Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/305

Rh intrude. At No Luck the man disappeared to return an hour later wearing his service uniform, and thereafter the boy noticed that Shorty's eyes gleamed balefully whenever they rested for a moment upon the back of Brek Wiley who was made to break trail ahead of the dogs.

The boy knew that his brother officer was thinking as he had never thought before, and that the decision he arrived at by the time they reached the big river would be the shaping decision of his life. And neither by word nor look did Connie intimate that he entertained so much as the slightest doubt of the other's sincerity.

Twenty miles above its mouth, they swung from Coal Creek and cutting through the hills came out upon the Yukon at some distance above Fortymile. And when the boy saw Shorty turn resolutely toward Dawson, he knew that from that moment the Mounted could boast no stauncher officer than Constable Peters. When they had camped for dinner on the river trail Connie turned to the Constable: "Well, Shorty, I'll be leaving you here," he said; "I'm going the other way."

Peters regarded him with amazement.