The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wolf Pass
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Title: Wolf Pass
Author: William Byron Mowery
Illustrator: Frank E. Schoonover
Release date: February 11, 2026 [eBook #77911]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago: The McCall Company, 1930
Credits: Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF PASS ***
[Illustration: A savage wrench tore the weapon from her grasp. She
was in the power of this vicious criminal.]
WOLF PASS
By William Byron Mowery
Illustrated by Frank Schoonover
A story of the frontier, where a woman
is allowed to make but _one mistake_.
A lonely portage twenty miles back in the wilderness from the Mounted
post at Bighorn, was where it happened to Sylvia. It came all
suddenly--this ugly disaster; and exactly as Lorn had prophesied when
he ordered her not to go bushloping alone this week.
Carrying her trim little birchbark over the hundred steps from
_décharge_ to _embarqué_, Sylvia walked along a bear trail under the
great yellow pines. Around her there were danger signals that should
have warned. In the dense mossy woods to her right a moose-bird was
chortling angrily at something. A snowshoe rabbit, big-eyed with
fright, darted out of the buckbrush there, and leaped across her path.
A family of Sitka kinglets were crying their sharp little “snake-call”
at some lurking menace of man or beast.
But to Sylvia, a city-born girl not yet wise in the language of this
northern Rocky wilderness, these plain signals of “Beware! Beware!”
meant nothing; and if she thought at all of her husband’s warning, it
was with a spirited defiance of him for ordering her not to leave the
post while he was gone.
She wasn’t one of his men, subject to command! What if he was Inspector
Hastings--getting married didn’t mean she’d enlisted in the Mounted!
A light breeze, spiked with the delicious tang of pine and cooled with
the breath of _névés_ back in the Lodestar ranges, came stirring down
the Packhorse Valley. The whisper of fall was in the air, with argosies
of yellow poplar leaves drifting down the river with rabbit and
ptarmigan bizarre in their mottled autumnal clothes, with those distant
snowfields reaching farther every day down the slopes of the Lodestar
giants. It was that year-time when creatures of the wood and rock and
water sought warmth and security; when uncertainty was a terrible
thing. Something of that age-old anxiety, translated into human terms
of love and home, Sylvia was feeling this morning, after the quarrel
last night with Lorn.
When she stepped out of the heavy timber and set her canoe down at the
water-edge, she straightened up, breathing a bit faster from the
carrying. Looking on up the wilderness valley, she stood there on the
shingle, a slender and girlish figure, lovely in the bright sun that
had a way of getting tangled in her golden-reddish hair and deepening
the pansy-purple in the depths of her eyes.
The brooding immensity of the huge forest, the mountains, the blue sky
above, was borne in upon Sylvia; and for a moment, reveling in the
freedom of this huge wilderness, she forgot the trouble between Lorn
and her that lay like a heavy weight on her heart. At times this
morning she had cried about it, aching for that former one-ness again
with him; but now, when she imagined herself idling away this splendid
day at Bighorn while he and his men were flung out on their hunt, her
aggressive little chin became still more determined and she tossed her
head again with a spirited defiance that jarred the sun-spangles in her
hair.
Oblivious to the warning of her little friends as she started back the
path to bring up her rifle, pack and nested camping set, Sylvia was
living over again her clash last night with Lorn.
Once or twice this morning she had actually wondered whether, instead
of marrying, she should have gone on with her plans to do social work
in Vancouver. She had been trained in criminology; it was the
overtowering purpose and ambition of her life. And Lorn wanted her to
have a work and purpose. When she met him last spring, dealing
sword-strokes at the ugly narcotic demon in Victoria and Vancouver, she
had felt that as his wife, helping him in the preventive branch which
the Mounted always puts first, she would have a golden chance to carry
out her plans.
But gradually she had come to realize that their outlooks were utterly
different. To her, Lorn seemed a hunter, a pursuer of men. Sincere--she
gave him credit for that--and far more experienced than she; but
intolerant of any sympathy for so-called criminals, and flatly hostile
to her most cherished beliefs. To work with him was impossible. She
could either sink into a useless existence--or break with Lorn.
