![]() Then he lay stock-still in his buffalo robe. Slowly, Blake eased the revolver out from under his head and into the bitter cold. There was a click as the hammer cocked but its sound was smothered and lost among the coarse cloth folds of the blanket. Under the blanket Blake used as a pillow, his right hand closed on the Enfield's grip and his thumb eased back on the hammer. His nervous system taut like a bowstring at full draw. The drumbeat came from up on the roof beyond the trap door in the ceiling. There was blood dripping from the tips of the dead man's fingers but the splash of each drop as it hit the pool was drowned out by the slow, incessant, monotonous thud of a drum beating overhead. A pool of blood as red as the tunic spread out beneath the corpse. What was left of the man was still dressed in the bright scarlet tunic of the Northwest Mounted Police, the arms, with their sleeves decorated with gold braid now dangling down toward the plank and sawdust floor. The head was missing, the neck severed to expose vein and muscle, artery and bone in a circle of raw flesh. ![]() The body hung upside down from the ceiling by nails driven through both feet. Woodsman, is your courage stout? Beware! The root is wrapped about Your mother's heart, your father's bones, And like the mandrake comes with groans. ![]() Old is the tree, and the fruit good Very old and thick the wood.
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