THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

BY

S. CARLETON

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY

GEORGE W. GAGE

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1920

Copyright, 1920,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published March, 1920

"I STOOD UP AND DROVE FOR ALL I WAS WORTH, AND THE GIRL BESIDE ME SHOT,—AND HIT!" Frontispiece. See page 76.

THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. I Come Home: And the Wolves Howl 1

II. My Dream: and Dudley's Girl 16

III. Dudley's Mine: and Dudley's Gold 30

IV. The Man in the Dark 46

V. The Caraquet Road: and the Wolves Howl Once More 56

VI. Mostly Wolves: and a Girl 71

VII. I Find Little Enough on the Corduroy Road, and Less at Skunk's Misery 86

VIII. Thompson! 100

IX. Tatiana Paulina Valenka! 116

X. I Interfere for the Last Time 134

XI. Macartney Hears a Noise: and I Find Four Dead Men 148

XII. Thompson's Cards: and Skunk's Misery 164

XIII. A Dead Man's Messenger 182

XIV. Wolves—and Dudley 199

XV. The Place of Departed Spirits 218

XVI. In Collins's Care 231

XVII. High Explosive 247

XVIII. Lac Tremblant 265

XIX. Skunk's Misery 283

XX. The End 293

THE LA CHANCE MINE MYSTERY

CHAPTER I

I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWL

Little as I guessed it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. But Skunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just come from the place.

Hungry, dog-tired, cross with the crossness of a man in authority whose orders have been forgotten or disregarded, I drove Billy Jones's old canoe across Lac Tremblant on my way home to Dudley Wilbraham's gold mine at La Chance, after an absence of months. It was halfway to dark, and the bitter November wind blew dead in my teeth. Slaps of spray from flying wave-crests blinded me with gouts of lake water, that was oddly warm till the cutting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on my bare hands and stinging face, that I had to keep dabbing on my paddling shoulder to get my eyes clear in order that I might stare in front of my leaky, borrowed canoe.

To a stranger there might have seemed to be nothing particular to stare at, out on a lake where the world was all wind and lumpy seas and growing November twilight; but any one who had lived at La Chance knew better. By the map Lac Tremblant should have been our nearest gold route to civilization, but it was a lake that was no lake, as far as transport was concerned, and we never used it. The five-mile crossing I was making was just a fair sample of the forty miles of length Lac Tremblant