Their growing estrangement, and especially their clash last night, had
shocked and sobered Sylvia. It had taught her that even passionate
affection is not all-powerful against different outlooks.
At the _décharge_, Sylvia gathered up rifle and pack and blanket, and
started back the path again.
As she brushed past a tangle of juniper and windfall logs, she felt
something catch her rifle, as though it had snagged on a branch. In the
next split-second a savage wrench tore the weapon completely from her
grasp. She had the sense of something rising up, lunging at her; a hand
shot out and seized her wrist; before she even could whirl, she was
powerless, weaponless, helpless in that clutch.
A jerk spun her around. Too terrified to struggle, she found herself
face to face with a strange unkempt man, who had crept in behind that
crisscross of logs and pounced out upon her like an animal.
For several paralyzed seconds Sylvia could only stare at his heavily
bearded face, his torn muddied clothes, his shaggy hair, a
blood-crusted wound along his temple. Then came memory of the hunt
flung out for Slith Behrdal, of the picture she’d seen on hundreds of
handbills and posters. Here on the lonely Packhorse, with no one on
earth knowing where she’d gone, she was in the power of this hunted
man, whom Lorn had emphatically declared was an incorrigible and
vicious criminal.
Still holding her wrist, Behrdal set the rifle against a tree,
unclasped her saucy cartridge-belt and thrust it into his pocket. Then
swiftly he felt of her clothing, her belted jacket, her pockets, for
other weapons. Finding none, he looked hard at her a moment, and said:
“Don’t try any yelling. Don’t try pitching off into the bush, either.
It wouldn’t be healthy.” He released her wrist, which was reddened by
his steely grip, and demanded:
“You got any grub in that pack?”
“Y-yes,” Sylvia managed. “A--a little--”
Picking up her pack, rifle, and blanket, he bade her, “You come along!”
and made her walk ahead of him, inland from the path.
They stopped in a little glade where the buckbrush was not dense.
Through the forest aisles one could catch a good view of the Packhorse
both above and below the portage. By the trampled moss and a rude
lean-to of pine branches, Sylvia knew that he had been waiting there for
a day or two, watching the river, watching for a chance to ambush some
lone traveler.
As he bade her, she sat down against a tree, facing him. She was
desperately trying to read what sort of man this Behrdal was, and to
read his purpose with her. He looked to be about thirty-eight; he was
powerful but gaunt of body; he was plainly of the backwoods, trapper
type, but he appeared more intelligent than the average. In spite of
his shaggy clothes, long hair, unshaven face, he was not altogether
frightening. Though she still trembled from the memory of his lunging
out at her, she was no longer panicky; and her first instinctive fears
of him were lessening.
She considered: “He’ll take my canoe and rifle and pack, of course; but
will he leave me here on this portage or set me off nearer some Indian
camp, or--or what?”
Without another word to her, Behrdal tore open the oil-paper packet. As
Sylvia watched him seize upon the food, a first sympathy was born in
her, in spite of her terrible predicament and her helplessness in his
hands. The man was famished, starving! Utterly forgetting her,
forgetting to watch the river, he fell to devouring the bread, meat,
cake and chocolate-bars as ravenously as any animal. After these months
of subsisting only on berries he picked and game he clubbed or snared,
he seemed to be especially starved for bread and sweets, for he bolted
the chocolate bars in two bites, and picked up the smallest sandwich
crumb that fell to the moss.
Sylvia was swiftly thinking of what Lorn had said about Slith Behrdal,
and recalling the Mounted record of his history. Years and years ago he
had trapped and prospected in these wild Lodestars forty miles on
north. Suspected of fur theft, he had escaped to Alaska, had come to
light several times in connection with petty crimes from Juneau to
Dawson, had been involved in one ugly affair; and then, homing to his
old haunts last May, he had gone to a gold-mine of a former prospecting
partner, robbed the office of twenty thousand in dust, shot up a guard,
got away, and was swallowed up in the oblivion of the Northern bush.
