Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge of murder. If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler, or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was assigned, plans should miscarry--an arrest be made--this man would take his prison sentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with a word could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about his neck.
The system worked. Now and again plans did miscarry--arrests were made by the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested upon evidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute. But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted his sentence--for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart was the fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.
With such consummate skill and finesse _did_ Lapierre plot, however, and with such Machiavelian cunning and _éclat_ were his plans carried out, that few failed. And those that did were credited by the authorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work of an intricate organization presided over by a master mind.
The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardest characters upon the frontier. Only Lapierre knew its exact strength, but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"--if he, by word or act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice--his life would be worth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to hell."
A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre Lapierre--but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few factors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided their time. One man _knew_ him for what he was. One, in all the North, as powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spies in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him. The one man Pierre Lapierre feared--Bob MacNair. And he, too, bided his time.
As Lapierre made his way to the camp of the Indians he pondered deeply. For Lapierre was troubled. The fact that MacNair had twice come upon him unexpectedly within the space of a month caused him grave concern. He did not know that it was entirely by chance that MacNair had found him, an unwelcome sojourner at Fort Rae. Accusations and recriminations had passed between them, with the result that MacNair, rough, bluff, and ready to fight at any time, had pounded the quarter-breed to within an inch of his life, and then, to the undisguised delight of the men of the H.B.C., had dragged him out and pitched him ignominiously into the lake.