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Title: Snow-blind
Author: Albert M. Treynor
Release date: August 16, 2025 [eBook #76689]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1928
Credits: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SNOW-BLIND ***
SNOW-BLIND
BY ALBERT M. TREYNOR
AUTHOR OF HANDS UP
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1928, 1929
By ALBERT M. TREYNOR
Published, February, 1929
Second printing, April, 1929
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I “Are You There?”
II After Many Years
III Dismal Trail
IV A Ghostly Voyageur
V The Girl in Handcuffs
VI The Great Owl Murder
VII In the Royal Scarlet
VIII Follow On
IX Grandfather’s Red Blankets
X Always Fire First
XI “Saut Sauvage”
XII Sergeant in Command
XIII Last-stand Outpost
XIV Squatter’s Rights
XV The Night Harriers
XVI The Honorable Murderer
XVII Vanishing Footprints
XVIII The Man Hunters
XIX Lost Loot
XX Scarlet and Gold
XXI Heading North
XXII Oogly
XXIII Brothers-in-Arms
XXIV There Were Three
XXV Inspector Tearl
XXVI One Whole Man
XXVII Hell Bent
XXVIII Snow-blind
XXIX Cocky-bird
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SNOW-BLIND
CHAPTER I
“ARE YOU THERE?”
“This,” said the bland voice on the air, “is Station WBZ, Springfield,
Massachusetts, broadcasting greetings from the home folks to the
far-advanced outposts of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I have a
letter for Sergeant Buck Tearl at Port-o’-Prayer in North Saskatchewan.
Good evening, Sergeant. Are you there?”
And then the message went into space on the waves of the ether. Like a
ripple on a pond, widening to the shores, the voice ranged all
directions to reach an audience half a world away. It was heard, no
doubt, by many lonesome chaps with ear-phones clamped to their heads:
trappers in snow-buried shacks, scattered over a hundred thousand miles
of forest and mountain and blizzard-scourged tundra; factors and
bush-rovers at the remotest fur-factories; whalers in stout ships,
nipped in the polar drift; frost-bitten policemen in barrack and camp,
stationed here and there in the great midnight around the curve of the
arctic circle, the uttermost videttes of the northern law.
“It is a queer message,” pursued the radio announcer in his pleasantly
modulated speech. “Maybe the man for whom it is meant hears me and will
understand. Here it is:
“Sergeant Buck Tearl, R.C.M.P., Port-o’-Prayer.” There was a momentary
pause and the voice cleared itself of a faint husk--a strangely personal
and familiar sound that for a moment seemed to bring the speaker out of
distance and invisibility into the very presence of the listener.
The man at the microphone went on with the letter.
“The dead do not always die,” he read. “If you can find Kablunak’s band
of A-hi-ag-muit Esquimaux, who winter, they say, on Queen Maud Sea, make
them tell you the truth.”
“I don’t know whether I pronounce the Esquimaux names correctly,” ended
the announcer, “but anyhow, that’s the letter, and it’s signed--Diane.”
Of course the broadcaster could not know whether Sergeant Tearl had a
radio receiver or was tuned-in that night on the wavelength of WBZ. Nor
could he have guessed that there was another man named Tearl, who
happened to be listening-in at this very moment, and in whose quiet New
York apartment that cryptic message arrived like an exploding grenade to
rearrange violently the whole of his future life.
Kitchener Tearl found WBZ by accident when in an idle moment he had
given the radio dial a careless spin. This much was fate or coincidence,
or whatever mischievous force it is that is constantly unsettling
people’s nicely settled affairs. But all that happened afterwards
followed as naturally and inevitably as blood follows the knife or youth
after its own reckless bent or birds take the course of the southerning
sun.
The greater part of the broadcasted messages in themselves were not of
much interest to an eavesdropper.
“Mother sends love.” “Father’s rheumatism is better.” “Bella wonders if
you remember her.” “Did you get the socks we sent last July?” “Baby
Nellie, born August second, is waiting for her first glimpse of Uncle
Jack.” Small, homely, intimate matters such as these were discussed in
the hearing of the rest of the world and flung off into the night to end
up under the crackle of the northern lights.
The messages would not have made Kitchener Tearl forget an engagement he
had made for that evening; it was the visioning of the men who were
receiving them. His imagination soared off to far, strange places which
he had never seen, nor ever expected to see, but which were names that
had been thrillingly real to him since his earliest days of boyhood.
The whirr of the elevator outside the foyer of his apartment, the rumble
of traffic coming up from the pavements of Park Avenue, were lost in the
sorcery of his straying thoughts in other, greater sounds: The grumble
of ice-floes, the slash of sleet on cabin walls, the rabid cry of the
wolf pack, the wind in the pines.
His lean, hard-kept body was sprawled motionless in his chair as he
listened and stared into immeasurable distances with one keen eyebrow
quizzically upcocked, seeing not the bright window-squares in the
apartment building across the way, but big timber and ice barrens and
mountains stacked behind mountains and the auroral glimmer on the Arctic
sky.
The fascination of the northland for Kitchener Tearl was a part of the
tradition of his blood and kind. One of his grandfathers long ago had
been a factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and he died with his
moccasins on in the frozen forests of Keewatin.
William Tearl, Kitchener’s father, had followed the trails that had been
broken ahead of him by Factor Jacob Tearl. He was an inspector in the
old Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
The story of Inspector Bill Tearl was left a grim, unwritten chapter in
the territorial records. Somewhere in the Ottawa files, after his name
and service reports, was set down in fading red ink the word--“missing.”
One night, more than twelve years ago, Bill Tearl had walked out from a
sub-post somewhere in the then-uncharted Vermilion River country, and
was never seen nor heard of again.
Tearl’s Yankee-born wife happened to be visiting in New York at the time
of the inspector’s disappearance. With her were her three children,
Gerald, who was sixteen years old, Kitchener, twelve, and Jane, an
elfish, jewel-eyed girl of nine.
An inheritance of money from her own side of the family had enabled Mrs.
Tearl to provide for the three fatherless youngsters, to send them one
after another to college, and to plan for a life of future comfort. And
then, the year Jerry graduated from the university, where he won renown
as one of the most ferocious half-backs who ever tore cleat-marks in the
Yale bowl, his charming mother was taken ill and suddenly died, and
Jerry became the head of the Tearls.
The two grown-up brothers and the growing sister went on living
together, a bit quarrelsomely, but with a fierce and undying loyalty.
Jerry gave promise of becoming as great a man in the business world as
he had been on the college gridirons. But tragedy once more stepped in
to decimate the family ranks.
The ex-line-plunger was notoriously quick-tempered. Nobody had ever
found out what it was all about, but he got into a fearful argument with
a man on a Broadway street corner, and had three-quarters killed that
man with his bare hands. A warrant of atrocious assault was issued by
the nearest magistrate, but Jerry left town a couple of jumps ahead of
the police. Kitchener and Jane never heard another word from him. Like
his father before him, he had abruptly quitted his place in the world to
be engulfed in the mystery of the passing years.
This had happened a long while ago. Kitchener was now twenty-four, the
elder of the remaining Tearls. In all this time he might have lost the
image of his prodigious brother in casual forgetfulness. But in his case
the hero-worship that had grown in the heart of boyhood still lingered
with all the sweetness of the earliest memories. The hearing of the name
Tearl choked him with a surging of emotion such as he would have felt if
his brother’s sinewy hand had been laid suddenly upon his shoulder.
When Kitchener’s sister came home at one o’clock that morning from some
sort of a party she had been attending somewhere or other, she found the
floor of the living room carpeted with her father’s old police maps,
while her brother crawled over them on his hands and knees, a strange
look in his dark, eager eyes.
“What the deuce, Kit?” she demanded from the doorway.
“I think I know where Jerry is,” he said.
Jane dropped the wrap from her fine arms and shoulders and came into the
room. “What?” she ejaculated.
Kitchener stood up and showed her the message he had taken down on
paper.
“Diane!” read Jane, womanlike, noticing first of all the woman in the
case. “Who’s Diane?”
“She sent the message over the radio. I’ve never heard of her before.”
Jane wrinkled her short nose as she perused her brother’s hasty scrawl.
“Who’s Buck Tearl?”
“Sounds like Jerry to me,” declared Kitchener.
“Why?” Jane had grown calm and skeptical. “Why would it be Jerry, when
it’s Buck?”
“There are not many Tearls in the world,” Kitchener reminded her. “It
isn’t like Smith or Einstein or O’Toole or Jones. As far as the nickname
goes, a man like Jerry would be apt to pick one up wherever he went. And
it just naturally ought to be ‘Buck.’
“Funny I never thought of it before,” he mused. “Knowing Jerry as I did,
I can’t understand now why I never guessed it. He went back where he
belonged, of course--the north and the Mounties.” Kitchener faced his
sister in tense excitement, “It’s Jerry, you can bet on it. He joined
up, and naturally by now he’d be a sergeant at least.”
Jane laughed, and then stopped and sighed. “We’re an odd outfit,” she
said, “each of us wasting our affections on the one up ahead. Dad
thought grandfather was a stupendous man, and Jerry worshiped Dad, and
you adore Jerry, and here am I, the last, with nothing to do but to be
simply foolish about you.”
He squeezed her graceful shoulders, and then turned away. “Don’t be an
ass,” he said.
“Can I help it?” she grinned.
“Listen here!” he said soberly. “Did you get the possible meaning of
that message?”
“About so-and-so’s Esquimaux?”
“No,” he returned, “the other part,” and repeated the line: “‘The dead
do not always die.’ Does that by any chance make you think of Dad?”
She looked startled for an instant, and then closed her firm mouth and
shook her head. “No. Why should it? You’d be crazy to get any such
ideas. Dad went--mother used to say--_écarté_--lost, frozen in the
drifts, and was never found. Or perhaps he was ambushed by some outlaw
he was after. Whatever happened, it was the end.”
“Are you so sure it was the end?”
“As sure as I can ever be in this life.”
“I’m not.” Kitchener gathered up the tattered police maps, refolded them
gingerly, and restored them to the keeping of the old mahogany highboy.
“You don’t know everything,” he remarked over his shoulder. “For
instance, you never heard of the Tearl annuity.”
“The which?” she asked.
“The year Dad was lost,” Kitchener informed her, “an express money order
for five thousand dollars was delivered at our address here in town. The
envelope that contained it was mailed in San Francisco, postmarked
January first. There was no writing--no mark to identify the sender.”
The girl stared with a quick contraction of her jade-tinged eyes. “You
mean--?” she began, and then left the rest unasked.
“I don’t know,” answered her brother. “I only know that another five
thousand came the next January and the next, and so on, every year, as
regularly as the months rolled around. One draft was sent from Portland,
another from Sitka, one from St. Johns, Newfoundland, two from Quebec,
one from Kamchatka, Siberia.”
“You’ve tried to trace the sender?”
“Mother first, then Jerry. Lately I’ve been trying. No use! If our
unknown friend were a skulking criminal he could have taken no greater
pains to keep his tracks covered.”
“You think it could have been--” The girl’s speech checked for an
instant on a failing breath, and then she ended in a whispered word,
“Dad?”
“Who knows? If he were alive and could send money he could have written
to us. You were old enough to remember what he was like. It wouldn’t
have been like him to duck his family. No matter what had happened to
him, he surely would have sent us word. And yet--”
Kitchener took a turn the length of the room, and then came back to
stand head-high above his sister. When he was in deadly earnest over
something his left eyebrow had an unaccountable habit of cocking itself
at the jauntiest angle, as though he had thought up something funny to
say. Jerry used to tell him he looked at such moments like a wily,
black-headed crow getting ready to guffaw over his sins.
Jane knew that expression of old, and she knew that whatever notion was
sticking in his head, all the world could not shake it out. “Hello,
Cocky-bird!” she exclaimed. “What’s up now?”
“I’m going to find Jerry,” he said.
No Tearl was ever much astonished by anything another Tearl ever decided
to do. She faced him anxiously, but without the least show of surprise.
“When?” was all she said.
“As soon as I can pull out.”
“But you’re by no means certain that Sergeant Buck Tearl is Jerry.”
“Yes, I am. And if by any chance he didn’t receive to-night’s message, I
want to see that he gets it. And I want to see Jerry.”
“You know what it means, of course. The rail head doesn’t go near
Port-o’-Prayer. The rivers will be frozen up there. No canoes. You
haven’t been in the forests since you were twelve. You’ll have to walk,
my boy!” Her smile did not quite hide the dismay that had suddenly
drenched her eyes. “You’ll never make it.”
“That money,” he pursued, without looking at his sister. “We never spent
any of it because we didn’t know whether it was ours to spend. Mother
put it in the bank. She called it the mystery fund. She deposited five
thousand every January--then Jerry--then I. I only learned about it a
short while before Jerry left. Didn’t think it was anything to bother
you with. But I’m telling you now. There’s sixty thousand dollars all
told, plus the interest. I’ll turn the book over to you. Whatever you do
about it is your own business.”
“It’s all settled, then? You’re going?”
“I don’t see any way out of it,” said Kitchener.
Jane’s hands reached up to smooth her brother’s raven-black hair. Then
she stood a-tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “If you think not,” she said,
“there’s no way out of it.”
CHAPTER II
AFTER MANY YEARS
When Kitchener Tearl left New York the city was basking in a spell of
sultry, Indian Summer weather that had lingered into late October. As
his Pullman traveled up the length of the Hudson Valley he saw robins in
the orchards and flocks of belated blackbirds hovering about the meadows
and fields. The hills and mountains still loomed green against the line
of a soft and sunny sky.
Farther north he found notable changes in the climate and the scenery.
On the other side of the border the air tingled with a frosty crispness,
and the fringes of the forest were blazoned with the colors of the dying
season. The people of Ottawa were wearing overcoats and keeping their
hands in their pockets. On the way across Ontario the harvested acres
reached sere and bleak to the chilly horizon. At Winnipeg the edges of
the forked rivers were rimed in the morning with a first film of ice.
Traveling from Saskatchewan into Alberta he saw long chains of wild
geese, swans, and ducks in clouds, fleeing ahead of winter. Near
Edmonton he caught sight of a man walking alongside a pond with a string
of muskrat traps slung from his shoulder. The train going north on the
branch line ran through snow flurries that increased in frequency and
severity all the way to Fort McMurray.
Here he threw away his timetable and opened up his maps. From this point
on his life would be regulated, not by the hours of a clock, but by the
changing seasons.
He dug out of his baggage a pair of scarlet “four-point” Hudson’s Bay
blankets--heirlooms that had been in his family for more than half a
century--and he went to bed warmly in the unheated inn and dreamed
gratefully of Grandfather Jake Tearl who for twenty years had defied the
cold of Keewatin in these same red, imperishable blankets.
The trip down the river afforded him three weeks of complete idleness.
The boat ran aground on all the charted shallows, and the crew of Indian
stevedores would lighten ship by lightening the cargo: afloat once more,
they would re-load and go hopefully northward for a few more miles,
until they stuck on another bar. Kitchener had traveled up this same
river on this same scraped-bottom steamer with his mother and his
brother and his little sister Jane, when they undertook their fateful
journey to the city, twelve years ago. He spent the short, gray days on
deck, facing sleet and swirling snow, trying to pick out old landmarks
as he watched the endless marching of the great spruce forest along the
white streaked hills.
They cracked ice the last hundred miles, before they reached the long,
black lake that is the geographical key to all the wild watercourses to
the north and the west and the east. The captain of the boat hoped to go
on down Mackenzie River, but his solitary passenger never learned how
far he got. Kitchener had his baggage dumped on the shore near a
Chippewyan encampment, and although sheet ice enclosed a part of the
lake, he hired two Indians with a canoe, and crossed in a headwind and a
heavy sea to his destination at the farthest lonesome harbor. So his
sister Jane’s dismal prediction came to nothing. He reached
Port-o’-Prayer and had not walked a step of the way.
Kitchener left his belongings on the beach and strolled up the hill
towards the group of white-painted buildings that huddled at the edge of
the vast forest. There was a sort of inn near the landing, a story and a
half log building, with battened doors and windows and an unsmoking
chimney. Nobody lived there at this season. Farther on were the
company’s store houses and the residency of the store-keeper. The
buildings were shuttered and silent, not even a dog was visible in the
snowy compound.
In the spring and early summer, when the trappers had come in from the
forests, Port-o’-Prayer looked like a populous village. Now the
store-keeper was the sole remaining inhabitant. He had sent out his furs
long since and had hibernated for the winter.
Kitchener routed the man out of his quarters and found him to be an
untalkative, sad-featured Scotsman. He was so lacking in curiosity that
he did not even show wonderment at the sight of a tenderfoot who had
journeyed into the back-country while winter was beginning to close up
all the routes of retreat.
He answered the newcomer’s questions with an air of pained but patient
politeness. Yes--a Sergeant Buck Tearl had stopped here at the post. But
he went away again, after a couple of days. This was nearly a month ago.
Where had he gone? North somewhere, into the Vermilion River country.
There was a police look-out station there at _Saut Sauvage_, on the
ground that vaguely divided the Esquimaux from the forest tribes of the
Cree and Yellow Knives. The sergeant was making an Arctic patrol,
presumably on the trail of evil-doers.
What was he like, this Sergeant Tearl? He was a big man, who spoke
softly, and yet had a hard and dangerous-looking mouth. While he was at
Port-o’-Prayer he had kept on his lynxskin capote and the store-keeper
had seen only his mouth and nose and his disconcerting eyes.
Even this meager description set Kitchener’s pulses tingling. Having
come this far he had no thought except to go on, as far as _Saut
Sauvage_, if need be. This man surely was his brother Jerry.
Had Sergeant Tearl picked up a radio message sent to him on the
twenty-fifth of last month? The store-keeper didn’t know. He himself had
no interest in hearing things out of the air. The company had given him
a receiver last year, but it was too much trouble to buy new batteries
for it. If he wanted to hear voices and songs he could go sit in the
Chippewyan camp up the river.
Kitchener decided to go on at once. He would need a sledge and a train
of huskies. It was snowing steadily and drearily now, and the trails
would lie under shrouds to-morrow. What about dogs? The store-keeper had
a couple he could sell. One of them would do all right for a king-pin.
The Indians probably could spare two or three others. But they would
come high--a hundred dollars a dog at least. Men were feeding their
draught animals again, and weren’t kicking and clubbing them away from
the camps as they did in the summer. This was dog-time.
Fortunately Kitchener had no need to stint himself in money. He acquired
the store-keeper’s two spare huskies, a serviceable sledge, a pair of
snowshoes and a load of Hudson’s Bay company staple groceries. At
daybreak next morning he hitched in the two dogs, set his face to the
snow-laden wind, and was off on the river route.
Years ago young Kit Tearl had followed his brother or his father through
another spruce forest on such white, blustery days as this, sturdily
planting a pair of toy-sized snowshoes in the tracks of the bigger
raquettes ahead. He hadn’t thought of that boy in a long while. But when
he shoved his toes into the _babiche_ thongs and started out through the
powdery drifts he was surprised to discover that snowshoeing was a
logical and familiar method of locomotion.
It was the same with the “gee” pole and the dog traces and the dogs. As
he coursed through the thickets at the edge of the freezing river, he
found himself trudging along effortlessly, managing his sledge and the
tandem of trotting dogs with a subconscious facility, as though a
long-forgotten part of himself had breathed the tang of the wilderness
and suddenly awakened to take charge of his affairs.
The lessons of childhood may be buried deep by passing time and quite
forgotten. But things well learned are never really lost. He strode
forward with an easy swing of the hips, his toes pointed straight ahead,
as a woodsman walks. Eyes accustomed to look placidly and rather
humorously upon the world, somehow had grown sober and restlessly alert.
It did not seem like a recollection of ancient teaching, but an
instinct, rather, that prompted him to keep a lookout twenty paces ahead
for trail signs and to pass invariably on the windward side of the
denser thickets.
He would have said yesterday that he did not know a word of any Indian
language. But when he pulled into the Chippewyan encampment he was
amazed to discover his tongue twisting into strange clicking and
grunting sounds of speech. He understood the talk of the sooty-skinned
men who emerged from the huts and teepees, and it was evident that they
understood him.
Yes, the tribe had a few very good, excellent sledge dogs for sale.
After long dickering Kit purchased a couple of undersized, slinking
starvelings, which he had to accept because his sharp-dealing hosts
would not part with any others. But when he tried to obtain a guide for
his northward trip, business relations promptly ceased.
The tribesmen could think up a hundred reasons why nobody wanted a job.
The whitefishing at this moment was too good to be neglected. One man
had promised his squaw not to leave Port-o’-Prayer, another’s moccasins
hurt his feet if he walked too far, a third felt his rheumatism coming
on, a fourth would have to go down to church on Christmas. Besides, the
proposed journey would reach the country of the Dog-Ribs and
Yellow-Knife Indians. Nobody was afraid of these bad men, the
Chippewyans wanted it to be known: they simply weren’t going, that was
all.
While Kitchener was engaged in his most persuasive efforts the flap of
one of the teepees was jerked back and a voice spoke to him in English.
He turned to face a white man who had come out to join the group by the
sledge.
The newcomer fixed Kitchener with a long, measuring stare. He was a
gaunt, big-boned man, slouchy and loose-knit of body, with lengthy,
dangling arms hinged powerfully to the knotted muscles of his stooping
shoulders. The temperature was approaching zero, but he stood
unshivering in a sleeveless athletic undershirt and without any hat.
There was a swipe of lather across the bulge of his hard, bluish jaw.
Evidently he had been interrupted in the act of shaving. His lean, dark
face was marked here and there with glaring white lines that might have
been scars of knife cuts, and his close-cropped scalp likewise showed
the seams of old wounds. Although Kitchener himself stood an even six
feet without his pacs and snowshoes, this stranger overtopped him by a
full two inches.
“North myself,” said the man. “Shoving off two hours before to-morrow’s
daylight. You can come with me.”
He spoke with a sharp-clipt brevity and without any trace of accent.
Kitchener should have been glad to find a man of his own language and
race for a companion. But somehow he was taken aback by the abruptness
of the proposal. The stranger’s deep-set eyes looked cold and
calculating in the winter twilight.
Kitchener had a feeling that he would have preferred an Indian. “Where
are you going?” he temporized.
“Not as far as _Saut Sauvage_. But I can put you on the track when you
turn off.”
“What’s your name?” asked Tearl.
“Jim,” said the other. “What’s yours?”
“Kit,” answered Kitchener, and checked a smile. He could be reserved too
if there was any reason for it.
“All right. You have your muts fed and ready to leave by six.”
Kitchener nodded. There was nothing further to be said. The man had
overheard him appealing to the Chippewyans for a guide. He could think
up no excuse for refusing the services that perhaps were offered with
honest intent.
He swept the man with a speculating glance, wondering who he might be.
If he were an ordinary bushman he would have been out on his trapping
grounds before now, circling his lines. His high boot-pacs and his
Mackinaw trousers were new and obviously of city manufacture.
Nevertheless he must be a forest man or he would not be pushing off with
such quiet confidence into a country that was barely known to the outer
world.
Although he had removed his upper garments to shave, he had kept on a
cartridge belt and a holster, from which frankly jutted the ivory handle
of a heavy revolver. Outside of the police, men of the wilderness
carried rifles habitually, but seldom burdened themselves with pistols.
It was a very fine weapon this stranger carried. Kitchener’s eyelashes
blinked as there came to him from out of the obscurity of memory or
imagination one of those dim and tantalizing flashes that try to bring
back a sound or a sight or an experience, once familiar, and afterwards
faded to dreamy inconsequence. The butt of the revolver was made of two
pieces of old, yellow ivory, handsomely carved and scribed. Kitchener
had a queer, startled feeling that he had seen it somewhere before.
He found the stranger’s formidable eyes upon him, and he looked up and
said anything to cover his momentary lapse of mind. “I’ll be glad to
make a deal with you.”
“Deal?” echoed the other coldly. “What do you think I am--a professional
guide? I’ve asked you to go with me. Come or not, it’s all the same.”
“Thank you,” said Kitchener. “I’ll come.”
The Chippewyans gave the two white men a sleeping space in one of their
skin teepees, and after taking potluck at the camp kettle, Kit rolled up
in his grandfather’s red blankets and went to bed. He tried to sleep,
but his thoughts kept going back to the ivory-handled revolver. It
belonged somewhere in the past, either this or a gun exactly like it.
Time after time the recollection almost came to him, and then escaped
behind the curtains of the mind.
Four or five Indians were soddenly asleep on the farther side of the
airy teepee. Jim, the stranger, was stretched out in the open space
between, a relaxed and quiet shape, breathing slowly and regularly. The
faint radiance of the northern night reached through the smoke hole of
the lodge poles to outline his sleeping form. He had unstrapped his
cartridge belt, and the ivory-handled revolver lay within reach of his
right hand.
Kitchener tried to make himself comfortable, first on one side and then
on the other. But he remained awake, hearing the cracking of branches
and the whisper of snow on the caribou skins. After a long while he
flung off his blankets and sat up. He might as well settle this thing
that was destroying his night’s rest.
The stranger was obviously asleep. Kit moved forward on his knees, and
the man did not budge. He reached the cartridge belt, extracted the
revolver from its holster and crept across the teepee to the flapping
doorway. None of the sleepers spoke or stirred.
From his shirt pocket Kitchener produced a match. He waited for a
moment, and then struck a light, cupping his hands carefully to break
the reflection behind him. Peering tensely, he turned the weapon in
front of the match. The blued steel of the barrel bore the
manufacturer’s trademark, with the patent-rights dates, and on the frame
was a small, silver shield, carrying a line of fine engraving. He bent
closer and read the inscription:
“W. T., insp., R. N.-W. M. P., ’16.”
Kitchener went back on his hands and knees and replaced the gun in the
holster. Then he drew his blankets about his shoulders and sat huddled
and shivering--staring into vacancy--
He saw far back through space and time. He remembered a twelve-year-old
boy seated on the steps of the barracks of the police. It was a sweet,
green afternoon with the spring sun flecking the parade ground between
rustling branches, while robins and red-polls and pipits flashed singing
among the trees. There was a tall, soldierly figure in a scarlet coat,
standing before a group of uniformed men. He recalled that one of these
men--a grizzled sergeant of police--had made a sort of awkward, halting
speech. In a presentation case of mahogany and velvet lay an
ivory-butted revolver.
These men had assembled to say good-by to their commanding officer, who
had been assigned to a far-distant post. They wished him to accept this
beautiful six-shooter as a memento of their affection and esteem. The
sergeant had said: “May it never fire first; may it never fire too
late.” And the twelve-year-old boy had listened and swelled with the
glory of the moment.
The tall officer was Kit’s father, and on that occasion they had seen
each other for almost the last time. Inspector Bill Tearl had buckled on
his big, new gun and voyaged away to the north.
To-night, after the long lapse of years, Kitchener had looked again at
his father’s revolver, and another man was wearing it.
CHAPTER III
DISMAL TRAIL
At the coldest and dreariest hour of the morning, in darkness and
silence so intense that an early riser must feel the snow stinging his
face to know that it was still snowing, Kit Tearl was out of his
blankets, poking the night fire and thawing out the coffee pot.
The Indians would lie sluggishly until daybreak, but the other white man
aroused himself a few minutes behind his traveling companion. Before he
donned his fur parka and mittens he stood half naked outside the teepee,
revolving his body in the weather, and stretching his sinewy arms, as
though he took relish in the snow beating upon his skin.
The two men barely exchanged greetings, and they ate breakfast without a
syllable of speech. The stranger fed and harnessed his dogs and waited
in dour silence while Tearl was putting his sorry team into the traces.
When the Chippewyan curs and the huskies from Port-o’-Prayer found
themselves in harness together for the first time the inevitable
dog-fight took place, and ended in as many seconds as there were dogs.
The leader, a red-furred Chinook cross called Buzz-saw, walked back
through his team-mates and left them on their backs, howling.
The tall man stood aloof until the trouble was settled. “Men could learn
something from the dogs,” he remarked. “When two or more start some
place together they ought to fight it out before they take the trail.
Then there’d be no future arguments.”
“As long as you know the trail, and I don’t,” said Kit, smoothly, “we
don’t have to prove which is the king-pin. You lead, I’ll follow.”
Until the dull, leaden daylight seeped through the forest Kit drove his
team and followed in the crunching furrow left by the vaguely seen
figure that stalked ahead.
He had said nothing about the ivory-handled revolver and was careful to
give no hint of last night’s discovery. Since their first meeting the
stranger had inspired him with distrust and an unaccountable feeling of
apprehension. To mention the fact that the gun he carried belonged to a
mysteriously “lost” police officer might precipitate a show-down such as
Kit was not yet prepared to meet. Common sense advised him to wait and
keep his eyes open, to find out who this man was and whence he came. If
he had any part in the tragedy of Inspector Tearl’s disappearance, it
would be insanity to question him or put him on his guard. He could
vanish permanently into the storm if he chose, or simply turn with a
single shot and let the ivory-handled revolver preserve its own ancient
secret.
Kit was carried along by a grim excitement as he dogged the footsteps of
his laconic companion. It was an odd whimsey of fate that had brought
them both on the same day into this out-of-the-way part of the
wilderness. For twelve years a great force of relentless, sharp-eyed
man-hunters, with every resource of experience and organization at their
command, had searched ceaselessly for news of a lost comrade. The
scarlet-clad brigade does not lightly abandon its own. Countless patrols
had turned up, time after time, with “nothing to report.” But where a
thousand seasoned bushmen had sought fruitlessly, young Kit Tearl, on
his first night in the big timber, had stumbled upon a clew that perhaps
might lead to the knowledge of what had happened to the missing
inspector of police. His errand had suddenly changed to such grave
import that he was almost afraid to look into the future. A huge
responsibility had fallen upon his shoulders. Of secondary concern now
was the finding of Sergeant Buck Tearl. His new mission was to hold the
trail and, by hook or crook, to ferret out the history of the man with
the ivory-butted gun.
The short day broke sullenly to the steady accompaniment of falling
snow. Kit and his traveling mate were cruising through a dense spruce
forest. There were no landmarks visible--nothing but trees and trees and
trees, with the endless expanse of snow underfoot and snow-chinked
ceilings of greenery above.
Men and dogs were like shadows stealing through muffled, unechoing
corridors of whiteness. The only sounds to be heard were the silken
whisper of sledge runners, the padding of industrious feet, the creak of
raquettes sliding through the feathery drifts.
The motions of snowshoeing came naturally enough to Kit, but by the end
of his first couple of hours on the march he began to feel acute little
pains in his ankles and calves and thighs. Since his graduation from
college his most arduous journeys had been undertaken by subway between
his apartment and the law office in which he had hoped in time to become
a junior partner. He was in for a few days of torment before his muscles
hardened up; meanwhile he shut a stubborn jaw and held the pace.
A while before noon they halted for a breathing space and to give the
dogs a drink. They picked up a cold snack and Kit’s companion squatted
by his sledge, unsociable and saturnine, crunching with strong, white
teeth the bannock and hard chunk of pemmican which he had produced from
his pack.
The taciturnity of the man was beginning to wear upon Tearl’s nerves. If
he would only say something, even to grouch at his fellow traveler! But
his harsh mouth stayed shut and his eyes remained as cold and unfeeling
as the wilderness that reached into mysterious silence for a thousand
miles about him.
They had left the river far behind and were traveling a diagonal course
across the spruce ridges. To ignore the natural guidance of the valleys
and waterways is the easiest way of getting lost in the big timber. Each
wooded crown or hollow looked exactly like the hills and hollows ahead
or those left behind. Had Kit been alone he would have been hopelessly
muddled long ago. But the stranger apparently scorned the need of route
marks. He plowed on tirelessly and without hesitation, having neither
sun nor compass to correct his turnings, driving his dogs through the
unbroken leagues of the forest, breaking trail and never at loss in his
points of direction.
Kitchener at first thought that the man’s silence was due merely to a
surly and unfriendly disposition. But as they traversed the miles of
solitude, it occurred to him that perhaps there were grimmer reasons for
keeping so quiet. He noticed that his trail-mate continually shifted his
glance, right and left, and whenever he came to an open glade in the
woods, where a moving object would stand out boldly against the snowy
backgrounds, he invariably skulked close to the edges of the fringing
thickets. At every high ridge he paused to scan the surrounding
landscape and to watch briefly over his own back-trail.
Once when the dogs started up a snowshoe rabbit and gave chorus
excitedly, their driver sent them back to their business with a savagely
curling whiplash, and within ten seconds had reduced them to whimpering
obedience. On another occasion the man checked his team in mid-stride on
the slant of a sheer hillside. He crouched to stare fixedly across the
valley, and, with a quick, reflexive jerk, his hand reached for the
rifle that rode under the lashings of his sledge. Whatever he thought he
saw or heard, it failed to reveal itself. By the time Kit had scrambled
across the slide, he had straightened again and was ready to send his
team onward.
“What was it?” Kit asked.
The man gave him a stony look from under his wet, bristling eyebrows.
“Habit!” he explained in a voice that he was cautious to keep lowered.
“It gets to be second nature to keep a lookout around you.”
“You were grabbing for your rifle,” Tearl observed.
“Thought I saw a moose,” the other returned sourly, and commanded his
team to _marche_!
Kitchener followed without further comment. But he knew that the man was
lying. The sledges were overloaded now, and it would be impossible for
either of them to take on any extra haunches of meat. Besides, no moose
would ever have allowed them to approach that close on his windward
side, as this woodsman knew perfectly well. It was evident that he was
on his guard against somebody or something that he feared was on his
trail or ambushed in the dim coverts ahead.
The winter darkness overtook them in mid-afternoon, and they promptly
made camp. In a deep little glen, screened densely by the alders, where
a spring of water welled forth in a half frozen trickle from underneath
an old, fallen hemlock, they erected shelter sheets and spread their
blankets. Jim built a tiny fire of knots kicked off the rotting tree,
and took pains to keep the flame low and well hidden in the deepest
pocket of their retreat. It was not an honest fire of logs that a
care-free bushman would have ignited to warm himself on a winter’s
night. Obviously the man did not wish to risk the attention of spying
eyes.
Kitchener was too tired to perturb himself over the significance of all
these precautions. He fed his dogs, helped to drain the pot of coffee,
wrapped his aching frame in the red blankets, and in ten seconds had
fallen into profound sleep.
What it was that aroused him he could not have said. The wind had died
during the night and the forest was invested in utter quiet. Jim had
trampled out the fire before he turned in. The faint aurora of a
northern white night lent a magical unreality to the muffled shapes of
the surrounding forest. Great downy snowflakes sifted interminably
through the weary-drooping branches. Kitchener had no idea whether it
was midnight or the edge of daybreak.
A drift of snow had formed over his feet and a current of outside air
had found a way in between the flaps of his blankets. He was curled up
in a tight ball, cramped and shivering. With clicking teeth he sat up,
intending to remake his bed.
His companion had bunked down on the opposite side of the spring.
Kitchener looked sleepily in that direction, and then his eyes blinked
wider and he looked harder. In the obscurity he could just make out the
oblong shape of the folded robes. But they lay flat on the ground. There
was nothing under them. Wonderingly, Kit crept forward to make sure that
he was not deceiving himself. He pulled back the furs, and saw in the
snow the deep impression of a man’s body. Jim had rolled up under his
covers for a while--presumably until he was sure that the other man was
safely asleep. Then he had got up again, and disappeared from camp.
At first Kitchener supposed that the man had decided to rid himself of
his traveling mate and had sneaked away into the night. But a hurried
glance around corrected that notion. Jim’s packed sledge still remained
where he had unhitched the evening before on the other side of the
brook, and on the neighboring slope, where the dogs had buried
themselves in the snow, a group of little hummocks, like grave mounds,
tallied in number with the count of the two teams. The man had slipped
off somewhere on some benighted business of his own, but it would seem
that he expected to come back.
Kit fastened his boots and picked up his rifle. The other man had taken
his own gun from the sledge, and his broad-toed snowshoes also were
missing. It was merely a question of casting across the brook to pick up
the web-scuffled marks in the snow. Jim had climbed out of the hollow
and, for some unguessed reason, had struck back over the windings of his
own down-country trail.
There was no hesitation on Kit’s part. Here was a chance for
discoveries. It must be a momentous errand to pull a man out of his warm
robes in the middle of such a night. He noticed that his fellow traveler
wore broad snowshoes with a peculiar square web packing. An inspection
of the departing prints showed only a light powdering of new-fallen
flakes. Presumably the man had quitted camp only a short while ago. Kit
scrambled up the embankment, intending to follow.
From a distance of a half-dozen paces he could dimly make out the
furrowed line that curved down through the spruces. By staying off at
one side of the trail he could pursue the back-track without being
betrayed later by his own footsteps.
Kit reached the top of the first terrace and there halted with a
startled abruptness. He had an impression that something had stirred
behind him. A bulky shadow loomed in the alder thicket. Before he had
half turned a brawny arm reached suddenly forward to crook itself about
his head, and an astounding voice accosted him.
“Hello, Cocky-bird!”
For an instant Kit felt as though his heart had gone dead in his chest,
and then all his blood coursed through him again in a wild, warm
resurgence. He knew without looking around. The low, mocking laugh, the
bearlike embrace squeezing his head and pinching his ears: there was
only one person in the world who ever hugged him like this, or chuckled
at him with such ironic amusement. It was Gerald Tearl. It could be
nobody on earth except his brother Jerry.
CHAPTER IV
A GHOSTLY VOYAGEUR
The arm in its rough, icy sleeve clutched Kit tightly, and in that
breath-taking moment he neither moved nor recovered the voice to speak.
It was as though time had swept backwards to rediscover the heart of an
eager, small boy, whose bigger, rougher brother sometimes stalked up
behind him with laughter to clench his head like this. The pain of his
ruffled ears had always seemed to him a very trifling price to pay for
the ecstasy of being noticed by the redoubtable Jerry. Even to-night
Kitchener was conscious only of a sudden, blinding happiness in feeling
himself caught in that harshly affectionate grip, in knowing that his
brother had found him.
“I saw your funny old face this morning,” said the man behind him. “You
stopped on a hillside and goggled your eyes my direction. And then I
knew it was you, Cocky-bird.”
Kit broke the muscular hold and squirmed around. He saw a tall,
deep-chested figure in duffles and furs, and wearing the royal insignia
of the northern police.
“Jerry!” he gasped.
The other man grinned at him, displaying teeth as white as the snow that
clung to his hood.
Jerry had matured since Kit last saw him, and seemingly had grown in
stature and taken on several more inches of girth. The eyes that
twinkled in the half-light were older with knowledge and experience.
Even in smiling the mouth held something of the ruthless inflexibility
of a wolf-trap. He looked harder and more competent than ever before,
and also, Kit fancied, with a touch of misgiving, much more self-willed
and reckless and devil-may-care.
“Are you Sergeant Buck Tearl?” Kit asked.
“None other. Almost demoted now and then, but still Sergeant Tearl. What
are you doing here, Oakheart?”
“I intercepted a radio message for you from WBZ. It was about some
Esquimaux and the dead not dying. I’ve got it written down for you. I
was sure this Buck party would be you.”
Jerry laughed quietly. “The same old Cocky-bird! Would hike three
thousand miles through a freeze-up of hell--if you take the notion--just
to tell me you got WBZ on your radio. That would be little Kit--always.
Too bad, after all your trouble, but I got the message too. I carry a
small, portable set on my sledge, and I picked it out of the air the
same night you did, about a month ago.”
“Then you must know--” Kit regarded him sharply. “What does it mean?
Who’s Diane?”
Jerry shook his head. “I’ll tell you about that later when we have a
little more time--all that I know, at least. It’s a strange story, and
may bring on things still stranger before we’re through. Just now we
have more immediate things to think about. How do you happen to be
consorting with this egg I saw you with to-day?”
“Jim What’s-his-name? I ran into him at Port-o’-Prayer, and he offered
to guide me part way to _Saut Sauvage_, where they said you had gone.”
“That’s all you know about him?”
“No,” said Kit, “that isn’t all I know about him.” He stole a glance
around the thickets and dropped his speech to a whisper. “He’s got Dad’s
old ivory-butted gun.”
“All right.”
Sergeant Tearl accepted the fact with a nod that might have seemed
almost indifferent. “He’s the mug I thought he was. I’ve been hovering
on him for several days, and of course he knows that I came in through
Port-o’-Prayer, just as you knew. He thought he saw me yesterday noon,
when I was watching from the opposite hill. He did, but it’s a good
thing for all of us that he changed his mind and decided he didn’t. It’s
too soon to kill him.”
Kit stared at his brother, chilled not so much by the remark as the
matter-of-fact tone of its utterance. “Who is he?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what name he’s going by now. His real name is Simeon Bent,
but the guards down at the prison in Ottawa called him ‘Hell’ Bent. You
can draw your own conclusions. He just finished an eleven-year stretch,
and they let him out a few weeks ago.”
Kitchener studied the dim vistas of the snowy landscape. “He told me his
name was Jim. But perhaps I misunderstood. He may have said ‘Sim.’
Where’s he gone now?”
“Just took a saunter down through the forest to find me. People are so
ready to accept the belief that it is easiest to murder a policeman when
he is in bed asleep. You’re supposed to sleep soundest in the small
hours of the morning.”
“You don’t mean--” Kit gasped.
“Why not?” observed Jerry placidly. “He knows I’m around here somewhere.
He has a pretty little job afoot, but he can’t go ahead until the field
is clear. He’s got to get me out of the way. I was sure he’d strike back
to-night to intersect my sledge tracks. He won’t find the trail until
he’s five miles up country. I detoured widely and came in here from the
east instead of the south.
“Caught a little sleep about a hundred yards from here.” The sergeant
pushed back his sleeve to observe the luminous dial of the watch
strapped around his big-boned wrist. “One-thirty now. It’ll be three
before Sim makes the circuit. That gives us time for a family reunion.
How’s little Jane?”
“She’s a grown woman, Jerry. Pretty and sweet and stubborn as a mule.”
“Little Jane!” ruminated the sergeant, with the faintest break in his
voice. “She’s the best of our tribe. Give her a kiss from the outcast,
if you ever see her again. I’m not at all sure that you will.” Jerry
measured his brother’s straight-standing figure with a critical eye.
“I’ve got to use you, Mr. Stoutenberg, now that I’ve got you. Sorry!”
Jerry reached forward a mittened hand and his iron fingers clamped down
for a moment on the other’s shoulder. “Did you make the varsity squad,
Cocky-bird?” he asked, as he prodded his brother’s wiry muscles.
“No,” said Kit regretfully. “Not enough weight for my height. The best I
could do was the cross-country team and captain of the pistol team.”
“You always were an ugly shot with a gun,” remarked Jerry. “And there
may be times when that’ll get an alumnus farther than a Phi Beta Kappa
key.”
“Jerry,” demanded the younger brother abruptly, “why did you run out on
us the way you did? I know you got yourself into a mess, and all of
that, but there was no reason why you couldn’t have written. It was
rotten never to send any word to Jane and me.”
“Maybe,” agreed the other. “But I’d thought it all out and I never was
going to. It was fairer not.” He laughed heavily and ended with a sigh.
“That man I smashed--I’ve almost forgotten who he was and what it was
about. There was a girl mixed up in it somewhere--as unimportant as
that. I went off my chump, and might easily have killed the poor devil.”
“He recovered, though,” Kit said. “You could go back and square it up
and be yourself again. There’s no need of burying yourself alive for
life.”
“I am myself,” Jerry returned somberly, “and there’s a beastly streak in
me. What happened once can happen again. I’m not going to risk another
chance of disgracing you and Jane, or keeping you in a nervous stew over
my running amok again. I’m better off forgotten.”
“That’s fool talk,” the younger brother protested.
“If I turn violent any time now,” grinned Jerry, “I’m acting in the name
of the law. This is the right job for me.”
Kitchener regarded him curiously. “Do you like it?”
“It’s my job,” the sergeant reiterated briefly, and changed the subject.
“Hitch your dogs,” he ordered. “You’re coming with me.”
It was characteristic that Kit should accept unquestioningly his older
brother’s decisions. He roused the sleeping huskies from their nests
under the snow, pitched them a fish apiece, and then hustled them into
the sledge traces.
Jerry looked on without offering to help. “You’ll find as you go along
that you remember things you thought you never knew,” he remarked as the
younger brother smartly swung his leader into line. “You and I cut our
milk teeth on the butt of a dog whip, and took our first bath in a snow
drift. I’m glad you’re here, Crow-eye.”
“What about Sim?” asked Kit as he packed up his bed.
“Let him find you gone. He’ll see I’ve been here and that we’ve gone off
together. Let him think what he pleases. I’m going to pass him along
later to the captain of the varsity pistol team.” Jerry finished with an
ironic laugh. “Ready?”
As he approached the neighboring hillside a half dozen animated bundles
sprang yapping from the drift to claw and leap at Jerry for a moment,
and then to round in a wolf-like pack upon the strange huskies. The
sergeant booted his own beasts back into their traces, and within ten
seconds had quelled the riot. Then he gave the command and the team
launched forward into the night.
Kit had thought that his companion of the first day’s march was a
snow-traveler, but he was to learn what it really means to cruise. His
dogs were forced to stretch their gaunt bodies to the utmost to hold the
pace of the police malemutes and the lusty sergeant who broke trail for
them.
Years pass and seasons change and men grow older. Times there had been
when a short-legged, anxious-faced little chap used to tag after his
elder brother, taking two steps for one, stumbling and breathless, yet
keeping up somehow. To-night it seemed to Kit as though a ghostly young
familiar were running with him, sharing his distress as the miles
lengthened and his wind gave out and his aching legs grew heavier, but
pushing onward, nevertheless, hanging on in spite of everything, not
once losing sight of the big hurrying shape ahead of him.
An hour or so on the shadowy side of daybreak Jerry at last decided
mercifully that they had come far enough. He halted his team in the
darkness of a wooded ravine at the head of a tiny, ice-bound brook. Then
with a crooked grin he turned to look back as his brother kicked out of
his snowshoes and sank down upon the ground.
“Same old Kit!” he said. “Cheerio! You’ll toughen up.”
He disappeared in the thicket with an ax, and for a few minutes the
morning stillness was broken by a cheerful ringing of steel. Presently
he returned with an armful of white birch billets and started a brisk
fire.
“You and I must have an understanding before we split directions,” he
remarked. “I’ve got my job to do, and you’ll have yours. We’ll breakfast
first. Meanwhile, let’s see what Diane has on her mind.”
“Diane?” echoed Kit, staring blankly.
“See if she’s asleep, will you?” Jerry nodded casually towards the
sledge. “Maybe she’d like something to eat.”
“To eat--? Diane?” Kit regarded his brother slantwise, as though he were
in momentary doubt of the other’s sobriety, or sanity. The policeman was
absorbed in measuring coffee from a muslin bag into a tin pot, and he
did not look up.
Kitchener stood up and paused uncertainly. “What are you talking about?”
he demanded.
“Here’s the key,” said Jerry. He fished in his pocket and handed his
brother a tiny, metal object that glinted in the firelight.
Young Tearl held the key between his fingers, looking at it vacuously.
“What am I to do with this?”
“Let her come to breakfast, if she wants any,” said Jerry, and turned
his back again.
Kit stood irresolute for a moment, and then, with a bewildered glance at
the policeman, he moved over towards the sledge. He halted to gaze in
sagging-jawed wonderment.
Jerry’s sledge was bedded deep with duffle and blankets and soft, warm
furs. In the cozy nest thus formed he made out the contours of a slight
figure, and saw the oval of a feminine face and a pair of dark, living
eyes glowering up at him.
As he stood awkward and unreasoningly embarrassed, a pettish, slightly
husky voice spoke sharply from the smothering furs. “Unfasten these!”
The robes were lifted and thrown back, and two hands stretched
themselves towards Kit. He was aghast to discover that the woman’s
wrists were held together by the steel links of handcuffs.
CHAPTER V
THE GIRL IN HANDCUFFS
The key was in Kitchener’s fingers, but at the moment he seemed to have
no idea what its purpose might be. He bent above the sledge, gawking
absurdly, utterly at loss to know what to say or to do. In the half
light of dawning he saw the curve of a full, firm cheek and was aware
that the woman’s mouth was drawn tensely in a fierce and bitter line. It
rather increased his distress to discover that she was quite young and
extremely indignant.
She tried to sit up, rattling the nickel-plated chain that swiveled one
wrist close to the other. He perceived then that the handcuffs were
secured by a short length of cord to one of the braces of the sledge.
“Will you,” she said in a panting fury, “kindly take these things off of
me?”
“Certainly,” said Kit, who was beginning to win back his
self-possession. He dropped his mittens and took her hands in one of
his. Her fingers, he noticed, were warm and soft and gracefully slender.
After a fumbling attempt or two he fitted the key in its apertures and
shot open first one and then the other of the locking wards. The woman
cast off the ugly circlets, dumped the robes overside, and flung herself
from the sledge. Without a word to her deliverer, or a glance towards
him, she stalked off through the snow to confront Jerry.