For months not a whisper was heard of him--till just last week an
Indian had glimpsed him on a mountain trail west of Bighorn.
As she watched him bolt the last of her food, Sylvia reasoned that
Behrdal, goaded by hunger and the relentless hunt, had been ambushing
this portage trail to seize a gun and camping things and a
canoe--especially a canoe; for in these mountains, foot-slogging
through the windfall and over the precipitous goat-paths was next to
impossible. And he had caught her, Inspector Hastings’ wife, and had at
last secured those desperately needed things!
Behrdal had finished the food; he was watching the river again,
breaking a twig in his fingers, thinking. Sylvia studied him keenly,
trying to read a hint of his thoughts, his purpose. The details of that
ugly affair, as she remembered them, were sinister; but this man
somehow did not seem very sinister to her. She did not feel greatly
afraid of him. Noticing the long red scratches on his hands and
forearms from briar and devil’s-club, the rents in his clothing,
patched with thorns, the gaunt famished leanness of his face, she
pitied more than feared him; and she was wondering whether Lorn, in his
usual stern merciless way, had not made a mistake about this man’s real
nature.
“He’s got a rifle, boat and outfit now,” Sylvia reasoned, “and he’ll
surely try to whip on north into the Lodestar Mountains. Lorn said he’d
try that.”
She thought: “About the quickest and safest way he can get into the
Lodestars is by going up the Packhorse. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll go
right up this river, through Wolf Pass--”
She stopped there, her heart suddenly pounding. Wolf Pass--with all of
Lorn’s men flung out along the Grand Trunk, watching mining camps and
timber camps, Lorn had left Bighorn last night secretly, had come up
the Packhorse alone, to guard that gateway into the Lodestars. Lorn
himself was watching Wolf Pass.
There would be a fight, a rifle-fight, between Lorn, her husband and
this armed man desperate for freedom, desperate from months of being
hounded!
Behrdal finally spoke to her: “You’re the Inspector’s woman, ain’t
you?” And as Sylvia nodded: “I mind seeing your picture in a Prince
Rupert paper last spring when you and him got married.”
Sylvia was provoked by a certain condescension in his manner toward her
as a girl. “You’re the Inspector’s woman!” It sounded as though she
were a piece of property or some kind of lesser creature. But she
reasoned: “I shouldn’t blame him for that. I’ve noticed that same
attitude in ’breeds and the lower white elements toward their ‘women.’
That lordly male attitude was born and bred in him.”
Behrdal went on: “He wants me bad, don’t he? Been hounding me like I
was a dog. Hadn’t been for him, I’d been able to get in south the
railroad and work down to the Border. Say, lookee--what’s he doing,
where’s he at _now_?”
“I--I don’t know,” Sylvia stammered.
“The hell you don’t!” Behrdal said roughly, but with an amused laugh at
nailing her evasion. “He come past here last night, along after
midnight, heading upriver. He’s up there at Wolf Pass, _waiting for
me_. Seen him plain in the moonlight. If I’d had a gun--”
“You--you wouldn’t have shot him?” Sylvia gasped.
Behrdal started to say something, checked himself, and studied her
curiously for several moments. A very visible change came into his
manner. He had evidently been considering her an enemy, plotting to
betray him. A man hounded as he was, must think that the hand of every
human was against him. But now he seemed to realize she was inclined to
be sympathetic and charitable.
Presently he answered her question. “I wouldn’t have shot him ’less I
absolutely had to. _You_ don’t think I’m a murderer, do you? But I’d
sure as sin have taken his boat and gun and things. I got to live. A
man’ll do most anything to save hisself. You don’t know how hiding
around in these mountains takes it out of a fellow--”
As he went on, Sylvia noticed that he wanted to be talking. He seemed
as starved for human company as for human food. She reflected: “It’s
been months since he’s spoken to a soul. It’s probably been far longer
since he’s sat and talked with a white woman.”
