The Valley of Silent Men. Curwood James Oliver

other you were hiding up at Kedsty's bungalow. You don't mind a fellow saying all this – when he is going to pop off soon – do you?"

      He was half frightened at the directness with which he had expressed the thing. He would gladly have buried his own curiosity and all of O'Connor's suspicions for another moment of her hand on his forehead. But it was out, and he waited.

      She was looking down, her fingers twisting some sort of tasseled dress ornament in her lap, and Kent mentally measured the length of her lashes with a foot rule in mind. They were superb, and in the thrill of his admiration he would have sworn they were an inch long. She looked up suddenly and caught the glow in his eyes and the flush that lay under the tan of his cheeks. Her own color had deepened a little.

      "What if you shouldn't die?" she asked him bluntly, as if she had not heard a word of all he had said about Kedsty. "What would you do?"

      "I'm going to."

      "But if you shouldn't?"

      Kent shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I'd have to take my medicine. You're not going?"

      She had straightened up and was sitting on the edge of her chair. "Yes, I'm going. I'm afraid of my eyes. I may look at you as I looked at Mr. Kedsty, and then – pop you'd go, quick! And I don't want to be here when you die!"

      He heard a soft little note of laughter in her throat. It sent a chill through him. What an adorable, blood-thirsty little wretch she was! He stared at her bent head, at the shining coils of her wonderful hair. Undone, he could see it completely hiding her. And it was so soft and warm that again he was tempted to reach out and touch it. She was wonderful, and yet it was not possible that she had a heart. Her apparent disregard of the fact that he was a dying man was almost diabolic. There was no sympathy in the expression of her violet eyes as she looked at him. She was even making fun of the fact that he was about to die!

      She stood up, surveying for the first time the room in which she had been sitting. Then she turned to the window and looked out. She reminded Kent of a beautiful young willow that had grown at the edge of a stream, exquisite, slender, strong. He could have picked her up in his arms as easily as a child, yet he sensed in the lithe beauty of her body forces that could endure magnificently. The careless poise of her head fascinated him. For that head and the hair that crowned it he knew that half the women of the earth would have traded precious years of their lives.

      And then, without turning toward him, she said, "Some day, when I die, I wish I might have as pleasant a room as this."

      "I hope you never die," he replied devoutly.

      She came back and stood for a moment beside him.

      "I have had a very pleasant time," she said, as though he had given her a special sort of entertainment. "It's too bad you are going to die. I'm sure we should have been good friends. Aren't you?"

      "Yes, very sure. If you had only arrived sooner – "

      "And I shall always think of you as a different kind of man-beast," she interrupted him. "It is really true that I shouldn't like to see you die. I want to get away before it happens. Would you care to have me kiss you?"

      For an instant Kent felt that his aorta was about to give away. "I – I would," he gasped huskily.

      "Then – close your eyes, please."

      He obeyed. She bent over him. He felt the soft touch of her hands and caught for an instant the perfume of her face and hair, and then the thrill of her lips pressed warm and soft upon his.

      She was not flushed or embarrassed when he looked at her again. It was as if she had kissed a baby and was wondering at its red face. "I've only kissed three men before you," she avowed. "It is strange. I never thought I should do it again. And now, good-by!" She moved quickly to the door.

      "Wait," he cried plaintively. "Please wait. I want to know your name. It is Marette – "

      "Radisson," she finished for him. "Marette Radisson, and I come from away off there, from a place we call the Valley of Silent Men." She was pointing into the north.

      "The North!" he exclaimed.

      "Yes, it is far north. Very far."

      Her hand was on the latch. The door opened slowly.

      "Wait," he pleaded again. "You must not go."

      "Yes, I must go. I have remained too long. I am sorry I kissed you. I shouldn't have done that. But I had to because you are such a splendid liar!"

      The door opened quickly and closed behind her. He heard her steps almost running down the hall, where not long ago he had listened to the last of O'Connor's.

      And then there was silence, and in that silence he heard her words again, drumming like little hammers in his head, Because you are such a splendid liar!"

      CHAPTER VI

      James Kent, among his other qualities good and bad, possessed a merciless opinion of his own shortcomings, but never, in that opinion, had he fallen so low as in the interval which immediately followed the closing of his door behind the mysterious girl who had told him that her name was Marette Radisson. No sooner was she gone than the overwhelming superiority of her childlike cleverness smote him until, ashamed of himself, he burned red in his aloneness.

      He, Sergeant Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals, the man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with deadly sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten – horribly beaten – by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible and at times distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the victor. The shame of the thing was his acknowledgment that a bit of feminine beauty had done the trick. He had made fun of O'Connor when the big staff-sergeant had described the effect of the girl's eyes on Inspector Kedsty. And, now, if O'Connor could know of what had happened here —

      And then, like a rubber ball, that saving sense of humor bounced up out of the mess, and Kent found himself chuckling as his face grew cooler. His visitor had come, and she had gone, and he knew no more about her than when she had entered his room, except that her very pretty name was Marette Radisson. He was just beginning to think of the questions he had wanted to ask, a dozen, half a hundred of them – more definitely who she was; how and why she had come to Athabasca Landing; her interest in Sandy McTrigger; the mysterious relationship that must surely exist between her and Inspector Kedsty; and, chiefly, her real motive in coming to him when she knew that he was dying. He comforted himself by the assurance that he would have learned these things had she not left him so suddenly. He had not expected that.

      The question which seated itself most insistently in his mind was, why had she come? Was it, after all, merely a matter of curiosity? Was her relationship to Sandy McTrigger such that inquisitiveness alone had brought her to see the man who had saved him? Surely she had not been urged by a sense of gratitude, for in no way had she given expression to that. On his death-bed she had almost made fun of him. And she could not have come as a messenger from McTrigger, or she would have left her message. For the first time he began to doubt that she knew the man at all, in spite of the strange thing that had happened under O'Connor's eyes. But she must know Kedsty. She had made no answer to his half-accusation that she was hiding up at the Inspector's bungalow. He had used that word – "hiding." It should have had an effect. And she was as beautifully unconscious of it as though she had not heard him, and he knew that she had heard him very distinctly. It was then that she had given him that splendid view of her amazingly long lashes and had countered softly,

      "What if you shouldn't die?"

      Kent felt himself suddenly aglow with an irresistible appreciation of the genius of her subtlety, and with that appreciation came a thrill of deeper understanding. He believed that he knew why she had left him so suddenly. It was because she had seen herself close to the danger-line. There were things which she did not want him to know or question her about, and his daring intimation that she was hiding in Kedsty's bungalow had warned her. Was it possible that Kedsty himself had sent her for some reason which he could not even guess at? Positively it was not because of McTrigger, the man he had saved. At least she would have thanked him in some way. She would not have appeared quite so adorably