She was a small young woman, with a body as slim and supple and
emotionally reactive as a reed in a gusty wind. She wore calf-high boots
with moccasin feet, a pair of forest-green breeches, and a green camel’s
hair parka with the hood thrown back. From the opened throat of her
upper garment her slender neck emerged to hold high a prideful and
shapely head. Her nose was slightly upturned and a shade too short; her
mouth was generously wide and warmly crimson, and, at this moment,
insolent. In the daytime her elongated, dark-fringed eyes were probably
a clear hazel color; in the light of the birch fire they gave back
ruddy, sherry-tinged glints. Her reddish hair, short and electrically
unruly, flaunted its disorder in the reflection of the leaping flames.
“If it takes me the rest of my life,” she said to the policeman, “I’ll
pay you for this!”
“Why, bless your heart,” said Jerry affably, “it wasn’t so much to do.
Baby Bunting in the warm rabbit skins. I didn’t mind taking you
bye-bye.” He had pronged a brochette of bacon strips, and was watching
the grease drops fall and explode in the fire. “I hope you had a nice
nap.”
“You--” The girl stopped and choked in her wrath. “You--devil!” she
wound up impotently.
Jerry turned his head slowly, and for the first time paid her the
tribute of looking at her. Then he shifted his glance to Kit. “This is
the one, Buck,” he said. “This is Diane.”
Kit in bemusement regarded first the girl and then the man. In his
brother’s lightness of speech he recognized a serious and purposeful
undercurrent. Jerry had called him “Buck.” Why? He couldn’t guess. Only
he realized that there was some queer and subtle game afoot. He would
have to watch closely and pick up his cues.
Jerry’s eyes held him, and he caught the warning in their smiling
depths. “This,” the policeman informed the girl, “is Sergeant Buck Tearl
of the royal stuffs. He told me that he wanted to find you and ask you
about that radio message. And here you are!”
Kit advanced a pace or two, but was careful not to reveal himself too
closely in the firelight. For some incomprehensible reason Jerry was
asking him to shift identities--to pretend that he was a policeman. All
his life he had been playing up to his big brother’s whims, and it
seemed but the normal and natural thing now to follow the lead that was
offered him, whatever the hidden motives might be. There would be no
difficulty in playing the part. He stood back in the shadow, and even if
the girl looked at him too observantly she could learn nothing from his
appearance. As far as she knew he could be wearing a police uniform
under his outer garments.
“I want to know,” he said, “what you meant by sending me that stuff in
the air. ‘The dead do not always die,’” he quoted. “And by the way,
who’s Kablunak?”
The girl shifted her hostile stare his direction. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” she said.
“Why did you ask WBZ to relay your message?”
“I sent no message to anybody,” she snapped.
He interrogated her with a measured frown. “Your name’s Diane?”
“Yes, it’s Diane.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“Is this supposed to be a court-martial?” she asked. “Or are you just a
fresh young man?”
“She told me her last name was Durand,” put in Jerry. “Diane Durand.” He
moved over a few inches on a log that he had recently brushed clean.
“Won’t you sit down?”
“No,” she said.
“What are you doing here alone in the woods?” Kit asked.
The girl had turned with a malevolent impulse to Jerry. “I want to tell
you something,” she declared. “You claim to be a policeman too. Well,
there’s an inspector somewhere in charge of this district. When I tell
him that one of his brave officers overpowered a helpless and harmless
girl and handcuffed her and dragged her around through the woods on a
sledge, you know what’ll happen to you. They’ll break you, my man, and
throw you so far out of a decent service that the lowliest Dog Rib will
be ashamed to walk in the same wilderness with you.”
Jerry stripped several crisp bacon slices from his toasting switch and
arranged them neatly on a tin plate. He added a couple of pieces of
buttered bannock, and offered the dish to the girl. “Won’t you eat some
breakfast?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“My dear,” he informed her pleasantly, “your unsupported word won’t get
you anywhere with the inspector. Inspector Bowman’s in charge just now.
And you could never in your life convince him that one of his trusted,
gentlemanly boys would do a vile trick such as overpowering a frail and
innocent girl, and slipping the nippers on her pretty wrists, and
dragging her around the woods on a sledge. He just couldn’t believe it,
and that would be all of that.”
“How did you chance to wander into this part of the territory--all by
yourself?” persisted Kitchener, making his voice as gentle and polite as
he could possibly manage.
“Her dogs,” said Jerry, “ran away from her and left her on her own....
Her own what?” He questioned himself interlocutorily, as though he were
a one-man minstrel show, at the same time inspecting the small feet in
the half-knee-high boots. “Dogs,” he replied.
The girl’s mouth curled contemptuously. “The comedy,” she said, “hasn’t
a laugh in it.”
Kitchener’s grave eyes wrinkled at the corners and, quite unwarrantedly,
he himself laughed.
The girl looked startled, and then glanced full at him and for the first
time appeared to recognize him as a fellow being. For just an instant a
responsive glimmer heightened her expressive features, as though she
were on the point of grinning back at him; and then the flickering
brightness was gone and the look of sullen resentment had returned.
“If I hadn’t picked her up,” remarked Jerry, “she no doubt would have
starved to death and frozen to death and lost her way home.”
“I wasn’t lost,” she declared furiously. “If you’d kept your hands off
I’d have found the man I was looking for.”
“Who was he?” Kitchener inquired.
“My uncle,” she told him.
The coffee pot had reached a boil. Jerry tossed a handful of snow under
the lid, and then poured out a steaming cupful, into which he dribbled a
sticky, white fluid from a punctured can. “May I give you a cup of
coffee?” he inquired of the girl.
“No,” she said.
Kitchener was watching her face with reflective curiosity. Suddenly he
tried a blind shot. “Is your uncle’s name Jim?” he asked.
For a second she hesitated, and then threw up her head.
“Yes,” she said.
“Tall, stoop-shouldered party with scars on his face and head?”
questioned Kit. “A burly-looking bird who shaves in blizzards and eats
up the weather?”
This time she was really interested. “Yes,” she said, and her straight
eyebrows drew anxiously together. “Have you seen him?”
“Jim who?” temporized Kit.
“James Durand.”
“It isn’t Sim, is it, instead of Jim?”
“What?”
“Simeon Bent?”
The girl stiffened perceptibly and the space between her eyelids
narrowed ever so slightly. She seemed to swallow something in her
throat. “What do you mean?”
“Is Jim Durand also Simeon Bent?”
“He is not,” she declared.
“Do you know Simeon Bent?”
She hesitated for half a breath, and then shook her head. “No,” she
said.
“Where do you live?” Jerry cut in.
“New York, Philadelphia, Edmonton, Portland, Montreal, North
Saskatchewan.” She rattled it off as glibly as a railroad brakeman.
“Ottawa too?” suggested Jerry. “Why discriminate against Ottawa?”
“Yes,” she answered surprisingly. “I did live in Ottawa for a while. I
went to school there.”
“Recently?”
“Quite recently.”
Jerry smiled. “Do you still want to meet your uncle?” he inquired. “If
you do it’s easy. We just came from his camp. All you have to do is
back-track the sledge runners to the place you came from. It isn’t five
miles.”
The girl regarded him suspiciously, and then glanced at Kit as though
for confirmation.
“Right!” he assured her.
“Won’t you have some coffee before you go?” invited Jerry.
“No,” she said.
She walked to the sledge, picked up a pair of snowshoes, and pushed her
toes into the thongs. For a moment she lingered, holding a pair of
boyishly competent hands towards the fire. Then she shoved her hands
into the fur mittens that dangled around her neck on a cord. Without a
word or a backward glance she walked away.
They saw her for a moment moving sturdily across the snowy hillside, and
then the slight figure faded in the morning gloom and was lost to sight.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT OWL MURDER
With a plate of beans and bannock and bacon in his lap, and a tin mug of
coffee gripped in his fist, Kitchener sat down by the camp fire and
faced his brother with an unwonted lack of approbation.
“I had believed,” he remarked, “that chivalry towards women was supposed
to be one of the higher virtues of the honorable northern police.”
“All of that,” agreed Jerry easily. “And ‘never fire first.’ You’ve
heard that one too. But strictly _sub rosa_--to uphold the law a police
force needs a few in its ranks who walk a little roughly and who
sometimes neglect to remember that women are ladies, and who are just a
hair firster on the gat than the other guy.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“They didn’t make me a sergeant for spreading my cloak in the mud for
the village queens, or for waiting for crooks to take a crack at me,
while I counted ‘one-two--it’s my turn next.’”
“What about this girl?” mused Kitchener. “She seems to me--sort of--a
square-shooter.”
“She’s Hell Bent’s niece,” said Jerry.
“Tell me about her,” invited Kit after an almost imperceptible pause.
Jerry glanced at his brother’s left eyebrow, which was crooked upwards
at its sharpest angle. “Hello, Cocky-bird! By the barometer I see
there’s danger of muggy weather. I’d be careful.”
“Don’t you worry about me.”
“I ran into her yesterday evening--and she acted lost and strayed. She
was looking for some man who was coming in from Port-o’-Prayer, and it
struck me that it might be this Bent onion. Then she told me her name
was Diane. I asked her if she was the WBZ Diane, and she said no. But it
seemed an odd coincidence that I should pick that name off the air, and
the very next woman I meet calls herself Diane. It gave me reason to
pump her a little.” Jerry shook his head. “A deep well, and Heaven knows
what’s at the bottom.”
“Why did you give her the wristlets?” asked Kit.
“Before I decided she was interesting I’d told her of crossing the trail
of a tall, stoop-shouldered snow-plodder back a ways in the forest. She
was all for going and finding him at once. That didn’t suit me. I didn’t
want the tip-off to reach Bent that I was flanking him--not until I
could have an understanding with you. Also I didn’t want her to see you
before I did. I expected you two to be making faces at each other, and I
was particularly anxious for you to know first what sort of a face yours
was to be.”
Kitchener prodded the ground with the heel of his snowshoe, and said
nothing.
“So when she started to go off to find her uncle,” Jerry pursued, “I
told her this morning would be soon enough. She didn’t agree in the
least: so what else could I do except to present her with the shining
bracelets and tuck her away comfortably for the night. She had nothing
to complain of. She had a snug sleep and a pleasant sleigh ride all over
Saskatchewan.”
“Do you think she did radio that message?”
“I don’t know. She, perhaps--or somebody using her name--thinking I’d
heard of her, and might heed it.”
“What would be the object?”
“To get me out of the country.”
Kit looked up searchingly. “What’s it all about, Jerry?”
“Dad!”
Jerry spoke the word solemnly, and just for that moment his look of grim
bantering was erased from his face.
Kitchener waited with a sudden physical tensing that seemed to strain
every muscle of his body.
There followed an interval of profound silence while Jerry stared off
northward through the falling snow. “Kit,” he blurted out in a
constricted breath, “there is a dark and horrible crime that has gone
unsolved and unavenged for twelve long years!”
Still Kitchener sat without speech.
“Since I came back into this country,” Jerry went on in a slow, brooding
tone, as though he had forgotten that any one else was present, “I’ve
spent every day and night and thought with just one object. I’ve gone
through all the department records, I’ve talked with every policeman who
has traveled the old-time trails, I’ve questioned every trapper and
bush-ranger and every one of the sooty-brothers, Indian and Esquimaux,
that I’ve met in the wilderness. I have spent years trying to find out
what happened to Inspector Bill Tearl.”
“You’ve found out--”
“Not much actually, and yet--maybe a lot.”
Jerry put down his empty coffee cup, dug in his shirt pocket, and then
twisted and licked a cigarette into shape. “Did you ever know there was
gold in this country?”
Kitchener shook his head, and his eyes begged his brother to get on with
the story.
“I didn’t either. But there must be. Of course the color may be found
almost everywhere. But what I mean is a lode or pocket or placer drift
in which the raw, yellow wealth has clustered like the raisins in a
pudding. Enough of it to shovel out with a scoop and load up a dog
sledge.”
“And where is this fabulous hoard?” asked Kit.
Jerry shrugged indifferently. “Who knows? You’ve got ten thousand miles
of territory to guess in. That part of it doesn’t mean anything in our
lives. Maybe some Indian found the deposit in the first place, or
perhaps it was rifled by one of those wandering, crack-brained
prospectors whom you’re apt to meet almost everywhere. The loaded sledge
is plenty for us to worry about. For all we know it may have been hauled
half-way across a continent and passed from murderer to murderer before
it reached its ultimate tragedy.
“The police,” Jerry went on, “maintain a little advance post near the
edge of big timber, some few days northeast of here at a place called
_Saut Sauvage_. At the time I am talking about a sergeant and two men
were wintering at this post. Dad, as you recall, was then the inspector
in charge of this district. Twelve years ago this December, Dad went out
on an inspection patrol and paid a little visit to the _Saut Sauvage_
boys. It was at that time, as you know, that he disappeared.”
“Where does the sledge-load of gold come in?” inquired Kit.
“I have this part of the story from Inspector Bowman, who, twelve years
ago, was the sergeant in command at _Saut Sauvage_,” said Jerry. “Much
of it never went into the official records, and almost all of it was
hushed up by the higher officers. Even Bill Tearl’s family wasn’t told
all of the facts. You’ll see why when you hear what happened.
“On the particular day I have in mind,” Jerry resumed, “when Inspector
Tearl was a guest at _Saut Sauvage_, a man and a woman came in from the
north somewhere, driving a train of huskies and a sledge. Bowman doesn’t
remember what they said their names were, or even whether names were
mentioned. He recalls only that the man was a lanky, rather good-looking
chap around thirty or so. The woman, he introduced as his sister. She
appeared to be near her brother’s age--an athletic-looking woman with an
astonishing lot of golden hair--they didn’t bob it in those days. I
gather from the inspector that she was a knock-out.”
The policeman pitched a couple of fresh birch logs on the fire, and then
moved a foot or two farther away to escape the heat. “The stranger and
his sister, it seems,” he went on, “had been up on the barrens hunting
musk-ox. They had started out with guides and packers--three men, whites
or breeds. What happened I don’t know. But there was some sort of
trouble, and either their men left them, or they cleared out and left
their men. It doesn’t matter about that. The two were alone when they
arrived at the police post. They had been caught by winter and were
hurrying to reach the outside before the big snow trapped them.
“One who lives in this country,” Jerry ruminated, “is apt to lose his
sense of wonderment. If you told me that you had found diamond pipes in
the hills yonder to rival Kimberley, I would say, ‘why not?’ There’s
everything else--coal and iron and copper and platinum and gold fields,
untouched as yet, and for the greater part undiscovered--waiting to be
dumped into a world that’s already too fat with wealth. Oil,
illuminating gas, water-power to run all the earth’s industries in high.
I’ve seen a natural gas vent up on the rim of the Circle, which some
passing Indian ignited, possibly a hundred years ago, which is burning
to-day, and perhaps will be spouting its fifty foot jet of flame a
century or two or three from now.”
Jerry sighed and shook his head. “It’s a pity to think that some day
this will all be filled up with sweaty ditch diggers and shrieking
machinery. Thank God, you and I will be dead.”
He looked into the darkness and stretched his arms in a wide gesture.
“It still belongs to you and me, and it hasn’t changed much since the
first white man found it. A wilderness bigger than the whole United
States. Peopled by a few of the simple, sooty brothers and a few whites
who have nerve enough to live as they damn please. An earth chockful of
virgin wealth, and a few primitives prowling upon it. If they see
anything they want they take it, and what the hell! Raw tastes and
hungers and desires let loose in a wild and opulent land. No law worth
mentioning; no restraints; every man for himself. Queer and terrible
things can happen. Almost every dark stretch of the forest holds its own
grisly secret--”
“What,” demanded Kit, “is all this about?”
Jerry’s hard features for a moment relaxed in a wry grin. “I was just
thinking,” he remarked, “that Dad and Sergeant Bowman wouldn’t have been
skeptical or even astonished when this stranger and his beautiful sister
arrived at the police cabin to tell them that they had found in the
woods farther north a sledge stacked with gold nuggets in rotting
caribou bags, and a man’s tattered skeleton sprawled on top of it.
“These two gave the skeleton as nice a burial as they could under the
circumstances, and then they hitched their own dogs to the sledge and
came on south. Bowman says he himself saw the sledge, and he saw and
hefted some of the nuggets. He said there must have been a quarter of a
million--”
“Who was the poor devil?” interrupted Kit.
“The skeleton? Who knows? He may not have been the original digger. As I
said, that sledge may have come by stages clear across from the
Klondike--one man slaying the man ahead of him for its possession. The
last chap, perhaps, died of the great northern illness known as
‘nothing-to-eat.’ That story is lost forever in the mists. We’re
concerned only with what happened afterwards.”
Kit was somberly watching his brother’s face. “Yes?” he breathed.
“The new owners of the sledge,” said Jerry, “were a bit nervous about
it. They had reason to be. Their guides, it seems, had turned out to be
a bad lot, and they had parted company with them in a nasty row. These
guides were loitering about somewhere in the neighborhood of _Saut
Sauvage_. The truth was that the brother and sister were afraid to go on
alone. It so happened that Inspector Bill Tearl was intending to go down
to McMurray, and he volunteered to escort the sledge out of the woods.
The three started off next morning in a snow storm--Dad and the two
lucky finders.” Jerry paused for a moment, and his lower lip bent up
under his teeth as he gazed with moody eyes beyond the crackling fire.
“They said good-by to Bowman,” he resumed quietly, “and set out for the
south. And none of the three was ever seen alive afterwards.”
The sergeant glanced at the crumpled cigarette in his fingers, and for
the first time seemed to remember why he had rolled it. He pulled a
blazing fagot out of the fire, puffed industriously for a moment, and
then settled back at ease on one elbow.
“Two weeks later,” he stated abruptly, “Sergeant Bowman made a little
patrol southward. Not twenty miles below the police post, at a place
called Great Owl Run, he found the woman with the lovely hair. She was
lying face down in a deep drift with a .45 bullet in the back of her
head. Her brother was nowhere to be found, nor Inspector Bill Tearl, nor
the sledge load of caribou sacks.”
Kitchener sat straighter, his dark eyes suddenly constricted with
horror. “What had happened?” he asked.
“There had been two or three snow storms before Bowman took the trail,”
Jerry explained, “and there was not much left even for a schooled
woodsman to read. No sledge tracks, no footprints. Between the spot
where the woman lay and the high, steep bank of Great Owl Run, the
underbrush had been broken and crushed down, as though a body, or
perhaps two of them, had been dragged off and dumped into the creek. The
stream runs deep and swift at that point, and seldom freezes over.
Anything thrown into it would be swept down under the ice tunnels and
probably carried all the way to the Arctic Sea.”
“And you know no more than this?” Kitchener asked in a hushed voice.
“A little more, maybe. But the rest is pure guessing.
“At about the time that Bowman was finding the dead woman,” Jerry added,
“a man by the name of Simeon Bent came out of the woods at Fort
McMurray. He had been in some sort of a fight a while before and had
wounds about the head and face. I got wind of this man a couple of years
ago and found out all about him that I could. One thing, he had been the
head guide for the two musk-ox hunters.
“From McMurray this Bent bird went on down to Edmonton,” Jerry continued
after a brief interval. “He went a bit wild on whiskey blanc down there.
In a rumpus in a back room he killed a man and was stretched a short
term for manslaughter.” The sergeant observed his brother fixedly. “He
was splurging some in Edmonton, with plenty to spend, and I have it
straight that his cash reserve was a bagful of gold nuggets.”
“You mean--” said Kit, and stopped.
Jerry answered with a short nod. “Sounds that way, doesn’t it? It was
Bent who ambushed Dad and the two strangers. My guess it that he got the
sledge, but for some reason he wasn’t able to take it down country with
him. Maybe the other guides were lurking near by and he didn’t want to
declare them in. He helped himself to one bagful of gold, and cleared
out.
“It’s my belief that he cached that sledge in the woods somewhere in the
neighborhood of Great Owl Run,” Jerry declared. “It’s probably still
there where he hid it on that ugly day twelve years ago.” The sergeant
tossed his cigarette into the fire and his muscular hands clenched
tightly over one knee. “Bent served out his term in prison, hugging his
secret. The minute they turned him loose he started for the north--”
“Carrying Dad’s old gun,” Kitchener cut in, his eyes suddenly grown as
cold and murky as the wintry dawn.
“That sledge,” asserted Jerry, “is still concealed in the forest up
yonder, and Hell Bent is on his way to get it.”
The sergeant raised himself to his feet and stood erect on the snowy
hillside. “When Bent’s time was nearly up I asked for the _Saut Sauvage_
assignment, and Bowman sent me to take command of the outpost up there.
I’m supposed to be on my way to that place.”
“I understand now,” said Kit, “why he’ll kill you if he can.”
“Of course,” said Jerry carelessly. “I want to nail him when he gets
that sledge, and he knows it.” The policeman knitted his brows darkly.
“The trouble is,” he reflected, “I can’t keep the assignment. Something
else has turned up.”
He contemplated his brother with shrewd eyes for a moment, and then
faintly nodded his head as though he had made up his mind about
something.
“Kit,” he declared, “it’s the luckiest thing in the world that you
turned up when you did. I needed you frightfully. But you were always
like that--an on-the-spot Johnny. You ready to carry on, Cocky-bird?”
“You know I am.”
“Good! It’s an outrageous and extremely hazardous business I’m wishing
on you. But I have no choice. You’re to go up there instead of me, and
stick tight to this Bent, and get him.”
“All right,” said Kitchener. “I’d like to.”
“I’m not going to report at all, Crowfeathers. I’ve got something else
to do. But I don’t want to be let out of the service for going
A.W.O.L.--heading off on my own. I’ve disgraced you plenty as it is.”
Kit watched his brother uneasily. “What are you going to do?”
“You and I don’t look a lot alike,” Jerry temporized. “I’m a darned
sight better-looking guy than you, if it comes to that. But at the same
time you approximate me enough to get by. Luckily the two constables up
at _Saut Sauvage_ have never seen me.”
“What--?” Kit stopped, his startled eyes dilating as he began to gather
the drift of Jerry’s plans. “You don’t mean--”
“That’s why I introduced you to Diane as Buck Tearl,” Jerry assured him
with a bland smile. “The idea was beginning to ferment even then. I
can’t take the patrol, you understand, so somebody will have to go in my
place. I’ll put you in my uniform and give you my credentials, and you
go north and tell ’em you’re Sergeant Buck Tearl of the royal police.
You’ll take command of the outpost at _Saut Sauvage_.”
CHAPTER VII
IN THE ROYAL SCARLET
As though his doubts and difficulties were completely settled, Sergeant
Tearl moved serenely to his sledge and began dumping blankets and duffle
bags off into the snow. Kitchener scrambled to his feet.
“Hold on!” protested the younger brother. “You’re crazy!”
“You’ll have no trouble,” Jerry reassured him. “Constables Devon and
Cross are holding down the _Saut Sauvage_ trick, and they know me only
by reputation.” He turned with a deprecating laugh. “Just heckle them a
bit and they’ll never dream that you’re not the sergeant.”
“But, Jerry, the whole idea is absolutely preposterous.”
“As for knowing police business,” said the older brother smoothly, “you
could have qualified for a sergeancy when you were nine years old.” He
came back to the fire, his features changed to an unwonted gravity. “You
know I wouldn’t ask you to do this, Kit, if I could see any way out of
it.”
“And you know I wouldn’t hesitate,” returned Kitchener, “if I really
thought I could get away with it.”
“That part’s easy. Inspector Bowman isn’t apt to come up this way this
winter. You ought to get friendly enough with Cross and Devon to
persuade them to keep their mouths shut if I come back in the spring and
resume my job. If I don’t come back all you need do is to slip quietly
out of the picture, and the police can write another disappearance case
in the records of the missing.”
Kitchener looked sharply at his brother. “Where are you going?” he
demanded.
“You remember the name of the Esquimau mentioned in the WBZ message?”
Jerry asked.
“Kablunak, wasn’t it? Kablunak’s band of Ahiagmuit.”
“Do you know what Kablunak means in the Ahiagmuit lingo?”
“No.”
“White man,” said Jerry.
“Well?” said Kit, and then caught his breath as he felt a peculiar
significance in the other’s manner. “What white man?”
“I wouldn’t ordinarily pay any attention to a message like that, sent by
nobody knows whom,” said Jerry. “But it so happens that my own inquiries
have brought facts to light that practically substantiate this
information from WBZ. It came to me in a roundabout way from a Cree
Indian, who had it from a Dog Rib, who had it from a Yellow Knife, who
had it from a Bathurst Inlet Esquimau. It’s funny, but you can almost
always believe the stories that reach you by moccasin telegraph.
According to this yarn, which really is more definite than mere rumor,
there is a tribe of Ahiagmuit up on the shore of Queen Maud Sea, whose
chief man is a white.
“This man,” the sergeant added slowly and deliberatively, “is tall and
lean, they say, and he has an eagle’s nose and a snowy-white mustache,
and terrible gleaming eyes, and under his _artikis_ he wears a shining
metal shield which, from its description, is the badge of the royal
police.”
“My God!” said Kitchener’s lips, but his voice was suffocated.
“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “It may turn out to be a wild-goose chase.
But I’ve got to go.”
“But Jerry--” Kit was staring at his brother with awe-stricken eyes.
“You don’t think--you don’t believe it possible--?”
“Who can say?” Jerry’s weather-beaten face at that moment was tragic
with wistfulness. “Most frightfully unbelievable things can happen to a
man in the wilderness. It might be that this has happened.”
“Wait!” gasped Kit. “You said that a body was dragged through the brush
and dumped into the creek--”
“I said it looked as though that had been done,” said the sergeant. “But
we don’t know whose body it was.”
“You don’t mean--you think there’s a chance--?” Kit checked himself and
faced his brother in a daze.
“Dad!” said Jerry. “Sounds improbable, doesn’t it? But I know I’ll never
have a decent night’s sleep again until I go and find out.”
“It’s impossible!” Kitchener burst out. “A white man living for twelve
years with a tribe of Esquimaux! What conceivable reason could he have?
Why would he go away up there in the first place? Or if he did go, why
would he stay? Why would he hide from his family? Why never a word from
him?”
Jerry laid a quieting hand on his brother’s wet coat sleeve. “I can’t
answer any of your questions, Kit. Only this much I do know: there has
been evil talk and sly, vile whispering--going the rounds.” The
sergeant’s eyes were stony and expressionless in the reflecting
firelight. “The woman was shot with a .45 bullet, which is the gun the
police carry. Her brother may have been shot and thrown into the brook.
Inspector Bill Tearl disappeared. The sledge-load of gold disappeared.
And as you know, and others have found out, Bill Tearl’s family have
received from some anonymous source every January for twelve years an
express draught for five thousand dollars.”
“Jerry!” The cry was wrenched from Kit in an agonized gasp as the full,
dreadful import of his brother’s speech flamed into his brain.
“You know you could turn gold nuggets into an express draught if you
wanted to.” The sergeant’s fingers closed tightly into the muscles of
Kitchener’s forearm, but his voice was restrained and very quiet.
“If anybody so much as hinted any of this to me, I would kill him.
They’re careful to keep their mouths shut when I’m near. But I know what
has been said. Bowman and the other officers who used to know Bill
Tearl--who knew what a clean, sweet, straight-shooting gentleman he
always was--none of them has ever listened or allowed himself to believe
anything except that a dark mystery was staged that day in the Great Owl
woods. But others have had things to say. And none of us really knows
what took place on that creek.”
Jerry dropped his brother’s arm, moved off restlessly for a few paces,
and then came back again. “You know now, Kit, why one of us has to trail
Simeon Bent and throttle the truth out of him if need be, while the
other goes to Queen Maud Sea, where the white man with the police badge
lives.”
“Yes,” said Kitchener. “Of course.” He raised his head impulsively. “But
why change jobs? You have your own assignment. Why not see it through
yourself? Bent’s going your direction. You stick with him. Let me find
Kablunak’s tribe.”
Jerry regarded the younger man affectionately. “You’re a great man, Old
Crow, but what chance would you stand on the far northern tundras? In
mid-winter. Living off the country. Did you ever stalk a caribou or run
with the dogs for a thousand miles in the seven months’ night? I’m an
arctic man, my boy, and you--” He punched Kit in the chest with his
thumb. “Our little five-mile breather almost did you in this morning.”
Kit looked sheepish and ashamed. “Try me a week from now,” he suggested.
“I’ll be two hundred miles north of here a week from now,” said Jerry,
and unfastened the tie string of his parka. He pulled off his outer
garment and started to unbutton his police tunic. “Strip!” he commanded.
Kitchener hesitated for just a second, and then with a wry grin he began
taking off his clothes. It was so foolish of him to balk at his elder
brother’s decisions. He always gave in, and Jerry was always right.
“Will you be able to make it?” he asked as he shed his stag shirt.
“Ought to.” Jerry’s coat was in the snow and he was hauling his uniform
shirt over his head. “There’s only one thing can stop me. That would be
the lack of meat. If I run across a caribou now and then I’ll come
back.”
Kit had kicked out of his trousers and stood in his undergarments--a
straight-backed, lean-shanked figure silhouetted against the curtain of
falling snow.
“I’ll give you all my police equipment,” Jerry said--“sledge, blankets,
guns--everything excepting the dogs. Those muts of yours would crumple
up like paper, out on the barrens.”
Kitchener drew on his brother’s beautifully tailored shirt, stepped into
the thick, warm trousers, and buckled the belt. With a feeling almost of
reverence he slipped his arms into the scarlet tunic. He strapped on his
side arm and stepped back to the fire. The coat was a trifle too roomy
under the sleeves, yet Kit squared his shoulders with a sprightly sense
of ease and self-confidence. Belted tight at the waist, the tunic seemed
actually to fit, and with a queer, thrilling emotion he felt somehow
that he belonged in it.
Jerry’s eyes were full of mockery, but when he spoke there was a faint
choking in his throat. He stiffened, and his hand went up in salute.
“Officer,” he said, “may you never miss your man!”
His manner changed, and he curtly motioned his brother to sit down
again. He squatted cross-legged and, with a stick in his hand, he began
tracing a network of lines on the snow-covered ground.
“We’ll say that this is our present position,” and made a cross. “Strike
northeast three days’ march across the ridges, and you’ll run into the
Vermilion River. A swift stream, bowlders and rapids. Way back in the
spruce hills. Follow it down past the mouths of one, two, three, four,
five tributary creeks. The sixth will be Great Owl Run. It comes in from
the northeast between two steep, granite banks. There’ll be a tall, pine
lobstick on the opposite shore that you can’t miss. Travel up this creek
about seven miles, and you’ll reach the scene of the old tragedy. Twenty
miles farther on is the police barracks at _Saut Sauvage_. Devon and
Cross will probably be there. You go in and tell ’em the sergeant has
arrived. You got it straight?”
He got up again and beckoned Kit to help him unpack the sledges. They
exchanged almost all of their luggage, and reloaded and fastened down
the lashings. They traded sledges, but each kept his own dog traces. Kit
was driving tandem. Jerry used the fan hitch, which gave the huskies
greater freedom on the open arctic prairies, and which was more easily
slipped if a polar bear attempted to pounce upon the animals.
The older brother chuckled as he caught sight of the old, red, Hudson’s
Bay blankets. “Shades of the ancient mariner,” he exclaimed--“I’m darned
if you didn’t bring granddad’s last testaments with you. I’ll sleep with
a ghost to-night.”
He looked around to make sure that nothing was forgotten, and then faced
Kit with a troubled scowl. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” For the
first time he seemed to have misgivings.
“I’ll be all right.”
“I mean, take care of yourself.”
“I hope you take your own advice,” returned Kitchener.
“Don’t stay long enough to go snow-blind,” said Jerry. “I don’t mean the
eyes, but the soul.”
Kit looked up alertly, on guard against one of his brother’s
flippancies. But this time he found no sign of laughter in the
hard-lined face.
“Down in your country,” Jerry resumed, “they call dope, ‘snow.’ Up here
the snow is the dope. They get you the same way. There’s something about
the dazzling white country that worms into you and creeps around you and
enslaves your heart and your brain like an insidious drug. We northern
men are all of us a little cuckoo. You can come up here for a year and
go back and forget. You can stay two years and still keep the will-power
to break away. Three years, and you’re lost.
“I call it going snow-blind.” The policeman’s voice was quiet and
impersonal, but the corners of his mouth were drawn in jaded furrows and
in that moment his depth of feeling was betrayed by his haggard, haunted
eyes. “This frozen world becomes a part of you, and you a part of it. It
blinds you to all save its own harsh, wild enchantments. You want to go
out, but you can’t stay out. You love it and hate it. You can’t be happy
anywhere else, and you can’t be happy here.”
He ended with a shortened breath and looked away, as though in
embarrassment. “Finish your business here, Kit, and get out fast. One of
us is enough.”
Abruptly he changed the subject. “Take your time with Bent. After last
night’s stroll he won’t travel far to-day. A man softened by prison.
Cross the back lots as I told you and you’ll strike his trail again
somewhere along the Vermilion River. After that stick close. He’ll be
watching for you. Look out! But don’t let him unearth that sledge
without your being on hand to jump him. Got it all straight?”
“Perfectly,” Kit reassured him.
“You’d better get some sleep then. If you and your dogs cork off for a
few hours now you’ll travel farther and faster in the end.”
“When do you leave?” asked Kit.
Jerry had gone back to his sledge and he was stooping with his back
turned. He did not look around. “When you’re ready to go,” he mumbled.
Kitchener unrolled the blankets of the service issue which, in the
future, were to be his own. As he passed the sledges on his way to pick
a sleeping place in the lee of the rocks, Jerry stood up and without
warning clamped his brawny right arm around his brother’s head.
“It was good to see you once more, old pioneer,” he said in a thick,
gruff voice.
Kitchener waited motionless, feeling a lump come into his throat and
almost choke him. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he
was abashed by his own sentimental longings, and he stood tonguetied,
and said nothing.
“Remember the last time we changed clothes?” asked Jerry--“the day I
induced you to put the kitten’s collar on the little black and white
striped animal, which the scientists call _mephitis mephitica_, and the
Indians call _Sikak_ the skunk? And Dad made me wear your clothes and
sleep out in the woods.”
Jerry laughed gently. “Go to sleep, Cocky-bird. It’ll all come out right
in the end.”
“See you later, Jerry,” said Kit. He stumbled off behind the rocks,
rolled up in his blankets in the gray, snowy dawn, and within three
minutes was soundly slumbering.
The snowfall had almost ceased when Kit awakened. It was a dull, sodden
day, windless and utterly quiet. The clouds were hanging low over the
forest, black and ominous, overcasting the wilderness with a strange,
uncanny twilight. For a minute or two after his eyes were open Kitchener
lay in warmth and drowsy comfort. But all at once it occurred to him
that there was something foreboding in the complete absence of sound.
His body went taut in the middle of his langorous stretching, and he
threw off the blanket and sat up. The campfire was still smoldering, and
somebody was bending over it.
“Hello, Jerry--” he said, and then stopped short. The figure in the
smoke had turned, and he saw that it was not a man. He scrambled to his
feet, rubbing his eyes, staring in astonishment. The fire-tender was a
woman--Diane Durand.
“Good morning,” said the girl coolly. She emerged from the suffocating
haze of the fire, which she evidently did not understand how to manage,
coughing and shaking her head as though to rid herself of the smoke.
In the daylight he noticed that her touseled hair was not the flaming
red the fire reflections had imparted last night, but verged into softer
tints of bronze. The eyes which regarded him steadily were deep and
luminous and flecked with a golden brightness. There was something
impudent and unflattering in the way she looked at him.
He regained his breath and faced her suspiciously. “What are you doing
here?” he demanded.
“It’s not my fault,” she returned. “I came back because I had to. Blame
your friend’s high-handed interfering. By the time I had reached my
uncle’s camp he was gone.”
“Gone where?” exclaimed Kit.
“On northward. Without dogs I can’t hope to overtake him. You’re going
up that direction, aren’t you, sergeant?”
Unwittingly Kitchener’s shoulders straightened. It gave him a queer,
uplifting sensation to have her think that he was an officer of the
Royal Canadian Police.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m going north.”
“Then you’ll have to take me with you,” she announced calmly. “When we
catch my uncle you can get rid of me.”
Kit looked around uneasily. “Where’s my--my friend?” he asked.
“He’s gone,” said the girl.
“What?”
She fumbled in the pocket of her mackinaw and brought out a folded slip
of paper, which she handed to Kitchener. “Here’s a note he left for you.
I picked it up and read it.”
With a sense of impending evil he opened the sheet and found a few lines
of pencil-script in Jerry’s careless scrawl. He read:
Dear Kit:
Don’t forget there are a million of ’em as pretty as this
Diane. I saw a funny look in your eye this morning. I’m just
warning you, that’s all. Don’t let her make a sap out of you
and I have no fear about anything else. So long, old crow.
The things I like least about life are its repetitions. You
get your hair cut or mow your lawn or paint a house or cook
breakfast or shave or wash a shirt or kiss a girl, and it’s
all to be done over again to-morrow or next week or a year
from now. The only thing I know that stays done is to have
your teeth pulled. Cheerio, Cocky-bird. Always exit on a laugh.
Jerry.
With eyes grown suddenly misty Kitchener turned and gazed around the
glade of evergreens. On the opposite hillslope he found the trail left
by sledge runners and trotting dogs’ feet and a pair of big, slashing
snowshoes. The tracks ran straight north and apparently were several
hours old. Jerry was well on his way towards the dreadful darkness of
Queen Maud Sea.
CHAPTER VIII
FOLLOW ON
It was like Jerry to vanish lightheartedly as though he were dropping
off somewhere for a frivolous week-end, instead of undertaking a journey
that would have appalled the most hardened _voyageur_. His comings and
goings had always been thus casual and unexpected. He hated to say
“good-by.” Kit had found his astonishing brother once more, only to lose
him. They might meet in a year, or in ten years, or perhaps never again.
As Kit turned the paper over his finger he was stricken by a sudden
recollection. He glanced sharply at Miss Durand.
“You say,” he asked, “that you read this note?”
She nodded her auburn head. “_Uhuh!_”
In spite of himself Kit felt an uncomfortable warming of blood under the
skin of his face. “I wouldn’t pay any attention--he doesn’t mean
anything--” He caught his breath in embarrassment. “He’s a lunatic.”
“He must be a good friend of yours to give you so much good advice,”
said Miss Durand.
“He’s an old friend, anyhow,” agreed Kit uneasily. “We’ve known each
other for years. Just the same, he’s an idiot.”
“Anything else you want to call him--why, yes,” she returned mildly.
“But he’s no idiot. I think it was very smart of him to warn you.”
Kitchener shifted his feet. “I don’t know what he was talking about.
Warn me about what?”
“Against anybody named Diane,” said the girl serenely. “Look at Diane
d’Angoulême and Diane de Poitiers, just to mention a couple. There were
a lot of ’em in history, and they all were sly and tricky and full of
the old Nick. It pays to be careful in your dealings with the Dianes.”
“Those two are dead,” remarked Kitchener. “And I don’t need Jerry to
tell me what to do about their successors.”
The girl moved to avoid the drifting smoke from the camp fire, and then
tilted her head sidewise as she examined him impersonally from under the
curve of her hazel eyelashes. “What was the funny look in your eye your
friend Jerry noticed?” she asked.
Kitchener stared at her. The audacity of her asking him that! There was
an impish suggestion about her mouth and lips that did not quite
approach a smile. He found himself feeling bitterly resentful towards
Jerry. He might at least have left the nonsense out of his note.
“Does it look funny now?” he asked stiffly.
“Well--no,” she answered judgmatically, and half closed one of her own
bright eyes, as though to see him better with the other. “Not
noticeably.”
“What Jerry meant,” he remarked, “is that I might fall for you because
you’re so pretty. You are, you know.” He was trying to appear as
nonchalant about it as the girl herself. “But he also said there were a
million of ’em. So what does that amount to?”
“Not a thing,” she said.
“Certainly not. I’ve met a good many of the million myself--Daphnes and
Delilahs and Dulcys, and maybe even a Diane or two. Darned pretty, some
of ’em--but what of it?”
“We haven’t anything to worry about,” she assured him--“anyhow you
haven’t. I can see you’re too well insulated.” She looked at him
demurely. “I know now,” she suddenly declared, “why he calls you
Cocky-bird. When you push up your left eyebrow, it makes you--you’re
just like that.”
He hastily drew his eyebrows straight, and scowled at her.
“I think it’s cute,” she said, and the smile grew definite, and wicked.
He confronted her furiously. “Listen here!” he said: “I suppose you
expect to go along with me?”
“I sort of took it for granted.”
“Why don’t you go down to Port-o’-Prayer and get the old Scotch factor
to ship you out? It isn’t far from here.”
“Because I don’t want to. I came to find my Uncle Jim, and I’m going to
find him. If you won’t take me with you I’ll tag on your trail. Anyhow I
will until I freeze to death or die of hunger.” The girl extended her
empty hands for his inspection. “I haven’t any outfit or anything.”
“You wouldn’t be able to keep up with me,” he objected.
She tossed back her head and her face looked childishly bewitching under
the tousel of ruddy hair. “I’ll keep up,” she promised. “I’ve snowshoed
a lot,” she said--“for sport. Saranac and Banff and St. Moritz.”
“How the deuce did you happen to lose your uncle in the first place?” he
asked her ungraciously.
“I didn’t exactly lose him,” she replied. “I was visiting friends in
Ottawa, when he wrote me that he had decided to spend the winter in this
country. I thought it would be nice to be with him, and telegraphed him
to wait for me. But he was gone before my message reached him. However,
I supposed I might overtake him, so I caught the next to last boat down
the Slave River and went ashore at Fort Smith. But for some reason Uncle
Jim had changed his mind and struck off from farther down country.”
“Yeah?” said Kitchener. “What does he want up here?”
“He thought he’d spend the winter trapping,” she answered as glibly as
though she had learned a formula by heart. “His lungs are not good and
the doctor ordered him to spend a few months in the open.”
“Oh, yes,” said Kit expressionlessly. “This is a good place for the
lungs.”
“While I was marooned at Fort Smith, wondering what to do next,” the
girl went on regretfully, “a couple of Indians told me of a man who had
outfitted at Port-o’-Prayer for a trip north. From their description I
knew it was Uncle Jim. I thought there was still time to intercept him,
and I persuaded these Indians to guide me east from Fort Smith to cross
the trails above Port-o’-Prayer. They brought me safely as far as the
Dog-Rib country, and then got frightened about something and said they
were going back. They were stubborn about it, so I had to let them go,
and came on the rest of the way alone.”
Kitchener was watching the girl sidewise. Her manner was so innocent and
confiding that it was hard to disbelieve her. But he was certain that in
most of its details the yarn was pure fiction. According to Jerry
Tearl--and Jerry usually knew what he was talking about--the uncle’s
name was not Jim Durand, but Sim Bent. At the time he was supposed to
have written to his niece and started into the woods he was still
serving time in the Ottawa prison.
The girl’s excuse for entering the wilderness was unbelievable. A woman
so obviously fastidious in tastes and habits certainly would never
submit voluntarily to the rigors and hardships of an arctic winter,
unless she were actuated by exceptional motives. Kit felt sure that she
was acting with Durand, or Bent, in an attempt to sledge a load of
stolen gold nuggets out of the forests. Her story of being “lost” was
probably only a pretext to bring her into contact with the police of the
district, so that she might spy upon their movements and attempt to
throw them off her companion’s trail. She was clever enough and daring
enough to hoodwink the entire force of the mounted.
Kit turned suddenly to rescue a skillet of beans, which the girl had
appropriated from his pack while he slept, and set on the fire to burn.
“Sorry!” she exclaimed. “I just simply forgot ’em.”
As he glanced around at her lovely, contrite face the line of
Kitchener’s jaw molded unconsciously into a harder line. The notion had
struck him that it would be a good idea to keep her with him. If she
were playing a subtle game at his expense, it would be a good job to
have her where he could watch her. He felt a strange premonition that
through Diane he eventually would be brought to his reckoning with the
man who brazenly carried his father’s service revolver.
“You might have known about Indian guides,” he remarked to hide his
inward thoughts. “Unless you arrange ahead of time for regular, listed
men, you’re out of luck. You pick up these fly-by-nights of the bush and
they’re sure to ditch you at the first hard portage.”
“I’d have been all right,” she said, “if my dogs hadn’t chased a rabbit
and run away with my sledge and everything I owned. And then your friend
Jerry came along with his high-handed performance.”
Her manner changed and she grew wistful and dangerously appealing. “You
owe me something if you’re his friend. You’re going to take me with you,
aren’t you?”
“I’ll take you,” Kit consented.
They lunched on what Inspector Bill Tearl used to call the “ABC’s” of
the wilderness, ashes, beans and coffee. Then, as soon as they had
cleaned up and repacked, Kit harnessed-in his dogs, and they started off
together upon the northward trail.
It was a gloomy day, with only a few hours of the short daylight left.
The snow had stopped falling, but the clouds that they saw through an
occasional rift in the spruces were black and low-riding, portentous of
trouble.
For a little distance Kitchener followed Jerry’s plainly marked trail.
Jerry was wearing a pair of big, broad-toed Chippewyan snowshoes. At one
place he had plowed unawares over a sharp root hidden under the snow,
and by the subsequent tracks it was seen that the webbing of the right
raquette had been torn. The small mishap had not halted him. He had kept
onward with enormous energy, and apparently would not bother to make
repairs until darkness forced him into camp.
It somehow was comforting to know that Jerry was not many hours ahead
and that the future and the past were still tethered together by a
visible line of footprints. As long as he clung to the trail Kit was
warmed by a feeling that some part of his big brother still lingered
companionably with him. But he had reached the time of final parting.
After a few hundred yards he resolutely turned leftward, and would not
look back at the forking of the trails. He set his eyes on the clean,
new snow ahead, which, to his misty vision, was like a freshly turned
page that had been assigned to him alone. Jerry had crossed out of his
life again, and he was left on his own resources.
Kitchener’s attention was fixed on the snowy aisles of the forest in
front of him and the compass that he wore on his wrist like a watch.
Jerry had given him the compass with the injunction: “Read it often and
believe it absolutely, even though you know it lies.”
Presumably Miss Durand was trudging behind the sledge. Kit did not
glance around. He felt a malicious satisfaction in imagining that she
was having difficulty in keeping up. Although he was rather sore from
yesterday’s travels, he was beginning, nevertheless, to find his
snow-legs. He fancied he was setting a stiff pace.
There is nothing so deathly quiet as the deep woods in winter. In the
lull between storms the trees stood lifeless as pillars supporting a
roof thatched solidly with snow. The chinking was constantly slipping,
falling as softly as feathers on heads below. There seemed to be a
complete absence of life. Through long stretches of the darker valleys
not a tiny, clawed footprint disturbed the white surface of the ground.
Even the shy, wild things of the forest shun the places of the deepest
gloom.
Early in the afternoon Kit emerged suddenly from thick cover to skirt
the edge of a frozen swamp. He lifted his head to look at the open sky
and breathed more freely, feeling that a great oppression had been
lifted momentarily.
Among the sedges that stood like broken spears in the swamp there were
millions of rabbit tracks. Where rabbits make their homes their hunters
likewise live. The padded prints of mink and otter and fox were seen on
all sides. The muskegs of the wilderness are bloody carnival grounds.
But to-day there was a strange brooding quiet everywhere. Not even a jay
or a whiskey-jack flew down to mock at the travelers.
Kit traveled on to the northwest and trusted in his compass. And a while
before the breathless twilight set in he crossed the base of a long,
timbered slope and came out on the banks of a river. At the place where
he struck the stream it was sheathed solidly in ice, but farther down he
saw ugly rocks and caught the mutter of wild, white water. From Jerry’s
description he knew that this must be the Vermilion River.
Miss Durand left her place behind the sledge and came forward among the
panting dogs. Her hand was pressed against her ribs, as though to hide
her rapid breathing. She grinned cheerfully at her fellow traveler. “You
can take it faster if you feel like it,” she remarked.
Kit laughed ironically. This was simply bravado. She probably knew that
he couldn’t go much faster, even as he was aware that she never could
hold the pace if he did.
Along the curve of the river bank ran a scuffled trail. A sledge and
dogs and a solitary man had passed here sometime during the day. Kit
called the girl’s attention to the peculiarities of the snowshoe tracks,
their waffle-mesh packing, the wide-spread gait, the deep drag of the
heels. These same snowshoes had broken the path for him yesterday, and
there was no question of their wearer’s identity.
“It’s your uncle,” he said.
She descended the sloping embankment to look with quickened interest.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Since the snow stopped falling. He can’t be many hours ahead.”
Kitchener hied-on his drooping dogs and the sledge once more got
underway. Night was approaching under a lowering sky and the reaches of
the river valley and the spreading hills of spruce had begun to fade
into a purple-stained haziness. Again Kit moved on in the advance, his
eyes strained ahead as he made use of that last half hour of twilight.
He was a hunter pursuing a human quarry. In the dim miles somewhere
ahead a tall, furtive figure was moving along with a train of dogs,
crowding a little more distance on the end of a hard day’s march. If
Jerry had guessed correctly, this man held in his guilty keeping the
secret of the old tragedy on Great Owl Run. Presumably he was on his way
now to regain the spoils of an earlier crime. The sledge with its fatal
lading undoubtedly had been cached near the place where the woman was
shot and her brother and Inspector Bill Tearl had vanished--one, perhaps
two days farther north.
Kit hoped to be on hand when that rotted sledge was unearthed. He had
the trail now, and he would hang on, wherever it led him. By the
freshness of the prints he estimated that at this moment his man could
not be more than ten miles farther down the river. After this evening he
must be wary, neither lagging too far behind, nor closing-in too soon.
