Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/194

176 when they made the ascent of the river. The boy passed a swift signal and with a dexterous twist of the paddle Ick Far shot the canoe shoreward. Here, evidently, was an Indian who had been missed in the counting. Suddenly, just as the bow scraped the gravel, the boy's heart gave a great bound. Darkness had gathered and in the scrub near a tiny fire someone was whistling. The man then, was a white man, and the air was Yankee Doodle! With his heart in his throat, the boy glanced toward the west where the high peaks of the main divide of the Rockies loomed big and vast and mysterious in the lingering half-light of the afterglow. For he knew that somewhere among those peaks and passes lay twelve picked men—stern-faced—experienced. Men who were the very flower of the Mounted, and who were there for the express purpose of preventing one certain man from crossing that divide. And despite their vigilance—despite the best efforts of that grim parol [sic], the man had crossed the divide! Notorious Bishop was upon the McQuesten and it was up to him. Special Constable Connie Morgan, to take into Dawson the man who had time and again flaunted his escapes in the face of the Mounted!