The man’s nature was a puzzle to her. She could not quite make him out.
Without jumping to any conclusions, she believed more and more that he
was at least not the criminal that Lorn considered him. He might even
be a very decent sort.
Out on the Packhorse, the cry of a great Northern diver interrupted
him. Breaking off, he scrambled to his feet, searched up and down the
river, saw nothing suspicious, then turned to her.
“Get up! We got to be moving.”
“We?” Sylvia echoed, startled. Did that mean he was going to take her
along with him?
Again he studied her with that curious gaze. It was plain he did not
fear her. There was a half-amused glint in his eyes. Was he laughing at
her fright?
“Why sure, us both,” he answered. And when a fear spread over her
winsome face, he added: “How the devil could _you_ foot-slog back to
Bighorn? I was thinking. See here, I got to have your boat, aint I? You
come, go along peaceful-like, go on up the Packhorse. Up there, about
four miles this way from Wolf Pass, there’s a good trail leading over
east to Beaver Valley. Old Thunder Crow and his band live there. Only a
couple miles across to Beaver. Old Crow’ll see you get home safe. I
wouldn’t let a girl afoot, place like this, would I?”
His words set Sylvia to thinking, to wondering more than ever about
this man. His glances at her face, his appraisal of her vigorous young
body, did linger longer than she liked. But he hadn’t touched her,
hadn’t spoken a wrong word; and now he was actually taking thought for
her! Hunted, half-starved in a desperate situation himself, he was
taking thought for her.
She thought: “I’m going to get his version of that formidable record.
Lorn never gave any ‘criminal’ the benefit of the doubt.”
As Behrdal picked up the rifle and pack, she rose and went with him,
unwilling but not frightened, back to the path and along it under the
great pines, to her canoe.
* * * * *
Near mid-afternoon, thirty miles on up the Packhorse, they came to a
tiny wooded islet in the river. Driving the canoe in to the bank,
Behrdal laid aside the paddle, and said:
“Only ten miles to Wolf Pass. We’ll stop here a minute.” He scooped the
sweat from his brow with a forefinger. “Pretty hard work dogging a
canoe up-current like this. Usta could do it all day ’thout feeling it,
but now--”
“I know, I know,” Sylvia agreed in sympathy. “It’s a wonder you lived
through these last few months.”
She was facing him, sitting in the prow of the canoe. She knew he had
put her there so he could keep a sharp watch on her actions; but to
offset that, he’d made her a comfortable seat with the white fluffy
H. B. blanket.
Very thoughtful, Sylvia sat with chin cupped in her small hand,
bare-headed, with the slant sun tangled in her golden-reddish hair.
Behrdal had been staring at her, but now he was looking on up the
mountain-cradled Packhorse at the wilderness of ranges which he had
trapped in years ago. Freedom was so very near for him now. If only he
could get through Wolf Pass--but there Lorn was waiting. Sylvia was in
panic at the thought of a rifle fight. Glancing at the high-power
weapon there beside Behrdal, she pictured Lorn shot, wounded, dying,
and her passion for him welled up. Lorn was her husband, her lover....
But then she reasoned that Behrdal would never try to shoot his way
through the Pass. He would surely land this side of it and circle up
against the mountain and hit the Packhorse above.
She asked him rather abruptly: “If you don’t mind a personal question,
Mr. Behrdal, what was it that started you to--that made you--”
“Made me a bush-sneaker?” he completed. “Well, you see, I stole some
furs. A trader, he cheated me four years hand-run. Jickered the
auction-sale figgers. So I busted into his storage-shed one night and
evened things up. But I had to cut for Alaska.”
“You have several charges against you there,” she suggested, leading
him on.
“Them’s damned lies! They knowed I was on the jump, so everything that
went wrong, and I was near enough, they hung it onto me. Nothing could
happen but what I got blamed for it. I did pull off a couple tricks,
when I had to--like with you this morning; but that wasn’t my fault.