Above all else the man must not be allowed to suspect that a pursuer was
following the river route.
Beyond his anxiety to surprise the ex-convict red-handed in possession
of the long-lost sledge, Kit’s plans were still somewhat indefinite. He
probably would arrest his man, and, posing as Sergeant Buck Tearl, hand
his prisoner over to the police at _Saut Sauvage_. With the new material
evidence backing the circumstantial facts that Jerry had gathered, it
might be possible to convict the man of an ancient crime. For one thing
he would be hard pressed to explain how he happened to be armed with a
revolver that at one time had belonged to the missing inspector of
police. Even if conviction failed, there still would be a chance of
forcing out the truth concerning Bill Tearl’s disappearance and hushing
the scandalous rumors that had sullied his memory.
For the immediate future Kitchener held no misgivings. He wore a
policeman’s coat and carried a policeman’s gun, and unless somebody
discovered that he was an impostor, he held the authority of the law in
this gloomy neck of the woods. If his man showed fight the former
intercollegiate pistol champion would have no need of begging quarter.
His present doubts concerned only Diane Durand. She perplexed him and
worried him more than he admitted even to himself. She was a vivid young
woman, fearless and humorous and intensely human, with a queer strain of
sweetness underlying the dominant qualities of recklessness and
willfulness. He liked her in spite of himself. There was danger of his
liking her much too well if he failed to heed his saner judgments.
Luckily, he had been forewarned. She was associated with the scar-faced
man, towards whom Kit was beginning to feel a strong personal enmity. In
the final reckoning, she too would be his enemy. And a perverse, highly
organized woman is so often more bitterly implacable than the ugliest
tempered man. He feared her, almost as he feared himself and his own
sentimental weakness. For that reason he had set his face and his heart
against her. His brother had trusted him, and whatever else he might do
on earth, he could not fail Jerry.
He drove his weary dogs down river until darkness finally hid the trail
of the sledge that had gone before him. Then he called a halt for the
night. The lee side of a great spruce windfall served well enough for a
campsite. He unhitched and tossed each of the dogs his evening’s portion
of ice-stiff fish. Then he pitched the Burberry tent, which he had
inherited as a part of Jerry’s luggage. He built a tiny fire screened
behind the river bluff, and, with the girl’s help, he scrambled together
a hot supper.
They kept awake only long enough to eat. Then with a faint, tired “good
night” the girl crept into the tent.
“’Night,” said Kit curtly. He rolled up by the fire in the spare fur
robes and was asleep before the dogs had finished burying themselves in
the snow bank beside him.
At the hour exclusive to milkmen and the rounders of night clubs in
milder lands farther south, Kit aroused himself in the frigid darkness.
A stiff breeze had sprung up in the north and sleet was rattling among
the gaunt branches of the willows and alders that hedged the riverside.
There was something in the wild sound of the wind and the feel of the
raw, tingling air that filled him with unpleasant foreboding. A native
could have told him that one of the dreaded northeast storms was
gathering forces to sweep down from the polar regions. It was nearly the
end of the year, three days before Christmas.
He raked up the dying embers of the fire, fed on new fuel, and started
breakfast. Then he shook the tent flap and awakened Miss Durand.
The girl pushed a reluctant head out into the cold, glanced heavy-eyed
about her, and yawned impolitely in Kitchener’s face. “What time is it?”
she demanded.
“It’s an unearthly hour,” he said.
“I haven’t had half enough sleep,” she protested.
“Neither have I,” he returned unfeelingly. “Get up. I’m pulling out of
here in twenty minutes and taking the tent with me.”
They were both too drowsy and too cross even to pretend to be
good-humored, and they ate breakfast without talk, and then struck camp
and reloaded the sledge like a pair of automatons. While the girl was
pulling on her green parka and mittens, Kit served the dogs their fishy
portion and hustled them into the traces. The man and woman then slipped
into their snowshoes, fumbled at the lashings with numbed fingers, and
started the day’s march as the sullen dawn was beginning to break.
They traveled as they did yesterday, Kitchener acting as pioneer, and
the girl tramping behind at the “gee” pole of the sledge. The new light
revealed the partly obliterated trail of the man who had proceeded them
down the river.
Kit followed with his head bowed to the cutting sleet, pushing on
remorselessly, and not always remembering the slender, frost-whitened
figure that trudged at his heels. Some time in the morning he came to a
sheltered place where the remnants of a campfire had been snowed under,
not many hours earlier. The ex-convict had spent the night here, and had
gone on again, probably at daybreak.
From this point the trail was fresher and, for the present, very easily
distinguished. The man was staying with the river. He had crossed the
ice of a tributary creek and still continued down the course of the main
stream. This creek was the first of the branches that Jerry had
mentioned. The fifth would be Great Owl Run.
Kit did not wish to overtake his man until after he had turned into the
Great Owl country. Late in the morning he discovered that the tracks of
snowshoes and sledge runners had a cleaner demarcation at the edges, and
he realized that he was closing up the gap too quickly. Thereafter he
moved more leisurely and kept a sharper look-out ahead.
He and the girl halted at noon for lunch, and later they again stopped
for a few minutes to give the dogs a breathing spell. The afternoon was
beginning to fade when they reached the second of the creeks that flowed
from the east into the Vermilion River.
The small stream entered the larger waterway between sloping, timbered
banks. Kit descended through the willows at the head of his dogs,
started across the thick ice, and then stopped as short as though an
alarming voice had challenged him. In the snow along the north margin of
the creek he saw a new trail--dog tracks, the twin grooves of a
heavy-laden sledge, and a pair of big raquettes crushing through the
snow.
Kitchener brought his team to a standstill and curtly signaled Miss
Durand to halt. He strode forward to investigate, and then stood in
wondering silence.
The newcomer evidently was a heavily built and energetic man. His
snowshoes were of the two-bar type, remarkably broad at the toes, but in
spite of their sustaining spread they sank deeply under his
hard-cruising weight. The webbing of the right shoe had been torn, and
afterwards roughly repaired. The imprints were too familiar to leave any
possibility of doubt. Kit yesterday had examined a line of tracks that
were identical with these, and he knew that he could not be mistaken.
The new arrival was Jerry Tearl.
Kit beckoned on his companion and crossed the brook to regain the
embankment of the main stream. The broad-toed prints ranged down to the
river’s edge, and there turned northward to meet and run parallel with
the trail that Kit had been following all that day. Jerry and the
ex-convict were traveling the same direction, and by the recent
appearance of the two trails they could not be many minutes apart.
It was incredible that the pair had actually encountered one another and
were cruising in each other’s company. One must be following the other,
with not more than a couple of miles separating them. Kit anxiously
inspected first one snowshoe depression and then another, trying to
decide which held the deepest film of sleet. To his untrained eyes there
was no appreciable difference in the trails. One man probably was a
little ahead of the other, but which was the pursuer and which the
pursued, Kit was unable to determine.
CHAPTER IX
GRANDFATHER’S RED BLANKETS
What change of plan or error of reckoning had brought Jerry into the
Vermilion River country, when he should have been miles from here,
heading due north, Kit at this moment was unable to imagine. He wasted
no time in futile speculation. It sufficed him to know that Hell Bent
and his brother were cruising on the river route, almost within rifle
shot of one another, while he and Diane Durand were trailing close
behind. He did not need the gift of prophecy to realize that events were
rapidly shaping themselves towards some sudden crisis.
The girl had come down the river slope to look curiously at the juncture
of the trails. For a moment Kitchener lifted his icy eyelashes, trying
to discover from her face whether she recognized the pattern of Jerry’s
raquettes. She did not enlighten him.
“Funny there’d be somebody else along here on a day like this,” was her
only comment.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Kit carelessly. “Maybe some trapper finishing
his rounds. You find fur-hunters’ shacks scattered here and there all
through the wilderness. Come on. Let’s go.”
They took advantage of the last of twilight and hurried on after the two
who had gone before. Kit had no expectancy of closing up the distance
to-night, and the best he could hope was that conditions to-morrow might
remain favorable for tracking. At this moment, however, the prospects
were disquieting. The sleet was changing to snow--stinging, dry flakes
that had begun to eddy into drifts along the exposed banks of the river.
As he pushed onward he cast many dubious glances towards the northern
sky, worried by the auguries that spelled heavy weather and smothered
trails.
When darkness finally hid the ground underfoot he had no choice but to
go into camp. This night they were lucky enough to find an overhanging
bluff by the river which served both as a windbreak and a sheltering
roof. By the time the tent was up and supper had been cooked, their fire
was almost blotted out by flying clouds of snow. Kit shoved the
smoldering fagots closer to the cliffside, and then groped his way along
the cracking edges of river ice and dragged in enough down-timber and
driftwood to last through the night.
Diane Durand left her tent flap open to catch the rays of heat, and Kit
snuggled down by the snoring dogs, where the reflected warmth reached
the wall of rock. A dozen times during the night he awakened to
replenish the fire and to listen with gloomy forebodings to the wind and
the rush of snow down the river levels.
At daybreak he and the girl aroused themselves in a world of swirling
whiteness. The moment he had cast off his robes he wallowed through the
drifts to the river bank. It was as he had feared. The landscape
stretched away into ghostly backgrounds, an unbroken monotony of snow.
This was to-day, and all of yesterday’s records were buried under the
great downfall of the storm.
Kitchener felt reasonably certain the ex-convict and Jerry both were
heading for Great Owl Run. The trails had disappeared, and there was
little prospect of picking them up again. But as long as he held the
guidance of the river and kept count of the branching streams there was
slight danger of his going astray. Diane Durand did not seem to be much
alarmed by the burying of yesterday’s tangible paths.
“Uncle Jim’ll be up there somewhere,” she said serenely, “and if we keep
on the way we’re going we’ll surely find him.”
“Shouldn’t doubt it,” said Kit.
Through that brief, blustering day they struggled forward in the welter
of snow, like specters in a world of death, seeing no living creature,
walking in a vast blankness. They crossed the mouths of a third and a
fourth creek that ended their ice-choked careers in the Vermilion River.
As night closed in at the end of the ghastly daylight they struck the
fifth branching stream.
On a high promontory, barely discernible in the hurly-burly of the
storm, Kitchener made out a tall, gaunt fir tree that had been stripped
of its middle branches and left standing above the river, a beacon for
all passers-by. This was a “lobstick” which the Indians had trimmed
fantastically to commemorate some noteworthy tribal event. The ancient
marker, Jerry had said, would indicate Kit’s turning point. This creek
must be Great Owl Run.
Whether Diane Durand knew anything of local geography Kitchener did not
know. But she offered no protests when he quitted the river here and
turned up the side stream.
In almost any other land Great Owl Run would have been called a river.
It was thirty or forty feet wide between its sheer banks, a deep,
swift-running stream coming out of the high hills in the northeast. For
stretches the course was closed solidly from bank to bank, but along the
narrow races the water poured out thunderously from under the ice
tunnels, and would not freeze even in below-zero weather.
There was no sign of human footprints along the sheltered shores. If
anybody had come this direction during the last twenty-four hours the
trail was blotted out under the heavy snowfall. Kit moved furtively and
as long as he could see he kept a restless lookout among the gloomy
coverts. Bill Tearl and the two outlanders had met with a strange and
terrible fate not many miles farther up this stream, and Kit was
conscious of a haunting oppression of mind and spirit as he neared the
scene of the old tragedy.
Darkness came, and he continued to grope his way up the winding
watercourse. The dogs were sagging in the traces, staggering belly-deep
in the snow. Behind the sledge Diane Durand stumbled and floundered in
the drifts, almost at the end of her endurance. But still Kit would not
halt.
As they advanced the forest grew blacker and denser. The gale still
raged overhead, but in the timber-smothered depths of the creek bottoms
scarcely a breath of wind reached them. Evergreens do not rustle like
deciduous trees, but moan and sigh in living anguish. There are few
sounds more dolorous than the wailing of a spruce forest at night.
Kitchener was groping his way through a tangle of snowy underwood, when
he was conscious of a shadowy movement at his elbow. Startled, he turned
his head to see a slight, wraith-like shape hurrying at his heels. It
was Diane Durand. In the darkness he could just see the blur of her
lifted face.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he resumed his weary stride. There was
no reason why he might not have spoken in a natural tone, but through
the warning of some vague instinct he pitched his voice to a whisper.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I-- How much farther must we go?”
“Not far now,” he said.
He expected her to drop back to her place with the sledge; instead she
kept at his side, pressing even closer, as though something had
frightened her and she was seeking the reassurance of human fellowship.
It was curious. Until this moment she had never betrayed any symptom of
timidity.
“I’ve never seen it so dark anywhere,” she complained. “It isn’t like
being out-of-doors, but feeling your way in a strange--” and hesitated
for the word--“cavern. Everything is so--shut-in.”
Kitchener had nothing to say. He was forcing his way doggedly through
the low, jungle-like thickets, when suddenly, unreasoningly, his breath
was quenched in his lungs and his heart stood still.
Something soft and silent and somehow horrible, seemed to move through
the air just by his head.
He was not aware of any sound, nor of actual motion. Yet without seeing
or hearing he knew that something alive had passed through the darkness
and stared at him.
And Diane knew, and the dogs knew. The girl’s hand was clutching the
muscles of his forearm, trembling. The dog team scrambled forward to
slink at Kitchener’s heels. Like the girl, the beasts also had
discovered a sudden need for human companionship.
Kit had pulled up short, listening, his eyes striving vainly to
penetrate the stifling gloom.
There was nothing, only the sighing of the spruces and the cracking of
frost-brittle branches along the hidden creek. His common sense tried to
tell him that he was deluding himself with overwrought imaginings, but
his high-keyed instincts knew better.
As he waited, tense and breathless, with the girl clinging to him and
the dogs cowering at his feet, it came again. For an instant he fancied,
or rather, felt, that a ghostly shape, blacker than the blackness of the
night, had soundlessly crossed his line of vision. Similarly, he was
conscious of a wavering in the darkness behind him.
Kit felt a cold tingling creep up his backbone to the base of the neck,
that queer, atavistic sensation that modern men probably have inherited
from furry forebears, who bristled in moments of danger and dread. The
girl was standing close, her slim young body as taut as though she had
suddenly passed under a mesmeric spell. Without thinking what he did,
Kit’s arm slid around her waist, and she did not try to move.
Again he was aware of a shady stirring, as though a grotesque and
impalpable substance had stooped his direction and brushed him by. For
just that moment the dead air was disturbed and he had the impression
that a soft, monstrous form had swept past his face. And all at once the
awful silence was disrupted by a harsh, snicking sound--like a pair of
steel scissors’ blades that had sharply clashed.
Kit caught his breath, and then his drawn muscles relaxed and he laughed
feebly with the letting down of over-strained senses. “Oh, gosh!” he
moaned. “What a pair of idiots we are! Scared--”
“Of what?” the girl gasped. “Oh, what?”
“Do you know the name of this place?” Kit’s voice sounded more as though
it belonged to him. “Of course! I never thought!”
“This place--?” she echoed.
“Great Owl Run. There must have been a reason for the name.” He released
the girl and looked shamefacedly into the darkness. “Owls!”
Something glided past them so close that they felt the fanned wake in
the atmosphere.
“It’s an owl pit in here,” explained Kit, who had become his own man
again. “There must be dozens of ’em. They’re just swooping to look at
us--”
The girl shuddered and threw up one arm to defend her face. “How
terrible!” she faltered.
“A puppy or a wolf cub would never get out of here alive,” he told her.
“But a man and woman and grown dogs are perfectly safe.”
The girl strained forward as his eyes tried desperately to fathom the
obscurity. “I can feel them about us,” she whispered. “They must be
enormous.”
“Great Northern Owls!” he said. “I saw one once that had wandered south.
He was six feet across the wings. Bloody night pirates! Fiends! This
must be a fearful pocket of the woods. Where the owls live nothing else
ever lives.” He touched her hand. “Let’s get on.”
Miss Durand was somewhat reassured, but the dogs did not like this place
at all. Thenceforward Kit had no worries about the jaded animals keeping
up with him. They were nosing his heels at every step.
As he crunched over a carpet of spruce needles, which in places was bare
of snow, vague, feathery flutterings wove invisible orbits about his
head. Once something croaked above him, and later one of the fearsome
nightbirds sent out his hunting call, a voiceless, disembodied sound,
like a despairing groan floating out of an insatiable emptiness. He knew
it was only an owl, and yet his blood was chilled by the unearthliness
of the cry.
He had no idea how far he followed the windings of that ill-omened
creek. For hours, it seemed to him, he groped his way among shaggy tree
trunks, around rotted windfalls, through tangling, flesh-tearing
thickets. And then, without warning, he found nothing in front of his
outreaching hand. He stopped and peered blindly, and knew only that the
dense forest had abruptly come to an end and that there was open space
before him.
Gingerly he moved forward again, and barked his knee on the sharp edge
of a stump. There were other snags and stumps sticking up from the
ground. He brushed the snow from one of the old stubs, and found the
scars of ancient ax-work. Here, apparently, was a man-made clearing.
Diane Durand had pressed up behind him with one unquiet hand touching
him as she tried to see past his shoulder. The dogs squatted on their
haunches and sat in an uneasy line, their noses and sharp ears cocked to
the fore. And then, before anybody could stop him, one of the beasts
flung up his head and let forth a long, lugubrious howl.
The sudden eruption of sound in that hushed closure of the wilderness
was indecent, uncanny, frightening. Kitchener caught the animal’s throat
and choked off the last echoing quaver. “Shut up!” he commanded under
his breath.
The girl had ventured a few paces forward, and he straightened and stole
up beside her.
“I think there’s something there,” she said close to his ear. “I can
just make it out--square and black.”
Kit lifted one eyebrow and stood at straining attention. Gradually a
dim, dark outline took shape in the gloom. “It looks like a house,” he
mused.
A mutual curiosity drew them on, and after several cautious halts, they
arrived before a low-roofed, dismal-looking structure of hewn logs, that
stood, apparently, in the middle of an abandoned clearing. There was no
sound within, no glimmer of light; the place smelled of emptiness,
desolation and decay.
Kit moved under the dank front wall, and waited with his mouth half open
and his head alertly tilted. The open doorway yawned at him and the
puncheon door hung on one rusted hinge that creaked faintly with the
pressure of the wind. At the right and left loomed the dark squares of
two broken-shuttered windows. In the faint odor of must that emanated
from the interior murk he caught no scent of smoke nor savor of recent
cooking. The one-time occupants of the cabin must have been a long while
absent.
Kitchener’s sense told him that he might enter the place openly, and
that there would be no one to deny him the right. But something more
than mere instinct of caution urged him to hesitate. His hand went down
to unbutton the flap of his pistol holster, and that simple, unthinking
act made him bold. He shouldered aside the swaying door and stepped into
the cabin.
Something squeaked and scuttled away overhead, and became silent. The
old roof evidently sheltered squirrels, or rats. There was something
else. It was a low, measured sound, lifting and falling, like a man
breathing in the dark.
The dead air within seemed many degrees colder than the zero weather
outside. Kit found himself shivering as he stared into the frigid
obscurity, striving with every nerve aquiver to locate the source of
that strange, breathy heaving.
Diane Durand had come into the cabin and remained a stilled shadow at
his side. The dogs were cowering in their tangled traces at the doorway,
snuffing audibly at whatever it was the darkness hid. It might have
seemed that they were afraid to stay alone outside, and fearful of
coming in.
Kitchener had his flashlight in hand, his thumb irresolute on the
button. He drew a quick breath and suddenly pressed the contact. A spot
of light danced on the farther wall, and he swung it in a circuit of the
room.
His swift reconnoitering disclosed nothing immediately alarming. The
brilliant bull’s-eye flicked from wall to wall, illuminating bare,
peeled logs, warped and moldy and showing wide cracks at places where
the chinking had crumbled. The first hurried survey revealed a clay
fireplace choked with stale kitchen litter, a greasy iron pot hanging on
a crane, a broken-legged table covered with tattered oilcloth, a slab
bench, a trash heap of empty tins and battered cooking utensils, a
sheet-iron stove and stove-pipe flaked red with rust, a disused ax
driven to the hilt into one of the sill-logs, and a double-decked bunk
made of poles and stuffed with withered balsam branches and
frowsy-looking bed clothing.
The single, four-square room held no visible habitant, and yet,
deliberate and rhythmic as tick-tocks, the breathing sounds continued.
Kitchener felt his eyes growing bigger as he switched his light back to
the bunk. There was something in the lower section, a shapeless bulge
hidden by a red blanket.
For lengthening seconds he watched and listened so particularly to the
other breathing that he himself forgot to breathe. At first he thought
the blanket had shifted slightly, but as he eyed it closely he changed
his mind and decided that nothing had moved. But still the strange,
bellows-like pulsations filled and expired, lifted and died again.
Slowly his glance turned upward, and then he shot his light towards the
ceiling beams. There was a gaping hole in the roof, where a patch of
shakes had rotted through; and one of the rafters had loosened at the
eaves. A current of air sucked through the door and drew out through the
vent overhead, causing the sagging roof to billow at intervals like a
tent-top in a wind. It was the cabin that was breathing.
Kitchener should have been relieved when he traced the source of
disturbing sound. But he wasn’t. There was something wrong about this
place. He felt it. He knew it. He felt it in the air, in the chilling
darkness, in his blood and nerves and in the marrow of his bones. The
light flickered back to the bunk. He looked, took a couple of steps
forward, and looked harder.
The red blanket was an old Hudson’s Bay Company four pointer. He saw the
marking stripes at the corner that hung off the edge of the bunk, and
also he saw a charred spot in the fabric, down near the border. A spark
had hopped out of the camp fire his first night in the woods and
scorched that hole in the wool. It was Grandfather Tearl’s old red
blanket. There was no mistaking it. He had given it to Jerry when they
traded clothes and equipment, two days ago. Jerry was here, or had been
here.
With misgivings that he could never have explained, Kit moved to the
bunk and pulled at the edge of the blanket. He tugged tentatively, and
then jerked it to the floor. In the middle of the bunk was a crumpled
garment--a gray stag shirt--and nothing else.
Kitchener stood like a torpid man, staring senselessly at his own bare
hand. His fingers were wet and sticky. He turned the light towards
himself and felt weak and sick. The blanket had left a gory smear across
his palm.
As though he had suddenly aroused himself from a stupor he snatched up
the shirt from the mattress of browse. He looked at the label under the
neck band. It was the shirt he himself had purchased not long ago at a
New York store of outfitters. His brother had it when they last saw each
other.
In an access of horror Kit spread wide the garment and brought his lamp
to bear. And then his eyes shut as though with an anguish that was
almost too great to bear. In the center of the back, where the cloth
would stretch over the wearer’s shoulder blades, he found a small, round
hole, soggy to the touch and stained an ugly crimson.
“Jerry!” The name stuck in his throat, choking him.
He whirled with his light to see Diane Durand standing behind him, her
lips apart, her eyes wildly gleaming as she stared at the bunk. “What is
it?” she gasped.
Kit said nothing. His spot-light was a will-o’-the-wisp, darting about
the room. A bare floor of hard-packed earth; bare, log walls; naked
timber-rafters supporting the roof: there was no hiding-place here. He
heard nothing except the thumping of his heart, the sighing of the old
cabin, the horrible sniffing of the dogs in the doorway.
The snow had swirled down through the hole in the roof, whitening the
floor in the middle of the room. In the snow Kit discovered the pattern
of a man’s boot-sole fouled with red. The light blazed a path through
the darkness as he moved forward, crouching almost to his knees. There
were other bloodspots on the floor, a spattering trail leading to the
broken window at the far end of the cabin.
On the floor beneath the casement there was an ugly, dark pool and the
windowsill was similarly bedabbled. He stood up, looked into the outer
darkness. Shrinking from contact with the red-stained sill, he thrust
his head out of doors and turned his lamp downward. His breath stopped
short as he peered after the piercing light beam.
The cabin, he discovered, had been erected on the brink of Great Owl
Run. The embankment descended in a sheer drop, straight down to the
stream, twenty or thirty feet below. In the flash of his lamp he caught
the gleam of black, open water racing under a yawning ice-tunnel a
little farther downstream.
He turned away, his eyes in a stinging mist, conjuring the image of his
lusty brother: the dauntless Jerry who had started with such supreme
self-confidence on his journey to Queen Maud Sea.
Kit needed to search no farther. He knew what had happened. Jerry must
have been in the lead, traveling down the Vermilion River and up the
course of Great Owl Run with Hell Bent only a mile or so, a couple of
hours, behind. Jerry could have had no warning that he was being
followed. Tired out after bucking the blizzard all day he had crept into
the bunk with his clothes on, rolled up in Grandfather Tearl’s blankets,
and slept.
It did not take a morbid imagination to visualize the rest. The second
man arrived stealthily under the cover of the storm. He would have
paused outside for a moment to remove his waffle-meshed snowshoes. Then
he tiptoed into the gloomy cabin, pausing to listen and searched out the
location of the bunk.
Probably the rats squeaked and scuttled away in the rafters. Silence
after that, save for the sighing of the cabin and the breathing of the
sleeping man. A furtive approach; a shot fired at close range. Utter
quiet then. Only the wind drawing softly through the cabin roof.
The valiant, resourceful Jerry had been caught asleep with his boots on.
Kit could visualize only too vividly the subsequent horrors: the
stripping off of blanket and shirt, the search of pockets; a limp shape
toppled off the bunk, dragged across the snowy floor, boosted to the
window sill and dumped overside. A plummet-like drop, a cold splash in
the darkness below.
Kitchener’s gun was in his hand, but he was not thinking of himself or
of lurking dangers. He was staring in direful fascination at the black
window opening, hearing only the swirl and gurgle of Great Owl Run, the
downpouring waters that ran under ice to empty their flotsam at last
into the frozen wastes of Queen Maud Sea.
CHAPTER X
ALWAYS FIRE FIRST
The soft stirring of footsteps jarred Kitchener out of his hideous
reverie. Diane Durand had stolen past him in the darkness, and with
reaching hands she leaned forward to look out the window. He grabbed her
and flung her backwards so violently that she cried aloud, clutching at
the finger-marks on her wrist.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, amazed and angry.
“Keep away from that window!”
“What for?”
“There’s blood on it. It’s everywhere.”
He had switched off his light and was unable to see her face, but he
heard her draw a shuddering breath and felt her dynamic glance fixed
upon him. “It’s--what?” she said in a small, muted voice.
“It’s murder,” he said, wondering what made his own speech sound so
strange. “That’s all. Just a nicely planned shooting in the back.”
“Who?” gasped the girl. “Who?”
“My--” Kit stopped so abruptly that he bit his tongue. “An old friend of
mine. He was worn out and trying to get a little sleep. I guess he
didn’t know that it happened. I--I hope he never knew.”
“You--what makes you so sure?” she asked in a chilled whisper.
“I’m as sure as though I’d seen it.” His short, ugly laugh did not have
quite the ring of sanity. “His shirt with a bullet hole in the back, all
smeared. The blankets he died in. The dripping across the floor--right
there--right at your feet. A body lugged to the window. Overboard and
into the creek. That’s how it was done. A pretty little job. A neat
piece of work from behind. Your uncle Sim or Jim or whatever you call
him. A straight-shooter--a straight-shooter-in-the-back! A nice, sweet
boy he is!”
There was a dead silence for a space, and then a harsh, choking sound in
the darkness. Then Diane Durand’s voice, icy and level and dangerously
restrained: “I can’t believe I understood you. Will you say that again?”
Kitchener was so stunned by the tragedy that he was unable at present to
think clearly or rationally. All that could matter to him was the aching
certainty that Jerry was gone. Funny old Jerry! He had been done out of
life and disposed of like a trapped, helpless animal. Stalked in his
sleep and brutally killed! The numbing realization left Kit without any
sense of discretion. He wasn’t caring about anything now, what he did or
said or what happened next.
“I said that your uncle came in here and stood over him while he slept
and put a bullet into his body.”
He felt the girl flinch, and he was conscious of her eyes staring at
him. “That’s a lie!” she panted.
“Killed him with the old ivory-butted gun!” Kit laughed insanely. “Of
course! The beautiful, engraved six-shooter that stood for law and
order! How things work out! God, what a joke everything is!”
The girl turned on him in a flash of savagery. “What a beast you are!
You don’t know. You make a wild and wicked guess, and accuse a man of
murder. With nothing whatever to go on except your own crazy notions of
what might be--of what you seem to want it to be. You policemen! No
wonder people are afraid of you. That’s your idea: get somebody, no
matter whom. It doesn’t matter whether he’s guilty or innocent. Get him!
Frame him! Bring him in! Swear his life away! Get your man--any man--”
“Listen, baby!” Kit cut in fiercely. “I don’t need your advice--or
criticism. That sort of talk isn’t helping any. I’ve seen what I’ve
seen. That’s plenty. The waffle-mesh tracks we followed down the river.
You know who those belong to. Stalking the two-bar shoes through the
storm, right to this place. Don’t think I don’t know the ins and outs of
this business. I know whom to look for, and I know he can’t be far from
here right now--”
“You haven’t a shred of real evidence!” she interrupted passionately.
“And to say what you’ve said, without being sure--it’s cruel, it’s
criminal!”
“Yes?” he retorted. “Well, let me tell you--I’m going out and find the
bloody prints. There’ll be tracks somewhere around here. And they’ll
show the waffle marks. I’m just that sure of that. If they shouldn’t
I’ll apologize. I’ll beg your pardon on my hands and knees. You can’t
ask anything fairer than that.”
Kit swung around to face the open doorway. It was snowing heavily
outside and the wind still moaned through the firs. In the black forest
farther down stream the frightful cry of a giant owl quavered in the
night--a hideous, hungering sound. He couldn’t forget the name of this
place. Great Owl Run. His father had been finished here twelve years
ago. And now his brother! A fateful spot for the Tearls. It wasn’t just
coincidence--it was kismet. This place had haunted his imagination since
childhood. Now he had found it for himself. And Bill was gone and Jerry
was gone, and only Kitchener was left.
Perhaps Kitchener would go next in turn. That would be consistent. And
he didn’t particularly care. Little Jane would carry on. It was queer
how his thoughts kept going back to Jane now, and he could smile
tenderly to himself, thinking of her. She was the best of the lot. It
didn’t matter about himself. He wasn’t afraid of the owls or the
mysterious forest or the red-handed murderer who undoubtedly was
skulking somewhere in the neighborhood.
His pulse had slowed to a sober, steady beat, the fever of his blood had
simmered down to an ominous coolness. There was something he had to do,
and he was ruthless and reckless in the zest to see it through. Whatever
happened, he asked only that it might be swift and decisive.
He started towards the door, but a hand reached in the darkness to grab
his sleeve. “What are you going to do?” asked Diane Durand in sudden
panic.
“Find him, and arrest him--if he doesn’t try to resist.”
“Oh, no!” The girl’s tone had changed. She was frightened and desperate.
There was frantic appeal in her voice. “No! Wait! You’ve got to wait!
Something terrible will happen! Don’t. Please don’t!”
“You seem to think he will resist.” Kitchener’s laugh sounded unfamiliar
in his own ears. “Well, he probably will.”
He shook off her hand and started again to leave the cabin. But at the
doorway he changed his mind and halted. He thought he caught a sound
behind him--not where the girl stood, a little to the left--but straight
back, over near the fireplace. He had thoroughly searched the room.
Nothing was there. And yet--
Again he heard it. Unquestionably! A soft, whisking sound--higher
up--near the roof--like snow sliding. He turned, and his pocket light
again found its way into the hand. He didn’t touch the button, but was
ready to shoot on the flash at an instant’s notice.
In his loosely gripped fist the butt of his pistol rested comfortably.
The expert marksman gave no conscious thought to the weapon. It was as
much a part of himself as the hand that held it. The safety slipped off
with the reflex of the thumb. His whole attention was centered towards
the ceiling beside the chimney, where he knew there was a wide hole
opening through the roof.
It was too dark within and without to differentiate between the solid
part of the roof and the open sky. But a prescience more astute, more
sensitive than mere eyesight, appraised him that something was blocking
the gap above, staring into the cabin.
All was still now, save the slow, gentle shifting of the rafters, but
Kit was positive that somebody or something had climbed onto the
roof--that a face was peering down.
He was waiting with every faculty straining to catch the least hint of
sound or movement, when, as sudden as lightning, a white, blinding ray
flashed downward to cut the darkness like a shining blade and hit the
farther wall in a dazzling bullseye.
Kitchener’s reactions were as spontaneous as it is to live or to breathe
or to fight back from a corner. He saw the hard, round spot of light at
the upper end of the shaft--the focus point of the searching beam. The
light was swinging his direction--reaching for him--
There was no volition on his part. It was as though his pistol lifted
and sighted itself and went off on its own responsibility, regardless of
his own will or intention.
Flame spurted, the butt kicked back in his fist, the log walls were
jarred as though by a sledge-hammer blow. At the same instant the light
winked out, and some broken, clinking object dropped and struck the hard
clay floor below.
The room was still filled with the first explosion, when a fiery streak
stabbed down at Kitchener from the darkness of the eaves. A chunk of
lead hit the wall just behind his neck and plunged deep into one of the
logs. The man on the roof had fired at the flash of Kit’s gun, and
missed him by inches.
As the report of the return shot jarred in his ears, Kitchener
side-stepped and ducked towards the floor. His bullet had shattered the
lense of the intruder’s lamp. He was safe enough, as long as he kept his
thumb off his own switch-button.
But Kit was not playing for safety. This blind-man’s work irritated him.
On the roof crouched the man who had assassinated his brother Jerry, and
who also must have had a hand in the ambushing of Inspector Tearl.
Kitchener was troubled by no scruples of chivalry. He grinned dourly to
himself in the darkness as he realized how he had met his first test in
police uniform. He hadn’t even thought of the traditions of the service,
but fired instinctively and beat his man to the shot. So Jerry
undoubtedly would have done in his place. There was no sense in dealing
politely with a dangerous criminal who knew no code.
At this moment Kit’s only regret was that he had shot too accurately. He
had sighted for the man’s electric lamp and smashed it. If his bullet
had only been a little off the line he might not be crouching in the
darkness now, with a live murderer at the roof hole, ready to plug him
the instant he revealed his whereabouts.
The sweetly pungent reek of picric acid was a familiar scent in Kit’s
nostrils. It reminded him of the target gallery where he used to put in
an hour every afternoon following the dismissal of the class on torts.
In law a tort is an evil or injury done one man by another, and the
professor had taught his students that the wronged party was entitled to
complete redress. Kitchener was thankful to-night that he had learned
something in college beyond the theories of books. If he caught a single
glimpse of his man no court of law would ever need to settle this
affair.
He turned his light-stick upward and pushed the button. A luminous
streak splashed to the ceiling, limning brilliantly the jagged hole in
the roof-shakes. In the opening he saw a bulky shoulder and an arm and a
man’s big fist clenching a revolver. His own gun went up. Eyes and
finger synchronized to their business, but in the fractional second
required to make sure of his aim, a living, gasping weight landed on him
from behind.
Kitchener had no warning of the attack. The shock sent him down on one
knee and his flashlight was knocked out of his hand and went flying
across the room in a twisting, white arc. He was unable to check the
pressure of his forefinger in time. A jolt of sound hit his eardrums as
his pistol exploded haphazard to send a bullet on a ricocheting course
from the chimney to the side wall and across the splintering door-slabs.
His assailant was Diane Durand. He had forgotten her in those few
seconds and had allowed her to get behind him. And now she had both arms
around him, clutching his pistol-hand, clinging to him with an amazing
strength.
Kit had often heard the phrase about female deadliness, but he never
thought it really meant anything--not until now. Under their silken
softness her muscles were almost as strong as his, and at that moment
she seemed twice as agile. He regained his feet and tried to wrench his
arm free, but small fingers and sharp nails were digging into his wrist
with the force of desperation.
The girl was hanging on his back, and whichever way he turned he swung
her with him. Her face was pressing his neck and he could feel the
breath come and go harshly from her open mouth. “Let go!” he muttered,
and tore furiously at her hands.
On the roof overhead he heard a slipping, sliding sound, followed by a
heavy thump in the snow behind the cabin. The man outside evidently was
dissatisfied with his peek hole, and had dropped to the ground. Either
he had decided to run away or had started around for the cabin door.
Kit was in too tight a situation to hold any false punctilios in the
distinction of sex. Courtesy towards women is a nice trait, but it was
absurd to be gallant with his life at stake. The beautiful gestures of
life are outmoded. There are no gentle disciples of Gautama left in the
world to feed themselves to female tigers.
This girl was fighting him like a man. He locked his fingers under hers
and wrenched backwards with his full strength. Her breath grew short and
sharp and he felt her supple tendons cramp themselves convulsively. He
was hurting her badly, but she still clung to him, trying to plow her
nails deeper into his flesh. Fiercely he tore her grip away, and whirled
to fling her from him.
But she was a shade the quicker. One slim, tenacious arm crooked itself
around his neck and tightened under his chin to choke back his
breathing. The second hand darted around to clutch him across the mouth,
trying to twist his head off his shoulders.
“Drop that gun!” a voice sobbed in his ear. “I--I’ll make him quit
if--if you’ll--quit!”
“Quit!” Kit laughed truculently against the warm hand that was stifling
him. “Quit, Hell!” He jerked his head aside at the price of a furrow of
skin gouged from his upper lip. Then, with a contortionist’s movement he
dropped to one knee, taking the girl with him and attempting to fling
her in front of him.
His pistol was in his fist and he did not dare to put it away or drop
it. At any minute the expected footsteps might cross the threshold from
without. He only had the use of one hand, and his attacker was as active
and lithe and stubborn as a pouncing cat. He almost threw her by the
unexpectedness of his ruse, but not quite. She recovered her advantage
with a surprising shift of her wiry body, tumbled across his shoulders,
twisted a rounded leg behind his knee, and wrapped both flexible arms in
a tightening strangle-hold against his wind-pipe.
Both were panting in the darkness, and Kit could taste a warm salty
trickle on his lips. He was furious. It stung him to the depths of his
masculine complacency to realize that this slender, boyish-built girl
was quite as able-bodied as he. At that moment, if his thumbs had been
able to reach her pretty throat, he could have throttled her cheerfully.
But she was like a leech, a fierce little incubus, hag--riding his back.
He set his teeth and, with a sudden effort of exasperation, he heaved
himself erect, wrenched his shoulder around and threw back his head.
His skull hit something soft and yielding with an impact sufficient to
hurt through the hardness of his cranium. He heard a broken little cry
behind him, and the girl’s tense body relaxed a trifle, and for an
instant her arms loosened their clutch. She tried to grab him again, but
this time he evaded her hands and tore himself free.
He did not linger to find out what had happened. He felt the draught of
the open doorway, and turned leftward to plunge out into the snowy
night. Groping blindly, he sprang through the door, stumbled over
something that yelped and snapped at his leg. He tumbled sprawling into
the middle of a shrieking, struggling heap of dogs.
His team of huskies had been sitting in an uneasy circle at the cabin
entrance. It was too dark to see, and he had completely forgotten them.
The reminder was so sudden that he did not quite know what had happened
until he found himself flat on his stomach in the snow, the center of
the writhing, howling pack. A wet, furry body fell backwards and sat on
his head. A second shape bounded across him, tangling him in the sledge
traces. One of the beasts snarled in fright, and something slashed his
pants and nipped the flesh of his calf.
Fighting with both hands, he warded off the milling shadows, and managed
to lift himself to his knees. A set of sharp teeth clicked in his face,
and as he threw out his arm to protect himself his pistol slipped from
his grasp and went spinning away into a snow drift. He righted himself
somehow, and scrambled to his feet. Kicking the dogs away, he
disentangled himself from the twisted harness lines and stooped forward
to plunge his arm shoulder deep into the nearest snow bank.
Frantically he groped about with his bare, chilled fingers, and gasped
with relief as his hand closed over the icy butt of his lost gun. This
was sheer good luck. He might have spent an hour in futile search for
the weapon. He examined the gun critically to make sure that the action
was not clogged, and then stole around the cabin, closely hugging the
walls.
There was nobody in sight. He wedged himself into the angle of the
chimney and waited with every sense keyed to hair-trigger alertness. The
dogs were raising such bedlam in front of the shack it was impossible to
hear any other sound. He gaped right and left in the darkness. The man
on the roof had jumped down on this side, but there was nobody here now.
Perhaps he was ambushed in the neighboring timber; perhaps he had fled.
Kit ventured out of his sheltering nook and pushed around to the side of
the cabin overlooking the high embankment of the brook. Still he saw
nothing, heard nothing except the gurgle of water and the raving of the
dogs around in front. He retraced his steps, waded through the animals,
and looked in at the doorway. His electric lamp was still blazing in the
corner of the room where it had fallen. All the rest of the interior was
shrouded in darkness. He did not see the girl and did not stop to search
for her. In three strides he crossed the room, snatched up his lamp, and
again ran out of doors.
His light cast strange, ghostly patterns among the sheeted stumps and
along the ragged, white fringe of the forest. The higher plumes of the
firs swayed and moaned in the wind, but everything was deathly still in
the underwoods below. He made his way around the cabin, boring the
darkness in all directions with his flashlight, steeling himself for the
crashing shock of a bullet.
He reached the rear of the cabin, and nothing interrupted his wary
advance. The lamp was brought to bear, and he paused to read the story
in the snow. Here were a pair of big boot prints. The intruder had
removed his snowshoes at this spot and climbed to the roof. The eaves
were only hands’-reach high, and he had boosted himself upward from a
convenient windowsill. Farther out were two deeper bootmarks. This was
where he had jumped off the roof. There was a circle of scuffled tracks
at this point. He had donned his snowshoes here.
Kit flashed his light outward and saw a line of webbed tracks, heading
across the clearing to the forest. Great, long strides--almost running.
The murderer evidently hadn’t cared for his enemy’s marksmanship and
decided that he had had enough.
There was nothing else that Kitchener needed to see. He switched off his
light and returned to the cabin doorway.
“Hello!” he said to the darkness.
There was no response.
“You there, Diane?” he demanded. “You might as well know it. The
waffle-mesh snowshoes. Your lovely uncle! He was here and took a crack
at me, and beat it, and left you to the wolves.”
“You fired first!” an unsteady voice spoke out from the shadows. “And
nobody left me. He didn’t know I was here. I was careful that he
shouldn’t. If he had he’d have come in and got me. You may not know it,
but I saved you--”
“Or him,” interrupted Kit. His sore lip yielded to a battered grin.
Somehow he bore no malice towards the girl. Nobody could blame her for
fighting for her own. That was the sort of blind, unreasoning loyalty
that he himself understood only too well. He turned on his lamp again
and switched the light around until he found the slight figure standing
lonely in the middle of the room. She faced him unflinchingly, and
apparently was trying to check her labored breathing.
As he looked at her he felt a queer catch in his breath. Her shirt was
torn at the collar, her ruddy hair was flying at wild ends, a bruised,
bare arm emerged from a sleeve ripped to the shoulder. But her pert nose
was the worst. It looked a couple of sizes larger than he remembered it,
and was frankly bloodied.
“Ah, gee!” he exclaimed contritely. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I didn’t mean
to do that.”
“Is it bad?” she asked, and crooked her arm across her face.
Kit hastily dug a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to
her. “Gosh!” he muttered. “I never hurt a girl before in my life.”
“I don’t think it’s broken,” she assured him through the crumpled
handkerchief. “What did I do to you?”
“You skinned my wrist and half ripped off my lip, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s something, anyhow!” Her dark eyes brightened with
satisfaction. “That makes us quits, doesn’t it?”
Kit drew a deep breath of relief. It was wonderful of her to take it
that way. “You’re a good sport!” he ejaculated. “Darned if you aren’t!
The Dianes! Hellcats, maybe. But that’s all right. I hope I always have
a Diane for an enemy.”
“You will,” she returned evenly.
He cast a sharp glance at her, started to say something, but changed his
mind and turned away. From his pocket he produced a match and ignited
the litter in the fireplace. “Might as well make it comfortable here,”
he said as a cheerful blaze crackled up in the darkness. “I hate to
leave you alone, but there’s no way out of it.”
“You--where are you going?” she faltered.
Kit did not answer. His thoughts were out in the dark forest, pursuing
the trail of the waffle-webbed snowshoes. In a few minutes he would be
on the march again. The other man would be very tired too. Wherever he
went fresh his trail would be easily followed. He couldn’t stay on his
feet forever. Kit could keep going as long as the other man did, and he
had no intention of being shaken off now.
“I’m going with you,” the girl announced.
“You!” he countered. “What chance would you stand? I’m traveling
to-night. I’d leave you miles behind.”
She started towards him, tottered uncertainly, and caught at the table.
“I’m all in!” she said piteously.
“Of course you are,” he assured her. “You stay here and get some sleep
and rest. I’ll come back for you when I can.”
Kit went outside, unharnessed and fed the dogs and turned them loose to
find their own sleeping places. An ax, two blankets, matches and a few
packages of provisions were strapped together into a small back-pack.
The remainder of his equipment he carried into the cabin. He dragged in
several armloads of down-wood and stacked it in a pile by the fireplace.
Then he drew the old ax out of the cabin sill, spiked the door back on
its hinges and refastened the shutters over the broken windows.
The girl had watched him in gloomy silence, knowing it would be useless
to try to dissuade him from his plans.
“I’ve fixed you up as well as I can,” he said. He shouldered his
pack-sack and picked up his rifle. “Good night, Diane.”
The girl was standing by the fireplace, dejectedly. “I hope--” she
began, and stopped.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said drearily. “Good-by.”
Without a backward glance Kit passed out of the cabin and strode off
alone into the blustering night.
CHAPTER XI
_SAUT SAUVAGE_
The police shack at _Saut Sauvage_ was buried in the snows of the remote
wilderness. A fitful storm of sleet was lashing southward from the
arctic barrens. It was December 24, a squally, gusty evening, bitterly
cold. The wind was many things that night: a child sniffing and sobbing
outside the batten door; a scolding old woman; frightened puppies
whimpering in the darkness; a pack of wolves raging howling around the
ice-banked walls; a gang of bad boys, laughing and throwing missiles
against the rattling windows.
Inside the plank and tar-paper building the confined air was close and
oppressively hot. The sheet iron stove, big enough to take a pine stump
at a gulp, was stoked until its round sides looked like a red apple and
its tin chimney shot a column of sparks above the drooping, stunted
trees without.
Constable Joe Cross was at home, spending Christmas Eve in his most
civilized manner. He had combed his sandy hair and trimmed his stiff,
blond beard and put on his best necktie and the clean flannel shirt that
he had washed and mended for this occasion. At the present moment he sat
astraddle a slab stool before a packing-box table, which held three
dry-batteries and a small radio receiver. He held a pencil in his huge
fist and a pair of ear-phones were clipped over his crimson,
frost-bitten ears. A lantern, hanging overhead, helped the glowing stove
to furnish the light for his writing.
The great radio stations at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Lincoln,
Nebraska, both were ranging the continent to-night with Christmas
messages for the boys of the Arctic Patrol. Constable Cross was
switching the dials first from one wave length to the other, waiting
breathless and expectant for his own name to come out of the stormy
night.
Meanwhile he was picking off the greetings intended for luckier men.
Sometimes he would jot down a line or two to be read over again
to-morrow, sighing with vicarious satisfaction in the knowledge that
Corporal Somebody’s sweetheart still loved him or that Constable Some
One-else’s family was thinking of him somewhere at this very instant.
A couple of trappers, Jean Bruyas and Giffard the Runt, who kept hunting
shacks somewhere in the neighborhood, had wound up their circles at the
police post where they knew the radio would be working and a Christmas
Eve mulligan would be stewing on the stove.
Bruyas was a great tree of a man, black and hairy, slow and thick of
body and wits, unsmiling, unfriendly, utterly fearless, with remorseless
slits for eyes and a loose-lipped mouth from which half the front teeth
were missing. In contrast Giffard was small and wizened and active as a
sparrow. At times he was overly talkative and too ready with his
laughter, and again he went into long spells of sulky, touchy silences.
The Chippewyans called him Giffard _Noondea_, which in their language
meant “the weasel,” and was not a complimentary nickname. It was
suspected that he would sometimes lift a fur from another man’s trap if
he were absolutely certain that the other man was nowhere about.
Giffard and Bruyas had been running their trap line along separate
branches of Great Owl Creek for a decade or more. They were well
acquainted and kept out of each other’s way as much as possible.
Earlier in the evening three Yellow-Knife Indians had walked into the
post. The Indians, as a rule, avoided the police when they could. But
these three were civilized and Christianized, and wore neckties. They
were known severally as Tom Salmonfish, Athu, which was short for
_Athulejeray_, the musk-ox, and Pete Tomorrow. Salmonfish and Athu had
been converted to two religions apiece, besides still keeping their
faith in the old tribal gods. All of which, Constable Cross had
remarked, should make them good enough to die young, and he hoped they
would.
The three of them squatted together on a corner of the floor, uneasy and
furtive in the presence of the law, muttering mysteriously to one
another, while they waited for a hand-out.
At eight o’clock in the evening Constable Mark Devon returned from a
short patrol he had undertaken during the last few days into the Slavey
hunting grounds. Devon blew in with the storm, enveloped in a gust of
snow that battered its way into the room as he opened the door and
hastily shut it behind him.
