CHAPTER VIII
"ON THE ATHABASKA"
"Who spilt that?" roared Ducane.
He lay on Chipewyan beach, with the red flare from the mosquito-smudges over him, and over half the population of Chipewyan where they celebrated the undoubted fact that the year's permits had come from the South, and that it was the whole duty of man to see that no one drop of them remained upon another by daybreak.
Out of the dark and noisy ring where ribald songs and drunken laughter had gone up these four hours past a face thrust forward. There was moisture on the forehead and the skin by the nostrils glistened. But by the tight lips and the still keen eyes Ducane knew it.
"I spilt that drink of yours," said Dick. "And if you're civil you shall have another. But I won't wait on a man who talks like a drunken cad."
Ducane sat up. He was flushed with conquest because, a few hours earlier, he had forced a promise from Jennifer. She had given it, brief and low, and without emotion, and he was not afraid of Dick Heriot any longer. Jennifer would manage him now. Jennifer would keep him out of the way whilst he and Robison did the work which they had come North to do. He laughed.
"Better than acting like one," he said. "I could tell things of you, Corporal Heriot."
Dick shrugged his shoulders. He had spent unprofitable hours in trying to discover why Ducane and Robison had chartered beforehand the only tug in Chipewyan and what they were going to do with it. He had spent more in trying to decide whether he should arrest Robison now or whether he might gain more by letting him do his work. And finally, he had drunk with the revellers on the beach until his temper was acutely on edge and his restlessness almost beyond restraint.
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