“Who done dat shootin’ if he don’t?” Doret inquired, quickly.

“Joe McCaskey—­or Frank,” Rouletta answered with positiveness.  ’Poleon started.  Through the gloom he stared incredulously at the speaker.

“I’m sure of it, now that I’ve had time to think,” the girl declared.  “That’s why I ran for you.  Now listen!  I promised not to tell this, but—­I must.  Courteau confessed to his wife that he and the McCaskeys trumped up that charge against Pierce.  They paid Courteau well for his part—­or they promised to—­and he perjured himself, as did they.  Hilda got the truth out of him while he was drunk.  Of course he denied it later, but she broke him down, and this evening, just before we got home, he promised to go to Colonel Cavendish and make a clean breast of everything.  He went out for that purpose, but—­evidently he lacked courage to go through with it.  Otherwise how did he come to be on the back streets?  The McCaskeys live somewhere back yonder, don’t they?”

“Sure!” ’Poleon meditated, briefly.  “Mebbe so you’re right,” he said, finally.

“I know I’m right,” Rouletta cried.  “The first thing to do is find them.  Where are they?”

“I don’ see ’em no place.”

“Then we must tell the colonel to look them up.”

But Doret’s brows remained puckered in thought.  “Wait!” he exclaimed.  “I got idea of my own.  If dem feller kill Courteau dey ain’t nowheres roun’ here.  Dey beat it, firs’ t’ing.”

“To Hunker?  Perhaps—­”

“No.  For de Boun’ry.”  ’Poleon slapped his thigh in sudden enlightenment.  “By golly!  Dat’s why I don’ see ’em no place.  You stay here.  I mak’ sure.”

He turned and strode away, but Rouletta followed at his heels.

“I’m going, too,” she stoutly asserted.  “Don’t argue.  I’ll bet ten to one we find their cabin empty.”

Together they made their way rapidly out of the brightly illuminated portion of the town and into the maze of blank warehouses and snow-banked cabins which lay behind.  At this hour of the night few lamps were burning even in private residences, and, inasmuch as these back streets were unlighted, the travelers had to feel their way.  The wind was diminishing, but even yet the air was thick with flying flakes, and new drifts seriously impeded progress.  Wading knee-deep in places, stumbling in and out of cuts where the late snow had been removed, clambering over treacherous slopes where other snows lay hard packed and slippery, the two pursued their course.

’Poleon came to a pause at length in the shelter of a pole provision-cache and indistinctly took his bearings.  Silently he pointed to the premises and vigorously nodded his head; then he craned his neck for a view of the stove-pipe overhead.  Neither sparks nor smoke nor heat was rising from it.  After a cautious journey of exploration he returned to Rouletta and spoke aloud: 

“Dey gone.  Sled, dogs, ever’t’ing gone.”