It was impossible to see anything of Devon because of the sleety snow
that clothed him from head to foot. He looked more like an icicle than a
man.
“Well, boys, we’re going to have a white Christmas!” he announced as he
limped to a stool in the corner and sat down to tug off his frozen
boot-pacs. “Ain’t it nice for the kiddies?”
Constable Cross turned momentarily from his radio. “‘It snows!’ cried
the schoolboy,” he sang out boisterously. “‘Hooray!’”
“Froze my foot again this morning,” remarked Devon as he tenderly peeled
down his thick-ribbed sock. “Same as a year ago. I always lose a couple
of toes for Christmas.”
“Are you maybe hangin’ your stockin’ to-night for Santa Claus?” inquired
Jean Bruyas with his twisted, broken-toothed grin.
“Nope,” answered Devon. “I’m through. I hung it last Christmas and all I
found in it next morning was the two toes that had come off with the
sock.”
Cross started to make some remark, and then checked himself, raising his
head and listening intently in the ear phones. Slowly his startled,
incredulous expression yielded to a look of utter beatitude.
“It’s for me!” the others heard him gasp.
His pencil was feverishly writing on the paper. Presently he stopped,
swept off his head clamps and stood up to flourish the scribbled sheet.
“From my sister!” he announced breathlessly.
“Yeah?” said Devon.
“Two or three thousand miles through sleet and darkness,” the first
constable declared proudly. “Can you beat it? And think of all the
people who must have heard my name mentioned!”
“After that one big experience,” remarked Devon, “anything else that
comes over the radio to all those people will just be a lot of
applesauce.” The tall policeman was very cutting about his comrade’s
Christmas message, but he could not quite hide his envious look as he
eyed the slip of paper. “Well,” he asked grudgingly, “what’d your sister
say?”
Constable Cross threw out his chest and moved closer to the lantern.
Wrinkling his forehead over his own scribbling, he read in a loud voice:
Constable Joseph C. Cross,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Saut Sauvage, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Dear Joe:
We are all well and hope your health is good too. Wish
you were to be with us at our big turkey dinner to-morrow.
Your affectionate sister,
Eleanor.
“Humph!” said Devon. “Is that all?”
“That’s enough, ain’t it?” said Cross contentedly. “It’s just supposed
to be a greeting.”
“Seems to me like they’re sort of ritzing us with their turkey.” Devon
sniffed the savory atmosphere of the police shack. “What are we having?”
he demanded.
“Ptarmigan and moosemeat all mix’ togedder,” said Bruyas.
“No rabbits?” asked Devon with a suspicious glance towards the singing
pot.
“On Christmas Eve!” exclaimed Cross. “Rabbits?”
Constable Devon pulled off his steaming parka, and then turned back
expansively to face the other men. “Turkey!” he snorted contemptuously.
“Can you imagine anybody wasting radio juice to blow about a turkey, and
here we got moose and ptarmigan and no rabbits!”
Giffard the Runt had sidled over to the packing-box seat the moment
Cross vacated it, and was listening in the ear phones. Suddenly he
looked around with a wry expression. “I don’t hear no voices,” he
declared. “It sounds more like mosquitoes in a muskeg.”
“Mosquitoes?” Constable Cross turned questioningly.
“Maybe somebody’s cut in with a key,” suggested Devon. “It might be C.W.
stuff from Edmonton.”
Cross pushed Giffard off the box and resumed his place at the receiver.
“It is!” he said after a moment, and turned his dial knobs. “Edmonton
official calling for somebody. From Inspector Bowman.” He cocked his
head on one side, and those who were watching saw his eyes blink. “It’s
for us!” he cried.
Constable Devon hurried across the room and shoved a pad and pencil
under his comrade’s fist.
Cross was able to read code if the sending did not come too fast. He was
writing painstakingly, with his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth.
The message was coming through slowly, and from the look of his face the
news must have been somewhat disconcerting. Once he frowned and shook
his head.
“What is it?” demanded Devon when the pencil finally stopped moving.
Constable Cross pushed away from the receiver and looked uneasily at his
comrade. “It was sent,” he declared, “to Sergeant Buck Tearl, _Saut
Sauvage_.”
“What?” demanded the other.
“It must mean he’s on his way here to take command,” said Cross limply.
“Gosh!” mourned Devon. “Why can’t they let us alone?”
“What did you expect?” returned Cross. “That they’d let two bum
constables loaf here through the winter without sending somebody to boss
’em?”
The pair exchanged a sobered glance. It was no light matter for two men
to be snowed-in together through long months of blackness; and the
arrival of a third man would multiply the dangers of friction and
discord: particularly when the newcomer held the authority to make the
lives of the first two as disagreeable as he pleased.
“What’s he like?” groaned Devon.
“Tearl? I don’t know. He was on this side when I was in Alaska, and when
I was in Alaska he had been sent somewhere else. It just happened that
way. So far we haven’t run across one another.”
“I have heard o’ dis Sergean’ Tearl,” put in the bearded Bruyas. “Dey
say he is wan bad feesh.”
“Everybody’s heard of Tearl,” said Cross.
Giffard’s squinty eyes turned maliciously from one policeman to the
other. “They say he’s a devil,” he remarked.
Constable Devon silenced the runt with a lengthy stare. “I’ve heard
myself that he’s bad medicine for trap thieves and whiskey blanc
peddlers and other little slinking ferrets of the woods.” He turned back
casually to Cross. “On the other hand,” he added consolingly, “he may
not be so bad. You know Jimmie Poe? Poe says he’s all right.”
“Weren’t they up at Herschell together a couple of winters ago?” asked
Cross reflectively.
“Yes. The two got caught in a storm and had to coop-up in an igloo for
three weeks. Each had a quarter’s pay in his pocket and nothing much
else. They were eating mittens before they got out, and on top of it
all, Jimmie Poe had gone snow-blind.”
Devon grinned. “But Buck Tearl kept him entertained. The sergeant--he
was a corporal then--had found a walrus tusk somewhere, and he carved
out a set of ivory dice. And the two spent three weeks in a snow-hut
shooting craps by the light of a blubber lamp--”
“And Poe was snow-blind?” interjected Cross. “You mean he couldn’t see
anything?”
“Nothing at all. He couldn’t see Tearl or his own bank roll or the dice
or the spots on ’em. Maybe Tearl didn’t even bother to draw the spots on
’em. Maybe he left his dice blanks. I don’t know. What I’m getting at is
to show you what a good guy he was.”
Cross licked his lips meditatively. “I’d have liked to have been in that
game.”
“Sure you would,” returned Devon. “You’d have made your killin’ in about
fifteen tosses. But not Buck Tearl. He’d call out the numbers that
Jimmie couldn’t see. ‘Seven’, ‘eleven’, ‘big-Dick’, ‘box-cars’, ‘little
Jodie’, and sometimes they’d roll up right for Jimmie.
“Now if it had been you,” mused Devon, “you’d have forgot Jimmy was
playing too. Then he would have had nothing but time left on his hands
for three weeks.”
“You don’t mean,” broke in Cross, “that Jimmie won?”
Devon ignored the interruption. “For twenty-one days Corporal Buck Tearl
sat there helping Jimmie to amuse himself. In the end, just before the
storm broke and they were able to travel again, Tearl had a phenomenal
run of luck and made forty-two passes and cleaned Jimmie for the works.
But where another man would have mopped up in an hour Tearl squatted
patiently and let Jimmie have his three weeks of fun. That’s the kind of
a pal Buck Tearl was.”
Devon lifted the pot lid to peer into its bubbling interior, sniffed
once or twice, and turned back to Cross. “What was that message about?”
he suddenly remembered to ask.
“About a Yellow Knife up yonder being murdered a while back. The word
must have gone down the other direction through Fort Resolution and
Simpson, and finally reached the inspector. He was just telling Sergeant
Tearl to send somebody to investigate.”
“Is that all?” said Devon. “And I suppose Tearl’ll be sending you or me
up through a blizzard to make notes on a dead Boogie.”
Cross looked resentfully towards the three Yellow Knives in the corner
of the room. “Any of you know about a murder up your way?” he asked.
The Indians exchanged solemn glances and said nothing.
“You, Tom Salmonfish!” exploded the constable. “You know anybody who was
murdered?”
“Nop,” said Salmonfish indifferently.
Cross dropped his head menacingly and was about to start the tortuous
process of extracting information from an Indian, when something
arrested his attention. He raised his head and looked towards the
frosted window, listening.
For five seconds he held motionless with one ear tilted upward. His
companions likewise had frozen to silence and were watching Cross. There
were no audible sounds save the howling of the wind outside and the
bubbling of the kettle on the stove within. But the constable’s
companions waited expectantly, knowing that his woodsman’s instincts had
apprised him of some unusual note in the bellowing of the storm.
All at once Cross’ alertness was backed up by a dog coming to life and
sending a challenging bark through the outer darkness. The first husky
was joined by a bass-throated friend, by a dozen, by forty savage,
yelling brutes that aroused themselves from their nests in the lee of
the barracks wall to fill the night with their frenzied babel.
“Wolves?” suggested Devon.
“Don’t think so--” Cross stopped his speech and lifted a silencing
finger.
In the other direction, from somewhere to the southward, they heard
something breaking its way through the underbrush. Then, for a full
minute, the wind sank fitfully and almost died. In that brief lull the
sounds of a man’s voice reached the shack. He was crossing the clearing
in the storm. And then they heard him raise his tones higher, and a
queer, sing-song tune came to them out of the night:
“Down in the woods lived a squaw and her old Injun.
Their only blankets were the cold frost and snow--”
The words of the song drifted to the shack in a melancholy baritone, and
then the singer changed to a lugubrious minor key and repeated his
dismal refrain, this time with full tremolo effects:
“Down i-hin the woods li-hived a squaw and her old In-jun.
Their o-honly blankets we-here the coooooold frost and snooow.”
The crowd of huskies had charged around the barracks, flinging
themselves at the stranger in a raving circle. But, whoever he was, he
would not let the dogs flurry him until he had rounded off the full,
last period of his song. Then he turned upon them with violent words,
and the men inside heard the thud of something on hollow ribs.
The two constables stared at each other, and Devon moved towards the
front entrance. But the newcomer was quicker. The latch rattled, the
draw bar was pushed up, and an icy blast of weather filled the room. A
muffled figure stumbled across the threshold. He was a slender, rangy,
easy-moving individual, who had turned negligently to force the door
shut behind him. As the latch caught he swung around to confront the
occupants of the shack, and he appeared to take in every detail of the
place with a single, flickering glance.
His head and shoulders were covered with drifted snow and a beading of
ice had formed upon his eyelashes. The austerity of his features, the
severe line of his mouth and his ascetic, high-bridged nose, was
relieved by the mocking glimmer of his dark eyes and the sardonic
expression of one upcrooked eyebrow. He ignored the Indians and the
trappers as he curiously inspected one and then the other policeman.
“Which is Cross and which is Devon?” he asked.
Without waiting for a reply he bent flexibly at the hips and proceeded
to pull his hooded parka over his black head. He dropped the white
encrusted garment to the floor and stood erect, a trim, nonchalant
figure clad in the royal scarlet of the Canadian police.
A glimpse of the chevrons on the tunic sleeve sufficed to wipe every
vestige of expression from the faces of the two constables. They drew
themselves up, stiff and soldierly, before the ranking uniform.
“I’m Cross,” said the shorter, lighter-skinned man. “You’re Sergeant
Tearl.”
“Right!” The newcomer broke into the constrained moment with a quick,
infectious grin. He pulled off his mitten and impulsively held out his
hand. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you boys,” he said. “How are
you? Merry Christmas! When do we eat?”
CHAPTER XII
SERGEANT IN COMMAND
Kitchener faced the constables in his scarlet tunic with easy
confidence, swaggering a little as Jerry might have done if he had
stepped in to take command of the outpost at _Saut Sauvage_. Inwardly he
was not so sure of himself.
He watched the pair warily. Jerry had said that he was not acquainted
with Devon or Cross. But there remained the danger that one or another
of the constables had seen him somewhere without his knowing. Both
officers must have heard of the sergeant, and possibly carried mental
pictures of him. Jerry was too vivid a personality not to leave strong
impressions upon the people he met.
A guilty conscience may have made Kit oversensitive. The constables
studied him critically for a moment, and then exchanged sidewise
glances. For an instant Kit held his breath. What thought had struck
them? Did they suspect something was wrong? It was an anxious moment. To
be unmasked now would be calamitous.
Whatever his secret doubts he put up his boldest front. And all at once
the tense atmosphere seemed to clear. The constables grinned at him in
apparent comradeship and shook hands with him. If their suspicions had
been aroused they evidently wanted to be more certain of their ground
before they denounced him.
“I’m looking for a man who calls himself Jim Durand,” he told his new
fellows-at-arms. “He’s a six-foot husky with big, bowed shoulders, a
prize-fighter’s arms and fists and a swarthy face that looks as if it
had been sliced up with a knife some time or other. Anybody like that
been around here recently?”
The two constables shook their heads. “Outside of these chaps and one or
two bushmen we know,” said Devon, “there hasn’t been a living soul along
this way in weeks.”
“I lost his trail this morning,” said Kit, “and so far haven’t found it
again. He’s wearing a pair of square-webbed snowshoes that look as
though they were woven over a waffle-iron. I hoped one of you might have
seen his tracks.”
“What’s he wanted for?” asked Cross.
Kit had had a night and a day to think affairs out and to decide on his
future course of action. He had made up his mind that in his dealings
with Hell Bent he would play out the hand on his own responsibility,
alone.
There were several reasons why he could not tell the constables the
truth. If he let them know, for instance, that a murder had been
committed in the old cabin at Great Owl Run they naturally would want to
learn who the victim was, and their police-trained curiosity in that
direction might lead to all kinds of embarrassing complications. They
would search the river and perhaps find Jerry’s body, and in his
clothing or on his person there might be some identifying mark to label
him as the real Sergeant Tearl. In which event Kit would have trouble
explaining why he was wearing another man’s uniform and perhaps even
might be accused of his brother’s murder.
It was too late now to abandon his imposture. Diane Durand knew him as
Sergeant Tearl. If he had tried to change back to private citizenship
she would discover the falsity of his previous claim: and having every
reason to wish him out of the way, she would not hesitate to denounce
him. He had to go on being a policeman.
As long as he was not found out there were advantages in playing out the
rôle. He was the boss in this part of the woods, and every human being
in the neighborhood had to step to his authority. By wearing the
insignia of the police he held the moral prestige at any future meeting
with Hell Bent. He could arrest his man or shoot him down, and there
could be nobody to interfere or to question his act. Meanwhile, if he
could learn anything of the old tragedy at Great Owl Run, he could keep
the information to himself or use it as he saw fit. Circumstances would
decide him. But for the present there would be no outside blundering to
hamper him. It was safest to work alone.
So Kit did not allow the constables to think that he was much concerned
over the fugitive’s whereabouts. He said nothing about the man’s being
the ex-convict, Sim Bent, and was particular to use the alternative name
of Durand.
“There’s no charge against him,” he said. “I’m looking for him on
account of his niece, Miss Diane Durand. She followed him into the woods
and somehow missed connections, and I picked her up farther down
country. She’s waiting at the old cabin down by Great Owl Run.”
“You had his trail?” asked Constable Cross.
“Yes. He had two teams of dogs, one of which he drove ahead, the other
running at his heels. I wasn’t two hours behind him last night at
midnight. There was no trouble following his tracks with a flashlight.
But early this morning he suddenly turned east and entered that
Yellow-Knife village by the long lake. That’s where I lost him.”
The two constables looked interested, but asked no questions. Apparently
they hesitated to say anything that might reflect upon their superior
officer’s woodcraft.
Kit shook his head ruefully. “There are a thousand tracks around that
camp, of course. Snowshoes and sledges and huskies’ pads. The
waffle-meshes entered on one side, and didn’t come out again. Well, when
I got there I searched the camp, looked in every teepee, talked to all
the Indians. No good. The trail went into the camp, but the man wasn’t
there.”
“What did the Yellow Knives say?” ventured Sergeant Devon.
“Hadn’t seen him, that was all. It may have been true. He could have
crossed through their camp while they were all parked in for the night.
They sleep like a lot of mud-turtles. Maybe for a fact they didn’t know
a thing about him.
“I circled the village several times,” Kit pursued, “but no waffle marks
passing out.”
“What do you think?” asked Devon.
“There’s only one thing that could have happened. He must have had
another pair of snowshoes with him, or else he stole a pair, and changed
’em after he got among the cluttered trails of the village. After that
there wasn’t any way of knowing which tracks were his.
“Well, I crawled into a teepee and caught a few hours of badly needed
sleep,” Kit finished. “Then I thought I might as well come on here and
report.”
He turned unexpectedly to the two trappers. “When did you two get here?”
he asked.
Giffard’s little eyes shifted uncomfortably before the sergeant’s
scrutiny. “This evenin’--early,” he answered. “A little before dark.”
“Either of you run across a stranger to-day?”
“No, sir,” said Giffard.
“P’r’aps,” insinuated the bearded Bruyas, “if we meet dis fellow we say
de sergeant he seek for him. Eh, w’at?”
“Tell him if he wishes to find his niece to get in touch with the police
post.”
“It is a fonny t’ing to arrive in dis col’ country when winter she
come,” Bruyas ventured to remark. “What is it he wish?”
“I understand he expects to trap a bit,” Kitchener replied.
The two natives exchanged a fleeting glance, and Bruyas scowled and
showed the ugly line of his broken teeth. “If he expect to use his trap
on Great Owl Run we have somethin’ to say about dat.”
“Bruyas,” explained the wizened Giffard, “runs his lines on the north
side of that creek, and I on the south. There’s no room for any others.”
“What do you have--leases or something?” inquired Kit ironically.
“We have been on dose groun’ for ten year,” put in Bruyas darkly. “Dat’s
plenty long time so we can say odders keep out.”
“Tell him anything you like as long as you don’t make a police case of
it,” said Kit indifferently. He measured the pair with appraising eyes,
and grinned at them. “After you’ve had a look at him you may not go
quite so heavy on conversation.”
Constable Cross had gone over to investigate the pot on the stove. He
tasted and wrinkled his nose with a fine appreciation. “It’s done,” he
announced.
Devon brought out a stack of crockery bowls and began dipping out the
contents of the stew-pot. Places for three policemen were set at the one
table boasted by the barracks. Giffard and Bruyas were served on the top
of a packing box. The Yellow Knives were handed out their Christmas Eve
dinner, catch-as-catch-can, crouched on the floor in the stifling hot
corner behind the stove.
“We just received a radio message for you, sergeant,” remarked Devon
when Kitchener, as was the commanding officer’s right, took his seat at
the head of the table, facing the door.
Kit lifted his head quickly. “Where from?”
“Edmonton--from Inspector Bowman. He wants us to look into a murder
among the Yellow Knives. I don’t know just what it amounts to, if
anything.”
Kitchener nodded. This, he was thinking, was a fortunate excuse to
return to the Indian village, which was not far from Great Owl Run. He
could prowl about that neighborhood as much as he pleased, attending to
his own affairs, and working ostensibly under the orders of Inspector
Bowman. “They didn’t say anything about it when I was in the village,”
he remarked.
“They wouldn’t,” said Constable Cross. “You can’t cork-screw information
out of those dull-blades.”
“All right,” announced Kitchener. “I’ll go back down there in the
morning.”
Devon chuckled under his breath as he darted a triumphant glance at his
fellow constable. He had predicted that Sergeant Tearl would turn out to
be an agreeable chap. Here indeed was an officer after his own heart--a
man who tackled a mean job himself instead of commanding an underling to
do it.
“You tried to pump any of these three anacondas?” inquired Kit, glancing
over his shoulder at the Indians, who were drinking their stew noisily
out of tin pans.
“Sure,” said Cross. “They don’t know anything. But if you really want me
to find out what they know, just say the word.”
“Never mind,” said Kit. “I’ll make somebody talk when I get down below.”
If the Indians knew they were the subject of conversation they gave no
sign. The three continued to eat until the well-scoured bottom of the
big cooking vessel came into view. This evidently was the sole purpose
of their visit. When the pot was empty they wrapped themselves in their
furs, stalked solemnly to the door and went out into the night without a
word of thanks for the provender which the police had supplied them.
Giffard and Bruyas lingered after their meal for a couple of pipefuls of
kinnikinnick mixed with tobacco. At length, however, Bruyas hoisted his
bulk from the stool, upon which it might have been feared that he had
become a permanent fixture.
“De leedle fox and mink will be lonesome waitin’ in traps,” he remarked.
“I make my way back down. _Bon soir._ I see you again mebby. _Merci._”
“I’ll go with you,” announced Giffard. He buttoned his cadaverous body
into a bulky mackinaw coat. “Good-by, everybody.” His piggy eyes shifted
Kitchener’s direction for a last squinting look, as though to make sure
of remembering the sergeant if they met again.
He picked up his rifle and snowshoes, bowed his head to the blast that
came through the open doorway, and followed Bruyas into the storm.
Devon, who was standing by the door, banged it shut. “If our nearest
neighbors don’t drop in again before next Christmas Eve,” he remarked,
“that’ll make it once too often. If I had my choice between the two
trappers and those Yellow Knives, I’d take a musk-ox.”
Kitchener went to the window, scratched the thick frost with his nail,
and looked out into the darkness. After a moment he turned back and
started to gather up his duffle.
The constables observed him wonderingly. “What are you planning to do?”
demanded Cross.
“I’m going back,” announced Kit--“down towards Great Owl Run.”
“To-night?”
“I don’t know whether you two noticed, but this Giffard had a queer look
in his eyes when I mentioned a girl left alone in that cabin.” Kit
scowled. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s all right. But I thought I might as
well follow him back. He lives down that direction, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does. The end of his trapping loop reaches that cabin on this
side of the brook. Giffard! A measly animal. I wouldn’t trust him
anywhere on the outside of a jail cell.”
“I thought not,” said Kit. “Give me a fresh battery for my flashlight,
will you?”
“Listen, sergeant,” suggested Devon. “Let Cross go, or I will if you say
so. There’s no sense in your bucking this nor’-easter again to-night.”
“Thanks,” said Kit. “But I had plenty of sleep this afternoon. I’ll go
myself.”
“We can give you dogs and a sledge,” offered Cross.
“Don’t need ’em. I left a team down at Great Owl Run.” Kitchener slipped
his arms into the parka that had been drying over the stove, and hitched
his pack onto his shoulders.
“Don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” he remarked. “If I happen to need
either of you boys I can send word. You go on with your usual routine
until you hear from me again.”
Kitchener opened the front door and looked out into the blustering
night. The trappers and the three Indians had vanished without a sound.
But the line of their footprints turned westward, and presumably they
were on their way home.
After a moment Kit stepped outside and kicked his toes into his snowshoe
lashings. “If you see this Durand,” he said in parting, “don’t try to
hold him, but keep in touch with him and let me know as soon as you
can.” He glanced back into the lighted, warm barracks room, and then
resolutely faced the clouds of flying snow.
“So long,” he called over his shoulder, and set forth on his return trip
to Great Owl run.
CHAPTER XIII
LAST-STAND OUTPOST
In the great North the lands of “big-sticks” and “little-sticks” and the
treeless arctic prairies are not divided evenly by the lines of
latitude. There are no definitely marked borders of forestation. For
long stretches the timber country dwindles through graduations of
stunted, failing growth across the frontiers of the open barrens. But
there are other places where the forests send out the massed array of
their mightiest giants, like shock-forces, to wage the endless, bitter
fight with the polar winds.
Great Owl Run stood at the head of one of these last-stand outposts of
the great forests. A broad, sheltered valley and an unusual fertility of
soil gave the trees a chance to root and grow tall and thrust their
dense ranks northward in a hundred-mile fringe. Huge spruces and firs
and wild, dark underwoods crowded each other in a jungle-like wilderness
that reached to the southern edge of the deep-cut creek.
On the opposite bank of the stream the ground rose abruptly into a high
plateau that was exposed to the furious assaults of the arctic gales.
Here the forest stopped as suddenly as though the line had been cut
level with axes. For a mile or so farther on a few dwarfed,
wind-tortured trees struggled to hold their own, and after that there
was nothing but the bare, frozen tundras reaching in a vast, appalling
emptiness to the polar seas.
Kitchener Tearl came westward along the thickly wooded side of Great Owl
Run as the smoky dawn was beginning to break. He had traveled all night
down the creek, skirting the Indian village on the tributary lake
towards the southwest, hurrying on his way because of the fear that Hell
Bent might return to the cabin and leave again before Kit could
intercept him. Kit was hoping at any time to cross the trail of the
waffle-web snowshoes.
It had stopped snowing during the night and the wind was dying. Before
the darkness paled Kit had seen patches of starlight through the
scattering clouds. The storm was blowing itself out, and there was a
promise of clear, below-zero weather for the holidays.
He was walking through the alders that skirted the high embankment of
the ice-bound creek, scanning the ground before him, watching the
shadows changing from purple to misty, twilight grays. The clearing and
the cabin and the owl-infested woods, he knew, could not be far beyond.
As he peered ahead, expecting at any minute to see the break among the
trees, he heard a sudden snapping sound behind him, and as he whirled to
look he saw a man’s muffled figure come out from behind a neighboring
windfall.
Kitchener planted his feet apart and shifted his rifle for
eventualities, and then his second glance reassured him. The newcomer
was short and slight in build, in no wise resembling Bent. He shuffled
forward into the open, and Kit recognized Giffard, the Runt.
The little trapper looked haggard in the early morning light, and as he
drew nearer Kit noticed that he was limping slightly and that there was
a streak of fresh blood across his left cheekbone.
“Hello!” remarked Kit. “What happened to you?”
“Who, me?” Giffard rubbed the back of his hand across his face, and then
looked tentatively at his fingers. “Why, nothin’ much, if you ask me. I
just got torn a little in a bramble thicket.”
To Kit the wound did not have the appearance of a thorn scratch, but he
let the statement pass. “You live around here?” he inquired.
“My shack’s down that way, about two mile in from the creek.”
Kit eyed the man curiously. His back pack was thickly encrusted with
snow, and it was apparent that he had not been home since he left _Saut
Sauvage_ the night before.
“Where does Bruyas live?” asked Kit.
Giffard pointed with his mittened thumb. “North side of the creek. He
hangs out mostly along the barrens.”
The little man moved closer, looked about him in a full circle, and
lowered his voice confidentially. “Last night you wanted to know about
an Indian murder, and I found out about one this morning. The Yellow
Knives is more apt to talk to me than to a policeman. I run into a
couple of ’em this A.M. and I asked ’em and they told me.”
“Yes?”
“One of their bucks was shoved into an ice-hole on Long Lake by an
Esquimau.”
“I thought the Esquimaux had all gone back north by now,” said Kit.
“Yeah. That’s right. The bands come down in the summer to get wood for
sleds and snowshoe frames, and they go back to the coast in the Winter
for the seal hunting. But this man was taken sick an’ left behind. He’s
been moochin’ around here ever since.”
“He murdered a Yellow Knife?”
“That’s the story. Picked him up by the heels and chucked him through a
hole in the ice.”
“What’s his name?” asked Kit.
“Oogly,” said Giffard.
“Ugly?”
“Yeah. Only you spell it with an ‘O.’”
“Where is he now?”
“That’d be hard to tell. The Indians have been hunting him for a month
and ain’t found him yet. He’s too good a hider.”
“Thanks, anyhow,” said Kit. “I’ll look into it.”
He started on his way again, and after a momentary hesitation Giffard
decided that he might as well follow along. The trapper did not actually
accompany Kit, but hovered aimlessly a few paces behind.
They reached the clearing in the nebulous light of daybreak. Kit halted
at the edge of the alders to reconnoiter. Before him lay half an acre of
stumpy ground, hemmed in on three sides by the deep forest, and flanked
on the fourth side by the steep-banked creek. The cabin faced the west,
and stood on the sheer brink beside the stream.
Kit had seen the place only in a pitch-black hour of horror two nights
ago when he and Diane Durand had stumbled out of the woods into the
blood-spattered room. His eyes had grown hard and grim as he paused
under the alders, inspecting the lonely dwelling.
The cabin probably had been standing there, weathering and rotting these
many seasons. The place was more forlorn and tumble-down even than he
had supposed. Yet somebody had been making a few pathetic repairs. Since
his visit a square of old tarpaulin had been tacked over the hole in the
roof, the door was properly squared in its frame, and the broken
window-panes had been replaced with rabbit pelts. A wisp of blue smoke
issued from the crumbling chimney. Apparently there was somebody inside.
From the cabin Kit’s glance shifted across the dismal clearing. The snow
was trampled every direction by a confusion of snowshoe prints. Perhaps
they had been left there by Diane Durand, perhaps by others. He saw only
that there were no waffle-web tracks. But this meant nothing. He knew
now that Hell Bent was equipped with an extra, unidentified pair of
raquettes. For all Kit could tell the man at this moment might be
watching from one of the cabin windows.
There was nothing to do but accept the chance. Kit ventured into the
open, but a hand reached after him to pluck at his sleeve.
“There’s somebody in there,” Giffard informed him in a husky whisper.
“Yes, I know. No doubt it’s the young woman I was telling the constables
about.”
“There’s somebody else,” the trapper insisted. “A man. I saw his face at
one of the window chinks.”
Kit looked around with a sobering expression. “Which window?”
“He ain’t there now,” said Giffard.
Kitchener faced the man with a narrowing scrutiny. “You mean you saw him
a while ago? You’ve been here before?”
Giffard’s eyes dropped and he relapsed into a sullen silence.
“If you’ll take the advice of the police,” said Kit evenly, “you’ll keep
away from this place in the future.” He turned on his heel and started
across the clearing.
He advanced without a sound, a wary eye on the door and the window
openings. So far he had passed unchallenged, but as he drew opposite the
cabin the breathless quiet was assailed by a savage, barking chorus, and
a pack of dogs came tearing around the corner of the building to fling
themselves at the intruder.
They were Kit’s dogs. Buzz-saw, the big Chinook, charged in the fore and
behind him came the tatterdemalions that Kit had purchased in the
Chippewyan encampment. The four beasts caught the familiar scent at the
same instant, recognized their man, and they sat down in a half circle
to yowl beseechingly for breakfast.
It was too late to arrive unobtrusively as Kit had hoped to do. He
strode to the door and flattened himself against the frame, to be out of
range of the flanking windows. The latchstring had been pulled through
its hole, and he found that the bar was down. He rapped heavily with his
fist.
The answer was unexpectedly prompt. “If you don’t get away from here
I’ll shoot you again, and this time you’ll get the full charge!” The
voice came from behind the barred door--a woman’s voice, tingling with
hostility. It was Diane Durand.
“I beg your pardon?” said Kitchener.
There was a short, uncertain interlude before the girl spoke again. “Who
are you?” she asked.
“It’s Tearl.”
“Oh!” she said, and there was another pause.
“Who’d you think I was?”
“Another man,” she told him through the barrier.
“Giffard?”
“I don’t know his name. I don’t want to. A little, horrid, rat-faced
thing.”
“That’s Giffard.”
“You tell him to keep away from here.”
“What did he do?” asked Kit.
“Nothing. He didn’t get a chance.”
“And you say you shot him?” demanded Kit incredulously.
“I certainly did.”
“In Heaven’s name--what for?”
“He came here and tried to give me a silver fox skin for a present. I
told him I didn’t want any presents, and for him to keep out. He tried
to force his way in, and I slammed the door in his face. Then he went to
get an ax, saying he was going to smash down the door.”
Kit looked around at the furtive figure that still lurked at the edge of
the clearing, and his left eyebrow slanted upward at an unpleasant
angle. “I guessed right!” he muttered. “I thought so.”
“What?” asked the girl.
“You mean you really shot him?” Kit asked again.
“When he started back with his ax from the other side of the clearing I
let him have it.”
“What with?”
“A shotgun. The one that was on your sledge.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Kit, realizing for the first time that the girl was
telling the truth. There had been a double-barreled twelve-gauge among
the effects that Jerry had traded him, and also a box of shells. He
recalled Giffard’s limp and the furrowed streak over his cheekbone.
Diane actually fired at the trapper, and a couple of the little missiles
had found flesh.
“Well,” demanded the defiant voice from behind the door, “I suppose I’m
not allowed to defend myself.”
Kit grinned maliciously at Giffard who, this time, was staying at a
discreet distance. _Noondea_, the weasel, probably in the future would
sell his silver fox pelts and not try to give them away to
helpless-looking maidens in lonely cabins.
“Who’s in there with you?” Kit asked the girl.
There was a dead silence on the other side of the door.
“Hello!” he persisted. “Did you hear me? Are you alone?”
Again there was no answer. Kitchener’s half-smiling lips suddenly drew
together in a set and rigid line. “Open that door!” he commanded.
“I’m not going to,” returned Diane. “This for the moment is my home, and
I’m not going to let anybody in.”
Kitchener unslung his ax and leaned the handle against the door-frame.
Then he shoved his pistol holster around to the front of his belt, and
unfastened the flap. There was a stealthy movement behind the door crack
and he thought he heard two people whispering.
The genial-featured Kit magically was gone, and in his place stood a
hard-jawed, stern-eyed man, cool and nerveless and dangerous. There was
somebody in that room with the girl, and his implacable instincts told
him that that somebody must be Jerry Tearl’s murderer.
He caught up his ax, swung the blade, and drove the bit deep into the
quivering door. A second crashing blow slashed a six inch chip out of
the wood above the latch-hole. A gasping protest sounded from within,
and as he lifted his ax a third time the bar rattled suddenly in its
socket and the door was flung open.
Diane Durand confronted him in the dim opening, her head up, her eyes
aflame, a shotgun gripped against her taut body.
“You keep out of here!” she warned the intruder.
Kit scarcely noticed her. Intuition told him that she would be too
squeamish to fire at such close range. A more imminent peril awaited him
in the gloom behind her.
He tried to peer into the thick, smoky atmosphere of the cabin, and was
aware of a gliding movement on the farther side of the room. The girl
was attempting recklessly to bar his way. He strode across the threshold
and grabbed the barrel of the gun. A tug and a twist, and the gun was
wrenched from her hands. He flung the weapon through the door, into the
snow outside.
“You--” she tried to say, and stopped with a choking sound as his elbow
jammed itself into her ribs. He shouldered her aside ruthlessly and
strode past her.
In the dingy light he made out two upright figures standing stolid and
motionless before him. Both were short and squat in build. Neither was
Hell Bent. He needed only a glance to assure himself of that. With his
pistol clenched for business his glance darted around the murky
interior, and then checked in blinking wonderment as a squalling little
human cry suddenly greeted him from the bunk.
“There!” broke in Diane Durand in a tense and furious voice. “You’ve
done it! I knew it! You’ve gone and wakened him!”
Kit was staring weakly at a tiny, squirming bundle, tucked up in a
blanket on the lower bunk. He was too flabbergasted to speak or to
think. At that moment an enemy could have shot him dead without a
flicker of resistance on his part.
Diane had rushed at him in an outburst of indignation. “You bully!” she
exploded. “You brute! I told you to stay out. Oh, doggone it! After all
the time we’ve had getting him asleep! You’ve waked the baby!”
CHAPTER XIV
SQUATTER’S RIGHTS
Kit stared goggle-eyed, first at the girl, at the strange, dumpy figures
watching him from the half-light by the smoldering fireplace and again
at the small, kicking, whimpering object in the swaddling blankets. His
puzzled glance finished the circuit of the room, and he saw there was
nobody else. Feeling flat and foolish, he slipped his pistol back into
the holster, turning his back for the moment, trying to believe that
nobody had seen him take it out in the first place.
After he had surreptitiously hitched his holster back behind his hip he
looked around at the girl. “Where’s your uncle?” he asked, and his
manner became stiff and dignified, as it should be with a sergeant of
police.
Her brilliant eyes suddenly grew stony and uncommunicative. “I don’t
know,” she said.
“Has he been here?”
“No.”
“When do you expect him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you heard anything from him?”
“No.”
Kitchener’s vision gradually was accustoming itself to the dingy light
in the room. The fireplace seemed to draw badly and the smoke hung like
a blanket from the ceiling. He scrutinized the two shapes in the haze
before him, moving closer to see them better and arching one puzzled
eyebrow as his gaze shifted from one to the other.
They were a singular looking pair, not much more than five feet tall, as
sturdy and rotund and solidly put together as a couple of thirty-six
gallon barrels. Kit grinned at the thought. A couple of perfect
thirty-sixes!
In shape and in outward appearance they were exactly alike. Both wore
thick-quilted pants, long, loose shirts of dressed skins, and clumsy fur
boots. Both had slant, mongol eyes set deep behind plumped-out
cheekbones, both wore their slick, black hair in the same square-bobbed
manner, both smiled at him blandly and confidently as a pair of amiable
children. How he guessed it Kit could not have said, but by some occult
system of identification he discovered that one was a man and the other
a woman. He had never seen any people from the Arctic seas, as far as he
remembered, but he knew at once that these two were Esquimaux.
He spoke abruptly to the masculine part of the team. “What’s your name?”
he asked.
The man seemed to know something of English. “Oogly,” he promptly
answered.
“Oogly?” Kitchener’s eyelids twitched slightly as he stared at the
round, good-natured countenance. “You don’t mean it?”
“Yup!” The man beamed upon the stranger, apparently much pleased by this
opportunity for introductions. He pointed with a stumpy thumb. “This
one, my wife. Her name, Mayauk.”
The woman’s lips parted and her teeth flashed in a smile as coquettishly
feminine as the most beguiling dimples of any beauty anywhere. Her
features were as broad and flat as Oogly’s, yet at that moment she
seemed almost pretty, while her husband, even at his best, remained
always as unlovely as his name.
“The baby,” condescended Miss Durand, “is called Uttaktuak.”
Kit looked curiously at the girl. “Friends of yours?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“How long you known ’em?”
“Since yesterday morning.” Her glance strayed gently towards the compact
little bundle on the bunk. “They just happened to find their way here.
The baby had the croup, and they were frightened. I steamed it out and
greased it up, and it’s better I think--I hope.” Her eyes turned
resentfully to the intruder. “She might get well if she weren’t kept
awake by axes and hob-nail boots and the big, loud voices of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police.”
Kit flushed, and then grinned deprecatingly. “I couldn’t very well know
that you had a baby here--now could I?”
“While I am living here,” she said, “this is my home, my demesne. It’s
my privilege to say who comes in and who stays out.”
“By what right?” he inquired mildly.
“Squatter’s rights,” she flashed back at him.
“You move fast,” he laughed. “It was my belief that it took more than a
couple of days and nights to gain a squatter’s title. However, we’ll let
it go at that. This is your castle and moat and grange. The police’ll
stay out, unless”--his brows contracted and he looked at her
pointedly--“unless they find you harboring a criminal.”
She drew a short breath and the span between her curving eyelashes
lessened by a fraction. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Kitchener spoke low, so that only she could hear. “Oogly,” he said, “is
wanted for murder.”
Diane’s pretty mouth sagged open, and for the next few seconds she could
not seem to think of any fitting thing to say.
“Inspector Bowman radioed the _Saut Sauvage_ outpost to get busy on the
case,” he informed her. “Oogly, it seems, upended a Yellow-Knife brave
over a hole in the ice and shoved him through.”
“You don’t know that it’s true,” returned the girl impetuously. “Nobody
saw it. Even the Indians who are trying to kill him--” Diane stopped
short and bit her lip, as though she had decided that she was saying too
much.
“Oh, they are?” exclaimed Kit. “I didn’t know that!” He wrinkled his
brow thoughtfully. “So that’s why they won’t talk. Sort of private feud.
Going to settle it themselves in the good old-fashioned way.” His glance
searched the girl’s anxious face. “Who told you they were going to kill
him?”
“Why, nobody--” she began uncertainly.
“Oogly himself, wasn’t it?” Kit hazarded.
Reluctantly she nodded. There was no evading the shrewdly questioning
eyes that watched her so intently. “They’ve been hunting him for nearly
a month--Oogly and his wife and baby,” she admitted. “They were well
hidden, and they probably wouldn’t have been found--only the baby got
sick, and they came out looking for help.”
Her manner and mood had changed mercurially. The cold defiance of her
eyes gave way to a beseeching warmth and softness. “There is no proof,”
she said--“only the accusations of a lot of irresponsible savages.
Nobody saw any crime committed. You can’t arrest him, can you, on
anything as flimsy as that?”
Kitchener was not thinking about Oogly’s escapades just then. He was
seeing Diane with a new vision, discovering an unexpected sweetness in
her glance and her tenderly curving mouth.
“I suppose not. I don’t know.” He really hadn’t much sense of what he
was saying.
“I’ll let you see the baby some time,” the girl vouchsafed. “It’s got
the funniest, snappiest eyes, and it says things in Esquimau. Think of
it! A little baby that can talk in Esquimau! And poor Oogly! If he were
taken away down south and put on trial--he’d die. You know that. In a
foul, stuffy courtroom! A hunter of the wide floes who has never
breathed anything but the clean, cold arctic wind! And if he dies
there’s nobody to look after Mayauk and Uttaktuak, and they’d both die.”
She paused with a gulp, and Kitchener was amazed to see the sparkle of
tears on her lashes. “It would be unfair. It would be cruel!” Her hand
went to him and for an instant touched his sleeve. “Please! Please--you
won’t, will you?”
“I can at least promise that I’ll investigate thoroughly before I--”
Kit checked himself and looked out through the open door of the cabin. A
harshly quavering noise came from somewhere across the clearing, and as
he lifted his head sharply he saw a great, dark object soar off against
the dusky, morning sky. The thing drifted above the open ground, with a
hollow, querulous cry, and a moment later disappeared in the black woods
towards the south. It was one of the great, slaty-white owls, evidently
going home after a night of foraging.
Diane had turned to peer over Kit’s shoulder, and he felt a tremor
suddenly pass through her slender body. “I hate them,” she said in a
voice of low intensity. “They cross over to the barrens at night to eat
things alive, and they come back in the morning glutted. There’s not a
single small creature left living in this part of the woods.”
Kit was not listening. His attention had been arrested by a movement on
the edge of the clearing at the eastern side. He had left Giffard in the
alders, and the trapper still waited there among the shielding branches,
a peeping, skulking shadow. But he was no longer alone. Two other
furtive shadows had appeared beside him.
As he watched Kit’s eyes began to bulge. Instead of two or three there
were now five or six of them--stark, gray silhouettes that had emerged
stealthy-footed from the underbrush.
Diane had seen his back stiffen as he edged towards the doorway. “What
is it?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Stay where you are.”
Kit leaned his shoulder against the door-frame and tried to see through
the pearly haze of the dawn. He counted eight now, silent, somber
shapes, forming like a skirmish line along the dark edges of the
thickets, and as he watched three or four others stole furtively from
the woods.
As though a soundless command had been given, the group all at once
began to advance towards the cabin. There were a dozen or more of them,
moving forward in a ragged file that spread the full width of the
clearing. They came on without haste, but with a purposeful stealth and
deliberation, dodging and gliding from stump to stump, as though they
expected to get close to the cabin before they were discovered.
Kit suddenly stepped into the open. “Stop!” he shouted.
The on-creeping figures froze to immobility like so many partridges in
scanty cover.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Two of the advance intruders met the challenge by standing boldly erect
among the stumps. The foremost of the pair was near enough so Kit could
see the man’s lean, parchment-like countenance and almost feel the
intensity of the wary, watchful eyes. He held a carbine aslant across
his flat-belted stomach, and Kit’s ranging glance discovered that all
the others were armed. They were Indians--Yellow Knives.
Kitchener was certain that he had seen the leader somewhere before. He
was a tall and skinny savage, all ribs and knobby bones, with a dirty
and grotesquely sharp face, like the face of a gargoyle that had been
left in the weather too long in a sooty city.
“You give Oogly to us.” The leader made his demand without heat, and yet
there was a stolid resoluteness in his manner that would not be easily
cowed.
Kit remembered the man now. He was one of the Yellow Knives who had
dined last night at _Saut Sauvage_. The cadaverous one, he recalled, was
known as Tom Salmonfish.
“What do you want with Oogly?” he temporized.
“We come get ’um,” said Salmonfish coolly. “A big lot of us come now. We
take ’um along.”
“What for?” insisted Kitchener.
There was an unpleasant mutter of voices along the line, and the men on
the outskirts straightened from their crouching postures and stalked
over to form a group around Salmonfish. They made it quite clear that
all were ready to back up their leader’s demands.
“I’m not saying Oogly is here,” Kit parried after a trenchant pause.
“But if he were, why do you want him? What’s he done?”
“He killed our man!” one of the younger Indians blurted out truculently.
“How do you know he did?” asked Kit. “Did anybody see him do it?”
He was aware of a light footstep behind him, and without looking around
he knew it was Diane Durand standing at his elbow, one small hand firmly
touching his back. “Don’t give him up!” she whispered. “You can count on
me. We’ll fight ’em if we must.”
Kit’s glance swept the pressing circle of dark, sullen faces, estimating
their potentialities for trouble-making. They did not look like a crowd
that would be amenable to argument or reasoning. But Kit could do no
less than try to make them see the light.
“Who saw this man killed?” he asked suddenly. “You make a charge. You
say your man was murdered. Who saw it done?”
There was a restless stirring of feet, a grunted word or two, but nobody
answered. There was no sign of receptive intelligence in the lowering
eyes that were watching him and the door behind him.
“You, Tom Salmonfish!” Kit stabbed at the man with his forefinger. “Did
you see this murder done? Or you? Or you? Or you?”
The pointing finger singled out first one and then another of the
Indians. “Tell me! I want to know. I’m a policeman. If Oogly is a killer
I want to arrest him. I’ll take him to trial. If any of you saw the
murder you’ll have to come with us. I’ll arrest you as material
witnesses. You’ll be forced to stand up in open court and make your
charges. If Oogly’s proven guilty we’ll hang him. Come on. I want to
know. Who saw the murder?”
“We don’t want ’um hung,” said Salmonfish, his little coal eyes gleaming
with maliciousness and stubbornness. “You give Oogly to us.”
Kit advanced a pace, but the threatening line did not yield an inch. The
men all held carbines or rifles tightly gripped, and most of them
carried knives and pistols loose in their belts. Three or four were
thumbing the hammers of their guns, without even pretending to disguise
the fact that the muzzles were menacing the policeman. The gang of
avengers were beginning to chafe at all this parleying, and anybody
could have seen that mere words would not hold them much longer in
check. If their man wasn’t handed over to them very soon, they would go
in and get him.
Although Kit realized that his persuasive efforts were foredoomed to
failure, he was determined to stave off hostilities as long as he
possibly could. He looked around the glowering circle with a bright,
accusing scorn.
“If there has been a murder,” he challenged, “where is the body? Have
you brought it with you? The body of the dead man? In law we call it the
_corpus dilecti_. If nobody saw the murder done and nobody has the body
of the dead to show, then there can have been no murder!”
It was a nice legal point and Kit could not help bringing it up, even
though he knew in advance that the niggling little technicalities of his
chosen profession could not possibly bear any weight with these surly
children of the wilderness. In any event his peroration was punctured
flat by an unexpected, startling voice, speaking up behind him.
“The body drowning under much ice. Nobody find um now.”
Kit turned on his heel to see the broad-beamed countenance of Oogly
cheerfully grinning in the doorway.
He closed one eye meaningly, trying desperately to warn the Esquimau to
keep quiet. But Oogly perhaps did not understand the white man’s method
of issuing a warning with a sly eyewinker.
He pushed forward to fill the doorway with his rolling bulk and looked
with good-natured triumph at the men who had come to take him away.
“Nobody find the body anymore,” he declared. “No difference. He is dead
a long time sure. Oogly killed um.”
CHAPTER XV
THE NIGHT HARRIERS
It was too late to stop the Esquimau’s talking. Kit stood dumbfounded,
staring at him. Oogly either had gone stark crazy, or else he was a man
devoid of fear. He had forced himself into public notice, and judging by
his wide, incorrigible grin he was enjoying his unique position
immensely.
From the demeanor of the Yellow Knives, a person unfamiliar with the
Indian temperament might have imagined that they either had failed to
hear or understand. Not a man moved nor spoke, not a muscle quivered.
They waited for the outlander to go on, watching him in a dead, flinty
silence, like wolves watching a swimming caribou.
Oogly was more than willing to oblige. He not only admitted killing the
Yellow-Knife brave, but he told all about it in picturesque detail. He
seemed to think it was a piece of work that his modesty ought not to
keep hidden.
“The man him praying against my fish,” he explained genially. “So
drowning him had to be.”
Kit no longer tried to interfere. What was the use? The mischief was
accomplished. Oogly could swear himself blue in the face with denials,
but nothing that could be said after this could ever sway or stay the
purpose of the savages who had come to get him.
“What do you mean,” demanded Kitchener--“praying against your fish?”
“So nobody of the fish would eat at my fishing hook,” declared Oogly.
The Esquimau had come a step beyond the open doorway, so everybody could
look at him while he told his outrageous tale. In his queerly chosen
words of English, helped out by vivid pantomime, he showed them exactly
how and why the killing was done.