I’d gone straight if they’d let me.”
Sylvia nodded. In her criminology texts she had studied many cases like
his. “Undeserved increment of criminal reputation,” her professor at
Berkeley called it.
She pursued: “But that robbery of the Orphan Angel Mine? You were
identified--”
“Don’t deny that. But if you knowed the facts.... Look here, I staked
that claim myself, years ago. My partner, he euchred me out of it. How?
Well, I sent him in to the assay office with the ore to have it tested.
He doctored the figgers. Brought back a sheet saying the ore was
worthless. After I left, he filed on it hisself. So I tried to even up
that old score.”
Sylvia forbore asking him about that more serious offense.
It seemed to her that here was a man who was a living refutation of
Lorn’s stern uncompromising attitude, and a living proof of her own
beliefs. Society had hounded him, branded him with the stigma of
“criminal.” If he could only escape, he would become an honest
self-respecting man. Once through Wolf Pass, he _would_ be safe, for he
had rifle, boat and pack now. Back in the Lodestars he could never be
tracked or found. Sylvia remembered those beautiful Lodestars, for she
and Lorn had spent their _lune de miel_ far back in them. Recalling
those innumerable cañons and beaten game-trails and dry caves, she knew
Behrdal could easily live through the winter there, and then make good
his escape.
But what would Lorn say when he found out that Behrdal had secured
those desperately needed things because of her disobedience? She
visioned her return to Bighorn, visioned Lorn’s silent anger; and she
knew that this adventure today was going to be fateful between Lorn and
her.
* * * * *
Beginning twilight in the mountain valley--almost within sight of Wolf
Pass.... Something was wrong, all wrong. Sylvia was keenly alarmed, and
more frightened with every passing moment.
The sun an hour ago had inched down behind the western Lodestars. The
twin peaks, lordly, snow-crowned, through which the Packhorse flowed,
towered up so high, so close, that she lifted her head to see their
summits. But Behrdal hadn’t set her ashore, as he had promised. He
didn’t show any signs of intending to set her ashore.
The valley had narrowed to half a mile, with mountains rising steep and
huge almost from river edge. A short “squaw-winter” which had passed
last week had turned the hardwoods of their lower slopes to brown and
golden and flaming red. All day the migrants, flock after flock, had
passed overhead, winging south; and Sylvia had the feeling that around
her in the mountains animals were laying by their store for the frozen
months or seeking out warm caves against the winter to come.
In this last mile she had noticed a marked and alarming change in
Behrdal. He was nervous now--with fatal Wolf Pass so near. And he had
become surly and heavy-handed with her, snapping her off if she started
to say a word. He had reloaded her rifle and dropped a handful of loose
cartridges into his pocket. He had said he was going to try to get
around Wolf Pass by slipping up along the windfall slope, but now it
looked as though he meant to shoot his way through. The suspicion had
grown on her that he didn’t mean to put her ashore till he got through
the Pass--that he meant to use her as protection against Inspector
Hastings’ rifle.
If that was true, then he’d hoodwinked her, he’d been friendly in
order that she would “go along peaceful.” It was galling to suspect
that this rough boorish man had been playing on her credulity and
sympathy--secretly laughing at her all day.
* * * * *
Twilight was deepening in the valley--a soft impalpable purple, though
high overhead the clouds were still roseate from the sun. The heavily
timbered shores, dark and formidable, awed Sylvia; and the memory of
the lonely mountain fastness ahead, where Lorn and she had spent their
honeymoon, filled her with prophetic fears.
Unable to bear this terrible uncertainty any longer, she asked
tremulously:
“We--we must be close to Wolf Pass; aren’t you going to--aren’t we
about to the place where you’ll put me ashore?”
Behrdal glared at her, and his answer was fairly dazing.
“You shut your trap and mind your own business!”
