.  Fill your gizzard but not your pockets.

Steele, Northwest Mounted.

Chapter II.  A Face Out Of The Night

Steele came up to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Lac Bain on the seventh day after the big storm, and Breed, the factor, confided two important bits of information to him while he was thawing out before the big box-stove in the company’s deserted and supply-stripped store.  The first was that a certain Colonel Becker and his wife had left Fort Churchill, on Hudson’s Bay, to make a visit at Lac Bain; the second, that Buck Nome had gone westward a week before and had not returned.  Breed was worried, not over Nome’s prolonged absence, but over the anticipated arrival of the other two.  According to the letter which had come to him from the Churchill factor.  Colonel Becker and his wife had come over on the last supply ship from London, and the colonel was a high official in the company’s service.  Also, he was an old gentleman.  Ostensibly he had no business at Lac Bain, but was merely on a vacation, and wished to see a bit of real life in the wilderness.

Breed’s grizzled face was miserable.

“Why don’t they send ’em down to York Factory or Nelson House?” he demanded of Steele.  “They’ve got duck feathers, three women, and a civilized factor at the Nelson, and there ain’t any of ’em here—­not even a woman!”

Steele shrugged his shoulders as Breed mentioned the three women at Nelson.