Oogly, it seemed, was fishing through a hole in the ice on Long Lake,
which emptied its chilly waters into Great Owl Run. He had been catching
plenty of fish--innumerable fish--if his hearers could believe the
number of times he jerked his pretended line out of the imaginary hole
in the ice. Then along came the Yellow-Knife fisherman.
The newcomer chopped himself a hole not far from Oogly’s splendid spot
for fish. He dropped a line of his own in the water and knelt down on
the ice.
The kneeling posture was the man’s undoing. The Esquimau could tell that
he was praying. When the fish stopped biting on Oogly’s hook he knew
that the Indian was praying against his fish. When the fish started to
come wriggling and flapping out of the water at the other hole then he
knew that the Indian was praying the fish onto his own hook. Oogly now
was catching none, and the other man was hauling them out as fast as he
could pray.
This, to the Esquimau’s simple method of thought, was a justifiable
cause for homicide. He walked over to the other fisherman, upended him
by the heels and pushed him down headfirst through the hole in the ice.
By making little explosive sounds with his puffed-out lips, Oogly showed
them how the bubbles came to the surface for a minute or two, and then
stopped coming.
“Awright now,” said the Esquimau, winding up his tale. “Finean’ dandy!
Oogly go back and fishing lucky once again.”
That was the story, and after its cheerful recounting Oogly leaned his
squat bulk against the doorframe as he waited placidly to find out what
the dead man’s friends were going to do about it.
Kitchener was aghast. He had never heard a tale so bloodthirsty and at
the same time so naïve and childlike in its telling.
He looked obliquely at the Yellow Knives, and nudged Diane’s arm.
“Inside!” he said under his breath.
“You come along now,” Tom Salmonfish said to Oogly.
The Indian did not raise his voice, but the glitter of his eyes was like
a baneful flame. He said something to his companions, and with that
soundless, gliding motion that is peculiar to all forest-born creatures,
the bunched group of men spread out right and left in a line that
flanked the front of the cabin.
Kitchener backed into the doorway, shoving Diane and Oogly into the
cabin behind him. He reached around with the toe of his foot and pulled
the door towards him, so he would be able to slam it shut with the least
possible delay.
There could be no doubt about the intentions of the Yellow Knives. They
had made up their minds to seize their man, drag him away, and somewhere
in the dark woods mete out their own cruel, remorseless justice, which
demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.
Kit was not deluding himself. These men wore store shirts and refused to
labor on Sundays, but under the veneer of the missionary teachings they
were still the same savages as their fierce and brutal forefathers. If
he tried to save Oogly it meant a fight to the death. They were a
sinister-looking crowd at this moment, and they had made it clear that
they neither respected nor feared the police uniform. He could hear the
click of rifle hammers up and down the line, and he knew they were all
set to rush the cabin the instant their leader gave the word.
Off on the other side of the clearing Giffard, the Runt, was seated on a
stump, like an ominous specter watching events. No help could be
expected from him. He had met with a rebuff that morning that his
shriveled and spiteful nature could never forget. So he sat tensely now
and waited, and Kit knew by the look of him that anything that happened
to the occupants of the cabin would be all right with Giffard. He even
might have egged the Indians on, had there been any need for that.
In the middle of the clearing, moving in the heavy snow between two
stumps, Kit caught sight of a tiny, gray-furred animal which was
struggling through the drifts, apparently trying to gain the shelter of
the nearer thickets. It was an old, whiskered house-rat. Kit recalled
that there had been rats in the cabin roof, and apparently this one had
been gassed out of his home by the smoking chimney.
The human mind is subject to the queerest aberrations. It was strange
that at this moment when Kit should have been terribly concerned with
his own troubles he could find time to think about a rat. But this
little creature was in a bad plight. It would starve or freeze to death
surely if it tried to live in the woods, and if it were caught in the
open by the predatory monsters that dwelt in the neighborhood--
Even at that moment Kit was conscious of a shadowy flutter in the air
above him, and he lifted his head in time to see one of the great, snowy
owls floating across the murky sky. The sharp senses of the Indians also
had caught the impalpable whisking of sound, and, without exception,
they too forgot their own affairs long enough to look up into the
morning dusk.
The huge, pallid night-bird flew softly above the roof of the cabin and
hovered for a moment to peer downward with his stupid, golden-tinged
eyes. Kit heard the Yellow Knives begin to mutter among themselves in
their own, ancient speech, and he saw them stir uneasily and crowd
closer towards the wall of the cabin. It was not a move of hostility,
but of fear, the impulse to hunt shelter. The savage faces were suddenly
stricken with awe and superstitious dread. This bird, as all Yellow
Knives knew, belonged to _Wetikoo_, the Devil’s regions, and they did
not wish him to fly above them.
The great owl was a weird apparition in the ghostly morning light. A
soft, downy body, poised graciously on soundless wings, at first glance
he seemed gentle and dovelike in his white-plumaged innocence. And then,
at closer range, might be seen his frightful head, the diabolically
hooked beak, the beautiful snowy floss of his cheeks and throat dabbled
in fresh blood. He had killed and dined gluttonously many times through
the night, and on his way back to the dark pits of the forest he could
pause in the quiet of dawn for one more killing.
The owl saw the gray rat wallowing in the snow, and by an imperceptible
movement of his expanded pinions he changed his course, slackened his
silent flight. Some clairvoyance of instinct at that instant warned the
rat of the stealthy form that had just skimmed the tree-tops. His sharp,
twitching nose twisted upward, he spotted the monstrous thing drifting
like a fog-wraith above him, and he tried to run, shrieking in terror.
For those few seconds the men in the clearing, white and Indian, lost
sight of their own grim business to watch tensely this lesser drama of
the wilderness.
The rat was doomed. Its tiny feet and legs sank deep in the loose packed
snow and it piled a drift in front of itself as it tried to drag its
body forward. The nearest thicket was a dozen yards away, and there
wasn’t a chance of its gaining cover.
The feathered legs of the owl reached down stiffly and the terrible
talons opened for their clutching stroke. Unhurried, unexcited the big
bird swerved and dipped earthward as lightly as a wafted ball of fluff.
Backed against a stump the rat turned at bay, squealing insanely.
The owl had turned his staring eyes towards the men for a moment, and
then he went about his butcher’s work, as indifferent to the human
spectators as though he were the unearthly spirit that the Indians
believed him to be. The men of the forest were mortally afraid of the
devils that owned these birds, and never dared to molest them. There was
no beast of the wilderness able to cope with the giant owls. So they
grew up without the instinct of fear.
Like a fleshless, disembodied thing, as aloof from the world, as quiet
as death, the great owl swooped.
What prompted Kitchener’s act, he could not have said. But somehow he
found his pistol butt set comfortably in the arch of his hand. His
sights notched themselves in line, and his finger squeezed the trigger.
He fired--not at the swift-moving owl, which was mostly invulnerable
feathers--but at the crouching rat. Nothing could have saved the little
animal, and it is better to die instantaneously than to be plucked to
bits alive. Kit might have missed the rushing bird, but the rat was
standing still. As the report slammed across the clearing the small,
gray body flopped headless in the snow, twitched once or twice, and
settled quietly at rest.
The great owl, almost scooping the ground, braked his descent as his
victim crumpled beneath him. The connoisseur of death recognized death
at sight. He was no vulturous feeder. He took his meat alive. With a
throaty, hissing sound that was not like any earthly sound, he lifted
himself on his shadows of wings, and vanished between here and there
like a smoke-puff dissipating in twilight.
Kitchener straightened his back and eased out a breath that was
threatening to burst his lungs. He looked at the beheaded rat lying so
still under its stump, he looked across the clearing at the
gaping-mouthed Giffard, and then he turned to look at the Indians.
Something had happened to the Yellow Knives in that astonishing moment.
Kit felt the change in their manner, he saw it in their gawking faces
and in their awed, incredulous eyes. They were huddled in an irresolute
group not far from the cabin door, watching him askance.
In an intuitive flash he realized that a miracle had intervened in his
behalf. These were no longer the fierce, rash men who would have shot
him down and burned the cabin above him. They knew nothing about the
law, but they knew much about shooting. They had seen him snip off a
rat’s head with his short-barreled gun at twenty paces. That sight
somehow had spoiled their stomachs for fighting. That same, quick-firing
gun might as readily pop off a half-dozen Yellow-Knife heads before they
could stop its spitting.
It might be impossible even to down a man who dared to cheat one of the
devil-birds of its prey. Such a one, who stood unsmitten afterwards and
mocked at fate with one high-cocked eyebrow--it was more than possible
that he also might be under the diabolical protection.
Kit read all of this in the guileless, bewildered faces, and he made the
most of his advantages. He moved nonchalantly outside the doorway,
keeping his pistol in his hand.
“You, Tom Salmonfish!” he said so sharply that the Indian jumped. “What
do you mean by bringing your friends here? It’s a bad place. None of you
may get out again.”
Salmonfish raised his anxious, squinting eyes, moistened his lips and
started to say something. Then he ducked his head with a spasmodic
movement and almost seemed to shrink within himself as another huge,
blood-smeared owl sailed in from the barrens to cross low over the cabin
roof.
Before the great, lazy-drifting bird had passed across the clearing a
second and a third and a fourth hove in sight above the whited line of
trees. One of them wheeled for an instant in his course, peered around
below him with solemn, glaring eyes. It might have seemed for those few
seconds as though he were trying to stare the watching men out of
countenance, twisting his gory head from side to side while he circled
and singled out individuals for his somber scrutiny.
The Yellow Knives refused to face the evil eyes looking down upon them.
Their shoulders hunched up, their heads bowed, and they huddled
together, looking absurdly like people who had been caught out
unprotected in bad weather. Kit, who was watching them narrowly,
suddenly raised his voice in a wild, singing shout:
“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful
pea-green boat.
They took some honey and plenty of money wrapped up
in a five-pound note.”
He howled the refrain after the owls and beat the time in the air with
the muzzle of his pistol.
For a few seconds the Indians seemed to stop breathing, and they looked
at Kit like so many petrified men. They could not have understood the
words. It might have been an infernal chant for all they knew. In that
hushed nook of the forest the profane outburst of noise was
nerve-shattering. Two or three of the Indians on the outskirts began to
edge away from the cabin, and those in front heard the uneasy shuffling
behind them and were quick to catch the infection.
Before Tom Salmonfish could have realized what was happening he found
himself alone, confronting the mad white man who dared to taunt the
fearsome owls, who could shoot like a fiend, whether he really was one
or not, and who was waving his deadly pistol with a crazy disregard for
those in front of it.
Tom Salmonfish might have stuck, in spite of the owls and the loony
policeman, if anybody had stood behind him. But his braves had thought
of something to do somewhere else. Some of them were already half way
across the clearing, peering furtively over their shoulders as the owls
disappeared in the black timber below the creek. The remaining two or
three lingered momentarily, and then they shambled in an aimless fashion
behind their comrades.
“I’d beat it,” said Kit.
Tom Salmonfish scowled after his departing friends, and then his morbid
glance came back for an instant to the doorway. “We comin’ back an’ get
um soon,” he threatened. “Plenty time to-morrow. Plenty more of us.”
He stalked away with dignity to overtake the last man of the file, who
felt himself being crowded from behind, and stepped on the heels of the
man in front of him. It was like a push given to a line of ten-pins.
Those up ahead moved faster to keep out of the way of those in the rear,
who moved faster to keep up. By the time the retreat began to lose
itself in the underbrush on the farther side of the clearing it had
begun to look like a contest to see who could go at the best walking
clip, without running.
Kit closed the door and dropped the heavy draw-bar. He looked around the
smoky interior, and laughed. Mrs. Mayauk Oogly stood beside him, smiling
up at him, a friendly, cheerful smile. With a sudden surging of good
spirits he leaned forward and kissed the Esquimau woman first on one
roly-poly cheek, and then on the other.
This done, he thought there ought to be no partiality, so he turned and
caught Diane Durand in his arms and firmly kissed her startled, open
mouth. As the girl gasped and lithely struggled free he looked around at
the man who had caused all the trouble.
“We’ve got a reprieve for you, Oogly,” he said. “You lucky stiff! Now
you can be hanged decently, as you should be, by the police.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE HONORABLE MURDERER
The promise of future punishment did not bother Oogly in the least. He
lived happily in his immediate moments, and anything that happened to
him at a later date was something not to be worried about until that
time came. Any day after to-day was too remote even to be thought about.
He gazed up in rapt admiration at the man who had chased off the Yellow
Knives and laughed at their departing backs. Oogly was a humorist
himself, and loved to laugh as well as anybody. His grin of appreciation
included his chin, the top of his forehead and both frost-bitten ears.
Suddenly he thought of something that had been overlooked on this joyful
occasion. He ran to the bunk and came back with the baby in his arms.
“Uttaktuak want kissum too,” he said.
“Being female,” remarked Kit, “she would.” He bent lightly and touched
his lips to the funny little sleeping face that Oogly held up to him.
Then he looked around at Diane with mocking eyes.
The girl was rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand. She flushed
with annoyance for an instant, and then her mood changed and she smiled
caustically. “You’ve certainly given us three women a glorious
Christmas,” she remarked in biting irony.
As she observed Kit from under her thick, hazel eyelashes her face
suddenly grew sober. “Did you mean that?” she demanded.
“I always mean it,” said Kitchener lightly. “Just ask any of the
girls--”
She shook her head impatiently. “You know what I’m asking you. What you
said about Oogly?”
“What did I say about him?”
“That you’re going to arrest him, and--”
“Hang him?” Kit supplied as the girl delicately hesitated. “I would if I
could. That’s part of my job. He deserves it, but I don’t just really
see how it can be done. Not right away, anyhow.”
Diane’s features brightened. “You really meant what you told the Yellow
Knives?”
“I’m afraid I did. You can’t prove that a murder has been committed by
the murderer’s unsupported testimony. Odd as it sounds, that’s the law.
Oogly’s confession isn’t worth a darn without a substantiating witness
and a dead body for an inquest. A man accused of a capital crime isn’t
allowed to convict himself. A nice situation, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s fine,” said Diane.
“You think it’s fine to let an admitted murderer go scot-free?” Kit
scowled at her. “Maybe that’s your idea of the way a world should be
run, but it’s not mine. I’ve got to try and find the dead man’s body.
Then maybe I can do something about it.”
“I hope you never find it,” said Diane.
“I go ’long when you go show you best places for looking,” put in the
irrepressible Oogly.
Kitchener eyed the Esquimau in perplexity. While he wore the scarlet of
the police and called himself by his dead brother’s name he was
conscientiously determined to acquit himself in his borrowed rôle as
sincerely and honestly as though he himself had taken the oath of
service. The responsibilities that once had been Jerry’s had shifted to
his own shoulders. And now his first police case left him in a decided
quandary. He hadn’t the faintest notion what he ought to do.
In spite of himself he secretly felt the same sympathy and liking for
Oogly that Diane Durand frankly expressed. By his own lights the little
Esquimau was a good man. He loved his wife and baby. He would freeze for
them and starve for them and die for them calmly if need be. Men who
lived always so close to death as the people of the frozen seas,
naturally would put the lightest valuation on human life. The loss of a
few Yellow Knives to the world could not seem a very important matter to
Oogly. But if his own life were forfeit for a simple killing, that
wouldn’t be so dreadful either. He had showed clearly how he felt about
it. If he had done wrong, he wasn’t afraid to pay the penalty.
Kit would have arrested the man if he had had any evidence on which to
found a charge. But there was none. There can be no murder trial without
a coroner’s inquest, and there can be no inquest unless the coroner’s
jury has a victim’s body to sit upon. Legally he couldn’t do a thing
about it.
On the other hand, it was out of the question to allow an unrepentant
murderer to wander at large in the forest. Oogly might take it into his
queer head some day that others of the Indians were praying against him.
As Kit studied the Esquimau with a baffled frown, an idea struck him. If
Oogly could be impressed with the enormity of his offense he might try
to be a better man. There was nothing criminal or wicked in his flat,
round face. He was looking at Kit now with an eager, dog-like
friendliness in his uptilted eyes. There could be no doubt of his
anxiety to please the man who had saved him. Perhaps he might be shamed
into future good-behavior.
Kit stared uncertainly around the foggy room, and his glance lit on a
row of shelves in the corner. During his recent absence Diane had
unpacked the provisions he had left for her on his sledge and stored
them neatly away in their original bags and boxes and tins.
After a brief inspection of the shelves Kit picked out a small can which
was labeled “baking powder.” He took off the tin top and laid it on the
table. Using his heavy-bladed knife for a cutting edge and a billet of
wood as a hammer, he cut around the rim, and broke out from the center a
bright disc of metal.
The others grouped themselves behind him and watched with curiosity, but
nobody asked any questions.
With the point of his knife Kit began tracing printed letters across the
shiny surface of tin. He worked painstakingly with his tongue in his
cheek, and when he finished he had engraved the word “murderer” across
the smooth-faced disc. He punched a slot in the rim of metal, removed
the strap from his wrist-watch and threaded it through the hole. Then he
stood up at soldierly attention and faced Oogly sternly.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
The Esquimau nodded. “Yup. You oneguy shoot-like-hell.”
“I’m the police,” said Kitchener severely. He tapped his chest, and then
swept out his arms in a gesture that was meant to take in a hundred
thousand miles of territory. “When I say anything it is the law
everywhere. It goes! You get that?”
Again Oogly nodded. He accepted the statement. He could readily believe
all of that.
“Look at me!” thundered Kit. “Straight! This is awful! This is a
terrible thing! I’m looking into the eyes of a murderer--a common
murderer who ought to be hanged!”
The Esquimau seemed to understand this too. He was watching Kit with
grave intensity, and by the pained screwing-up of his face he showed how
sorry and remorseful he was beginning to feel. His underlip hung out
tremulously, as though he were a little, penitent child who was suddenly
overcome by its own fearful wickedness.
Kitchener hastened on with the arraignment. “I hate to do this to you,
Oogly,” he said sadly. “But I’ve got to do it. You’re a pariah, an
outcast, a no-good man. People must know you for what you are. When they
meet you in the forest or on the barrens they’ll shrink from you,
they’ll shun you, they’ll hurry the other direction. They’ll be afraid
to speak to you, because they’ll know they’re looking at a scoundrel.
“Come here!” Kit crooked a relentless forefinger.
After an instant’s hesitation Oogly advanced a pace and waited uneasily.
Kitchener reached forward suddenly, and with the point of his knife cut
two narrow slits in the Esquimau’s skin shirt. He thrust the wrist-watch
strap through the opening and fastened the buckle. Then he stepped back
and regarded the man with judicial severity.
“If you can read,” he said, “you will see that the word ‘murderer’ is
written upon it. It is my order that you wear this all the time,
whatever you are doing, wherever you go. So that all men may be warned
and recognize you for what you are. It is the mark of crime, it is your
badge of shame.”
Oogly bent his head to look. Gingerly he raised his hand to finger the
dangling, mirror-like bit of tin. After a moment he looked up with shy,
anxious eyes. “Fo’ me?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“For you, Oogly.”
“This make people umfraid?”
“It’ll make them afraid. They’ll be filled with horror at the very sight
of you.”
“I keep um all time?”
“You’re never to take it off.”
Oogly turned to gaze at his wife, he glanced around towards the little
bundle that he had just put back in the bunk, and then he revolved
slowly to face Kit again. The look of respectful admiration that Kit had
read in the man’s eyes a moment ago had mellowed into rapt, slavish
devotion. Oogly’s head went up, the chest that wore the murderer’s medal
expanded by inches, an expression of pride and sheer happiness
overspread his wrinkled face.
“Thanks you!” he said fervidly.
“What?” Kitchener stared at the man with wilting features. “What do you
mean?”
He heard a snickering sound behind him and turned sharply to see Diane
Durand standing with a hand pressing against her ribs, almost doubled up
by the effort to keep her laughter to herself.
“Keep quiet!” he snapped.
“Your psychology is great,” said the girl, and stopped for an instant to
choke. “You had the right idea,” she finished, “only something went
awfully wrong with the psychology.”
“Will you kindly keep out of this?” he commanded, and gave her an ugly
look.
Instead of being dismayed Diane moved suddenly towards him, and before
he could move his head aside she put up an audacious forefinger to touch
his fiercely crooked eyebrow. “Hello, Cocky-bird!” she said demurely.
“Honestly--I think it’s cute.”
Kit tried to erase the scowl, and found himself scowling worse than
before. He was on the point of saying something disagreeable, but at
that instant he caught sight of Oogly’s strutting figure and honest,
beaming face. The ludicrousness of the affair struck him, and he was
forced to clutch suddenly at his own ribs and turn his back on the
Esquimau. Somehow his eyes encountered Diane’s elfish eyes, and before
he quite knew what had happened he was grinning at her.
“My gosh!” he gasped. “What have I done?”
“You’ve given out a decoration,” she said--“‘_pour valeur_’.”
“The poor idiot couldn’t be any more pleased if the King had come from
Windsor to pin him with the V.C.,” Kit groaned.
“You’d better do something about it,” said the girl seriously.
“Yes. I know.” Kitchener whirled abruptly to tower stiff and erect above
the Esquimau.
“Listen to me, Oogly!” he said crisply. “I don’t want to have any
misunderstanding. That medal is for only one murder. No more.”
The little Esquimau blinked and waited with flattering attentiveness.
“Do you get me?” demanded Kit. “If I hear of anybody else being
killed--good-by medal. I’ll take it away from you!”
Oogly was startled and worried. “Noum else?” he faltered.
“No. No one else. It’s only good for one. So please be careful. I
wouldn’t want to tell you that you can’t wear it any more. But that’s
what I’ll have to do if I hear of your killing another man. If you kill
another person I’ll take the medal and throw it in the creek and I’ll
never give you another one.”
Oogly’s mouth was twitching and for a moment it seemed almost as though
he were on the verge of tears. He was slow to think things out, but as
Kit waited uneasily he saw the bland, contented smile gradually reassert
itself. “Oright,” Oogly suddenly agreed. He touched his badge with
renewed satisfaction. “People see um an’ find out Oogly a good-murderer.
Get umfraid an’ no more come aroun’ for bothering. Nobody hav’ be killed
no more.”
“That’s exactly the idea,” agreed Kit, and breathed his relief. “But
don’t forget--if you ever lay a hand on a Yellow Knife, or anybody
else--you lose the medal.”
With a feeling that he had muddled through somehow, Kitchener dismissed
Oogly from his immediate worries. He went to the door, opened it a
crack, and peered out through the clearing. The silvery reflection of
the cold, wintry sun was beginning to lighten the sky above the gloom of
the forest. There were no Indians in sight, no sign of Giffard; the owls
had gone to roost.
Diane came to the door to observe the melancholy Christmas morning. “I
wasn’t laughing at _you_,” she said.
“Laugh all you like.” Kit closed and barred the door, and smiled
wearily. “If you can find anything funny in this heart-breaking hole, in
Heaven’s name laugh!”
“I was laughing,” she told him, “just at the dum-foolness of things. I
could have cried just as easily.
“If you want to know what I think,” she went on gravely, “I think you’re
doggone clever. You pulled a couple of fast ones this morning.”
“Laugh or cry, and think what you please,” he said ungraciously. “We’re
just where we started in the first place.”
“Mrs. Oogly and I,” said the girl, “wish to invite you to Christmas
dinner.” She made him a mocking little bow. “We hope you accept.”
“Sure. Thanks. I’ve got to stay until dark, anyhow. If Oogly or I step
out of here in the daylight, there’s an excellent chance of our being
popped off. I suspect those Yellow Knives have only taken a little
recess.”
The Esquimau family had arrived at the cabin well supplied with
provisions, the fruits of Oogly’s prowess with his fishing hooks and
iron-headed spear. They had brought with them a haunch of tender young
caribou, a dozen brace of ptarmigan, lots of frozen salmon and
whitefish, caught presumably during a lull in the Yellow-Knife praying,
and quantities of blueberries, which Mayauk had dried and compressed
into hard, black bricks.
By some necromancy of her own Mayauk persuaded the fireplace to stop
smoking, and, with the white girl acting as cook’s assistant, she
achieved a Christmas dinner which was palatable, although somewhat
greasy, and plentiful enough for famishing men. Diane’s personal
contribution was a great, soggy plum-pudding, made of white flour and
sugar and raisins and blueberries and caribou suet.
When Kitchener was invited to take his place at the table he could not
help wondering if anybody else in the world might be eating such an
outlandish Christmas dinner to-day with such strangely found companions.
He rather imagined that the championship for oddness went to this table.
He and Diane Durand called a truce for the afternoon. Kit tried to
forget that his sole object in life at present was to hunt the girl’s
criminal uncle, and she did her pathetic best to be amiable and cheerful
and to hide the harried look of anxiety that always came back to haunt
her restless eyes. Of the four Oogly and Mayauk alone joined with honest
good-will and untroubled laughter in a festive occasion which, to these
two pagans, was not really an occasion at all, but just another
bounteous meal to eat and another day of contentment to live.
Several times during the course of the dinner Kit excused himself to
saunter to the door and peek out across the sun-glistening clearing.
“As soon as it’s dark,” he remarked, “Oogly and I are going to make camp
down woods in the owlery. I don’t think it likely that any Yellow Knife
will go in there to look for us.”
“What about Mayauk and Uttaktuak?” asked Diane.
“Let ’em stay here with you. The Indians won’t bother them. They’re
after Oogly, and nobody else. And he’ll be as safe living with the owls
as he would be in jail.” Kit turned to the Esquimau. “You afraid to
sleep where the night birds roost?” he asked.
Oogly shook his head scornfully. “Hellno!” he declared.
“You expecting to stay around here?” the girl asked in a tone that was
almost too careless.
“Sure,” said Kit. “I’ve got to try to find the body of Oogly’s victim.”
Diane looked at him somberly. She knew perfectly well that his staying
had nothing to do with the dead Yellow Knife. Her eyes measured him with
a challenging hardness.
“I may not see you again,” she informed him. “If a chance comes along to
get out of this country, I’m going. This place is getting on my nerves
frightfully.”
Kitchener regarded her skeptically. She wasn’t likely to leave until she
could get into touch with her uncle, and the two of them had recovered
the hidden gold-sledge. That’s what she was here for. And Kit had seen
enough of her inflexible will to feel certain that she would not run
away and leave her errand unaccomplished. He would meet her again,
undoubtedly, and their next encounter was not apt to be so agreeable for
either of them.
He shrugged his shoulders. “If you need me for anything in the meantime
you’ll know where to find me.”
“If I ever want anything from you,” she told him stiffly, “it’ll be on
account of Mayauk or the baby.”
“Send if you want me,” he repeated.
The short-lived December day reached its noontide and waned as the
pallid, heatless sun crossed the short arc and set beneath the
white-topped forest. There followed the brief, breathless moments of the
gloaming; then the stars broke with electric brilliancy through the
frozen night, a thin, wan moon sailed into the sky, and savage, prowling
life began to awaken among the dark coverts and underwoods.
Kit and Oogly made back packs of the few belongings that necessity
advised them to take, they said good-by to the women, and quietly left
the cabin.
The forest was full of noises, ice-stiff branches cracking of their own
weight, the babble of the brook between the rifts of ice, the groan and
strain of floes piling up under pressure, the long-drawn howl of a
distant wolf, the horribly plaintive cries of owls arousing themselves
after heavy sleep. There were other sounds, small, furtive stirrings,
not so easily identified, that might have meant anything. For all Kit
knew there might be twenty Yellow Knives hidden around the clearing.
He kept close to the brook, and Oogly followed in the silence of his fur
boots. In a few seconds the two men reached the woods. No hostile
shadows rose up to intercept them. They plunged into the nearest thicket
and worked their way into the deepest tangles of the Great Owl woods.
Along the creek and at the edges of the clearing the glimmering of the
moon touched the great columns of the firs, but in the denser woods not
a ray of light penetrated the interlacing of snow-sheeted branches. But
they did not need the power of sight to know when they stood under the
roosting places of the owls. The dead, rank air about them pulsated with
soft, feathery movements, and without seeing they knew that seeing eyes
were looking down at them.
In a hollow of ground between two enormous tree stubs they dropped their
meager equipment and made preparations for the night. It promised to
turn extremely cold before morning, and they would need a fire. Kit
didn’t think there was a chance in the world that any Indian would
venture into this owl-haunted pit in the darkness, or even in the
daytime for that matter. Oogly gathered a few sticks of down-wood and
some dry twigs for kindling. Kitchener struck a match and applied the
light.
He was on his knees as the fire ignited and leaped into flame. Shadows
and shapes emerged in the gloom and wavered drunkenly around the dancing
firelight. One of the owls scooped past his head so close that he felt
the rustle of pinions, and was gone again as mysteriously as though it
had dissolved in the air. Kit was about to stand up and stretch his
tired muscles to the warmth, and then he changed his mind.
There was a sound behind him like a hatchet driven into a block of wood.
He looked around slowly, and then tumbled and rolled away on all fours
in his haste to get outside the range of the firelight. A two-pronged
fishing-head spear was sticking in the tree behind the fire, quivering
there in arrested flight.
Kitchener bumped into Oogly and carried the Esquimau with him, tumbling
through the brush and into a hole where an uprooted tree had once stood.
It was a good crater to hide in, and they crouched together and peered
back towards the mounting fire.
Somebody had hurled the fishing spear at Kit. He could see the double
prongs buried almost to the haft in the trunk of the old fir. The shaft
was pointed towards the brook. It must have come from that direction.
Thrown with greater strength and ill-will than accuracy. A few inches
lower and Kit would have been pinned to the tree like a beetle to a
cork.
The intended assassin had moved as quietly as the owls. Kit had had no
inkling of another presence in the jungle of trees. And now, if he
hadn’t seen the spear, he never would have dreamed that anybody was
hidden near by.
He reacted with anger. “You go that way, Oogly,” he whispered and
pointed towards the brook. “I’ll circle around. We’ll get him.”
Oogly had said himself that he was a good man in an affray. Kit could
have asked none better. The Esquimau was not flurried, and he was not
afraid. He owned a trade gun, but for close-in work he preferred his
short, heavy hunting spear. He reached the weapon and drifted away as
unobtrusively as the smoke from the fire.
Kit slipped behind the nearest tree and stole around from the opposite
direction. He moved with utmost stealth, down through the alders that
lined the edge of the brook. And then he stopped. The snow had been
shaken off the branches near his head and a furrow was piled up
underfoot. Somebody had crept through the underwood at this point. For a
moment he waited. There was nobody in sight now, no alarming sound.
He pulled off his mitten and blew his breath on his chilly fingers. Then
he screwed up his courage and snapped the button of his flash lamp.
There was a snowshoe trail in the fresh snow. Instantly he doused the
light. He had seen enough to drop him crouching, with every nerve at
quivering tension. The raquette prints were waffle-webbed.
CHAPTER XVII
VANISHING FOOTPRINTS
Kitchener recognized the snowshoe tracks with a shock of surprise. A
spear is not a white man’s weapon, and he had supposed of course that
one of the disgruntled Yellow Knives had thrown it. It hadn’t occurred
to him that his attacker might be Hell Bent.
For the first time Kit was brought to a full appreciation of his own
danger. This Bent was a subtle and crafty man. He had outwitted the wily
Jerry, and he had just missed his present attack by inches. It was an
artful scheme. He must have been hanging on the outskirts of the
clearing when Kit drove off the Indians. When Kit and Oogly left the
cabin he probably trailed along close at their heels. He had obtained a
native fishing spear somewhere, and he used it instead of a rifle. If he
had spiked his victim to the tree the police would have hunted for a
Yellow Knife, never suspecting that the killer might be a white man. Kit
had escaped this time only by the merest good luck.
He realized that if he hoped to go on living he would have to move in
the future with the utmost caution. Death might be lurking in ambush
almost anywhere in the dark wilderness, at any moment.
The man had faded away into the gloom, but he could not escape from the
betraying line of snowshoe tracks. Kit did not dare to use his lamp
again, but by feeling the snow with his bare fingers it was easy enough
to follow the departing prints. Patiently he groped his way along the
trail, which curved out of the denser forest through clumps of
snow-sheeted alders and willows, and ended finally at the top of the
steep creek embankment.
The moon cast a cold, sickly radiance along the wooded shore opposite,
but on this side a deep shadow hid the ice-bound stream. Bent must have
dropped over the edge of the sheer embankment, but whether he had
followed the ledges upstream or downstream, or was hiding below at the
bottom of the slope, Kit had no means of knowing. This might be a trap.
As he hesitated he saw something rise up on the bank to blot out the
face of the low-riding moon. A short, stumpy figure silhouetted boldly
against the sky--Kit’s reflex towards his gun checked as he scrutinized
the apparition. Nobody but Oogly could be shaped like that.
Watching, he saw the figure suddenly start up in an erect posture. Two
hands grasping a spear flung themselves above the man’s head, and for
twenty seconds he stood thus, stark and motionless, like the statue of
some mythological figure posed in a battle scene. His glance was fixed
rigidly on something in the brook course below him. Kit’s lips were
gripped in his teeth. He expected any instant to see the spear go. But
for some reason it never left the warrior’s hands.
Slowly the tense figure relaxed, the upraised arms dropped and lowered
the weapon. Oogly turned his head and saw Kit. He looked hard for a
moment, and then tucked the spear under his arm and sauntered back along
the embankment to meet his companion.
“Did’n’ kill um,” he announced as Kit moved towards him.
“What?”
Oogly’s wrinkled smile was visible in the moonlight. “Man he come along
down by me,” he explained. “No goin’ murderum anybody.” He inflated his
chest on which proudly glinted the tin “murder medal.” “Let um going on
past along the water.”
Kit regarded the Esquimau quizzically for a space, and then he returned
Oogly’s grin. Evidently Bent had passed up the creek within spearing
range of the Esquimau hunter, who for just that moment was tempted to
let fly. Then he remembered his promise and restrained himself. He
hadn’t wanted to lose his badge. So Hell Bent was still a living menace
instead of a dead man with a spear in his ribs.
On the night of Jerry’s killing Kit would have shot Bent down at sight.
But that hour of madness had passed. He wanted his man alive. Later he
might exact the full measure for his brother’s death, but first he
wanted the truth about that bloody day years ago. Bent probably was the
only one left who could tell the story. If Kit got his hands on the man
he would have it out of him. He’d wring him out like a sponge.
“You’ve done well,” he told Oogly. “No more murders.”
The Esquimau swelled visibly. He had been a good boy.
“Did he see you?” asked Kit.
Oogly shook his head and pointed upstream. Bent had hurried on his way
without knowing how closely death had brushed him by.
The old cabin stood on the creek bank up that direction. The white man
and the Esquimau went forward, hugging the line of alders. Not far ahead
they struck a place along the embankment where the new snow had been
disturbed. Man tracks ascending from the creek bottom. Waffle-webs had
climbed out.
The trail turned through the creek brakes directly towards the clearing.
They followed as carefully as cats in a burr patch. Across the clearing,
among the stumps, straight to the cabin--the waffle-meshes had left
their ominous marks before the closed door. The frozen moon gave just
enough light to see by. Kit’s breathing had grown painfully sharp. It
looked as though he had his man if he were able to take him.
It was dark inside, quiet. Kit spoke to Oogly. “Knock. Tell ’em you want
to see Mayauk.” His voice was just audible.
The obedient Oogly thumped with his fur-mittened fist.
At first nobody answered, and then a voice in high-pitched alarm. “Who’s
there?”
“Nobody, just Oogly. Coming see Mayauk please.”
“You, Oogly?” It was Diane Durand. She sounded somehow relieved. “It’s a
funny time to want to see Mayauk. Wait a minute.” A soft footstep came
to the entrance and the door was unwarily opened. “Come in if you must.”
Kit had flatted himself against the log wall. For that moment he was
unseen. Diane showed herself for an instant in the moonlight, her
slimness hidden under the dragging folds of a huge, crimson Hudson’s Bay
blanket. “Come in, Oogly.”
Her voice sounded very sleepy. Kit saw her face in the softening
moonlight, the eloquent dark eyes, the shadow of the drooping eyelashes.
Queer that her beauty should affect him in those seconds with a pang of
sadness. The seigniors of France who won this country had such women for
their wives--the Durantayes, the Demonvilles, the Frontenacs--lovely,
dauntless, gently bred women who went where their men went. What it must
have meant to come home out of the night and the storm to find love and
loyalty and sweetness waiting in the doorway! Diane might have been fit
to be a pioneer’s wife. It was a pity. She might have been so fine.
The girl drew her crimson robe closer at her throat. It was Grandfather
Tearl’s old four pointer. She was sensible not to have scruples.
To-night was bitterly cold, and she had no other blanket. Yet Kit could
not help wondering if it had been laundered since the other night. He
thought of Jerry and Bill Tearl and Hell Bent and his heart was
hardened.
Diane admitted Oogly, and then she disappeared after him, neglecting to
bar the door. Kit pushed the door softly and slipped into the room. He
heard voices talking by the still-smoldering fireplace--Diane and Oogly,
and then Mayauk’s drowsy greeting. Somebody threw a pine log on the
fire, and almost at once the bright, resinous flame blazed up.
Nobody had seen Kit come in. He shoved the door shut with his foot and
edged along the wall. The firelight danced around three figures, the
Esquimau man and wife, and Diane. But he saw nobody else.
Kitchener’s quick glance went around the room. There were no angles or
ingle nooks where any one could hide. Only the bunk, and he knew the
baby was sleeping there. He blotted himself in the shadow as he stole
along the wall, ready at any instant for anything to happen.
The bunk was barely visible in the darkness. Kit approached
breathlessly. Hell Bent was contemptible enough to ambush himself in bed
with a baby and fight from behind an infant body. Kit reached the bunk
and groped back into the gloom. He found only a wee shape under the fur
robe. Cautiously he felt into the upper section, and then along the
floor underneath. Nobody was there.
He stood up, realizing that he had made another false move. Bent was not
in the cabin. He must have eluded his tracker by the same trick he had
employed at the Yellow Knife encampment, switching snowshoes and mixing
up his trail with a confusion of other prints. He had come only as far
as the outer doorway, where the Indians had trampled the snow, and now
he probably had followed them off into the woods, carrying the
waffle-mesh raquettes on his back.
Unluckily Kit had disturbed the baby and the little thing began to
whimper in the darkness. Diane turned and saw the shape by the bunk. She
advanced a pace and stared.
“You!” she exclaimed. “How’d you get here?”
“Came in with Oogly. Didn’t you see me?” From previous experience Kit
knew how useless it would be to question her. Bent may have spoken to
her, or he may have hurried on without her knowing. It didn’t matter.
“What do you want?” Diane demanded.
Kitchener coolly circled the room and came back to the door. “Oogly
forgot his toothbrush,” he told her without a smile. “Found it, Oogly?
Well, let’s get on.”
The Esquimau lingered only to bid a second good-by to the baby, and then
he followed Kit out of the cabin.
There was no use trying to unravel Bent’s trail. He had taken off his
identifying snowshoes, and the tracks he left now would be
indistinguishable from the dozen other sets of tracks that turned away
from the cabin. Kit had begun to suspect that the man had reached some
sort of understanding with the local Yellow Knives. If not he would be
clever enough to win them over. They naturally would have only the
bitterest feelings towards the policeman who had refused to give up
Oogly to them. This was their own country. They knew the secret paths
and byways of the wilderness, and they would have eyes and ears
everywhere. With a shrewd and unscrupulous white man to stir them up
their capacity for devilment had no limit.
Kit and Oogly went back to the Great Owl woods and re-built their night
fire. Then they lugged their robes a hundred yards deeper into the
timber, bedded-down under an uprooted hemlock, and slept fireless and
shivering through the night.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN HUNTERS
That evening was to begin the harrowing days and weeks of peril and
hardship through which Kitchener lived in an incredulous daze, like a
sleeper in the throes of a bad dream.
Kit and Oogly slept “cold” every night, and they never slept in the same
place twice. The Great Owl woods was their refuge from the Indians, but
there was a chance at any moment of Hell Bent’s creeping up and sticking
a spear or knife into their fur bags. Asleep or awake the menace lurked
behind them. Like a pair of homeless rabbits they dug-in under windfalls
and brush piles, wriggled into hollow logs, or spent the frigid night
huddled against some shaggy tree-trunk, where unseemly eyes glared down
and giant wings fluttered in the eerie stillness.
Daytimes they skulked and dodged through the woods and paid the price of
life with a vigilance that never gave them a second’s surcease. They
were hunters, and at the same time they were ceaselessly hunted. Kit’s
every waking hour was given over to a single, undeviating purpose--to
find Hell Bent and take him alive. But the man was gifted with an
uncanny elusiveness.
The ex-convict seemed to take an infernal delight in tantalizing his
enemy. Kit often crossed the trail of the waffle-meshed snowshoes. He
would follow with extreme caution, casting back and forth in
half-circles to avoid the dangers of a deliberately planted ambush. But
he never once caught a glimpse of the trail-maker. The waffle-webs
always ended blindly in some well-traveled pathway, where the wearer
shifted to his spare snowshoes and mingled his footprints with those of
other passers-by.
So far the ex-convict apparently had made no attempt to recover the
hidden sledge-load of loot. Presumably he was afraid to make any
definite move while a policeman was on patrol in the neighborhood.
Unhampered, he was able to evade his Nemesis. It would be another matter
to attempt the long trip southward, dragging a heavily laden sledge
through the deep snow. Before he could safely go ahead with his original
errand he would have to dispose of Kit as he had dealt with Jerry.
Kitchener seldom left the Great Owl woods in the daylight, and he never
showed himself in the open. Yet he was shot at mysteriously on several
occasions. He would hear a bullet tearing through the thicket that he
had thought was screening him, and an instant later the dry report of a
rifle echoed somewhere through the rift in the trees. He would duck and
scramble for a deeper cover, and later would maneuver around from the
rear to find a departing trail at a place where a man had stood and a
gun had rested for a moment in the snowy crotch of a sapling.
These wanton snipings he was inclined to lay at the door of Oogly’s
enemies. He had seen their tracks criss-crossing the forest along the
outskirts of the owl pits, and knew that some of them were always
prowling in the neighborhood, waiting with a deadly patience for the
Esquimau to come out. And their hostility towards Oogly naturally
included Kit.
The Yellow Knives were good stalkers, but notoriously bad shots. The
snipers so far had missed their mark, and that was one reason why he had
blamed the Indians for these furtive attacks. He had a feeling that if
Hell Bent ever glimpsed him over rifle sights it would be the end.
At least once every day Kitchener made it a duty to creep to the edge of
the clearing and assure himself that the cabin door was shut and that
smoke was still curling out of the chimney. Diane and Mayauk had not
been molested.
So Kitchener was justified in his first belief that the occupants of the
cabin would be ignored. The Yellow Knives would know that two armed and
resolute women at loop holes might wreak havoc among an attacking party.
They would know further that Mayauk would never let herself be taken
alive. To kill her would be worse than futile. Mayauk and the baby were
the anchors that held Oogly in this section of the wilderness. Let them
die, and he would pack up his scanty belongings and vanish northward
over night into the trackless barrens, where the Yellow-Knife vengeance
could never find him. It was to the interest of Oogly’s enemies to allow
his wife and baby to dwell unharmed in the cabin on Great Owl Run.
The January moon waned and black nights of storm and sleet and frightful
cold set in, and the wilderness lay in death under the white scourge of
winter. By craft and by stealth Oogly and Kit contrived somehow to eat
and to sleep and to evade their enemies. And Kit hunted his man, and
failed, so far, to get him.
The sun all but disappeared over the southern bulge of the world, and
then gradually began to come north again, a hazy, pallid ball, lacking
warmth and the power of giving life. Sometimes Kitchener encountered the
two local trappers in the woods. He would gossip with them briefly, and
then go his way, liking neither the sneaky-eyed Giffard nor the sullen,
black-bearded Bruyas.
On one occasion Constable Devon made a patrol downstream to find out if
all was well with the sergeant. Kit did not want police interference in
an affair that was decidedly his own. He told Devon that he was still
investigating the Yellow-Knife murder, assured the constable that he was
in no need of help, and sent him back about his business.
Kitchener had not talked with Diane Durand in weeks, but one night,
after the return of a full moon, he met the girl while roving the banks
of the creek.
He was working his way downstream, hidden by the shadows of the willows,
when there appeared above a snowy knoll a slender graceful figure in a
hooded mackinaw and calf-length breeches.
The girl of necessity had become a huntswoman. A brace of partridges and
two or three rabbits hung at her belt, and she carried a shotgun in the
crook of her arm.
Kit held his position in the thicket, waiting for her to come opposite
him. The moon-rays touched the curves of her cheeks and lips and her
small, firm chin, giving her face an expression of childlike
wistfulness. She looked thin and tired and most unhappy.
As Kit observed her calm and pensive features it struck him that nobody
but a monstrous cynic could ever believe that she was actively involved
in her uncle’s murderous schemes. Bent might have told her anything
about the gold-sledge, but Kit would not let himself think that she knew
the whole truth. If she were as bad as that, then nothing in the world
ever could be right, and he would be glad to pass out of it. If, like
her uncle, she looked on Kit as an obstacle that had to be put out of
the way, here was her opportunity. She had her shotgun. He stepped
suddenly before her with his hands in his pockets.
The girl halted as the tall, gaunt shape loomed in her path. She peered
fearfully for a moment, and then her tense shoulders relaxed and she
drew a long breath.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you. Hello.”
She moved a pace nearer and her glance swept to his face. He had shaved
that morning with ice water, but nevertheless he felt that he was not a
very presentable object. His clothing had grown a bit seedy and he knew
that his face must have taken on a few haggard and care-worn lines since
he saw her last.
Diane seemed kindlier than he remembered her and just for a moment he
thought he caught a trace of pity in her lovely eyes. “How are you and
Oogly?” she asked.
“All right. We’re getting along.” He did not think it worth while
telling her that they had spent every hour and minute of the last few
weeks in the shadow of imminent death.
“Mayauk and Uttaktuak are well,” she informed him. “Particularly the
baby. It does you good to see what a little husky he’s getting to be.”
“How’s Diane?” asked Kit.
The girl lifted one shoulder in a curt and reckless movement. “Well
enough,” she said.
She pulled off her mittens and put her cupped hands to her mouth. Then
she wriggled her fingers and beat them together, trying to restore the
circulation. They were strongly shaped, competent little hands, chapped
and rather grimy, more like a boy’s hands than a girl’s.
Without thought or actual intention Kit took one of them into his, and
doubled her fingers under his warm palm. “I guess you’re not used to
this sort of business,” he remarked.
“No.” For a moment or two she allowed her fist to lie quiet, as though
she gathered comfort from the touch. “You can get used to anything,
though,” she added sturdily.
Then she raised her eyes level with his. “Have you seen my uncle?” she
asked with a directness that startled him. She released her hand and put
it back in its mitten.
“No,” he said.
She looked around the thicket that sparkled in the moonlight in white,
lacy designs. Her straight eyebrows met in a troubled pucker. “If he’s
anywhere in this part of the world he should have heard that I’m here.
And then he should come and find me. I don’t know why he doesn’t come.”
Kitchener faced her with a smile that had grown a bit acrid these days.
She didn’t fool him. He not only believed that she had seen and talked
with her uncle, but he rather imagined that she would know about where
to find him at this minute. What was she trying to put over, he
wondered? Probably fishing to find out how much he knew. His face had
grown stony. She wouldn’t learn anything from him.
“Maybe he’s gone back south,” he suggested.
“I don’t know what’s happened.” Diane shook her head. “It’s funny I
haven’t heard anything from him. It’s darned funny!”
Kit sat down on the edge of a snow terrace and brooded grimly upon the
icy world. “I thought you were going back yourself,” he said after a
moment.
“It’s easier to come in,” she told him, “than it is to get out.”
“I offered to help you out,” he reminded her. “But it isn’t too late.
I’ll order one of the constables to escort you down to the rail head.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m in no hurry to leave.”
She moved to the snow-bank, hesitated for an instant, and then sat down
beside him, crossing one booted ankle over her knee and clasping her leg
between her hands. “This is a wonderful place!” she sighed.
“Wonderful for what?”
“For me.” She pushed off her hood, shook her ruddy hair in the
moonlight, and gave him a full, close-up view of her darkly shimmering
eyes. “Do you know, I’ve always had somebody to cook things for me and
bring ’em in on a tray and clean up afterwards. I don’t believe I’ve
ever washed a dish before in my life. And now--” Her mouth crooked
ironically. “I shoot my own rabbits and clean ’em myself and scorch ’em
without anybody else to blame, and eat ’em to the last scrap, and scour
up the pans afterwards.”
“Is that supposed to be wonderful?”
“Isn’t it? I thought it taught you to be self-reliant and unselfish and
a little humble. Everybody says so. If I ever get back, I thought I
might be a better girl.” She turned to him appealingly. “Do you think
maybe I might?”
Kit didn’t know whether she was laughing at herself or at him, or was
really half in earnest. She was the most enigmatical woman he had ever
met. There was no way of guessing the thoughts that kindled those deep
eyes, with their singular trick of being serious and humorous at the
same time.
“You’re a pretty good girl now, aren’t you?” he said, and stirred
uneasily. He wished she wouldn’t sit so close and look at him so
intimately. And then he began to despise himself for a fool, because he
realized with a sudden shock that he wanted fearfully to feel her
tangled hair under his fingers, to bring her face even closer and to
find out the meaning of her disturbing eyes. In that moment he knew that
if he ever lost his grip on himself, he was gone.