Startled, she shrunk back against the thwart as though he had struck
her. He meant to take her on through Wolf Pass! He meant to use her as
protection against her husband. How could Lorn battle him--with her in
that canoe? This man would kill Lorn--
Silent, panic-stricken, with the canoe carrying her on into Wolf Pass,
she sat there helpless, praying that Lorn would not come out at
Behrdal. But she knew he would. He’d never let a criminal escape; he’d
never let Behrdal take _her_ through Wolf Pass. The prospect of Lorn
getting wounded, maybe killed, killed by her own rifle, killed because
she’d defied him and gone away alone, frightened Sylvia as nothing in
her life before had ever done.
Watching, she saw Behrdal suddenly start, ship the paddle, seize the
rifle. From the east shore, from behind the cover of a cypress whose
branches swept the water, a canoe had glided out, a canoe with a
straight stern figure in it, driving it with powerful strokes, his
rifle muzzle sticking up above the gunwale.
It was skirling directly out athwart the current, out into midstream,
to block their path.
The last vestige of Slith Behrdal’s pretense dropped away from him.
His eyes were fixed on that canoe. There was fear in them, a craven
fear that made him jerky in the manner of a cornered animal. And there
was a vengeful light in them, too--a murderous glare at the officer who
had hunted him for months and flung out the wilderness dragnet for him,
and now blocked his path to safety.
As Behrdal cocked the rifle, Sylvia rose up, wild with fright, nearly
tipping over the frail canoe, and pleaded:
“Don’t! Don’t shoot! You mustn’t hurt _him_. I’ll tell him to keep
away--”
Behrdal swung the gun back behind his shoulder, like a heavy club
against her, menacing her; and he snarled:
“Get down! Damn you, get down there! You make one move, you just try to
help him to take me, you damn’ little softie, and I’ll-- I aint aiming
to get taken!”
Shrinking back from him in quivering panic, Sylvia helplessly watched
him lift the rifle--_her_ rifle--and level it, and draw a bead on that
canoe.
In that instant Lorn’s voice, sharp and clear, came ringing across the
water, repeating the formula of arrest:
“Halt! In the King’s name, I warn you against resisting!”
* * * * *
Behrdal shot at him. In her terror for Lorn, unmindful of the bullet
that screamed past her head, Sylvia turned, looked. Again and again and
again, till the magazine was empty, Behrdal shot at her husband. The
bullets, kicking up tiny spurts of white, hit all around Lorn. Two of
them, striking almost at the wind-water line of Lorn’s canoe,
ricocheted and tore through his fragile craft.
She saw Lorn lean forward, stuffing a blanket corner into one of those
spouting holes. But he did not shoot. He had recognized _her_; though a
bullet at any moment might kill him, he would never jeopardize her
life. Cool and steady, he was driving his canoe on, on out into
midstream, to block the path.
She cried out: “Lorn! Lorn! Shoot at him!”
Behrdal swung his reloaded rifle upon her. Had she not been his
protection, he would have killed her.
“Shut up!”
He seized the paddle, drove the canoe frantically on with powerful
grunting strokes, till less than two hundred yards of water lay between
the two crafts. Dropping the paddle, whipping up his rifle, he poured a
stream of bullets at Lorn’s canoe.
One, ricocheting, tore a gaping hole through the wind-water line.
Another knocked Lorn’s paddle out of his grasp. And then that fatal
bullet! In her terrified anguish, she did not clearly see what
happened, but Lorn’s canoe suddenly caved in, as though the middle
thwart had been splintered, and the craft, collapsing, plunged him into
the water, boatless, his rifle gone.
[Illustration: Then that fatal bullet! Lorn’s canoe suddenly caved in
and plunged him into the water, his rifle gone.]
He reappeared, treaded water, then started swimming strongly--not back
to the safety of the shore, which likely he could have reached; but on
out into midstream, toward a flat granite rock that reared above the
water. With belt-gun in his teeth, he headed for that boulder in a last
magnificent effort to make his arrest and save his wife from this man.
