Wayland tore open the coat and felt for the notes.  They were gone.  He looked at Calamity.  A darker suspicion came.  Then, he caught the Cree woman by the shoulder and threw her to her feet.

“Calamity who did this?”

“Th’ trunk man, O’Finnigan!  Flood, he lead heem up; an’ t’ trunk man shoot, shoot quick close—­lak dat,” she said snapping her fingers round behind Wayland’s ear against the soft of his temple.

Wayland’s suspicions became a certainty.

“They will blame you,” he said, “do you understand me?  They will prove you did it; and hang you!  Ride for your life!  Ride for Canada; and hide!”

Was he thinking of Calamity or Eleanor?  But where was Flood; and where was the drunken man?

He fastened a stone to the end of the cut cable, and with a shout began dropping it down and down from the windlass.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE AWAKENING

By all the tricks of stage-craft and book-craft, of the copybook headlines and platitudinous lies which we have had rammed down our throats since childhood, virtue should have triumphed in the person of the Ranger, because he fought regardless of consequences for right.  MacDonald, the sheep rancher, who went out of his way to enforce the fair deal and the square deal, when he could very much more easily have remained safely at home, a fire-insurance, bread-and-butter, safety-guarantee Christian of the quiescent kind, MacDonald by all the tricks of the-be-good-and-you-will-prosper doctrines, ought not to have been shot down as he stood guard at the head of the mine shaft.

A very great many years ago, a very great Man, in fact, the very greatest moral teacher the world has ever known, declared that the milk-and-water, neither-hot-nor-cold, quiescent, safety-guarantee type of Christianity was a thing to be spewed out of the mouth; but that was a very great many years ago.  Time has softened the edge of that passion for right.  Perhaps, He didn’t mean it!  Perhaps, we have permitted sentimentality to sand-paper down the fighting edge of militant righteousness that goes out beyond the Safety Line!  To be sure, bread-and-butter goodness is an easier matter than risking hot shot beyond the Safety Line; and perhaps, a sentimental Deity may be persuaded to allow us a little jam on our bread and butter if we sit tight on the safe side with a fire-insurance policy in the shape of a creed!  Personally, I wonder when we all take to joining the sit-tight, safety-guarantee brigade, who is to stand on the outside guard?  Or is there any modern Fighting Line?  Or does the Fighting Line belong to the old Shibboleth legends of Canaanite and Jebusite and Perizzite and God knows what other “ite”?  I hear these ancient gentry preached about and the heroes who smote them hip and thigh extolled.  Personally, I am a great deal more interested in the modern tussle