But he was watching himself to-night. He didn’t want any recollection of
a foolish weakness and a softly moonlit evening to make life cruder by
contrast and more unbearable. He stood up abruptly and looked away
somberly into the thickets. Hell Bent might be creeping up even at this
instant. “If shooting and cooking rabbits makes people good,” he said,
“Oogly is a saint on earth.”
Diane half stretched her hand towards him, as though to invite him to
come back, and then dropped it listlessly. “Well, I’m not,” she declared
with a sudden harshness of voice. “If anybody wanted to know, I’m bad.”
Kit measured her quizzically. She sounded as though she were
passionately ashamed of something, and yet she watched him with a queer
glow of defiance.
“Not in any way you’d ever think,” she added morosely. “It’s not so much
badness as--as just being idiotic.”
“We’re all of us a bit of that,” he said, and faced her wryly. “Just
what form does yours take?”
“Think I’d tell you?” she flashed at him.
Kit started to open his mouth, and then shut it. Through the silvery
night there ranged a queer, unearthly sound--something between a sigh
and a croak and a hiss--a voice that was horrible because it lacked
reality.
The girl started up to her feet and then sank down in the bank of snow.
Kit saw her shiver, and he himself felt an electric chill running down
his spine.
“It’s only one of the owls,” he told her, wondering why he never could
get used to these ghostly disturbances in the upper air. This one in
particular startled him every time he heard it. He had never seen the
bird, but he knew it by its voice, which was hoarser and croakier than
any of the others. Oogly told him once that this one was a spirit that
had caught a cold on its way out of hell.
“I know it’s an owl,” said Diane. “And I know who he is. It’s Shedim.
And I hate him worse than all the rest of them.”
Kit contemplated her face gravely. It was strange that she too knew this
bird and had given him a name.
The voice crossed invisible above them, passed over the brook, and faded
away somewhere in the north.
“They’re my bad thoughts,” said the girl at the end of long silence.
Kit peered down at her. She never had seemed more in earnest.
“Whenever I think something bad,” she pursued, “one of the owls comes.
It always happens. As though they were something that had just been
released out of my head.” She was not looking at Kit and he had a
feeling that she had forgotten he could hear her.
“It’s the oddest thing,” she mused. “My bad thoughts are owls. And the
night I thought the very worst thing I could think of, this one came for
the first time. His name was Shedim. And I’ve heard him every night
since, croaking in the sky.”
She raised her head and found Kit staring at her. “Honestly,” she said,
“I almost half believe such truck.” She smiled somewhat grimly. “Maybe
I’m going a little goofy from lonesomeness.”
“I’d kill him,” Kit advised.
“I can’t,” she said mournfully.
“You’ve got a shotgun. I’d wait up until daylight, and when Shedim comes
back from the red hunting I’d let him have both barrels.”
“You can’t kill a bad thought with a shotgun,” Diane said.
“I can,” Kit told her soberly. “You lend me that gun and there won’t be
any Shedim around here after to-morrow morning.”
She shook her head. “Suppose I don’t want him killed?”
“Why wouldn’t you? If I had a bad thought flying around in the air I’d
knock him for a row of feathers.”
“No! The thing’s born and alive, and all the killing in the world won’t
kill it. And what’s worse I wouldn’t want it killed--I couldn’t bear
it--”
“Diane!” Kit sat down again and tried to see into her eyes. She was no
longer the girl he had known--the competent, self-possessed Diane. She
was beginning to sound hysterical.
“What’s this awfully bad thought about?” he demanded.
“Do you think I’d want you to know?”
“I do know!” he shot at her.
“You don’t. You couldn’t!”
“It’s about me,” said Kit.
Her lips parted and wild alarm showed itself in her eyes.
“I guess you can’t help hating me like that,” he said drearily.
“Hate you!” She turned to him and he heard her choking breath and felt
the potency of her eyes, brought close and recklessly seeking his. “If I
did--” She laughed crazily. “Oh, my God!”
Suddenly she was on her feet, standing over him. “What’s the use of our
talking?” she said measuredly. “You and I have nothing to say to one
another--ever.” Her high tone changed to something suspiciously like a
sob. “If you ever meet me again, don’t stop me. Let me alone!”
She picked up the shotgun, pulled her hood down over her head, and
before Kit had recovered from his astonishment she was gone.
He stumbled erect and stood with his left eyebrow perched at its highest
attainable angle, gazing after her. He started forward as though to
follow, and then he changed his mind and his feet anchored themselves in
the snow. For an interval he waited, irresolute and dejected. He sighed
and shook his head sadly. Then he turned decisively and strode back to
camp.
During these recent moonlight nights Kit and his Esquimau companion had
borrowed the habits of the owls that lived about them. They slept days
and did their hunting under the cover of night. But this night Kit
turned in early. He tossed and twisted in his sleeping bag and was
unable to close his eyes until dawn. And then, just as he finally
dropped off into a doze, Oogly came back from his night’s fishing.
The Esquimau brought four or five fish and a coiled line, which he
dropped under Kit’s windbreak, while he yawned and sat down to pull off
his frozen boots.
Kit opened one eye, started to shut it again, and then opened both.
Fastened to the fishing line, a few inches above the hook, he noticed a
battered slug of metal that glinted yellow in the early morning light.
He suddenly sat up in his bag and snatched up the coil of line.
“What’s this?” he demanded.
Oogly looked around. “A sinking,” he explained.
Kit hefted the slug and turned it in his fingers. Oogly had split the
hunk of metal with his knife and pinched it around his line for a
sinker. It was soft, and heavier than lead, and there was no mistaking
its glinting color. To weight his line the Esquimau had used a chunk of
pure, raw gold.
“Where’d you find it?” exclaimed Kit. In one movement he was out of his
bag and on his feet.
Oogly winked his slits of eyes. He saw no reason for excitement, and
remained his placid self. “Fishing along fast bottom, hook ’em up.
Plenty lots more.”
“Where?” cried Kit.
“You want to see ’um?”
“You’re darned tootin’. Come along and show me.”
Oogly was perfectly willing. He conducted his comrade through the thick
timber to the bank of Great Owl Run. The two men made their way upstream
through the thickets, and the Esquimau halted presently on the
overhanging brink, not far from the cabin where the two women lived.
This was the place. In the snow lay a moss-covered pouch, from which
spilled forth a double handful of blackish, corroded lumps like pebbles,
but which, under Kit’s tremulous knife-blade, changed magically to the
color of virgin gold.
Oogly pointed towards the stream, which, at this point, ran too swift to
freeze. “I catch um fishing an’ hook um up,” he said.
Kitchener stared breathlessly at the boiling water. The Esquimau must
have snagged the bag by accident, and after helping himself to one of
the “sinkers,” which he needed for his line, he dumped the rest on the
bank and unconcernedly went his way.
With shaking hands Kit crouched to lift the pouch. It was made of some
sort of rawhide. But instead of rotting, some chemical action of the
water had hardened and stiffened the bloated skin until it was like a
sheet of stone.
For a space Kit squatted on his heels, dribbling nuggets through his
fingers. All at once he stood up and looked down over the brook
embankment. The racing water had cut its way under a shelf of the rock.
The deep, black channel was farther out, but here it looked to be rather
shallow. For just an instant he hesitated, and then began stripping off
his clothing.
Oogly looked on wonderingly, but had nothing to say. Anything his friend
did was correct in his eyes.
Kit stood in his underwoolens, and reached for the Esquimau’s hand.
“Hang on and don’t let the current pull me out.”
He slipped over the curve of the shelf, held his breath, and then
heroically dropped into the water.
The cold was like sharp blades cutting his flesh. But it was something
that had to be borne, and he gritted his teeth with the desperate
resolution of a martyr undergoing torture. The stream level did not
quite reach his arm pits. By clinging to Oogly’s hand he moored himself
against the gurgling current.
He trampled the bottom below the shelf, and found a heaped-up slimy
mass, which he knew by the feel to be a pile of full, heavily-weighted
bags. His toe groped along a mossy, waterlogged framework--the
guard-rail, “gee” pole and upcurving runners of a long submerged
dog-sledge.
CHAPTER XIX
LOST LOOT
In that tremendous moment Kit lost all sense of the cold that chilled
and numbed him to the marrow of his bones. A tingling pulsebeat rang in
his temples and throbbed in his fevered blood. He forgot that dawn was
at hand. He forgot his lurking enemies. He took no account of his
stiffening muscles and chattering teeth. He had found the lost treasure
sledge. It had taken its final plunge over the embankment to be engulfed
for the years in Great Owl Run. This was the place. A brave woman had
died here, and men had fought and killed and vanished. Here the valiant
Bill Tearl had taken leave of the remembering world.
Scarcely realizing what he was doing, Kit ducked under the water and
came up with a bulging, slimy sack in his hand. He deposited his burden
on the shelf, and went under again for another, and for another. There
was no need to look into the swollen bullhide sacks to know what they
contained. No metal excepting raw gold could have the heft of these
bags.
He brought them up, one after another, until warning cramps forced him
out of the water. For a few minutes he ran up and down the bank, beating
himself with his arms, while Oogly trotted behind, slapping him with
stinging and resounding slaps. As soon as his blood felt the resurgence
of life Kit went back into the brook. Five times he climbed in and out
of the water and at his fifth shivering emergence he lugged with him the
last bag of gold.
That appalling job was done. He looked from the heap of sodden bags
towards the sky which, as usual after an overly bright moon, had turned
threateningly black. There was a promise of more snow to-night. If it
snowed hard enough the evidences of this morning’s work would be buried
before to-morrow.
Kit had decided what to do next. He would transport the treasure to
another pool, and he alone would know the secret of the new hiding
place. So to thwart Hell Bent. While Bent was trying to re-locate his
loot, Kit would be given the leisure for his own grim hunting. And if in
the end Bent should kill him, then at least he had struck back at the
killer with a last sardonic jest.
He told Oogly as much as was needed to enlist that amiable savage’s
assistance. A half mile farther upstream they found a spot under a sheer
bank where black ripples ran deep under a sagging ice-bridge. They were
able to carry only two of the plethoric bags apiece. These they lugged
to the marked spot and dumped them overboard.
They made a dozen trips that morning, back and forth, burdened with bags
of gold, which they jettisoned in the swift current of Great Owl Run.
Luck favored them to-day. Their enemies presumably took it for granted
that they were sleeping out the daylight, as usual, in some well-hidden
nook of the Great Owl woods. There were no snipers dogging them this
morning, no curious intruders crossing their trail. And before their
task was finished it had begun to snow.
The dreary downfall began with a misty sleet, which changed presently to
white-drifting flakes. Kit had grown sick of the snow as a man wearies
of an unremitting disease. But now he looked with satisfaction at the
fluff that had begun to fill his tracks. By this time to-morrow nobody
could know that he and Oogly had been tramping up and down the creek
bank.
He watched the dark ring of ripples as the last bag hit the water and
sank out of sight. The Great Owl treasure had found a new resting place,
where it might lie untouched for twelve or fifty or a thousand years.
Who knew?
Although Kit was soaked to the skin under his outer clothing, he felt
overheated after his heavy labor. Unless he dried out immediately he
risked pneumonia or worse. He and his companion were starting back for
the shelter of the Great Owl timber, when Oogly broke away through the
alders. Kitchener followed, to find the Esquimau scowling above a fresh
snowshoe trail that came down almost to the edge of the creek.
The two men peered into the thicket. The tracks were not half an hour
old. Their maker obviously had been standing in concealment, looking
down at the creek. With sinking heart Kit realized that some one had
watched him while he toiled up and down the stream.
There was no sound save the whisper of snow in the frost-hard branches
of the alders and willows. The intruder must have fled at his approach.
He examined the tracks again. They were not the narrow, skiing prints of
the Yellow Knives, nor Hell Bent’s waffle-webs. But he knew whose they
were. A pair of rounded Chippewyan squaw raquettes, too light in build
for a man’s weight. He had seen these same tracks too often to be
mistaken. The trail maker was Diane Durand.
So the morning’s work was wasted: unless he gave the quietus to Diane.
The watchful Oogly may have noticed the sudden dour molding of his face
and jaw, that sinister Tearl look which meant that one of the tribe had
solved a knotty problem to some one’s else disadvantage. He turned
curtly.
“You go to the cabin,” he said, “and stay there to-day with Mayauk. If
the white girl leaves or anybody comes to see her, you come to me at our
camp, right away.”
Oogly’s squinty eyes held the same look that a malamute’s eyes hold for
the man he trusts. Kit took his leave without any misgivings, confident
that the Esquimau would never fail him.
He retraced his steps to the Great Owl woods, chanced a small fire to
dry his underwear, and later turned into his bag and slept the day
through. When he awakened in the early evening he found himself in a
welter of snow-filled darkness.
All of Oogly’s worldly belongings, combined with his own, formed such a
meager kit that he was able to bundle everything into one pack, which he
toted through the woods and across the clearing to the cabin door.
Diane admitted him without protest when he knocked. “Hello!” said the
girl, and there was nothing in her voice or manner to betray any guilty
consciousness of her morning’s activities.
Kit looked at the ground before tramping into the doorway. The
afternoon’s snowfall had covered the old trails, and there were no
fresher tracks arriving or departing. He shut the door and thumped down
his pack.
“Get ready to pull out,” he commanded. “All of us are traveling to the
police outpost to-night.”
The calm announcement produced a silence, which Diane broke into at last
with a brittle laugh. “Anybody may go who wishes,” she said. “Which
leaves me out, because I don’t wish to.”
Kit did not raise his voice. “We want to start at once. Please hurry.”
He saw the girl’s silhouette grow taut in the reflecting firelight. “Are
you by any chance,” she asked carefully--“in earnest?”
Kit didn’t think it necessary to answer. “Oogly,” he suggested, “will
you call the dogs and hitch ’em in? Everything we’ve got we can carry on
the one sledge.”
“Because if you are,” put in Diane, “you’ll have to get over it. I’m not
going!”
Kitchener faced her unsmiling, maddeningly supercilious. “Mayauk will
help you to pack. If not, I will. Only hurry. And this time we leave off
the ‘please.’”
“Why, you--” She stopped and glared at him. The Diane of the moonlight
was gone. This one was resentful and bitter and untouchable, yet he
never felt an allure more poignant than the beauty of her sultry and
stormy eyes.
He was utterly cold at this moment, because it would have been so easy
to be otherwise. “Oh, very well,” he cut in. “If you force me--I arrest
you.”
“What?” she shrieked.
“If you want the whole formula: I warn you. In the name of the king--”
“What for?” she cried. “By what right?”
“Vagrancy!” he said.
Diane’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. She was so outraged
that for those seconds she was unable to speak or even breathe.
“Why--why--you--what do you mean?” she finally managed to gasp.
“The word has only one meaning. A vagrant is a sort of a hobo without
visible means of support.”
“You’re calling _me_--” It was too humiliating to say. She ripped open
the throat of her shirt with a gesture so violent that one of the
buttons flew across the room. From beneath the open collar she jerked a
string and a chamois bag. The bag was torn wide and she pulled out a
roll of yellow-backed currency so thick that her fist was barely able to
close around it.
“And you say I have no means of support!” she taunted him furiously.
“What’s that?” he asked mildly.
“It’s money! I haven’t counted it: but I guess there’s a couple of
thousand or more!”
“What’s it for?” inquired Kit.
“What’s what for? Money?” Her pretty mouth attempted to sneer. “Why, my
dear sir. Money is to spend. To buy things with.”
“What things?”
“Anything! Anything you want!”
“Where?”
She blinked and looked at him a trifle uncertainly. “At the stores,” she
finally said.
“What stores? I haven’t seen you buying anything. The flour you eat, the
salt, sugar, bacon, beans--I gave you. You’re using my matches and my
shotgun. You don’t even own the blankets you sleep in. Yet you say I
have no right to arrest you for vagrancy. Well, you’re under arrest.”
The girl’s face changed from red to white, and then went red again.
“I’ll pay you for anything of yours I ever had,” she informed him.
“What’s the price?”
“I’m not in business,” he told her. “You’ll find the nearest
store-keeper at Edmonton, or maybe McPherson. When you get down there
you can buy anything you fancy. Here we don’t recognize money, because
there’s nothing for it to buy. That’s why I’m transporting you to
Edmonton. You won’t be a vagrant there.”
“You’re not--” Diane was almost crying with mortification and rage. “I
won’t go!”
“Remember the first morning I met you?” inquired Kit. “You were trussed
up with a pair of handcuffs, riding on a policeman’s sledge. I’ve got
those same handcuffs, and I’ve got a sledge.”
“Oh you--you rotter!” she said with a vitriolic intensity.
“So was the other bird. And you had to travel with him. Ready?”
Diane stood stock-still, her great eyes searching his face with a
helpless, hunted look. Her impassioned resolution seemed to waver. Two
tears trickled from her lashes and glistened on her cheeks. “What can I
do,” she moaned, “when a bully and a brute--so much bigger and
stronger--and I’m just a girl--”
“Certainly you are,” said Kit.
He turned away to spare her his smile. He should have done this before,
he was thinking. She had worried and hampered him more than he would
have admitted. But now he soon would have her off his hands, out of his
sight and, he hoped, out of his mind. She knew where he had sunk the
gold. But that no longer mattered. It would be months before she could
see her uncle again. Long before that time Kit should have settled up
his score with Hell Bent.
With Diane sitting by in sullen hostility, the other three soon gathered
up their belongings and loaded up the dog sledge. They closed the cabin
and started eastward in a swirling storm, Oogly breaking trail, the baby
riding in a nest behind the dogs, Mayauk handling the “gee” pole, and
Kit and Diane trudging speechless in the rear.
Through the long, blustering night they held their steady pace, and
shortly after the crack of dawn they arrived at the police outpost of
_Saut Sauvage_.
Constables Devon and Cross were at home. The two officers tried
valiantly to hide their astonishment and welcomed their unexpected
visitors with a hospitality that was warmer than the bleak quarters in
which they lived.
Kit explained affairs in a few words. “This is the girl I told you
about. Looking for her uncle and hasn’t found him yet. And this
wilderness is no place for a child.”
He was short and brusque in his speech--a commanding officer telling a
subordinate what to do. “I want you, Constable Cross, to make a patrol
south and take her with you. She says she doesn’t want to go, but that’s
just too bad. Technical charge of vagrancy. You can let the inspector
decide what to do about it.”
Cross looked furtively at the girl, and blushed. His simple face
reflected the pride he felt in being chosen for a responsibility, the
joyous anticipation of a visit to civilization, and also a painful,
gawking shyness at the thought of the company he would have on his way
out.
“It isn’t really right for a young girl to be roamin’ about alone in
this country,” he stammered. “You’ll find it’s better, miss, to be away
from here.”
Diane studied the constable coolly, and then, for just an instant, a
gleam of malicious amusement tinged her eyes. Kit intercepted that
glance, with its sly and tantalizing humor for mischief-making, and
somehow he did not envy the doughty constable his journey out of the
forests.
After their night’s trip the wayfarers were glad to accept the comforts
of the police shack. The rear storeroom, with its cots for guests, was
turned over to Diane and Mayauk. Kit and Oogly stayed awake only long
enough for breakfast. Then they crawled into the constables’ bunks and
throughout the snowy daylight slept the sleep of the righteously weary.
Subdued voices, the scuffle of feet, a poker rattling in the fire-box of
the stove, the faint rasp of snow falling aslant on the log walls and
tar-paper roof, the savor of meat cooking--Kit awakened amid lazy sounds
and pleasant smells. The frosted window square opposite him loomed
opaque against the outer blackness of the night.
Constable Cross was bending over the bake oven on the stove. Devon sat
in low-voiced conversation with a man whom Kit had not seen before, a
broad-backed man with a bullet head, hatrack ears and a round-necked
hair-cut. Diane, Mayauk and Oogly were nowhere visible.
Kit hitched himself into his clothes while lying in the bunk, and then
opened the skin curtains and slid out onto the floor.
In a far corner of the room, beyond the angle of the bunk, he discovered
Diane. The girl was seated on a camp stool, a lock of auburn hair tipped
over one straight eyebrow, her pert nose in the pages of a big book
which she held balanced on one crossed knee. She evidently had spent the
snowy afternoon ransacking the outpost’s supply of literature. Old books
and lop-eared magazines and tattered newspapers littered the table and
the floor about her chair. She appeared as aloof from the rest of the
company as if she had retired to a private apartment with a “no
admittance” sign on the door.
As Kit stretched himself and sauntered across the room the stranger
turned to stare at him. The man’s face, which was close shaven and
unwholesomely pale, had the battered, hard-used appearance of a
third-rate prize-fighter’s mug. His eyes were as protuberant and held
the same metallic coldness as a frog’s eyes.
“Oh, good-evening, sergeant,” said Devon, standing up. “This man came in
on us out of the storm this afternoon. His name is--_um_--”
“Pettijohn,” supplied the stranger. “How-da-do, sergeant.”
“Where’re you from?” inquired Kit without much interest.
“The States.”
“Yeah? You must enjoy chilly weather to be coming up here now.”
“Oh, any time’s good enough for my business,” said the man. “I’m a
missioner. Our people sent me to look after the welfare of the Indians.”
Kit surveyed the stranger ironically. He wondered what sort of welfare
the Yellow Knives might acquire from this ornery-looking plug-ugly. Then
he turned away indifferently. What the intruder did to the Yellow
Knives, or what they did to him, didn’t really seem to matter.
The kettle was humming on the stove, and Kit poured out a basinful of
the first hot water he had reveled in for weeks. He scrubbed his face
and neck and hands, and then paused before a wall mirror with its
chained comb. He was plastering back his wet, sleek-black hair, when he
heard a chair scrape on the floor. Feet stumbled across the room. A
voice cried out:
“I knew it. I knew it!”
The comb dropped to swing on its chain. Kit looked around. He saw Diane
under the lamp. In her hands she clutched an open book--a volume bound
brightly in scarlet and gold. There was not a vestige of color left in
her face. She breathed fitfully and heavily. A ruddy light glinted in
her wide spaced eyes.
Every man in the room gaped at her.
“Look at this!” she said to Constable Devon. “Your police year book. The
_Scarlet and Gold_!”
“Yes,” said Devon, puzzling his eyebrows. “Yes, it is!”
Diane’s laugh was harsh and cramped, utterly different from her real
laughter. “He says he is Sergeant Buck Tearl.” For a moment her glance
fixed Kit rigidly, and then she softly laid the book on the table. She
tapped the open page with her finger, and stepped back.
“Here,” she said, “is a photograph of Sergeant Buck Tearl.”
CHAPTER XX
SCARLET AND GOLD
In the moment of his betrayal Kit had the ghastly sensation of a man
whose lungs had been suddenly pumped empty. His heart stopped, his brain
went numb, the sense of living stopped for those few shocking seconds.
He felt as though he had been stripped bare and pilloried in a public
place. Faces surrounded him and eyes looked at him, and the silence grew
almost too acute to be endured.
The page of the open book was glossy in the lamplight. He saw the
half-tone photo in the upper corner, the strong-jawed, bold-eyed
likeness of his brother Jerry. Sergeant Buck Tearl, stalwart in any such
crisis as this. But Jerry was gone, out of it. Kitchener and his brother
looked nothing alike. Anybody could see the photo and know with
certainty that Kit was not the man whose name and the record of whose
deeds was printed here in the blackest of ink. And he was alone now,
with no Jerry to turn to, standing at bay in the sacred scarlet.
Devon and Cross were hanging over the table looking at the book. Then
both raised their heads to look at Kit. All trace of expression was
wiped from their faces. The ruthless police visage--their faces might
have been chopped out of the same slab of marble.
“Well?” said Devon.
Kit said nothing. What could he say? They had him. Impersonating an
officer! A black crime in the police books. These men were terribly
jealous of their own. Looming, hard years--a long stretch--the least
punishment he could expect. Well--
There was nothing to do but face it out. His back stiffened as though he
were to meet an assault. One eyebrow cocked upward. He had known that
this might happen. Only it was strange the way it had been brought
about. He would have gotten away with the masquerade if Jerry’s funny
old picture hadn’t bobbed up to ruin him--
“What about it?” demanded Devon.
As though a command had been given, the pair of constables circled the
table, one from one side, one the other. A hard, round muzzle jammed
itself into Kit’s ribs. Somebody ripped open the flap of his holster,
and his gun was gone. Searching hands passed skillfully up and down his
person. A chain clinked, something glinted in the lamplight, steel cuffs
bent themselves around his wrists and snapped fast.
Sergeant Cross pulled up a chair. “Sit down!”
Kit sat. He hadn’t tried to resist. They would have had every excuse to
kill him. His self-control had come back to him. He was thinking clearly
and rapidly.
“Why’d you do it?” asked Devon.
“Warn you!” put in Cross.
Kit’s head turned instinctively, seeking Diane. But the girl had
withdrawn into the background, keeping out of his sight. Oogly had
climbed down from the upper bunk, fully clad, and was standing with
Mayauk, looking on. From the dismayed expression of his face it might
have seemed that the Esquimau’s whole world had fallen apart.
Oogly’s gaze reached Kit. For just an instant his narrow eyes held a
gleam that might have been mistaken for intelligence, and then his dull
and stolid look returned.
“Too much hot here,” he announced abruptly. “Me an’ Uttaktuak. Going for
walking.” He took the baby from Mayauk’s arms and moved across the
cabin. “Nobody cares?”
Nobody did, apparently. The constables didn’t look around. Oogly opened
the door and went out into the snowy night.
“You don’t have to talk--if you don’t want to,” Cross said to his
handcuffed prisoner.
Kit acknowledged that remark with a rasping smile, and held his tongue.
He had decided what he had to do. There had been enough scandal in the
Tearl family. The ugly talk about his father; Jerry leaving home under a
cloud. And now Kit. He’d be the first Tearl jail-bird.
Well, nobody had to know it. He’d keep the name out of this. Spare
little Jane that shame anyhow. Nobody could make him tell who he was. It
wouldn’t do a particle of good to identify himself. Even if he proved to
them he was the sergeant’s brother, what of it? His offense was not
lessened. If he could make them believe that he had donned the uniform
at Jerry’s suggestion, it wouldn’t help him. And Jerry’s memory would be
blackened....
“Where is the sergeant?” Devon suddenly shot at him.
Kit saw no reason to withhold all of the facts. “He’s dead.”
“Huh?” The muscles around the corners of Devon’s mouth stiffened
visibly. “Where? How?”
“In the old cabin down at Great Owl Run. Six or seven weeks ago. You
lose track of time. He was killed and dumped out of the window into the
creek.”
The constable’s lips formed a soundless exclamation. “Who the hell
killed him?” he snarled.
“This girl’s uncle,” said Kit quietly.
A hurried step across the room, and Diane confronted them. “It’s a lie!”
she said.
“Wait a minute now. Hold on!” Devon’s steely glance shifted from Diane
to settle upon Kit. He sat significantly silent for a moment, his
features limned austerely in the shadow of the lamp.
“Where’d you get the uniform?” he asked abruptly.
Kit’s lips set tighter. He was in danger of entangling himself if he
said too much. As Cross had said, he didn’t have to make any admissions.
He’d have to think out his story and be very sure that all the parts
fitted together. There’d be plenty of time for that. He wasn’t on trial
now.
“Where’d you first meet this man?” Cross asked Diane.
“Down around Port-o’-Prayer.”
“Was he alone?”
“No. There was another man with him.”
“Who?”
“He was--I didn’t know at the time. But since I’ve seen this picture I
think--I’m sure--he was Sergeant Tearl.”
“Yes?” said Cross sharply.
“Yes!” echoed Devon, and swung around menacingly to Kit. “Killed him
yourself, didn’t you? Killed him for his uniform!”
“No,” Kit replied, meeting Devon’s gaze, steel to steel.
“Do you know if he did?” the constable jerked over his shoulder at the
girl.
“No. I--I don’t know.”
“Was he wearing the uniform when you first saw him?” Diane hesitated.
Kit saw her blanched face beyond the table. “I--I can’t say. If he had
the scarlet tunic then it didn’t show under his outer garments. I only
noticed it--after we had reached the cabin!”
“Where the murder happened?”
The girl shuddered. “There--yes.”
Kit smiled a twisted, acid smile. The girl was doing her best to convict
him of murder. She wanted him taken down country out of her uncle’s way.
Innuendoes and half-truths, told with a show of reluctance--she had made
a grave case against him. And he would let it go at that for the
present. He wasn’t sure how much of his own side of the story he wanted
to tell. Anyhow, it would be useless to say anything now in his own
defense. Nobody’d believe him. He had been caught in a uniform that
didn’t belong to him. Almost as heinous a matter as being a spy in
wartime. They’d take him to the inspector’s headquarters no matter what
he said--or tried to prove--they’d hang him if they could.
Devon and Cross were already formulating plans.
“I’ll take him down,” said Devon, whose seniority gave him a slight
advantage. “Starting at daybreak. He’ll talk when the inspector puts on
the clam-squeezers.”
“What the deuce do you suppose his lay was?” asked Cross indignantly,
discussing the prisoner as though he were not present. “Bumping off a
policeman, and then coming around in sergeant’s chevrons, giving orders
to you and me?”
“You leave it to the inspector,” said Devon.
“When you take me down, you’d better take this girl too,” interrupted
Kit. “Whatever I’ve done she’s as bad or worse than I. Ask her to
explain why she’s hanging around the Great Owl woods. Make her tell you
her uncle’s right name, and then find out what he wants here.”
“When we want any more orders from you,” said Devon, “we’ll post you for
a commission.”
“While I’m gone,” Devon suggested to Cross, and turned his back on Kit,
“you’d better see if you can find Buck Tearl’s body. If he went into the
creek he’ll be there still, or down along the Vermilion River.”
“I’m going to look,” said Cross.
“This last storm is busting up the ice. You’ll find plenty of open water
and big jams all the way down. You look well. We’ve gotta have the
body--”
“Ask her about the sledge-load of gold,” interrupted Kit, and shot a
malicious glance at Diane. “Ask her how it came to be where it is now.
Get her to tell you all about it.”
Devon faced about, winking. “What do you mean--sledge-load of gold?” His
curiosity rebounded to Diane. “What does he mean?”
“Why--I--” The girl hesitated and her glance wandered uneasily towards
the stranger, Pettijohn. The man was sitting with his arms hugging the
back of his chair, his jutting ears as avid as a pair of funnels.
“Oh, ye-ah!” drawled Devon. “Just wait a minute.” He spoke almost too
politely to the visitor. “You said you were going on down to the
Yellow-Knife camp to-night.”
“Well, yes, I thought I might--”
“All right!” agreed Devon pointedly.
Pettijohn stood up, disconcerted. He didn’t want to go. That was clear.
But the invitation was too plain to be missed. “Well,” he decided, “I
guess I might as well be going along.”
Devon picked up the man’s steaming mackinaw and held it for him. He gave
him his snowshoes and rifle and helped him to buckle on his back pack.
“Sorry you gotta be going,” said Devon. “Well, so-long anyhow. Come and
see us again sometime.”
“Thanks awfully!” said Pettijohn wryly. “Thanks for the dinner and
everything. Well, so-long, everybody.”
A moment later he had tramped out into the night.
Devon crossed to the front window and scratched into the frost rime with
his thumbnail. He applied his eye to the gouged place and then bent his
ear to listen. For a minute or two he waited thus to make sure there was
no eavesdropping. Then he turned back to Diane.
“All right now. What’s all this about a sledge-load--”
He never finished. The heavy door banged open, admitting a gust of snow
and a white-furred figure that looked more like a shaggy, stampeding
musk-ox than a man. Then the door was closed, the wavering light
steadied, and they saw it was Oogly.
Kit never before had seen the Esquimau aroused from his transcendental
calm. Now he was fairly exploding with excitement, horror.
“_Uttaktuak!_” he yelled.
Everybody turned, petrified, to stare. Mayauk’s eyes had grown into dark
circles of alarm. A sharp incoherency of speech was wrung from Diane’s
parting lips. Kit stumbled up from his stool. The two constables stood
with sagging jaws.
“What?” exclaimed Devon.
“The baby!” gasped Diane. “Uttaktuak! Something’s happened--”
“Down between ice--falling in creek!” Oogly’s voice broke through above
his labored breathing. “Can’t reach ’um--drowning--”
“Where?” demanded Cross.
“In creek--ice-- Oh, my gosh awful!” wailed Oogly.
Mayauk screamed and darted for the door.
“Come on! Show me!” Devon put on one mitten, and didn’t wait to grab the
other. He seized Oogly’s elbow and thrust the Esquimau ahead of him out
of the doorway.
Constable Cross snatched blindly at the wall pegs, got a blanket and a
cap, and then he was gone after the others, banging the door behind him.
In their dash to the rescue it might have seemed that they had forgotten
their prisoner. But there really was nothing for them to worry about. A
handcuffed man would never get far in the wintry forests.
Kit started to follow, and then ruefully clinked his manacled wrists,
and sat down again. Diane was left alone with him.
The girl had checked her first impulse to rush out into the storm. As
the running footsteps faded away in the blustering darkness she turned
wildly to look around the cabin. The tea-kettle. She filled the vessel
afresh at the water-butt and put it on the stove to boil. If the
rescuers were lucky enough to come back with a frozen morsel of human
flesh in their arms, there’d be no waiting for “first-aid” treatment.
Somebody had to stay behind.
She poked up the fire and crowded three fresh logs into the fire-box.
Blankets were brought from the bunk and draped over chairs by the stove.
She found an old door brick and put it into the oven to heat. Then she
went to the back window, scraped off the pane, and tried to see out of
doors.
Kit had followed her movements about the room, watching with dreamy,
half closed eyes. Then, fervently, after a long silence: “I do hope they
get her!”
“Yes,” agreed Diane, her nose still pressing the glass.
There was another endless lapse after that: two beings in one room,
listening for the same sounds, thinking kindred thoughts, acutely
conscious of one another, separated nevertheless by a barrier as
heartbreakingly wide as the polar ice-pack. The clock ticked quietly on
its shelf, the kettle began to hum its homely refrain, the draft whipped
and lashed up the red-hot chimney; outside they heard the snow slatting
across the roof, the hurry of the wind, the crack and groan of the
broken ice-floes in the creek, crawling, sliding--
Diane faced about suddenly. “What a frightful night!” she said.
Kit saw her eyes, pitiful somehow, haunted with a tragic lonesomeness.
He knew she was not thinking of the weather.
“You and I have done frightful things to each other,” he said.
“You forced me,” she answered dully. “You forced me to do it.”
In the flash of his smile there was a melancholy sweetness, without
resentment or reproach. “We ran afoul of things that had us licked
before we started. It might have been so different.”
“I know. You think I don’t?” Tears gathered and glistened for an instant
on her eyelashes, and then she winked hard and flung back her head. “I’m
sorry--”
Her hand gripped towards Kit, to be arrested half-lifted, half-open.
“What’s that?”
A tumult of heavy sound welled out of the night: a slow rumble gaining
force and momentum; a splintering and grinding; the crack and crash of
small field-pieces cutting loose in furious volleys; the ground, the
cabin walls trembled against a sudden violence breaking out of the
darkness.
Kit and Diane were standing at the rear window, without remembering how
they got there. The black head and the ruddy head were touching as they
tried to see through the same window-pane. Smothering darkness without.
They caught the surge and rush of big water let loose.
“_Saut Sauvage!_” muttered Kit. “The rapids! The ice-dam has gone out.”
“My God!” she whispered.
The battering crunch of great ice cakes, hitting and breaking up. A man
shouted somewhere shrilly. A sudden swelling and mingling of all sounds
in one thundering outburst. Then, as abruptly, the roar ceased. A jar
and a jolt now and then, slacking to quiet. Only the wash and splash of
rapid water running free.
Kit did not hear the shack door open. An indraft of snowy air hit the
back of his neck. He turned his face from the window. Oogly was standing
in the doorway.
Diane whirled. “The baby? Where’s the baby?”
Oogly ignored her. He came into the room and forgot to shut the door.
His slyly puckered eyes brought their message for Kit alone. This, he
seemed to think, was no time to bother with children or women.
“Finean’dandy!” he announced. “You an’ me go up along barren land. Sea
no frozing later. Big whaling ship come along inside pack-ice. You go
away on whaling ship--nobody arresting you anytime then.”
Oogly was trying to be nonchalant, but obviously he was pleased with
himself. It was beginning to dawn upon Kit that the Esquimau in some
mysterious manner had had a hand in the breaking-up of the creek floes.
He had lured Devon and Cross out of the shack with a wild yarn about the
baby. Kit studied the man’s unemotional countenance in suddenly growing
alarm.
“Oogly! Where are the constables?”
For the first time the Esquimau allowed his self-appreciation to appear
in a widening grin.
“Constables riding on middle water. Noum coming along back a long while
now.”
CHAPTER XXI
HEADING NORTH
Kitchener felt a sickness and emptiness under his ribs. His comrade, one
time a murderer, again had taken direful measures. He peered in
consternation at the swarthy, round face that looked forth so genially
from its ice-encrusted hood.
“Cross--Devon!” he accused furiously. “Drowned--you’ve killed them!”
A hurt, almost tearful look clouded Oogly’s soft, seal-brown eyes.
“Noum!” he protested vehemently. “Sitting on ground along water middle.
Can’ get off now.”
“What? They’re out there, and still alive?”
“You betchum!”
By stumbling speech and vivid gesture the Esquimau tried to explain just
what had happened. In the center of the stream stood a long, narrow
island, a pointed ridge of rock, like a backbone, humped up above the
surface of the rapids. Ice cakes, broken from the tunnels upstream had
piled up on the nose of this island, forming a big jam that reached from
bank to bank.
The observant Oogly had noticed this place when they arrived at the
police shack that morning. When he saw the handcuffs snapped on his
friend’s wrists his fertile mind had immediately devised a plan to
outwit the police.
He used poor little Uttaktuak for a bait. The constables responded
humanely to his cry for help, followed at his heels across the ice to
the island. While they were poking in the crevices, listening for
wailing sounds of human distress, Oogly had crept under the head of the
hanging floe.
As an experienced timber-driver is able by a sort of sixth sense to
stick his peavy into the key-log of a log-jam, so the expert ice-man
knew which block of ice it was that held back the crowding, straining
mass behind it. Oogly simply and unerringly had found the critical wedge
upon which the backed-up tons of ice were precariously suspended. He had
chopped and pried for a minute with his spear head, and had jumped clear
as the floe suddenly toppled and split apart, to go thundering and
foaming downstream on both sides of the island.
So much he told in casual words, helped out by his lucid pantomime. That
part of the story meant nothing to Oogly. He had made his way to the
bank, leaping from one submerging ice-chunk to the next. The policemen
had not been quick enough or sure-footed enough to escape as their
shoreward bridge fell to pieces about them. Oogly gurgled with amusement
at the huge joke he had played.
“Constables have a seat on middle rock,” he said.
Kit only wanted to be certain that this was true. He did not wish to
have any drowned policemen on his conscience. Without waiting to hear
more he ran out of the door and picked his way down to the embankment of
the rapids.
In the welter of the falling snow he made out a smudgy shape that was
just a little blacker than the darkness itself. It was the island--the
tongue of rock, jutting high and dry in midstream. He heard the big
cakes of ice washing by at his feet.
He raised his head and hailed the middle of the stream. “Hello! Devon?
Cross?”
Yes, there was somebody. Voices--one of them shouted with rage. “Who the
hell did that?”
Kitchener laughed and turned away. It was all right. The constables were
unharmed, marooned in the middle of the creek. In his haste to the
rescue Cross had grabbed a blanket instead of a rope. They could huddle
up for warmth and there was no danger of their being swept away. In a
day or so a new ice-bridge was sure to form, and then they could walk
back to shore again.
Meanwhile Kit had no intention of waiting for the next freeze-up. While
he didn’t precisely approve of Oogly’s methods, he at least saw no
reason to be stupidly quixotic over fortune’s sending. The alternative
was unthinkable. It meant a long prison term, or worse, if they took him
south. The cards would all be stacked against him.
Oogly’s plan was to dash across the barrens for the Arctic Sea. The idea
was inspired. The trails would be swept away by the time the constables
got off their island. It was a ten to one shot that they would cast
southward after their quarry. And Kit would be heading due north.
Queen Maud Sea! The chance to carry out Jerry’s unfulfilled mission. He
could seek for the white man who wore a police badge under his artikis.
That business could be settled, that ghost laid one way or another.
Then, as Oogly suggested, the whale ship--around the point of Alaska,
Frisco--New York! Nobody in this country knew who he was or where he
came from. He’d be safe in New York.
Someday he could send a trusted agent to recover the sunken gold bags.
He wouldn’t touch the stuff himself. But a pension fund for the
R.C.M.P.--that was the idea. A memorial to Jerry. The Tearl memorial
fund, sent by an anonymous donor. His heart was thumping, a thrill of
excitement was in his blood, imagination ran riot. He was pulling up
stakes, taking a new deal all round. He’d be on the march soon, heading
north.
At the shack doorway Kitchener bumped into Oogly and his wife. Mayauk
was scolding about something. As Kit came up the Esquimau turned aside
to a deep snow embankment, plunged into the drift to his shoulders. Then
he came up with a squirming, fur-clad bundle in his arms. It was
Uttaktuak, making cheerful sounds and kicking her feet. Oogly must have
dropped her there before he went out to the floe. Mayauk snatched the
baby from her husband’s hands, and peace was restored.
Oogly followed Kitchener into the cabin.
“Finean’dandy!” grinned Kit, and shoved up his manacled wrists. “Can you
get these things off?”
The Esquimau found an ax and indicated that his companion was to lay his
hands on the doorsill. Kit complied dubiously. Unfortunately the key was
on the island with the constables. To use a file was apt to prove an
endless job. Kit held his right wristlet against the hammering block.
Then he set his teeth and gave the word.
Oogly swung with his full strength. The butt of the ax crashed down
squarely upon the arch of steel, cracking the brittle, highly-tempered
metal as though it were glass. The band fell apart and Kit’s wrist was
free.
He winced and looked at his hand, and then grinned up weakly at Oogly.
The astonishing Esquimau had struck off the shackle without crushing the
bone underneath, or even bruising the skin. More confidently this time
Kit offered his other wrist, and a second blow rid him of his
humiliating bonds.
He kicked the broken links aside. Diane Durand stood under the lamp,
looking on uneasily.
Kit’s jawline reasserted itself as their eyes encountered. He didn’t
propose to leave her behind to carry the tale of the sunken gold to her
uncle. If he were unable to settle the long accounting with Hell Bent,
at least he’d make sure that the man was done out of the loot.
“We’re going out by way of the Arctic Sea,” he informed the girl. “You
too.”
He had expected fierce resistance. But Diane was too clever a girl to
squander her courage and strength in a futile struggle. She was shaken
and dazed by the turn of events, and she knew she was beaten. “After all
that has happened,” she said wearily, “it doesn’t matter much where I
go, or with whom, or what happens next.”
Kit and Oogly hurried their preparations for departure. The constables
had Kit’s service revolver, but his rifle and Diane’s shotgun were on
the sledge, and the Esquimau had kept his musket and hunting spear. They
took a couple of blankets from the police store and helped themselves to
such provisions as were needed to replace their own diminished supplies.
As they must travel fast, they cut their equipment down to the last
possible ounce. And it was decided that Mayauk and Uttaktuak should
remain behind under the protection of the police. Oogly promised to send
for them when the tribes drifted south again with the coming of summer.
The three strangely-met _voyageurs_ set forth in the night and the
storm, beginning a journey that appalled the imagination. They would
bridge the creek at the first opportunity, and then strike due north
across the vast stretch of the wind-swept barrens. Some day, by
fortune’s leave, they might reach one of the isolated whaling
settlements on the ice-bound sea. For the present Kit preferred not to
let his thoughts dwell upon the uncertainties of the coming weeks.
They drove their dogs down the shadowy line of the creek, Oogly running
ahead, on the look-out for a favorable crossing place. The night was
half gone before he finally shouted and turned the team leader. Instead
of hummocks and crevices and crawling floes, he at last had come to a
naturally formed bridge that was solid enough and level enough for
crossing by sledge. He turned and haled the trotting dog-team on behind
him. And then he stopped and crouched and peered forward under his hood.
Buzz-saw, the team leader, checked himself at the Esquimau’s heels. He
threw up his head, tested the air once with his nose, and let out a
warning growl. An ugly chorus, snarling and barking, answered the
challenge from across the frozen stream; then, an instant later, men’s
voices hailing the darkness in alien gutturals.
Without a word Kit swung the “gee” pole, while Oogly turned at a
lumbering trot to break trail downstream. No need to stop for questions.
The party across the way had to be Yellow Knives--a hunting band, no
doubt, coming back from the barrens.
The Esquimau’s enemies, of course, had long since familiarized
themselves with the peculiarities of his only pair of snowshoes; also
Kit’s. They’d pick up the trail as soon as they crossed the creek and
identify the tracks. Then they’d come on like wolves running a caribou
herd.
Oogly’s eyes had learned to see in the great Midnights, and he led the
way now, picking the best ground unerringly, cruising as fast as an
ordinary woodsman cares to travel in the full sunlight. He would know
that his one slender chance was to stretch out his trail so far ahead of
the Indians that the friendly snowstorm would have time to bury it.
The huskies caught the infection of alarm. Danger for men means danger
for dogs. They jumped after Oogly, half-galloping, with the lightly
laden sledge singing over the downy new snow. And in the rear, whooping
yells broke out in a significant babel to reëcho down the hidden valley
of the creek.
The Yellow-Knife village was pitched on the south bank of the stream,
about midway between _Saut Sauvage_ and Great Owl Run. In the darkness
the fugitives failed to make out the huddle of skin teepees and shanties
until they suddenly found themselves in the midst of the sleeping
encampment.
It was too late to detour. Two score of grave-like mounds in the snow
exploded suddenly like bombs as buried huskies sprang to life and
action. Bounding, yapping forms circled in from all directions, trying
to get at Buzz-saw and his team-mates, raising a din that must arouse
every comatose Indian for two miles around.
Kit closed up on the flanks of his team and beat off the charging beasts
with a clubbed rifle barrel. For just a moment Oogly slackened pace. His
snaky dog-whip licked out, right and left and behind him, popping like
fire-crackers. The savage outcry changed suddenly to anguished yelping.
Again the Esquimau plunged into his stride and went through the main
street of the Yellow Knives, with Buzz-saw a jump behind him, and Kit
and Diane racing for the “gee” pole.
In a moment they were out of the village, hugging the line of willows as
they fled down the banks of the creek.
Bedlam had broken loose in their rear. Women shrieking, men yelling to
one another and bedamning their frenzied dogs, rifles wantonly firing at
nothing: the town had gone mad. It wouldn’t take the bucks long to find
out who their passing visitors were, and then to hitch sledges and take
the trail. Instead of a single hunting party, the fugitives in a few
minutes would have half a village in pursuit.
Many weeks of snow-tramping had hardened both Kit and Diane for the
physical ordeal they must face to-night. Oogly had trained with sledges
on the wide Arctic tundras since the days of babyhood. In a long race he
could outlast the best of the dogs. Any of the three probably was as
trail-fit as the average starveling Yellow Knife. If the dogs only stood
up for the night in the traces there was a chance of their wearing their
way through.
Kit had kept a watchful eye on Diane, but apparently at this moment she
had no desire to leave him. There was a blood-chilling savagery in the
sounds behind them. For the present she had as much incentive to run as
Oogly and Kit.
The events of the remaining night went by like the spinning of hazy
dreams. Shadows fleeting along half-seen trails; snow and darkness and
cold; the straining snap of harness thongs, the humming of sledge
runners and the steady crunching of snowshoes, the _pat, pat, pat_ of
furry feet digging along: they gained the Great Owl cabin clearing, and
Kit shouted to Oogly to turn.
Away to the left swung the dogs, with their forerunner a stride ahead,
among the stumps and headlong into the blackness of the “haunted”
forest. The sounds of pursuit had dwindled to silence. But out of
hearing did not necessarily mean out of striking range. There were teams
and men running the plainly marked trail. The fleeing dogs knew it, and
Kit and Oogly and Diane never lost the occult feeling of being pushed
hard by danger behind them.
The owls were away from home, out foraging over the frozen prairies far
to the north. It was deathly quiet under the trees. Oogly was familiar
with every inch of the ground here, and he cut through the owl woods,
dodging low, avoiding the great trunks by some uncanny method of
perception. They struck the creek again several miles farther down, near
the point where Kit and Diane had first come into this country from the
south. Here they found an ice-bridge crossing. They worked over to the
north bank, groped their way through the stunted, wind-torn thickets on
the opposite shore, and turned their faces at last towards the Arctic
Sea.
There was hope now that their pursuers had been shaken off, or at least
held up for a while in front of the Great Owl woods. No Yellow Knife
would venture into that unhallowed pit of darkness, unless the lust of
the chase had keyed him up to a fine, high point of frenzy. Then he
might go anywhere, dare anything. In any event the savages might circle
the forest and strike the trail where it crossed farther downstream. But
this would mean a clear gain for the fugitives of an hour or two or
three.
Unfortunately the wind had whipped around into the southwest some time
in the night, and the promise of heavy snow had failed. It had grown
colder and calmer, and the great, soft flakes had turned to a misty
sleet. Oogly, the weather-wise, had announced that they might see blue
sky in the morning.
