APIERRE PAYS A VISIT

Up on Snare Lake the men to whom Lapierre had passed the word had taken
possession of MacNair's burned and abandoned fort, and there the leader
had joined them after stopping at Fort McMurray to tip off to Ripley
and Craig the bit of evidence that he hoped would clinch the case
against MacNair. More men joined the Snare Lake stampede--flat-faced
breeds from the lower Mackenzie, evil-visaged rivermen from the country
of the Athabasca and the Slave, and the renegade white men who were
Lapierre's underlings.

By dog-train and on foot they came, dragging their outfits behind them,
and in the eyes of each was the gleam of the greed of gold. The few
cabins which had escaped the conflagration had been pre-empted by the
first-comers, while the later arrivals pitched their tents and shelter
tarps close against the logs of the unburned portion of MacNair's
stockade.

At the time of Lapierre's arrival the colony had assumed the aspect of
a typical gold camp. The drifted snow had been removed from MacNair's
diggings, and the night-fires that thawed out the gravel glared red and
illuminated the clearing with a ruddy glow in which the dumps loomed
black and ugly, like unclean wens upon the white surface of the
trampled snow.

Lapierre, a master of organization, saw almost at the moment of his
arrival that the gold-camp system of two-man partnerships could be
vastly improved upon. Therefore, he formed the men into shifts: eight
hours in the gravel and tending the fires, eight hours chopping
cord-wood and digging in the ruins of MacNair's storehouse for the
remains of unburned grub, and eight hours' rest. Always night and day,
the seemingly tireless leader moved about the camp encouraging,
cursing, bullying, urging; forcing the utmost atom of man-power into
the channels of greatest efficiency. For well the quarter-breed knew
that his tenure of the Snare Lake diggings was a tenure wholly by
sufferance of circumstances--over which he, Lapierre, had no control.

With MacNair safely lodged in the Fort Saskatchewan jail, he felt safe
from interference, at least until late in the spring. This would allow
plenty of time for the melting snows to furnish the water necessary for
the cleaning up of the dumps. After that the fate of his colony hung
upon the decision of a judge somewhere down in the provinces. Thus
Lapierre crowded his men to the utmost, and the increasing size of the
black dump-heaps bespoke a