There was nothing to do but to keep going, to make all the distance they
could while the dogs stood up. It is astonishing how much reserve
vitality the ordinary human being holds on tap if the emergency call is
great enough. Earlier in the night--hours and hours ago, it seemed to
them now--the three fugitives had known the torture of overtaxed hearts
and lungs, an unquenchable thirst, the dry taste of blood. Then they had
caught their “second wind.” A pleasant numbness seemed to drug their
physical sensibilities. Legs and bodies moved automatically, without
effort. Breathing became easier. Indeed it seemed almost unnecessary to
breathe. It was as though they had been running and could keep on
running always.
Daylight caught them far out on the frozen prairies. As a mariner loses
his landfall in the night, so they had lost sight of the peopled world.
A dead-level sea of snow and ice surrounded them. There was not a tree
nor shrub, not a speck of color within range of straining eyes. The
clouds had blown clear, and the early gray of the sky changed gradually
to the flawlessness of hard, blued-steel. The sun came up, and the white
monotony of the barrens became an aching, dazzling glare.
Diane was drooping again, staggering now and then as she tried to hold
the killing pace. Oogly’s face looked as drawn and bloodless as smoked
moosemeat. Kit was beginning to suspect that in time he might reach the
end of his “second wind.” The breathing of the dogs sounded like the
rattle of broken skid-chains. They stopped by mutual consent, because
nobody could go much farther.
Behind them the horizon line was a scintillating glaze. Landmarks all
had vanished. The Great Owl forest had been left so far in the rear that
not even a smudge of color showed against the field of snow. There were
no specks or dots anywhere to betray the existence of beasts or men.
At the left the Vermilion River pursued its endless course northward,
held between treeless snow banks so low that the dykes of the waterway,
even at a short distance, could not be distinguished from the rest of
the flat, sweeping landscape.
The travelers camped on the river ice, because at least there was some
slight protection behind the low embankments.
Kit unpacked their alcohol stove and started coffee boiling. “Ready for
breakfast?” he asked Diane.
“No, thanks. Not hungry. Sleep. I want to go to sleep.”
He unstrapped a fur bag and spread it in the lee of an ice hummock. The
girl stayed awake only long enough to pull off her boots. Then she
crawled into the warm pocket, and ten seconds later was asleep, with the
sun beaming into her face.
Kit and Oogly dined on chunks of cold pemmican, washed down with
scalding swigs of coffee. Then the Esquimau stumbled off behind the
parked sledge, rolled up in his robes and started snoring. The dogs had
dropped in their tracks the instant after they were fed. Kit alone
stayed awake.
He turned, squinting, to gaze back over the glistening reaches of the
open tundra. No sign as yet of pursuit. But his own trail, the ruthless
thread of fatality, linked him with the horizon. At any moment he might
see little, evil shapes moving in the shimmer of the sun.
Sighing, he picked up a blanket and tucked his rifle beneath his arm. He
seemed to have been elected unanimously to the post of responsibility.
Oogly was dead to the world, with his head wrapped in a robe. Diane lay
on her side, a glinting, silky wing of hair tumbled over her eye, her
mouth relaxed in a faint, unwitting smile.
For just a moment Kit’s gaunt features were robbed of their guarded
sternness. His glance hovered wistfully as he half leaned over her, and
then, with an inexorable shrug, he turned on his heel and trudged back
to the southward.
For two or three miles he walked the down trail. Then he picked a
defensible spot behind the river bank, where he spread his blanket and
stretched out on his stomach to watch over the line of northbound
footprints.
If his enemies came out on the barrens the trail would lead them past
the ambush point. He could take them on the flank, and by surprise. They
wouldn’t get him for a long while. He was loaded down with cartridges,
and he was covered on three sides. Oogly and Diane would hear the shots.
They’d have time to run for it again. Kit was confident that he could
hold the Yellow Knives long enough to give his companions a safe start.
Better one than three.
All of that morning Kit lay on his blanket, keeping vigil.
The sun had come up in the southeast, and it was from that direction
that his pursuers must come. He lay on his diaphragm and stared into the
sun.
An endless morning. He had nothing to do but to gaze across the flat
wastes and try to keep his eyelids open. It was a wearying, painful
prospect, snow and ice stretching everywhere, shadowless, colorless, a
vast mirror reflecting the sunlight.
A merciless sun. A silvery, frigid incandescence pouring balefully upon
the world. The snow remained as hard as crystal, and flashed and
sparkled like the dancing of flame.
An appalling silence. Even the wind is without noise when there is
nothing to interfere with its blowing. The tick of Kit’s wrist watch,
the thud of his pulse, were mighty sounds in ears attuned to an absolute
vacancy. He could hear the friction of his toes when he wiggled them for
warmth in his ribbed-wool socks.
A forlorn panorama. Sometimes he saw with an astonishing clarity,
seemingly for miles and miles, but there was nothing to look at. The
boundaries of earth and sky were so much alike that he could not tell
surely where one left off and the other began.
The waves of cold on the snow-fields sometimes waver visibly like heat
waves on the desert. In the flickering daylight he later began to see
things. Men and dogs and sledges and shifting herds of musk-ox moved
distantly before his widening gaze; then a black, bumping object, like a
locomotive laboring over a rough road-bed. By that time he knew
something was wrong. He studied his finger tip for a minute to bring his
pupils back in focus, and when his glance ranged the far tundras again
there was nothing whatever in sight.
If the Yellow Knives were coming he wished they’d come.
The queer mirages formed and faded for a while, and then a dullness
stole over his vision. When he took off his mitten again to concentrate
on his forefinger, the finger somehow looked bigger than it should and a
trifle vague in outline. The heatless sun, strangely, felt as though it
were beginning to burn his eyeballs. The muscles of his eyelids started
to twitch, and he could not hold them still. And he began to notice a
pin-prick of pain in the nerves behind the bridge of his nose.
For relief he allowed his eyes to close against the glaring sunlight.
And he went to sleep, to awaken suddenly in a sweat of terror. He had
dozed off. He had failed his companions, when he was supposed to be on
watch. Nothing had happened. The silence was as intense as ever, and
there were no shadows beneath the coldly blazing sun. That was nothing
to his credit. He had slept.
He looked at his watch, and had no idea of the time of day. The watch
dial and the hands and numerals fluttered in a kaleidoscope of changing
colors. He gazed across the tundra and the colors swam off ahead of him
into the horizon.
His eyes felt as though something had blown into them. Sticks or
cinders. He rubbed them with the back of his hand, and then stopped
because of the smarting. If the Yellow Knives were coming, please let
them come while he still could see them.
In the meantime he could not endure the agony of the snowlight and the
sunlight. He let his eyes close again--for just a second. His chin was
propped on his forearm and his face stared insensibly across the white
barrens. And the second lengthened into minutes and the minutes into
hours.
What aroused him he did not know. The movement behind him was so
stealthy that a man in his full waking senses might not have noticed,
nor had reason to look around. But Kit sprang to his feet as suddenly as
though an alarm clock had banged off by his head.
A towering, muffled shape stood over him. Twilight and cold--the sharp,
calm, bitter cold of the arctic evening. His eyes were all wrong. It was
as though he were trying to look through fuzz. There really was
something, though--an erect figure on two feet--a face and a body and a
rigid arm, and a pistol muzzle pointing at his head.
CHAPTER XXII
OOGLY
Dazed as he was, half-blind, half-awake, Kit recognized his fate.
Intuition was better than eyesight. This was no Indian. It was Hell
Bent. He knew that. Everything was as good as ended. There’d be a flash,
and then the obliterating shock, nothing worse than that. His mouth
twisted sardonically.
“What are you waiting for? Go ahead and be damned!”
Funny the man didn’t fire. All these weeks, gunning for Bent and Bent
for him--
The man whirled with a snarling sound in his throat. Something had
stumbled up from behind the river embankment. Kit was vaguely aware of a
broad shape and heavy feet crunching the snow.
“Oogly!” he yelled. “Back! Get down!”
The stocky figure swayed on outspread legs, a heavy, two-handed spear
poised above his head.
A streak of flame reached above the snow. The sound of that one shot,
out of all the pistol shots Kit had ever heard, lingered in his head
with a reëchoing of horror.
The spear-thrower lurched forward violently, and his spear was gone.
A second shot and a third, point-blank; the stench of gas and
powder-burnt fur; a squat body on staggering legs, that still would not
fall; writhing sinews and muscles in Kit’s clutch and a fist trying to
pound his face: everything was dreadfully mixed in his brain, events and
their sequence of happening.
He remembered the feel of the hot steel in his hand, but how he got the
gun he did not remember. Afterwards he found torn flesh under his nails;
but at that moment he only knew that the butt had settled down in his
fist and he was looking everywhere and softly crying because he could
not see well enough to shoot.
Gliding snowshoes moved off hurriedly in the dusk. Everybody in the
wilderness would have heard by this time that Kit was deadly with a
six-shooter; nobody could have learned as yet that anything was wrong
with his eyesight. The intruder had fled. To follow would be hopeless.
Kit groped behind him and his arms circled a stumbling, furry
hulk--Oogly.
“He got you, didn’t he?” said Kit, and lowered the sagging body to the
snow.
The Esquimau said nothing. He was fumbling at the front of his shirt.
The tufts of fur were matted together, warm and wet. But it was not that
that bothered Oogly. He was pulling at the bit of tin on his chest--his
medal--trying with failing fingers to unbuckle the wrist-watch strap.
“Murderem once more,” muttered Oogly.
Kit felt something come into his throat to choke him. Oogly believed he
had killed another man. He had flung his spear, and did not realize that
the first pistol shot had spoiled his aim and stolen the force from his
stroke. By breaking a promise he had forfeited his medal.
“No, Oogly.” Kit slipped off his mitten and stilled the uneasy hands. He
saw no reason to disillusionize the man. Let him think that his last
spear-thrust had been magnificently delivered. “It’s a good murder this
time. You saved my life. The medal’s still yours to keep. You’ve won it
twice over. This time it’s something for pride. It’s yours now forever.”
“Keep um?” whispered the Esquimau.
“Nobody can ever take it away from you.”
“Thanks--thanks you--” Oogly tried to sit up, tried to laugh. But the
sound died choking, and the broad body grew slack and heavy, and slipped
down from Kit’s arms to lie in the snow.
Kit touched the man’s pulse and his temple, and then he stood over the
quiet, baggy shape in the snow. “White men!” It was a short and savage
ejaculation. “I knew a better, Oogly. The best man I ever knew was not a
white man!”
His voice broke and a sudden wetness soothed the dry stinging of his
eyes. Oogly had no other funeral oration.
Kit stooped and scooped handfuls of snow over the motionless body. He
patted the surface down and shaped out a clean, smooth grave-mound.
Oogly’s destiny always had marked him for nothing less and nothing
greater than a mound in the clean, cold snow.
The sun was gone and it was growing darker. How good the darkness felt
in Kit’s swollen eyes! He picked up the captured six-shooter. Yes--this
was it--carved ivory butt, engraving on a silver name-plate. It was the
gun he had seen Hell Bent wearing, Inspector Bill Tearl’s old service
revolver. Kit shoved the weapon into his empty holster. Well, it was
back in the family now. The last Tearl had three more shots on his hip.
He left Oogly and went back to camp--trudged wearily up the frozen river
until he came to the place where a sledge was parked and dogs bounded
forward to greet him.
“Diane?” he said.
There was no reply.
“Queer!” Then louder: “Hello--Diane?”
The dogs leaped up, pawing at him, and he trod on their back toes to
keep them down. There was nobody in camp. The sleeping bag was empty.
And the red Hudson’s Bay blanket seemed to be missing. Further search
discovered a sheet of paper pinned to the topmost duffle-bag on the
sledge.
Evidently it was a note from Diane. She was gone. Probably she had
escaped as soon as darkness fell. Kit’s jaw hardened. He might have
expected it. Diane would be on her way back to Great Owl Run, looking
for her uncle. He shrugged unpleasantly. Well, what of it? He couldn’t
stop her now. Let her go.
Kit struck a match and frowned at the sheet of paper. There was writing,
but the lines wabbled and ran together when he tried to read them. He
flipped out the match and gave up the effort. It didn’t matter what she
wrote. What did he care? He crumpled up the paper and threw it away.
As soon as the dogs were fed, Kit went to bed. He was worn to utter
exhaustion. His two or three hours sleep that afternoon meant nothing at
all. If he expected to get on he could do with no less than eight or ten
hours of solid, unbroken rest. Maybe his eyes would feel better by
morning. If anybody came in the night it couldn’t be helped. He simply
had to sleep.
But strangely he didn’t drop off in a delicious sense of forgetfulness.
In fact, he couldn’t lie still. His bag didn’t fit him. One minute he
felt too hot, and the next, too cold. Finally he went to the trouble of
unlacing himself and crawling out of the flea-bag, a mean and
undignified undertaking. He staggered around in his stocking feet, and
finally found the wad of paper that he had thrown away. Then, with
Diane’s note buttoned in his shirt pocket, he crept back into his fur
pouch and went to sleep.
The pitiless morning sun appeared in a frosty-blue sky. For miles and
miles around, the snow fields flashed and glinted and threw back the
sun-rays with a blinding brilliancy. Far to the southward black
figurines, no bigger than pencil strokes, moved in the undulations of
light.
Kit had discovered the approaching specks the moment he awakened. He
studied them briefly, and then made leisurely preparations for their
reception.
In the first place he decided to stay where he was. His dogs were
footsore, and, with the possible exception of Buzz-saw, none of them was
fit for work. There’d be some fresh, first-rate teams in the gang that
was coming across the tundra. They’d run him down in no time. And he
might not find such a favorable place to dig-in farther along.
The river bank here bent at a sharp angle and rose up from the ice sheer
as a breastwork. He hauled the sledge to the brink and banked up a shelf
of snow on which he could stand shoulder-high and peer over the packed
duffle. The niche in the river bank protected him in front and on two
sides. They could circle and get him from behind. But the river was wide
here and it was a long-range shot from the prairie on the other side.
They’d have to burn up a lot of cartridges, perhaps.
He arranged his own shells in a neat row along the runner of the
sledge--ninety-two for the Winchester and fourteen for the shotgun,
which, for some reason, Diane had neglected to take with her. These were
more than enough. If he lived to use half of them he wouldn’t complain.
A quart pot of strong coffee and the most extravagant breakfast his
larder afforded: he fried his bacon just so and carefully browned his
corn-cakes and used half the can of egg-powder and his last tin of ham
to crisp a beautiful omelette. Into his coffee he dumped the entire jar
of preserved cream that he had been saving for some purpose or another,
he hadn’t quite known what until now. It was the best meal he had eaten
in two months.
His eyes didn’t hurt much this morning. They looked inflamed in his
pocket mirror and the lids were a bit puffy, but he could see what was
going on. He threw a blanket over his head to shut out the light as long
as he could.
But he could not long ignore the approaching figures. They were coming
in a sweeping line, running up yesterday’s trail--Kit’s trail and
Diane’s and Oogly’s. He didn’t bother to count. There were six dog teams
and twenty or thirty men. All Yellow Knives, excepting, perhaps, the
tall one who strode in the rear.
This last one was unrecognizable at such a distance. But he stood a full
head above the others and he did not walk like an Indian. A white
man--who else but Hell Bent? In all probability the savages had been of
two minds about venturing out on the bleak barrens, until Bent returned
last night and stirred them up again. Now he was showing his good
generalship by letting the Indians rush into range ahead of him.
The foremost of the party caught sight of the sledge on the embankment.
Kit heard the yells as the advance dozen fired a spattering volley and
charged. Two or three bullets dusted the embankment, but the rest
plopped short.
He slammed his rifle bolt. A .30-’06 soft nose. No caliber of bullet
ever brought more woe into the world. Four-hundred and fifty yards,
thereabouts. Allow for refraction. Allow for wind-drift. Two and a half
from three, plus one--
This long range rifle practice was too much like surveying or
dressmaking for his taste. Give him a six-inch pistol barrel and an
offhand mark.
He felt the savage buck of the gunstock. One of the distant figures went
down on its hands and knees, and tried to crawl, and couldn’t.
Somehow he didn’t hate these men because they were trying to kill him,
but because they were forcing him to deal with such beastly arithmetic.
He gritted his teeth with annoyance. Fortunately the others had stopped.
No more for the present.
The devilish sun was mirrored into his face by the shining miles of
snow. It was as though a billion white-burning lenses were turned full
into his eyes. He tried to see across the blazing levels with his
eyewinkers almost shut.
The advance squad had scattered and scrambled back for the sledges,
leaving the fallen one, a blot upon the snow. Kit could see them
talking, using their hands vehemently. The tall man came forward and
seemed to have much to say.
For a half hour or more they held their council-of-war. Kit watched them
as a basking seal watches at the edge of his diving hole, opening his
eyes for five seconds and closing them for thirty. But the sun-rays
seemed to bore through his naked eyelids.
The Indians at last decided what was to be done. The six sledges
separated and were driven out in skirmish order, right and left from the
center and fronting the river course. The dogs were unhitched and chased
off into the background. Then a couple of Yellow Knives dropped prone
behind each of the loaded sledges.
A nerve in Kit’s left eyeball had begun to jump and quiver, and he
couldn’t control it. Yet he still was able to make out what was
happening. A party of a half dozen braves detached themselves from the
line and started off in a wide circle across the sun. These obviously
intended to strike the river farther south and to swing back along the
opposite shore to attack Kit’s ambuscade from the rear. It would take
this bunch an hour or so to work into position, and for the present he
dismissed them from his worries.
The real menace now was the sledges in front. He stared at them for a
moment, and was under the impression that they were moving towards him.
He blinked and passed his hand before his face, and looked again.
Surely! Each sledge was gliding forward, propelled by the unseen men who
wriggled flat in the snow behind it.
Kit now understood his enemies’ strategy, but it had been a costly
business finding out. The Yellow Knives could approach with their backs
to the sun that streamed like molten silver into Kit’s squinting,
tortured face. The snow field was beginning to dance before him in
garish colors. He dared not even think the word, but he knew what was
happening to him. Trying to make out things in a quicksilver flood, with
his eyes boggling in his head--
Rifle firing! Sullen thuds of sound at his left and in front of him--he
listened for bullets in the air. Some of them plunged into the snow, not
very close. One went above him, turning end over end, buzzing like a
June-bug. Rotten rifling that wouldn’t spin a bullet properly. Something
hit the sledge resoundingly a dozen inches from his nose, and one of the
deck supports was sheared in two, neatly as the slicing stroke of a
sharp ax.
They weren’t all using trade guns. Somebody else was doing a problem in
long-distance arithmetic.
Kit tried to locate the sharp-shooter. That crisp, whip-like report
meant high-power and meticulous rifling. Puffs of black powder smoke
drifted above the sledges--all but one. That one stood farthest back and
in the center of the line. By an exertion of will Kit forced his eyes to
stay wide open long enough to concentrate his pupils on the midmost
sledge. No smoke there. Anyhow, maybe not. His vision had cleared for a
few seconds, and now the red and gold clouds were beginning to roll back
in front of him. The middle sledge had seemed to be farther away than
the others. Probably Hell Bent was sprawled behind that one. He’d be the
one to have smokeless powder cartridges.
A bullet tore through the six fat duffle-bags lashed in a row on Kit’s
sledge. He picked up the distant object again--a vague smudge in a
spectrum of fiery colors that wouldn’t stay still. No trajectory tables
or micrometer calculations were possible; just shove the butt to the
shoulder, and guess, and pull the trigger. He couldn’t even see the
sights.
What was the use? Damn his eyes! And the sun and the frightful, glaring
snow! A trickle of syrup was running out of a punctured can over his
bare right hand. He wiped his hand in disgust on the back of his shirt.
His four dogs were crouching at his feet, and he absently scratched a
rough, uplifted head.
“That you, Buzz-saw?” He laughed crazily. “What you sticking around here
for? Why’nt you beat it?”
The firing seemed to be getting in closer. Banging explosions not only
in front and to the left, but off on the right now. The bullets were
dropping around him. They sounded like skate-blades cutting into crusty
ice. Buzz-saw’s hot tongue was licking the rest of the sticky mess off
his fingers.
He started to fire at the echo of the guns, and then changed his mind.
If he missed a few times running they’d guess what was wrong with him,
and jump up and come on headlong. Let ’em crawl up, thinking he was
deliberately holding his fire. It would take them longer to get here,
anyhow.
Not that it mattered when they came.
There was a spot in back of his nose that seemed to be the core of his
troubles, a swirling and flashing, as nerve-racking as fireworks in his
head. The eyesight--what a sensitive, perishable gift! Maltreat it for a
few minutes, and it is gone. He couldn’t see a thing. There were nothing
but shrinking nerves and agonizing colors swimming around in the places
where his eyes ought to be. He was blind. He was snow-blind.
The rifle was of no more use to him than a dictionary. He chucked it
away and groped for the shotgun. This was the tool for a blind man.
Fourteen shells. Some held bird-shot and some buck-shot. It said which
was which on the wads, if he could read them. No difference. He’d try to
get them all in at the last minutes when everybody was jammed around him
so close he couldn’t miss.
He tried the safety and broke the breech and snapped it shut again. A
slug hit the ground by his face and spattered with the noise of an
ice-pick chipping ice. Another knocked a welt of fur off his hood and
ricocheted across the frozen river in two clanging jumps. He must have
stuck his head up too far without knowing it. Blind and blundering!
Buzz-saw let out a terrific growl. Kit dropped his hand to feel the dog
crouching with every muscle tense and his back ridge abristle. The keen,
snarling muzzle was pointing north, down the river-course.
“What? What it is, boy?”
Kit suddenly flung up his gun and turned in sightless staring.
Something--crunching, gliding in the hard snow below the river
bank--coming towards him. He thumbed off the catch, finger crooked,
sighting for the sound.
“Hello!” said a voice. “Hold it! What do you think you’re doing?”
The blood seemed to drain out of Kit’s brain. A swaying weakness
overmastered him. The gun barrels wavered and sagged in his hands--too
heavy to hold. He couldn’t move, or think, or speak.
Somebody strode up to him, and a big, strong, rough-sleeved arm suddenly
wrapped itself about his head and squeezed his ears.
“Hello, Kit,” said the astounding voice. “Hello, Cocky-bird!”
CHAPTER XXIII
BROTHERS-IN-ARMS
Kitchener lost his shotgun as a wave of giddiness swept over him. His
hands went up, incredulous, feebly groping, to cling to a pair of big,
fleshly shoulders, to feel the warmth and vitality of solid human
strength holding him on his feet.
“Jerry,” he said. “Jerry! My God! Jerry!”
“Who the hell did you think it was?” asked the bright, mocking voice
that Kit would have known anywhere, anytime, in any world or state of
existence. Jerry Tearl!
“I thought-- They killed you. I thought you were killed--Jerry!”
“Who killed me? Have you gone nuts or something? What’s the shootin’--
Hey--you damn fool--keep your head down!”
“Back in that cabin. The bloody old red blanket! And all over the floor
and window sill. I thought they got you.”
“What cabin? What _are_ you talking about?”
“Back at Great Owl Run. Grandfather Tearl’s old Hudson’s Bay blanket
with a bullet hole in it. I thought you’d been murdered--”
“Who, me?” Jerry broke in with his scornful laugh. “I wasn’t at Great
Owl Run. I went down the Vermilion, straight to the sea coast. The
blanket. Oho! I’m beginning to get you. I had the blanket strapped on
the back of my sledge, and some of the duffel you’d traded me. It must
have come loose and fallen off. I discovered it was gone late one night
when I went into camp, several miles farther down the Vermilion than the
Great Owl fork. Somebody picked it up. That’s all.”
Kit was laughing while tears ran from the corners of his inflamed
eyelids. “Jerry! I don’t know what to _say_.” His fingers contracted in
his brother’s bulging biceps with bruising force. “Why, you--you
doggoned old scut!”
“Steady-on there, bird!” Kit felt a pair of fingers poking
experimentally into his eye-sockets. “What’s wrong with you, Crow-eye?”
“Nothing. Just a little blind--snow-blind. The cursed sun--and the
snow--”
Jerry made a queer sound with his lips. “You mean to say--you been
carrying-on here--and can’t see?”
“Trying to.”
“What’s it all about--?”
A chunking hunk of lead slapped a metal brace of the sledge and burst
into particles around their ears.
“Pardon me,” said Jerry, “may I cut-in?”
He stirred, then steadied, and five rifle-shots rattled spitefully over
the river embankment. The clip tinkled and he shoved in a fresh round.
“Slaveys--Yellow Knives? What’s the racket?”
“Yellow Knives,” said Kit. “It’s a long story.”
“If I could shoot like you used to,” remarked the sergeant, “I’d have
got that baby with the red cap. But I’ll bet his ear’s burning. They’re
not pushing in quite so fast.”
“It’s the ones behind,” said Kit. “Where are they now?”
Jerry was silent for a moment. “Yeh!” he observed at length. “Six of
’em--making way around to the west. The bunch in front are going to hold
us until the others are in our rear. The second bunch are going to be
the bananas. Well, we had lots of fun when we had it.”
Kit heard a scratching sound, and a savor of strong pipe-tobacco drifted
into his nostrils. Then Jerry moved off a few paces along the river, and
said something in thick, rasping syllables of speech that Kit was unable
to understand.
A second voice answered in heavy gutturals. Kit threw up his head with a
start, his facial muscles contorted in a straining effort to see through
multicolored mists. Jerry had brought a companion with him, an Esquimau,
judging by the talk.
“Who’s that?” Kit demanded.
“Just a friend,” said Jerry lightly. “He came down with me from the
Arctic Circle.”
Kit sighed and shook his head. One more victim in the trap. On the other
hand, if this newcomer was anything like Oogly, he’d be a stout comrade
for a last-hour stand.
The sergeant was giving the man some sort of instruction in the Esquimau
tongue. Feet moved down the slope, and then Jerry came back to Kit.
“I’ve got him planted on the river ice to guard our rear. He’s a good
man, a crack shot, but there are too many of ’em for us, and they’ll get
us all before sundown. Well-o, Cocky-bird, we’ll go out of this
heathenish country together!”
The rattle of rifle-fire in front of them had died away to only an
occasional report. Jerry’s recent burst of shots had taught caution to
the crowd behind the sledges. They’d hold their real attack, of course,
until the men in the rear were in position.
“Jerry! Who do you suppose was murdered in that cabin?”
“I don’t know. How do I know? Say, how’d you get in this jam, Kit? Who
started it, and why?”
“Oh, there was some trouble about a man that the Yellow Knives wanted to
kill--who was shot down last night by Hell Bent. Bent’s here now,
keeping ’em ribbed-up. That business back at Great Owl Run--somebody was
murdered there that night. Trail of the body dragged across the floor
and dumped into the river.”
“No!” ejaculated Jerry. “Oh--that’s how! I _found_ him.”
“What?”
“Body in the river. About fifty miles north of here--on our way back. A
tall, raw-boned chap with a bullet in his back. Drifted out from an ice
hole and washed up on the bank. Poor devil! Must have floated all the
way down under the ice--Great Owl Run into the Vermilion River. Funny
thing about him--”
“Hell Bent killed him,” interrupted Kitchener. “And I thought it was
you!” He blinked and dug the back of his fist into his eyes. The pain
came and went in waves. But if he forced his bare eyeballs to endure the
daylight he could still see something of his blurred surroundings. Jerry
sat on the snow-shelf with his knee locked in his fingers and a pipe in
his teeth.
“Bent’s square-meshed tracks went to the cabin,” Kit ruminated. “Why did
he shoot this chap? Who do you suppose he was?”
“Keep ’em shut, Kit,” advised Jerry. “Not that it’ll do any good now,
but they won’t hurt so much. The only thing that’ll cure snow-blindness
is a long stretch of total darkness.” He laughed grimly. “Well, I guess
we’re going to have that soon--a long, long stretch.”
“Who do you think he could be?” Kit persisted doggedly.
“The dead man? I went through him, and he didn’t have an identifying
mark on him. But I’ll tell you something that he did have--in an old
wallet, buttoned up with a big bunch of money. A stack of old express
company and postal money order receipts for five thousand dollars
each--dated in January for twelve consecutive years. In whose favor do
you suppose they’d been made out, Kit?”
“I don’t know. How’d I--” Kitchener’s chin lifted sharply. “You
don’t--you don’t mean--”
“Yes. The slips were all made out in the name of Mrs. William Tearl, New
York City. The source of the mysterious annuity. That man, whoever he
was, was the chap who has sent five thousand dollars to our family
around the first of every year. He could have told us a lot of things, I
guess, if we’d got to him in time. And now he’s dead.”
“But who--why?” Kit faced his brother blankly.
“Don’t know. Any guess you’d make would be only a wild shot. Maybe Dad
did something for him some time, or he did something to Dad, and he’s
been squaring accounts with his conscience ever since. And for some
reason wanted to remain incognito. Funny he should be at the Great Owl
place the night Hell Bent got there--and is murdered by him.”
“Here it is!” said Kit tensely. “This chap must have been mixed up some
way in Dad’s disappearance. Maybe he felt responsible somehow for what
happened. Tried to make it up to Mother the best way he could--by
sending money. When Bent is released from prison this chap goes to the
old cabin and waits, figuring Bent’ll come some day. Sounds as though
there was an old score between them that had to be reckoned up. And Bent
came and settled it for keeps by killing this other chap when he was
asleep.”
“Maybe,” agreed Jerry. “But anyway you fit it together it’s guesswork.”
He touched his brother’s sleeve. “By the way, I didn’t introduce you to
my friend.”
“Who?”
“The man who came down with me from Queen Maud Sea.”
“Your trip up there turned out to be a bust, didn’t it? I never did pin
any hope in that business.”
“My friend didn’t want to come,” pursued Jerry. “But I made him believe
that I wouldn’t be able to make the return trip unless I had a good
hunter with me, and I finally persuaded him to see me down as far as the
police post.”
Jerry spoke to the man on the river ice. “I want you to know my
brother,” he said. “I’m Jerry Tearl. This is Kit Tearl.” He stressed the
name with a peculiar emphasis.
There was a momentary silence. Jerry seemed to be waiting for something.
Kit at length heard him fill his lungs deeply. “His name is Kablunak,”
said Jerry. “He belongs to the Ahiagmuit tribe.”
“Yes?” said Kit, and stopped with a sudden, queer breathlessness.
“Kablunak! Why--that was the name--wasn’t it? You said-- Kablunak!
Why--why, that means ‘white man,’ doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” The fingers on Kitchener’s sleeve gripped a little tighter. “This
man only talks Esquimau, but he is not an Esquimau. His own
language--he’s forgotten it. He’s lost his language, his
identity--everything. Everything is completely gone.”
“You--what do you mean?” gasped Kit. His blinded eyes were turned wildly
towards the tall, straight-formed figure of the stranger, whom he saw as
in a blurring fog.
“He was frightfully wounded a number of years ago,” said Jerry in a
slow, curiously strained voice. “A bullet in his head. You could see the
scar if you were able to see. That bullet snapped something in his
brain--what do they call it?--aphasia--forgetfulness. He doesn’t
remember a thing. He doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from or
what he had been.”
Kit was breathing hard, staring tragically through the mists. “My God!”
he whispered.
“A party of Esquimaux found him in the snow in the forest down yonder,
apparently dying. Twelve years back. They bundled him on a sledge and
took him north with them, and nursed his body back to health, but
not--not his brain.”
“Who is he?” whispered Kit in agonized suspense.
“He became one of the Ahiagmuit,” stated Jerry. “In the years that he
lived with them they came to accept him as their chief hunter, their
leader--”
“Who?” Kit demanded hoarsely.
Jerry’s hand was a vice, clutching his brother’s arm. “He’s a lean, tall
man with a white mustache and a shock of snow-white hair, a hawk’s face,
and a pair of steel eyes that glow sometimes with a strange inward
flame. And under his artikis he wears the badge of the royal police.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THERE WERE THREE
Kitchener was on his feet with a stabbing breath, stumbling down the
embankment. In his dim-sighted, watering eyes the erect figure on the
ice loomed like a specter in an unbelievable dream. He reached
awe-stricken towards the stiff, unresponsive silhouette.
“Dad!” he said in a stifled voice. And again, in sudden, breaking
emotion: “_Dad!_”
With a quiet, gentle dignity the man drew away from the hands that had
touched him. Jerry hastened forward and crooked his arm about his
brother’s shoulders.
“No, Kit! I’ve talked and talked with him, and he doesn’t get me. It’s
no use. Save yourself the heartbreak. He knows us only as a couple of
white men whom he’s just happened to meet out here on the barrens.
That’s all.”
The tears that drenched Kit’s eyes were not wholly the weeping of
tormented, aching nerves. His father! Inspector Tearl of the Royal
Canadian Police--wearing the garb and living the life and thinking the
thoughts of an Ahiagmuit Esquimau! The pathos of that stern and lonely
figure--the man who had emerged out of the ghostly years, and did not
even know he had come back to his own.
The old man said something in a strange tongue, and ended with a kindly
laugh.
Jerry answered with an unusual gentleness of voice.
“What is it?” Kit asked with a sound that was like a sob.
“He sees what’s wrong with you, and he says that snow-blindness
sometimes makes men act queerly. But he likes your looks and is glad to
have made your acquaintance.”
“To make my--” Kit could not finish. He felt as though he were stifling.
“I found him on Queen Maud Sea, sitting by a seal hole with a spear in
his hand,” said Jerry. “His tribesmen told me that they have not known a
starvation winter since he became one of them. A white man’s brains to
help them through the long midnights. They adored him.”
Kit was too choked-up to speak. He had never heard of a more complete
tragedy than this. Bill Tearl, lost to the world and to himself--not
knowing who he was or where he came from--spending the years in an
Esquimau igloo. Death in itself is not so terrible. But to die, and
still go on living! It might not have been so bad if utter forgetfulness
had blotted out everything of the past. But was it possible ever for the
memory to go into a total eclipse?
Life for Bill Tearl must have been a fantastic nightmare. Wandering
through lonesome, six-months-long nights. Bewilderment and yearning and
discontent. There must have been times when the smoldering fires of the
poor, estrayed brain, the vague, vain efforts to remember, would
overwhelm him like a madness.
Kit found himself fumbling at the snap of his revolver holster. If there
were only some way to touch the spark that surely still lived in the
darkness, to set off the lost train of recollection! He pulled out the
engraved, ivory-butted revolver and offered it to the man who called
himself Kablunak.
“Inspector William Tearl!” He tried desperately to speak clearly and
steadily. “This is your gun. Please take it back again. It’s the old six
shooter your men gave you when you left to take command of the outpost
at _Saut Sauvage_.”
He could almost see the grizzled face of the old sergeant who had made
the presentation years ago, and he recalled the little speech that
accompanied the gift.
“May it never fire first,” he said; “may it never fire too late.”
The old man took the gun from Kitchener’s unsteady hand. He turned it
over and examined it minutely, barrel, trigger-guard, the engraved
silver name-plate, the beautifully carved butt. After a moment his hand
cuddled the stock and he sighted at some imaginary target. Then he broke
into a pleased, gentle laugh that snapped the awful tension like the
parting of a chain.
He asked some question in the Ahiagmuit dialect, and Jerry let go a
pent-up breath that was almost suffocating him. “He doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t recognize it. He--he only wanted to know if you were loaning
it to him.”
“Tell him it’s his--it’s his very own,” Kit said in a gulping voice.
“I thought--for just a minute, there was something in his eyes. As
though something was trying to remind him. And then it faded--was gone.”
“Tell him!” Kit pleaded. “Make him understand, Jerry!”
“I’ve told him--dozens of times. And it just doesn’t register.”
Jerry turned and exchanged a few sentences with the old man, and then he
looked back somberly at his brother, and shook his head. “He thinks
you’re giving it to him--as a gift--between comrades who are willing to
fight together. That’s as much as I can make him understand.” The
sergeant’s hardlimned features held a strange, boyish wistfulness. “He
says it is a fine, handsome gun--to thank you very much--to tell you
that if he were ever privileged to use it to protect your life, it would
be a trifling return for such a splendid present.”
Kit could not trust himself to speak.
“Where did you get it?” asked Jerry.
“The gun? Grabbed it from Hell Bent--last night. If it hadn’t have been
for my eyesight I’d have got Bent--”
Something screamed across the river terrace behind them and stopped with
a tearing, meaty _curump_!
“Lookout! Down!” Jerry seized Kit and shouldered him back into a niche
of the embankment.
Kit wrenched himself loose and squirmed about, impotently gripping his
shotgun. “Jerry--who’s hit?”
“One of your dogs! Stay there! Cut him nearly in two. Dum-dums--”
Jerry snatched up his rifle, and fired, and cursed with a lilting
gayety. “How can you hit ’em when you can’t see ’em?”
“The bunch in the rear?” asked Kit.
“And how! They’ve buried themselves under the snow, with nothing but
peep-holes. Just a landscape to look at.”
“You hate to have to kill ’em,” said Kit. “The poor, misguided fools. If
we could only get Bent, there’d be a chance.”
“Yeh,” mocked Jerry. “Hate to kill ’em! Where’s this Bent?”
The first shot was followed by others, mean, vicious sounds whipping
through the sunlight. Another dog went down, got up and tried to walk,
dragging his hind quarters, and crumpled gasping in the snow.
Jerry was crouching at Kit’s back, squinting into the snow-glare, trying
to find a living mark. “Look!” he suddenly gasped. “Dad!”
“Huh?” exclaimed Kit, twisting around.
“He’s trying to crawl up on them--across the river. With the revolver!”
He raised his voice in sharp warning. “No! They’re on this side too!
Dad! Stay where you are!”
Instantly he recollected, and his English shifted into a lingo of harsh
consonants, the meaning of which Kit could only surmise. But the old man
paid no heed.
He was out on the river ice, sprawled flat, pushing a little breastwork
of snow ahead of him, hitching his way across the stream as though he
were stalking caribou. The Yellow Knives ambushed on the west side would
make short shrift of the trapped defenders--unless they were quickly
suppressed. So the one-time policeman had chosen that hazardous job for
his own.
Heedless of the bullets that nipped the air about him, Jerry was on his
feet, hurrying down the slope. The old man was more than half-way across
the river, and now was shielded from the sight of his quarry by the
rising embankment above him. But the opposite terrace no longer served
as a buttress behind him. He had crept out into view of the men who were
firing from the sledges on the eastern side.
Kit and Jerry had been partly sheltered in the rear by a break in the
embankment. The old man kept himself covered with snow as he crawled
ahead. Only the top of his head was showing. But the dogs were huddled
out in the open. The first few rounds from the west bank were picking
them off.
Evidently the attackers proposed to make certain of their victims by
first destroying the means of flight. There was to be no last-minute
dash for safety with the sledges. Kit’s team was wiped out in two
minutes. Buzz-saw was down, back-broken. Two of the Chippewyan huskies
lay stone-dead, a third was trying to walk on two feet, with his muzzle
plowing the snow. Jerry’s leader was out, and numbers two and four had
tumbled together in the traces, moaning and kicking feebly.
“Bent’s in back of the middle sledge!” gasped Kit. “High power and a
deadly shot! Jerry! Dad! Come back!”
The bright, windless morning was filled with hard, electric
cracklings--ripping, snapping sounds breaking in from both sides of the
river. Two dozen or more savages were at work now, combing over the
defenders from both directions with a venomous cross-fire. The heavy
explosions echoed back and forth with a sullen malignity. At bay between
the embankments of the wide river-bed, the three trapped men were left
the grim alternative of taking it either from one shore or the other.
The pain in Kit’s eyes throbbed intermittently like a jumping toothache.
Sometimes a fire spectrum wavered before him, or again the colors washed
out in white blankness, as though a bucket of snow-white paint had been
dumped over his head. At intervals his eyesight was restored briefly, so
he could see things through a weaving film.
He made out a dull, dark shape on the river ice, crawling doggedly; and
Jerry, stooping, moving down the embankment....
Through the snow glare there rushed a high-pitched wail of sound,
faster, shriller, more hideous somehow, and overriding all other sounds.
It reached the river and stopped horribly with a soggy thump.
For a moment Kit was overcome by a ghastly sickness. He heard the clean
report of a small-caliber rifle whip back above the line of sledges, and
at the same instant he heard Jerry’s anguished cry.
“Dad!”
Jerry was down in the middle of the stream, bending over a snow-shrouded
shape that did not move. He went on his knees and stood up again with a
limply dragging object in his arms. Up the embankment he staggered,
clutching his burden, breathing thickly through his teeth. Unhurried by
the bullets that cut the air about him he crossed the open ground to the
eastward terrace and laid the fur-clad form at his brother’s feet.
“Dad!” he said, and trailed off in a dull monotone. “They got him for
keeps this time.”
CHAPTER XXV
INSPECTOR TEARL
Kit gripped his eyes tightly shut, and then opened them again and tried
to see. He dropped and buried his hands in the muffling, snow-crusted
furs. “I heard it hit,” he said.
“Right behind the ear,” whispered Jerry. “Craziest thing I ever knew.
Almost the same place where the other one hit him--years ago.”
A chunk of lead threw a spurt of snow in Kit’s face. He peered about
wildly, and then sprang to his feet and hauled his parked sledge down
from the top of the embankment. He swung the runners about and shoved
the load of baggage alongside the prone body. Then, with his head down
between hunched-up shoulders, as though he were plunging into a hail
storm, he ran down the slope among the strewing of dogs.
He found a short ax, and with numbed sensibilities he struck twice. The
whimpering ceased. He drew his knife and slashed the traces free. Then
he bent his back to the tug and started up the embankment with the
second laden sledge.
Jerry caught the idea, and hurried down to help. They rushed the sledge
up the terrace, lifted it with its baggage, and stood it on top of Kit’s
sledge. Before the marksmen across the river had spotted their range
both dodged into the protected alley between the piled-up sledges and
the crest of the river bank.
For the moment they were barricaded against their enemies on either side
of the stream. Jerry had dropped his rifle and was stooping low over the
wounded man. At length he looked up gravely and shook his head. “He’s
breathing--that’s all.”
A while ago Kit had wept over the man who came back from the years of
living death. Now he was strangely unaffected. It was as though the
well-springs of emotion had suddenly dried within him. Actual, physical
death was not so terrible.
He stared towards Jerry for a moment, and then groped for his rifle and
drew himself flat on top of the embankment. Hell Bent was over there
behind the middle sledge. Bent at last had finished his incomplete job
of twelve years ago. It seemed to Kit that his own life had been shaped
and consecrated to this one moment. Just give him his vision long enough
to mark his man and align his rifle-sights, and he would ask nothing
else of fortune, ever.
He was fumbling with his rifle, gray-faced and grim, trying to pin his
sight on the sledge that sheltered Bent, when Jerry grabbed his ankle.
“Come down, Jackass!”
Kit kicked back in an effort to loosen his brother’s grip, and then his
body went taut and a queer, shivering sensation ran up and down his
spine. Somebody had shouted from under the embankment: not Jerry; a
wild, unearthly voice that rang through him like a Jehovian trumpet.
Awed, shaken to the depths, he tumbled down from the bank of snow, to
find Jerry locked with a struggling, bloodied figure that was trying to
stand erect behind the sheltering sledges.
The miracle was not so much that the man still lived with a bullet in
his brain, but that an unconquerable vitality flamed in the lean, gaunt
body to endow him for those few moments with a will and lithe muscular
strength to overmatch the brawny Jerry.
Bill Tearl, as he might have been a dozen years ago, his head high, his
gun in his fist, a deathless valor sustaining him in his last embattled
hour!
“Behind that stump!” he cried. “There’s another under the windfall! I’ll
take him! Durand--over your shoulder--behind you--look out!”
Kit was staring in utter stupefaction. This was not the gentle, vaguely
smiling man who had come down out of the Northland with Jerry. The lax
shoulders had stiffened, indolence had kindled into a blazing
resolution. He was no Esquimau, either in thought or in speech, but a
determined white man at bay, fighting for his life.
“It’s Bent!” he declared. “And Bruyas! And that other little
weasel--what’s his name--Giffard!” He had remembered his own tongue, and
was calling to somebody in furious, hard-clipt words.
“Hold the dogs. I’ll take care of this side. They want the gold sacks.
Let ’em come and get ’em!”
“My God!” said Jerry. “He thinks he’s back there that day--at Great Owl
Run.”
Kitchener had stumbled to Jerry’s assistance and was trying to pinion
his father’s straining arms. “Dad!” he said. “Wake up! Come out of it!
It’s Kit! Listen to me!”
The old man did not seem to hear the soothing voice. He wrenched his
arms free, whirled and stared at the ground behind him. “They’ve shot
her from behind--murdered her!” His speech throbbed with pity and
horror. “That lovely girl-- Ah, the devils!”
The bullets were whining and snapping overhead, but if Bill Tearl heard
them he thought they were the bullets of another bloody day, long ago.
The missile that had hit him a few minutes before must have re-opened
the lead-scarred brain-cells and let in remembrance. Recollection had
come to him, and with it, delirium. His mind was back in the Great Owl
forest, re-living the tragic scene of his last rational hour. A sleeper
who had awakened at the place where his long sleep began.
“Hell Bent did that,” he avowed. “If you don’t kill him, Durand, I’m
going to.”
He turned and looked squarely at Kit with eyes that evidently saw
another man. “Here! The chamber’s full. Take this one!” He reversed the
ivory-handled gun and shoved the butt into Kit’s hand. “Listen, I’ll
keep ’em busy here by this poor girl. Leave your rifle. He’s under the
windfall. If you can work around behind you can nail him.”
Kit thrust the revolver into his holster, and curved his arm about the
old man’s shoulders. The bullets were singing around them with the
pertinacity of blood-thirsty mosquitoes. It might have seemed for just
those few moments that a derisive fate was protecting them.
“Dad!” Kit beseeched. “Please! Let’s get under cover.”
Strangely, the old man yielded. The tense figure relaxed in his arms and
he lowered the sagging weight behind the shelter of the sledges.
“Who--who’s there?” asked the inspector in a wandering voice.
“It’s I--it’s Kitchener.”
“Who? Little Kit?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s that with you?”
“Why, it’s Gerald.”
“Jerry?”
“Yes.” Kit felt as though something had been stuffed in his throat to
shut off his breathing. “It’s--it’s Kit and Jerry.”
His father’s hand groped upward to touch his face, and then strayed over
his shoulder and down his arm to clutch at his hand. For an instant the
sinewy fingers gripped him tightly, and then he felt them slipping,
growing weaker.
“What are you two boys doing here?” Bill Tearl asked with a sudden
severity.
“We--we came to find you.”
“What do you want? Why did you leave home?”
Jerry was down beside them, his hand on his brother’s knee. “He’s gone
all the way back now,” he whispered. “He knows us now and he thinks
we’re a couple of little kids.”
The hearing of the dying man was astonishingly alert. “What did you
think you were,” he demanded--“men? Now listen to me, you boys. I don’t
want you tagging after me. I’ve got a job to do, and this is no place
for you.
“I want you to go back to your mother,” the inspector commanded, while
the brothers knelt over him with heads mutely bowed. “Tell her I’ve got
some business to attend to, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll be
home shortly.”
“Yes, Dad,” Kit assented in a breaking voice.
He thought it was the end, and was taken unawares when, with a sudden,
uncanny resurging of vitality, the dying man twisted out of his arms and
stumbled up in the red-spattered snow.
The old inspector yelled with a frightful incoherency. “The gold bags!
The dogs--broken loose. Runaway! Hey--Durand--stay there. I’ll stop
’em--”
He was on his feet, swaying, staring with excitement across the barrens.
Before the brothers could interfere he stooped and snatched up a rifle.
“Look out there, you!” he shouted. “The fool dogs. They’ll go over the
creek bluff! Whoa! Haw, you fools! They’ve gone. The sledge. Drowning,
the poor brutes. And the sledge!” He laughed with a grim mockery.
“Snowing! Trail soon blotted. Murder for gold bags, and the bags are
gone. Who’ll find ’em? Funny world. Murder for nothing--”
He snapped off his speech to glower across the river embankment. “Hell
Bent! You know where they went overboard, do you? Followed, eh?” The
white mustache lifted in a ferocious smile. “All right! See if you live
to salvage ’em!”
He broke away from Kit’s detaining hand, and with a spasmodic strength
that was not to be denied, he flung himself against the river bank and
scrambled up over the mound of snow. Against the white, shadowless
tundra he stood in stark outline, an erect, straight-poised figure,
advancing towards the sledges with a rifle in his hands.
The guns were blazing away in a furious concentration, up and down the
line in front, and from the other side of the river. Three or four
powdery snow puffs spatted out of the old man’s clothing like dust out
of a beaten rug. Inspector Bill Tearl tried to advance on his weaving
legs, and then toppled and went down slowly and solemnly as a crumbling
tree-trunk, and lay still with his face towards the midmost sledge.
CHAPTER XXVI
ONE WHOLE MAN
The two brothers were both over the bank, crawling in the scuffled snow.
Kit scarcely noticed the buzzing bullets. He shook his head in petty
irritation, as though he were annoyed by a swarm of gnats. Jerry had
reached the fallen man, and grasped one of the limp ankles. Kit caught
hold of the other leg. They wriggled backwards and dragged the body with
them over the terrace and down into the shallow trench behind the
sledges.
Kit spoke with a curious, measured calmness. “It’s a lot better to
remember and die,” he said, “than to forget and go on living.”
Then his voice thrilled with a swelling emotion. “They had to kill
him--not once--but three times!”
Jerry said nothing. He was giggling like a girl in a most amazing
falsetto.
Kit turned to him blankly. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Fun-ny bone,” exclaimed Jerry, and tried to stop his spasmodic gasping.
He moved half way around to exhibit his right forearm, which hung from
his elbow like an old, fagged rope-end. “One of the dum-dums--smashed
the bone. It--it’s not so darned funny as--as it sounds.”
Kitchener grasped his brother’s hairy, dangling wrist and explored with
his fingers up under the dripping sleeve. “Gee, that’s rotten, Jerry.”
It gave him a pang to feel the magnificent muscles changed in a moment
to numbed and useless flesh. “When was it?”
“Just as we came back over the bank.” Jerry was in control of his
fretted nerves again. He laughed ruefully in his own deep voice.
“Doggone ’em, Cocky-bird. They’ve got us winging. You’ve got no eyes to
speak of and they’ve turned me into a port-sider. Well, there’s still
one whole Tearl left if we combine our good points.”
Kit had ripped the puckering string out of his hood. He pushed up the
sleeve and wound a tourniquet above the broken elbow. This was as much
as he could do for the present.
Jerry dug into his pocket for a pipe and tobacco pouch, and stuffed the
bowl full with one hand. Then he struck a light and inhaled with a gusty
sigh.
For the moment Kit was bending in gentle abstraction over the body
stretched alongside the sledge. He took off his mitten and his warm
fingers touched the upstaring face. With a caressing lightness he traced
the line of the rugged features, the high, bulging brow, the keen,
hawk-like nose, the straight-formed mouth compressed in death, and the
square and dogged chin. Then he softly folded together the flaps of the
rudely made Ahiagmuit hood.
“Did you hear what he said, Jerry?”
“Umph. He fought that old fight all over again.”
“You can fill in the gaps without much trouble and know about what
happened back there that day.”
“He and the two musk-ox hunters, the brother and sister, were traveling
south in a heavy snow storm with the gold sledge,” suggested Jerry.
“They were ambushed somewhere near Great Owl Run by Hell Bent and some
chaps named Buya--what was it?”
“Bruyas. Bruyas and Giffard. Those two!” The muscles of Kitchener’s
mouth contracted. “I might have suspected before. As ornery a pair as
you ever want to see. They’re still living down there--trapping. They
must have been a couple of the guides that came back from the musk-ox
country, along with Hell Bent. It’s certain now that they were in the
bunch that attacked Dad’s party. He evidently saw them at the time, and
knew them.”
“The girl in the party,” mused Jerry--“she must have gone down at the
first few shots. From then on it was a free-for-all. Dad and this other
man--battling from behind the sledge of gold bags. And the dogs got
scared in the midst of it all and bolted.”
“And ran for a few miles,” put in Kit--“with Dad after ’em. And Hell
Bent after Dad.”
“The other two,” supplemented Jerry--“what’s their names--stayed behind
to fight it out with Dad’s friend. That chap, standing over his dead
sister’s body! After seeing what he had seen I guess he wouldn’t give
much of a damn what happened to him. Probably just went shootin’ crazy.
My guess would be that he ran those two scuts clear out of the woods.”
“Meantime,” pursued Kit, “the frightened dogs must have reached the
bluff that runs along with Great Owl Run. Swung in too close, lost their
footing on the slippery incline, and went down into the creek, dragging
the sledge with them.”
“My gosh!” Jerry checked his pipe-stem as he was about to put it between
his teeth. “Why, it must--maybe it’s there still!”
“It is. I found the bags, and shifted them.”
“You what?”
“Found ’em--at the place where the sledge dumped off the bluff, years
ago. I dived for the gold bags, brought them up and jettisoned them
farther up stream, where Bent won’t easily locate them.”
Jerry stared for a moment. “Smart boy!” he declared finally.
Kit wrinkled his forehead reflectively. “Here’s what happened. Dad saw
the dogs take their last plunge. Hell Bent was chasing close behind, and
he also saw it. These two were the only ones who knew what had become of
that sledge of gold.”
“They faced each other in the snow storm on the brink of Great Owl Run,”
Kit ruminated. “They shot it out, and Bent fired first.”
“That’s it, of course,” assented Jerry. “Left Dad there for dead, helped
himself to one bag of nuggets, and went his way. Meant to come back
after his pals had passed out of the picture and salvage the rest.”
“Those other two,” said Kit--“Bruyas and Giffard--they must have made a
shrewd guess at the truth. Knew the treasure was still around here
somewhere. Sticking in the neighborhood all these years. Living by their
trapping, and hunting for the lost sledge.”
“Yep. And waiting for Bent to come back. Probably they heard he was in
the jug. But they’d know that as soon as he got out he’d come back here,
and they were sitting tight waiting for him to betray himself to them.”
Jerry knocked the ashes out of his pipe and lifted his head cautiously
to peer over the top of the river embankment. The shooting had almost
ceased in the last two or three minutes, and the continued quiet was
beginning to grow ominous.
“The two middle sledges have pushed in close together,” he remarked
casually. “They’re holding a pow-wow.” He glanced across at the waning
sun. “The daylight won’t last much longer, and they’re probably thinking
they ought to do something about it pretty soon. I wouldn’t be surprised
if they rushed us anytime.”
Kit was strangely unconcerned over the war councils of the Yellow
Knives. When they decided to come on they’d do it, and worrying wouldn’t
stop them. For the moment he was much more disturbed by the revelation
of past events.
“Jerry!” he broke in sharply. “The murdered man you found with
money-order receipts--what did he look like?”
“Why, he’d been a pretty tall guy I’d say--six feet or more.” Jerry
faced his brother curiously. “Dark, keen-featured chap, black hair shot
with gray, clean-shaven, couple of welts across his cheek like old knife
or bullet scars. He had on a tannish mackinaw--”
“Jerry!” Kit sprang to his feet, forgetting that the top of his head
offered an inviting target for any of the Indian marksmen who happened
to be looking that direction. “Do you know who he was?”
The elder brother looked startled. “Why, yes,” he said after a moment.
“Sure! The man who was in the fight with Dad. The brother of the
murdered woman.”
“Of course!” he ejaculated after a briefest pause.
“Funny I never thought of that before! That would explain the money
orders. He dragged Dad into that mess. After Dad disappeared he felt
that he owed the family something, and started sending the annuity--”
“Wait!” interrupted Kit. “That isn’t what I’m getting at. Do you know
who he really was?”
“Huh?”
“You heard the name, didn’t you? The man who stood fighting over his
dead sister?”
“It was--” Jerry scowled in an effort of recollection.
“Durand,” said Kit.
“That was it. I remember now--” Jerry stopped as he caught the
expression of his brother’s face.
“The man I met down at the Chippewyan village, weeks and weeks ago!”
burst out Kit. “He tallies in every detail with your description of the
body in the river. Unquestionably he’s the man who was murdered in that
cabin. Diane’s uncle. She told us his name was Durand--Jim Durand. And
we didn’t believe her. You said he was Hell Bent!”
“I thought he was,” Jerry started to say, but Kitchener stopped him.
“You put me on his trail, made me think he was a scoundrel. And he was
Dad’s friend, and ours! We might have gotten together, if we’d only
known. And now he’s dead, and we aren’t much better off ourselves.”
Kit’s voice rose in sharp accusation. “Jerry! How’d you ever make a dumb
bull like that?”
“Now hold on!” protested the sergeant. “Take it easy. I supposed he was
Bent. Gosh! He came into the wilderness at the time and place I was
expecting Bent. I didn’t get a close look at him, and when I saw him
through the thickets he was wearing a hood. And remember--you told me
yourself he was carrying the old ivory-butted .45 that had belonged to
the inspector.”
“Yes. And you saw a few minutes ago how he got it. Dad himself handed
the gun to him in the thick of the scrap. And he carried it ever after,
up until the day somebody killed him at the Great Owl cabin.”
Kit scowled at his brother. “I thought it was you who had been killed
that day, and that Bent did the job. But Durand was the victim. Who do
you suppose the murderer was?”
“If you must be oratorical,” said Jerry pleasantly, “don’t bob your head
around up there where a bullet can knock it off.” He reached up with his
useful hand and pulled his brother down behind the embankment. “How do I
know who that particular gunman was? Maybe it was the real Bent himself,
or maybe Bruyas or this other trapper.”
“These two trappers probably had kept tabs on Bent,” Jerry pursued.
“They would have known that when he got out of the cooler he’d be coming
up to recover the hidden sledge. They’d be laying for him, and for
anybody else that butted into the proceedings.”
“The man who disposed of Durand took the gun and his snowshoes,” Kit
ruminated. “A pair of waffle-webbed snowshoes that I’d followed down the
Vermilion River to Great Owl Run. The murderer, whoever he was, put them
on instead of his own when he fled from the cabin. That’s what brought
about the confusion of identities. Afterwards he used those same
raquettes to mislead me. And all the time I took it for granted that he
was the same man I’d trailed through the wilderness from Port-o’-Prayer.
“All this while I thought Jim Durand was Bent,” Kit went on bitterly.
“And Diane! Because he was Diane’s uncle, I suspected her of the evilest
things. Why, I treated her as though she were some criminal. And she
hated me--”
Jerry had not forgotten to watch the Yellow Knives. Every minute or two
he had hoisted himself to peer over the terrace. His warning grip
suddenly closed over Kit’s arm. “Now!” he interrupted coolly. “You save
the shotgun until they’re in close. I’ll try to chime in with a left
fistful of .45s.” He laughed devil-may-care. “Well-o, Cocky-bird, we
were a good family while we lasted.”
A babel of yells breaking out suddenly along the east shore were flung
back in a whooping chorus from the other side of the river. Pieces of
lead clipped the air in a gust and knocked up the snow crust in flying
chunks.
Kit crept against the rampart beside his brother. He pushed up his head
warily, with no more than a hand’s-span of his skull risking itself
above the embankment.
“They saw Dad go down, and they’ve about figured out how wabbly we are,”
muttered Jerry. “They’ll whoop it up a minute, and then one’ll get
reckless enough to start, and they’ll all come.”
Kitchener was trying to distinguish substance in the milky haze that
seemed to have flooded the barrens. He felt as though inflated bags had
been sewed into his eye-sockets. Wavering, uncertain things loomed
vaguely and distantly--men or dogs or sledges--they were shapeless and
unreal and wouldn’t stay still.
“Half of ’em are up, testing us out,” Jerry informed him. “And there’s a
white man, waving them on.”
“What’s he like?”
“Big lookin’ zob with a black beard.”
“Sounds as though he might be-- He’s the one who picked Dad off--and
poor Oogly.”
“He’s crouching with his rifle now, trying for a crack at us. If I only
had my right arm!” Jerry groaned impotently. “Nice, easy shot around
four hundred. We could pay off the hands--”
“Jerry! You’ve got it!” Kit’s voice was so fiercely exultant that his
brother turned to stare. “Are they still where they were?”
“They are now. But they won’t be long. Any second--”
“Where’s my gun?” Kit cut in. “The sights are set at the correct range,
windage and everything. All you need to do is to notch ’em point blank.”
“Yeah! And then what?”
“I’ll pull the trigger for you. I’ll squeeze it so gently you won’t even
feel it.”
“My gosh!” For an instant Jerry surveyed his brother with glowing
approval. “Why--why, you blood-thirsty little gnat.”
With his hand reaching behind him he stooped and came up with Kit’s
rifle. He chucked the butt to his shoulder and leaned his weight against
the terrace.
Kitchener stepped behind and circled the sergeant’s broad back with his
arms. He pulled the firing-bolt pin, and dug his chin firmly into the
hollow of his brother’s neck. Then he crooked his forefinger under the
trigger-guard.
“Look out!” grunted Jerry. “Here they come!”
Without actually seeing, Kit’s instinct told him that the line of men
had surged forward. The yelling swelled into an appalling savagery, he
caught the distant crunch of oncoming feet. Bullets were plowing around
his face.
Jerry’s brawny bulk settled, stiffened. His breathing stopped. He became
rock-like in his transcendental calm. Kitchener waited in readiness.
Seconds passed--minutes, it seemed to him. He could hear the advancing
snowshoes cutting through the snow. The suspense was growing unbearable.
“Jerry!” he whispered. “What’s the matter? Can’t you line ’em?”
“A second!” soothed the sergeant. “He’s kneeling to fire. It’s hard to
hold a rifle with one hand. Easy now! I’ll say ‘go.’”
The back muscles hardened to steel--the physical rigidity of the cool
marksman inexorably engrossed.
“Ready!” said Jerry crisply.
Kit’s trigger-finger clenched to the steel--put on all but the final
ounce of pressure.
“_Go!_”
CHAPTER XXVII
HELL BENT
The curt voice and the rifle report cracked out together as a unity. Kit
felt his brother’s shoulder yield with the kick-back of the heavy
discharge. He grabbed the rifle and shoved another cartridge under the
bolt. Jerry was straining forward, breathless, staring.
“Hit!” Jerry’s cry rang jubilant, and then checked lamely. “No....”
Kitchener gawked at the snowy barrens. His throbbing, visionless eyes
overtaxed themselves in feverish uncertainty. He desperately wanted to
see, and he couldn’t.
“Yes!” The grimness of Jerry’s speech sent a shiver through Kit.
“_Yes!_”
The racket along the river had choked off as abruptly as though unseen
hands had gripped a score of wildly shrieking throats. The senseless
outburst of firing dwindled, almost ceased. Kit was aware of a sudden
lagging of footsteps up and down the line of advance.
“He stood against it for a few seconds,” explained Jerry. “I thought
we’d missed.”
Jerry spoke in a casual, chatty tone. The tension had lifted. He was his
carefree, natural self again. “But he buckled up finally, as though he
had the gripes, and rooted his nose in the tundra. He’s lying out there
like something that the dog fetched. The brother act was the hit of the
piece.”
Kit at that moment was not sorry that his eyes were spared the need of
seeing. He was not squeamish. But also he was without morbid curiosity.
Jerry’s description did not sound pretty.
A few minutes ago Kit would have given his eyesight permanently for a
fair shot at the man who had killed Inspector Bill Tearl. But now that
it was over his wrath had simmered down and left him cold. His
conscience did not disturb him. He knew that he would never feel the
slightest twinge of remorse. It was as though he had merely helped to
execute the decree of a higher judgment. The dead man had been one of
the world’s ugly liabilities, and they had simply wiped him off the
debit column. Kit was thankful only that Jerry shared the responsibility
with him, fifty-fifty.
The quiet was a bit disconcerting after the recent hubbub. Evidently it
was the white man who had incited the Yellow Knives to the pitch of
daring that brought them out from their cover. But the white man was
down, and Kit sensed the wavering in the line of attack. These Yellow
Knives knew him. He had bluffed them once before....
With the Winchester at a menacing slant he planted his knee on the
embankment and scrambled to the top. He stood boldly erect and faced the
tribesmen. Two or three bullets, hastily fired, whanged past him.
“Come down, you idiot!” gasped Jerry.
Kit’s blinded gaze moved slowly, unflinching, across the invisible arc
of the prairie. “Stop!” he shouted, and threw up his hand.
“Are you fools?” He queried them cheerfully in a voice only loud enough
to reach across that narrow area of snow. “You know me! And my brother
shoots straighter than I do. You’ve seen what happens. We’ll kill ten of
you before you get here, and the few who live now will be hanged by the
police later on.”
“You tell ’em, Cocky-bird!” he heard Jerry chuckling behind him. “Gad!
They’re half wilting right now.”
“Tom Salmonfish!” Kitchener called. “And you, Athu! You needn’t hide
behind the others. I see you’re there. Come forward a little way. I want
to talk to you. You needn’t be afraid.” He spoke with disarming
friendliness. “The man who shot one of us and made fools of you is dead.
There can now be peace among us.”
No shots had been fired in the last minute or so. These men at least had
accepted the truce long enough to hear what he had to say. He caught a
creaking of snowshoes as somebody stirred restlessly off at his right.
“We come get Oogly,” one of them announced, dispassionate and stubborn.
“Oogly!” Kit echoed the name with apparent amazement. “He’s not here.
Didn’t you know? Oogly’s dead!”
There was quiet for a few seconds after that, a hushed and incredulous
interval.
“I’m telling the truth!” Kit broke in sharply. He pointed southward with
his finger. “Down the river, three or four miles from here--go look for
a mound of snow and a spear sticking in it. Dig in that mound, and
you’ll find Oogly.”
The silence of the next moment or two was nerve-racking. Kit was just
able to distinguish a few blurred shapes confronting him in a gloomy,
watchful immobility.
“Oogly’s not here I tell you!” Kitchener insisted earnestly. “Salmonfish
and Athu--come and see for yourselves.” With a splendidly magnanimous
gesture he tossed aside the rifle, which he was unable to aim anyhow,
and exhibited his defenseless hands. “You two come on.” He smiled
benignly. “You needn’t be afraid.
“Show yourself,” he said over his shoulder. “Let ’em see you’re
unarmed.”
“Right behind you!” said Jerry.
“You needn’t worry about anything that happens afterwards,” Kit
reassured the Yellow Knives. “You can go your way and everything will be
forgotten.”
For a dozen seconds, perhaps, the issue hung in the balance. But from
the hesitation of the tribesmen it was clear enough that Kit’s talk had
made an impression. He had long since taught them a wholesome respect
for his marksmanship. Although he had dropped his rifle, anybody could
see an ivory pistol butt sticking out of his holster. There was no
foreseeing how many of the tribesmen might go down before that deadly
gun if hostilities were suddenly renewed. And at Kit’s back stood the
hard-jowled Jerry, whose potentialities as a fighter still must be
reckoned with. Probably also a few of the more reflective minds had
begun to ponder dubiously about the white man’s law, which, in its own
manner, at its own leisure, was capable of reaching a merciless arm even
into the remotest wilderness.
Besides, they just wanted Oogly. They had no real quarrel with anybody
else.
Kit suddenly was aware that two of the men had stepped out ahead of the
line and were coming towards him warily.
He waited with apparent indifference. The advancing Indians finally
ventured to the river’s edge, and he allowed them to look over the
embankment.
“You see,” he said, “there were only three of us. My brother and I
and--the man who was shot.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. “What you do after we go away?” one of
the Indians finally blurted out.
“Nothing,” said Kit. “The white man was to blame, not you. You killed
our dogs, but we will forget that. If you leave now, nothing will ever
be done to you. You have my promise.”
“Oogly dead?” temporized the tribal spokesman.
“I said so. You search where I told you and you’ll know that I’m telling
the truth. Oogly is dead.”
“Good!” said the man heartily.
He said something in his harsh jargon to the nearest group of his
comrades, and then flung up his arm to signal to those across the river.
It seemed to be a pacific gesture.
Jerry had been watching suspiciously, with his left hand tucked under
his parka. He relaxed with a twisted smile. “You’ve got ’em on the run,
Crow-eye. They’re going to call it a day.”
The two Indians had turned on their heels to stalk away, but Kit
motioned them to halt. “Just a minute,” he commanded. “Who was the man
who told you you’d find Oogly here?”
“Bruyas,” one of the men informed him.
“Is that Bruyas lying off there by the sledges?”
“Yup!” said the Yellow Knife carelessly.
“All right. You may go now.”
Kitchener picked up his rifle and dropped down beside his brother.
“Bruyas!” he mused. “I’m beginning to think that he was behind most of
our troubles. Bruyas, and probably Giffard. I shouldn’t doubt if one of
them was Durand’s assassin. And they guessed, of course, why I was
hanging around the Great Owl forest. Figured I knew too much and thought
they’d better put me out too. They wanted a clear field for Hell Bent
when he arrived. The only thing I don’t understand is why he bothered to
follow me into the barrens.”
“It’s quite likely,” Jerry suggested, “that they’d heard the same rumors
we did about the mysterious white man at Queen Maud Sea, who might turn
out to be the lost Inspector Tearl. You were posing around as Sergeant
Tearl. When you suddenly struck north it would be natural for them to
suppose that you were off to hunt for the old man. His return would be
fatal to them. They grabbed the chance to stop you before you started by
sicking a crowd of irresponsible smokies on you.”
Jerry was leaning against the terrace, eyeing the Indians. “It looks as
though they’re leaving us,” he remarked. “They’re hitching in the dogs.
As soon as they pull out we’ll be getting on ourselves.”
Kit faced his brother in startled recollection. “Say!” he exclaimed.
“I’m under arrest--a fugitive from the police. I’d darned near
forgotten. They spotted me a couple of days ago--impersonating an
officer--”
“Who did?” interrupted the sergeant.
“Devon and Cross.” Kit grinned ruefully. “Murder too. They think I made
away with you.”
“Really?” Jerry was amused by the notion. “Good! You’ll have to take
good care of me if you want to clear yourself of the murder charge.” He
laughed calmly. “I guess it’ll be all right. If Cross and Devon are like
the usual run of the mounties they’ll be a couple of four-square chaps
whom we can tell the truth to and trust to keep their mouths shut
afterwards.”
The Yellow Knives were moving away. Kit heard the cracking whips and the
shouts of the dog drivers. The tribesmen had started down the river to
look for Oogly, to find out if the blood-debt were really paid.
As soon as the last of the creaking sledges had drawn off out of range
Kit climbed the embankment again and walked out on the prairie. The
Yellow Knives, with cynical unconcern, had left their white companion as
he had fallen. It needed but a moment’s investigation to establish the
fact of death. Here at least was one who never again would trouble the
crown’s lawful forces.
At that moment Kit’s stinging eyes saw as much as he cared to have them
see. The broad, bearded face, with the missing front teeth--the man
undeniably was Bruyas. Kit lingered only to unlace the upturned
snowshoes, and he carried them under his arm back to Jerry.
“Jim Durand’s square-webbed snowshoes!” he remarked. “We guessed right.
It was Bruyas who killed him and dumped him out of the cabin window, who
found use for the snowshoes, who helped himself to Dad’s old service
gun. Bruyas--who tracked me into the barrens, and shot Oogly--
“It’s funny,” he puzzled after an interval of silence. “Durand evidently
timed his return to this country to coincide with Hell Bent’s release
from prison. His idea must have been the same as yours. He must have
expected Bent to come back after the hidden gold sledge, just as you
were sure that he would. Like you, I gather that he intended to ambush
himself in the Great Owl woods so that he might catch Bent red-handed
when he tried to recover his loot.”
“It would seem so,” agreed Jerry. “And this Durand would have even a
blacker account to settle with Bent than you and I. We thought that Bent
had something to do with Dad’s disappearance. But Durand knew! He was an
eye-witness. He’d seen his sister shot down. You can guess what he meant
to do!”
“The woman.” Kit’s half-seeing eyes turned broodingly towards the south.
“If she was Durand’s sister and Diane his niece, then she either was
Diane’s aunt or her mother.”
Jerry tilted his head sidewise to regard his brother searchingly. “You
call her ‘Diane’ now, do you?”
Kitchener wasn’t listening. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought
out a fragment of paper that had been crumpled and then carefully
smoothed afterwards. “Here’s a note she wrote when she left me
yesterday. I haven’t been able to read it.”
Without comment Jerry took the sheet and spread it open in his left
palm. In a faintly mocking tone he read aloud:
Dear Cocky-bird:
I don’t know any other name for you, and I guess maybe it’s
better that I don’t. I’m leaving you because I don’t want to
go north, and anyhow I’d be a hindrance to you. You and Oogly’ll
travel faster without me. You may believe me--I’ll never hint
to the police which direction you went.
You remember the bad thought I had, that gave birth to Shedim,
the owl? And I couldn’t tell you what it was. But now that we’ll
never see each other again I think I’d be not quite so unhappy
in the years to come if I knew you knew.
From the very first I guessed that you were no policeman.
I don’t quite know how you fit into the horrible crimes at
Great Owl Run, but I know that you do, somewhere, somehow.
When I see you and talk with you it’s something that is utterly
impossible to believe. But I’ve had to force myself to believe it.
I ought to hate you, and I don’t and can’t. And my bad thought
is simply this: that it is filled, days and nights, with nothing
in the world but you. Good-by. I’m praying that I’ll never
see you again.
Diane.
Jerry folded up the paper and bent a brotherly grin at Kitchener. “A
demon with the girls!” he remarked. “How do you do it, Oakheart?”
Kit took the note back and tucked it into his pocket and buttoned the
flap.
“I can see where she might mistake you for an old crow,” remarked Jerry,
“but an owl--”
“Shut up!” Kit broke in fiercely.
“It’s turned out to be the craziest mess that anybody ever heard of,”
ruminated Jerry in a sobering voice. “Everybody ramming and bulling
around at cross-purposes. We picked Durand out for Hell Bent. And you
thought Diane was a crook, and she thinks you’re one.”
“Diane has gone back to Great Owl Run to wait for Durand,” said Kit, and
softly shook his head. “And he’ll never come.”
“It’s odd,” reflected Jerry, “the way everybody’s scuttling all over the
place waiting for this Bent bird to get out of prison. He’s been out now
for two or three months, and none of us has seen him or heard a thing of
him yet.” His forehead creased perplexedly. “What I’d like to know is
where the deuce is Hell Bent?”
“How do I know--” Kit started to say, and then stopped with his mouth
open.
“There was a man at the police post the other night!” he burst out. “A
big, ugly-looking cuss with a scarred face. His excuse for being in the
woods in mid-winter sounded phony to me. But I didn’t give it much
thought until this minute--
“He heard me say I’d moved the gold bags, and that Diane knows where I
hid them.” Kit’s face looked ghastly in the dying sunlight. “Diane is
alone at the Great Owl cabin, and this man is loose in the woods.
“Jerry!” It was a stricken cry. “He must be Bent. I know it! As sure as
the devil it’s Hell Bent!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
SNOW-BLIND
Kit was on his feet, grabbing for the shotgun with one hand and his
mittens with the other. He was like a man demented. A dozen miles or
more back to Great Owl Run, and night was at hand and he could barely
see and Jerry was badly wounded and the dogs were dead. Diane would be
waiting at the old cabin, at the mercy of the monster who had come back
at last like an evil genius to hunt out the scene of his bloodiest
crime.
Kit knew now that the stranger he had met at the police shack was Hell
Bent. He knew it, not merely by surmising and guessing, but by an inward
conviction, a clear and absolute prescience that left him without doubt
and without hope. He knew it as positively as he had known all these
weeks that he loved Diane. If anything happened to her before he could
see her and pour out all the astonishing things that were in his heart,
if he lost her now after she had vouchsafed him a glimpse of loveliness
and incredible happiness that might have been....
He was nearly frantic with his visions of her, alone in the dismal
night, needing him.
“Nothing else counts,” he told Jerry. “We’re leaving now.”
“Righto!” Jerry was perfectly willing to undertake the killing march
across the barrens, but when he stooped to tighten up his snowshoes he
simply doubled in the middle like a grain bag and pitched headforemost
into a drift of snow.
Kit was down beside him, pulling his face out of the snow, propping the
sagging back against one of the sledges, peering beseechingly. “Jerry!
What is it--what’s wrong?”
The sergeant let his legs sprawl apart for added support, and managed
something like a laugh. “Just went dizzy all at once. A minute ago--a
big, hulking slob, and now-- I thought I was going to faint--or
something. Kit--you go on!”
Kitchener unloaded the topmost sledge and hauled it into the lee of the
terrace. He got his hands in his brother’s armpits and stumbled
backwards, and bedded the slack, awkward body in a nest of blankets.
There was no need to ask questions. Jerry’s forearm had been smashed by
one of the Yellow Knives’ dum-dums. This after weeks of snow-travel that
would have broken most men. The shock and the loss of blood and an
accumulated fatigue fought off for days and nights: it was a miracle
that he had not collapsed when he was hit. He stood up for a while on
sheer nerve, and then the physical creature finally had demanded
payment.
“I’ll be all right here for a few days or a week,” said Jerry, trying to
make his voice sound as big as it ever had been. “I guess--I don’t
believe I’d better go with you.”
Kit stripped up his brother’s sleeve and bathed the swollen, darkened
flesh, and removed the tourniquet that had begun to cut too deeply. He
kneaded the shattered bones into place as truely as his inexperience
could accomplish the job, while Jerry looked on with a set, awry grin.
Splints and bandages were speedily improvised, and the arm was bound
stiff against the body, like an unused pump handle.
This much, at least, Kit could take the time to do. And then he lingered
for just another moment. “It’s rotten to leave you like this, and yet, I
don’t see what else to do.”
“What would I want with you?” returned Jerry scornfully. “I’ve got
plenty of blankets and plenty to eat and an oil stove. And anyhow--you
know--” His glance sought the reposing shape beside the second sledge.
“It’s better to have somebody to sit here and keep the wolverines away.
And--I don’t know--I’d like to be the one to keep the vigil. You can
come back or send for us when you have a chance.”
Kit drew his hood closer about his mouth and pulled on his mittens. “Can
you still see the Indians?” he asked.
“Just barely. They’re following the river and’ll be out of sight in a
few minutes. If I were you I’d cut more southeast than the river runs.
You’ll save several miles. The wind’s southwest. Keep it on your right
cheek.”
“So-long, Jerry!” Kitchener shouldered the shotgun, and then he bent
down and the brothers’ left hands met and clasped.
“We’ll be waiting for you,” said Jerry lightly.
Kit started to speak, and then decided that he’d better not attempt it.
He nodded and tried to swallow the choking feeling in his throat. Then
he turned his right shoulder to the vanishing sun and started off across
the barrens.
“If you’re in doubt about the direction of the wind,” yelled Jerry, “rub
your face with snow.” His reckless, graceless laughter was the last
sound that Kit was to hear that night. “Give my love to Diane. And give
Hell Bent hell.”
There were only a few more minutes left of the chilling daylight and
then the early, arctic gloaming began to spread down into the awful
silence and lonesomeness of the barrens.
Kit struck off at a gliding trot, his raquettes crunching pleasantly
over the icy surface of the snow. He felt fit enough for enormous
undertakings. The clean frosty air filled his lungs and set his blood
tingling. He could keep up this sort of a dog-jog all night if he must.
Not more than twelve miles to go--if he held the straight line he ought
to reach Great Owl Run long before dawn.
The day vanished quickly and the night grew as dark as it ever is around
the dusky circle of the north. Kit hurried on with his eyes almost shut.
There was no need of seeing the ground ahead. His feet could follow the
gentle undulations of the unbroken prairie.
If there were only a moon he’d have fewer misgivings. The moonshine,
shifting around his head, would have given him a constant check on the
compass points. But there would only be stars to-night. He could look up
and feel the shimmer of the stars in his face, but he could not see well
enough to pick out individuals for guidance. Only the southwest wind was
trustworthy, and he kept its breath on his right cheekbone.
He counted his steps, and allowed twenty-five hundred to the mile. This
ought to be approximately correct. The multiple of twenty-five hundred
by twelve was thirty thousand. The total was appalling. Yet he’d already
counted past the five thousand mark. He must be at least two miles on
his way.
Jerry was back there, probably with his little stove alight and coffee
boiling and his eternal pipe smoldering, while he gazed into the night
and sat in dreamy quiet beside the man he had loved.
Every stride was taking Kit farther from Jerry and nearer to Diane. His
thoughts were like restless terriers, sometimes lagging behind, but more
frequently racing ahead. His longing for Diane and his fears for her
existed as tangibly in his mind as actual forerunners on the trail,
frantically beckoning to him, calling him on. His legs were always
trying to keep up with his anxieties, and his better judgment was
constantly reminding him that if he ran too fast he would spend himself
too soon.
Ten-thousand foot-paces and fifteen-thousand--it seemed to him that he
had been traveling thus for hours, automatically counting the feet into
miles. “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, fifteen thousand three
hundred, one, two, three--” A deadly monotonous business this, saying
numbers to himself, over and over and over again, exactly in the rhythm
of his breathing and his stride. But he kept it up. If he lost track he
would never know how far he had come or how far he yet must go.
As he switched the shotgun from one hand to the other it occurred to him
that he did not know what loads it contained. He snapped open the breech
without slacking his stride, and made sure that there were two shells
chambered. They might carry buck-shot, or only a charge of “6s” for
ducks and ptarmigan. He ought to have asked Jerry before he left. Well,
it was too late to worry about that. Whatever the gun had in it he’d use
it if he had to.
Two or three times during the next hour or so he had lost the feeling of
the wind in his face. But before he was seriously alarmed the lightly
fanning breeze sprang up again. He went along confidently for a while,
and then all at once realized that he was moving in an apparent calm.
Either there was a sudden lull, or else his skin was not as sensitive as
it had been. He halted abruptly and tried Jerry’s plan of rubbing the
face with snow.
It seemed to work. The right cheek felt much colder than the left. Once
more he trudged onward with the assurance that he must be going the
right direction.
After this he paused every now and then to gather a handful of snow and
dab it over his stinging face.
Time and distance--how long he had been slogging ahead, how far he had
come, he hadn’t a faintest notion. The numbers he had counted were
beginning to jumble up meaninglessly in his head. He couldn’t seem to
recall whether he was in his twentieth or thirtieth thousand. He began
to think of himself as a minute, selfless object moving eternally in
endless, invisible space....
In the middle of his long, hurrying stride he halted as abruptly as
though he had hit a wall. His head turned one direction and then
another, and his breathing stopped. A puff of icy wind had struck the
left side of his face.
Kit flung off his hood and stood aghast in the vast silence. There was a
distinct breeze quartering his path from the sinister side. Either he
had unwittingly changed his direction, or else the wind had veered.
He was careful to keep his feet planted exactly as they were when the
alarming change pulled him up. He mustn’t get excited. It wasn’t any use
being frightened. As deliberately as he had ever moved in his life he
pulled out his flash-lamp, and laid his compass in the palm of his hand,
and snapped on the electric beam.
It is a peculiarity of snow-blindness that the vision is more befogged
and the eyes hurt worse at night than in the full daylight. The glare of
the search-lamp made him blink. It was easy enough to differentiate
between light and darkness, and he even caught the glint of the metallic
disc in his hand. But that was all. He couldn’t make out the compass
card or the arrow. He couldn’t tell which point was north and which was
south.
Kit deliberated, with a stern effort to keep his head. He had to reach
the Great Owl cabin to-night. Even now he might be too late.
The breeze seemed to be much stronger than it had been. Coming off from
the left. Jerry must have been certain that it would not change its
point during the night. But Jerry was not infallible. It might have
shifted. Or in a moment of aberration Kit perhaps had swung off his
course. How was he to know?
He put away his useless torch. His head pivoted blindly in a
half-circle. There was no sound nor scent to guide him, nothing that he
could touch with his hand. He stood in the midst of barrenness and
desolation, completely at sea. And in his heart was the tantalizing,
maddening conviction that Diane was in desperate straits somewhere near,
needing him frightfully--and he did not know which way to go.
The compass was clenched in his hand. In a sudden fury with himself and
his sightless eyes he started to fling it away. Then, just in time, he
checked his arm. It occured to him that perhaps he might read his
directions by the sense of touch. He stooped to one knee, laid the
compass firmly on the other knee, and tapped the crystal with the hilt
of his knife. The glass shattered into fragments. The sharpest point of
the needle, he recalled, was the magnetized end. He slipped his hand out
of his glove, and with a gingerly forefinger he tried to trace the line
of the wabbling sliver of steel.
But he was overanxious, and his hand was not as quiet as it might have
been. His blundering finger dislodged the needle from its jeweled post.
He heard the needle slide across the card, and it was gone before he
could save it.
He went after the tiny metal arrow with his bare hands. In a widening
circle he groped and searched. He dug up handfuls of snow and explored
minutely among the frozen crystals. And before very long his flesh was
ice and all sense of feeling had left his fingers. He wouldn’t have
recognized the compass needle if he picked it up.
Now he needed his self-command. He was aware of the beginnings of that
strange form of insanity that attacks lost men: the raging desire to do
something, to be somewhere else, to walk off whichever way the feet are
turned, to break from a walk into a run, to keep on running from the
multiplying horrors that can run faster than a man.
This was the time for Kit to remember that he was one of a hardy line
whose men do not lose their heads in the wilds. The old lessons of
wilderness lore had been drummed into him from the days of his infancy.
When in doubt, don’t move. Sit down. Cover up. He put his freezing
fingers in his mouth, and did not budge.
There was nothing to be done now. He’d have to wait for the sun. He
pulled his hood over his head and sank down in the snow, despairing, and
shivering with cold.
And from off in the darkness, a long while afterwards, he thought he
heard a sound. He was crouched in a ball with his head on his knee. His
body had grown so cold that he was almost in a torpor. It may be that he
had dozed now and then. He didn’t know. His faculties were nearly
dormant.
But he did hear something. He raised his head. His breath had congealed
under his hood. With his sleeve he wiped the frost rime from his face
and eyes. Both arms were so stiff he half listened to hear them creak.
What was it that had aroused him?
He remembered. There was a noise of some sort off across the tundra. He
leaned forward on his hands and labored drowsily to stand up. There it
was again--far off in front of him. A voice in the air--a ghostly
whistle changing into faint chuckling laughter.
He was on his feet now, swaying a trifle, staring vacantly. For some
reason he had picked up his shotgun. Listening until the pulse of his
heart seemed to wait--
The cry! This time it was nearer--a grotesque, quavering note that
reached his ears and trembled all the way down his backbone. He knew it
now--the sound that had awakened him other nights in the sweat of an
unearthly abhorrence--the horrid, hunting call of a great owl.
Kit stumbled forward. The creature was ahead of him. It would be time
soon for it to be going home. The owls lived off there somewhere in the
depths of the forest, on the other side of the creek. They circled over
the barrens at night and went back at the first crack of dawn.
Whether it was night or morning, Kit didn’t know. He couldn’t even see
the glimmer of the stars. His eyes had gone totally blind while he
huddled in the cold. But he could hear the complaining of the owl. A
low, gasping sound, with a hoarse croak at the end.
Why, it was Shedim--the bird that had caught cold in Hades! It was
Diane’s owl.
Kit’s legs had refused to obey him for a minute or two. But he had
staggered on somehow, and now he was beginning to feel his feet under
him. His snowshoes were gripping the crusty snow. He was getting into
his stride.
At moments there was utter quiet, and then he would hear the throaty
wheeze in the air, at his right or at his left, or sometimes off in
front of him, but always drifting farther ahead, leading him on.
He ran full tilt into a clump of bushes, and rejoiced in the frozen
branches that cut his face. This was no longer the bleak tundra. He was
getting somewhere at last.
The owl was still ranging ahead, and Kit charged on recklessly. There
were other patches of brush in his path, and now and then a group of
dwarfed trees. Usually his outgroping hands saved him.
The ground suddenly sloped down from his feet. He crashed through a
tangled barrier of small growths, and then all at once he caught the
clean, pungent smell of pine woods. Shedim was somewhere behind him. But
he did not wait. He picked his way cautiously down the declivity, and
was gladdened by the sound of running water.
Here was the creek. This must be Great Owl Run. He felt his way along
the stream and found a place where the thick ice reached out from the
bank. On his hands and knees he crept precariously across the slippery
bridge to the opposite bank.
He no longer heard Shedim, but there was something else--not far
away--rhythmic thuds of chopping, an ax blade ringing in wood. Through a
border of willows and alders he thrust a path and emerged into an open
space.
The chopping went on briskly, close at hand it seemed. He turned towards
the sounds, started forward, and hit his knee on a stump. The axman must
have seen him. The strokes stopped, and there was intense quiet. Kit had
a feeling that he was being stared at.
And then something like a spurt of wind crashed past his face, a red
flame leaped at him, a rifle explosion battered his ears.
He flung his shotgun to his shoulder and fired both barrels. The double
shock, the dreadful hush that followed, and then a woman’s cry throbbing
wildly....
“Diane!”
Kit leaped forward, and tripped, and fell. The uproar in his head faded
to leaden silence.
CHAPTER XXIX
COCKY-BIRD
The quiet and drowsy warmth; the languid pleasure of stretching out
weary legs; shadows that soothed his heavy, aching eyes; the cheery
crackling of a hearth-fire and wavering of ruddy firelight: Kitchener’s
reawakening senses went adrift in a spell of dreamy contentment.
He was under shelter somewhere, wrapped in a soft blanket, his head on a
pillow. It seemed to him in those moments that he had never felt a
keener consciousness of well-being. Something stirred gently beside him.
He tried to see, and couldn’t, quite, and so he closed his eyes again.
“Who is it?” he asked.
Somebody came closer, and a hand strayed to his face, and then ran its
fingers through his hair.
His heart stopped, and then swelled in mighty beating. He reached for
the hand, but it was gone.
“Diane! Where are you?”
“I’m here.” The voice held him thrillingly awake.
He sat up and threw off the blanket.
“Diane! Are you all right? I was all night getting here. I was so
frightened--I wanted to get to you so--and I couldn’t see--”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “You got here in time--you got here just
in time.” There was something like awe in her muted voice. “I’ll never
understand what it was, but--deep in me, all the time I had the
strangest feeling that you were coming--that you’d get here. And you
did.”
“What happened?” he asked. “I don’t quite remember.”
“You stumbled over a stump and fell and hit your head on the sill of the
cabin. You’ve been lying here without knowing anything for nearly five
hours.”
Kit put up his hand to feel an enormous swelling above his right
eyebrow. “I don’t mean that,” he said impatiently. “That’s nothing. But
before then?” He scowled in an effort to collect his faculties. “I
remember the chopping, and then somebody fired at me, and I let him have
it.”
“He was chopping down the door of the cabin,” Diane told him, and
shivered. “He came here last night and demanded that I tell him where
the--where those old bags were hidden, and I wouldn’t, and he said he’d
make me. I never heard anything as frightful as his talk. He went away,
and some time later he came back with an ax and started chopping down
the door, and I had no gun or anything, and I was just crouching in the
corner, when--when I heard the rifle and then the shotgun. And I knew it
was you.”
“I guess I killed him,” said Kit.
“No, you didn’t. You must have had bird-shot in your gun. A few of the
shot hit him in the forehead and temple, but they were too tiny, and
only glanced. They only knocked him out for a few minutes.”
Kit started to get up and grope for his boots. “My God!” he exclaimed.
“Where is he? Where is he now?”
“No. Don’t!” Diane’s flexible arm was around his shoulders, holding him.
“He’s safe. As soon as I’d made sure that you hadn’t been killed, I went
to him and tied him up tight. And then two or three hours later the
policemen came.”
“Policemen?” he echoed.
Diane moved discreetly away before Kit had time to regain his breath.
“Devon and Cross. They were searching the woods for you, and happened to
pass here this morning. Cross is outside now, with a tent pitched and a
handcuffed prisoner lying in it.”
“Hell Bent?”
“It was the man we met at the police shack the other night--he called
himself Pettijohn.”
“Yes. I knew it. I figured that out when it was just almost too late.
He’s Hell Bent.”
Kit sat straighter. “Listen!” he said. “I want to see Cross right away.
I want him to go, or send, for a wounded man down in the barrens--”
“All right,” interrupted Diane. “Devon started a couple of hours ago.
When I dragged you in here you muttered something about rescuing a
wounded man. So Devon went as soon as I told him. He’s following your
back trail. Poor Oogly. I hope he isn’t badly hurt.”
“It isn’t Oogly,” said Kit. “It’s my brother Jerry.”
“Who?” Kit was aware of the intensity of the girl’s glance.
“My brother. Sergeant Buck Tearl, the man I was pretending to be. The
one who put you in handcuffs that night, long ago. It was he who put me
up to the masquerading business, and sent me on the trail of Jim Durand,
mistaking him for Hell Bent.”
“You--” Diane stopped in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”
“About you and me and the muddle of everything in general.” Kit spoke
decisively. “We’ve got to straighten it out. You thought I was mixed up
somehow in that old tragedy here at Great Owl Run, and I thought your
uncle was. See? I was after him--after the wrong man, and you thought I
was some kind of a beastly scoundrel, come here to smear my hands in
those rotten bags.”
“Oh, wait--wait a minute!” protested Diane. “You’re going so fast.”
“We can’t clean this up fast enough for me. Jim Durand--your uncle--he
was here in that fight twelve years ago, wasn’t he--when the gold sledge
was lost, and the woman--”
“My aunt,” broke in Diane softly. “I was only just a little girl, but I
remember, Uncle Jim--coming home without her. She was so beautiful--”
“Remember about the man who was with your uncle?” asked Kit. “Who fought
side by side with him--who disappeared and was never seen again?
Inspector William Tearl, R.C.M.P.--did you ever hear of him?”
“I heard--I knew there was a policeman. I may have been told the name.
If they told me, I’ve forgotten.”
“He was my father,” said Kit.
Kit felt the girl move abruptly, and he did not need his own vision to
feel the potency of her eyes looking at him in the shadows. “I didn’t
know,” she whispered. “You say he was--then you--then you’re not--”
“I’m not anything excepting just Kitchener Tearl, who came here to help
Jerry and to find Bill Tearl.”
“But why--why the imposture?” Diane demanded in a shaken voice. “Why did
you impersonate somebody else? Explain please. I’ve got to know--I’ve
got to know the truth.”
“Bill Tearl was lost, and Jerry had to go hunt him, that’s why,” Kit
told her. “And somebody had to stay around here and watch for that
devil--for Hell Bent. We thought it would be better if I was in uniform.
So I traded clothes with Jerry, and he went north and I stayed here.
That’s all there was to that.”
“Oh, God!” Diane was beside the bunk on a box. Her face had suddenly
buried itself in her hands and she was sobbing. “Then you--oh, how could
I have thought for a minute that anything was wrong! Of course not! I
might have known!”
“I might have known too,” said Kit. “Taking Jerry’s word, like a darned
fool. Well, I’ve learned something. I’ve learned only to believe what I
see with my eyes and feel in my heart.”
Diane had straightened on her box, and somehow seemed to have regained
her self-control.
“What a frightful thing it all has been,” she gasped. “I can remember
when Uncle Jim came home, so long ago. He’d been traveling all over,
from city to city, crazed with grief and horror, after he’d seen his
sister’s death.”
“Did he know what had become of Hell Bent?” Kitchener asked.
“He found out some way that one of the men--the worst of the lot--had
gone to prison. And so Uncle Jim waited. He knew that the man would come
back here to the woods as soon as he was freed, and so he waited--with
one idea, with one fixed purpose.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Kit.
“Oh, I know. Of course not. But it was so terrible. Uncle Jim, the
sweetest man that ever lived, but a stubborn and dangerous one, brooding
over one thing, living his life for just one end. He kept away from the
police. He didn’t want anybody to interfere. He wanted to do it with his
own hands--here in the woods.
“He was so restless,” Diane went on in a musing voice. “He spent most of
his time wandering over the world, just--just marking time until the
day. Sometimes he took me with him. I am the only thing on earth he
cares for. But he would never talk to me about what had happened
here--just kept his mouth shut, with that terrifying look of his.
“And one day,” she said, “he left me in Ottawa and told me to wait there
for him. After he was gone I guessed--intuition told me. I found out
that he had started for the north--and I came after him. I thought--I
hoped--if I could catch him in time I might be able to prevent a second
tragedy. That was why I followed.
“But I never found him.” Diane sighed heavily. “Uncle Jim! I don’t know
what ever happened to him.”
Kit’s teeth closed in his lips. He didn’t want to tell her now of the
body that Jerry had found in the river. “I wonder,” he said, “if it
wasn’t your uncle who sent the radio to Jerry about the white man who
was living on the north sea, who--it has turned out--was Dad?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But it is possible. He probably did.”
“But it was signed, ‘Diane.’ Why would he use your name?”
“I suppose he didn’t want to use his own. So he just signed
anything--the first one that came into his mind. And the first name
Uncle Jim would think of, always, would be ‘Diane.’”
“Me too!” said Kit.
“What?” He heard the box scrape on the floor.
“Diane! Come here!”
“No.” And then, after a briefest pause. “What for?”
“I want you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
There was a lingering silence after that, until a log on the fireplace
suddenly broke in two and a shower of sparks sizzled in the chimney. Kit
put one foot on the floor and strove with hungering eyes to see the
shadowy figure that stood so quiet in the dusk. He could hear Diane’s
breathing, but nobody moved and nobody spoke.
“Do you remember Shedim?” Kit asked at length, with a little, husky
laugh.
Still Diane said nothing.
“Last night when I was out there on the barrens--snow-blind--knowing I
had to come to you, and not knowing which way to turn--Shedim flew over
me, and I heard him, and he led me here. I wouldn’t have got here if it
hadn’t been for the owl. Your bad thought that you couldn’t kill--”
“And didn’t want to!” she declared defiantly. “And never would
have--never!”
His forehead was screwed up in a straining effort to visualize the
shadowy face that always seemed to elude him. And suddenly he heard
faint laughter, and something reached to him and gently poked his left
eyebrow.
“Hello, Cocky-bird!”
“Diane! Please!” Kit’s arms reached forward vacantly. “I can’t see you.
I can’t find you!”
“Need you see?”
And Diane was in his arms then, and her young, warm body was clinging to
him, and her lips were feeling their way to his. “You don’t need to find
me--not while I can find you.”
THE END
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