[Illustration: Behrdal shot twice at him--at a helpless man swimming.
Checking himself, he watched Lorn climb out.]
Behrdal shot twice at him--at a helpless man swimming--but his bullets
missed. Checking himself, he watched Lorn reach the rock and climb out.
His nervous jerky fear slowly ebbed now. As his narrowed eyes studied
the boulder, an expression of gloating sureness twisted his mouth. He
knew, and Sylvia knew, what chance a man with a belt-gun stood against
a long-range rifle. He could edge up closer, could stand off beyond
belt-gun range and pour a magazine of bullets into his enemy. Lorn was
caught, doomed; he and she too were at Behrdal’s mercy now.
* * * * *
For perhaps half a minute Behrdal held the canoe where it was, stroking
a little against the current, studying the rock where Lorn knelt on one
knee, waiting.
Beneath his breath he snarled: “That yellow-striped devil won’t hound
me any more! Nor he won’t get back home to tell where I faded to, or
boss any more hunts after me!”
He dipped paddle to drive the canoe within deadly rifle-range of the
rock. Sylvia’s glance went to her little belt-ax loosely tied in the
pack within arm’s reach of her. She started to lean forward, to seize
it and hurl it with all her strength at that brutal face. Her movement
caught Behrdal’s eyes; he whipped back the paddle, swung at her; and
the thin blade struck her across the arm she flung up to protect
herself.
He grabbed the belt-ax and thrust it safely beneath his leg.
“Didn’t quite, did you? Pretty cocky now, ain’t you? You’ll tame down.
You and me--while them men of his are kiting around wondering what
happened to him--we’ll be looking up a nice place back in there to den
up in.”
* * * * *
In the horror that swept over her, Sylvia had a livid memory of Behrdal
bolting her food with an animal’s hunger, of his hunger for human
company, of his overbearing, lordly-male attitude, of Lorn’s
significant hint that this man had been alone in the bush for many long
months.
He taunted her, as he drove the canoe on toward the rock:
“You’re the softest one I ever met up with. Swallowed everything I told
you! Come along peaceful-like, you did--no trouble at all. And you
thought I was going to set you off, after catching you out here like
that, no one knowing what happened to you. You, by God, thought I’d let
you go! _And you wanted to help me escape!_” He laughed throatily. “You
sure need a husband--sweet little coonie like you--or need _somebody_
to look after you--letting a fellow string you along like I did!”
He laughed again; and in that horrid laugh Sylvia seemed to be hearing
Lorn’s warning, and caught a glimpse of all his long years of hunting
men, all his hard-earned knowledge of criminal nature, all his bitterly
learned experience and beliefs.
A moment later Behrdal was ignoring her, as a helpless and inferior
creature to be noticed or scorned at his fancy. The rock was within
good rifle-range; but Lorn had crouched down lower, to offer the
smallest possible target to that sharp-speaking gun. Estimating
distance, Behrdal shoved the canoe on closer, closer, till at the
deadly range of a hundred yards he shipped the paddle and rose up, and
lifting his rifle, deliberately took aim.
As she watched that rifle come up, Sylvia grasped the gunwale with both
hands, and her body tensed for a swift desperate attempt to save Lorn’s
life. A minute ago she had thought to leap forward and struggle with
Behrdal and try to wrest the rifle away from him, but she knew he could
shoot her before she reached him. There was one other way.
Too swiftly for Behrdal to lower the rifle and shoot at her, she flung
herself over the gunwale of the canoe, still gripping the edge of it,
dragging the gunwale down by the force of her plunge. She saw Behrdal
stagger, lose his footing and topple backwards. As the water closed
over her, she felt the canoe suddenly lightened, and knew he had fallen
bodily out of it. With a plop that drummed in her ears, the craft
overturned, twisting loose her grip on it, plunging her down and down.
For a few moments that seemed endless she struggled in the dark cold
depths, fighting upward to the light. When she broke up out, dashing
the water from her eyes, tossing the shock of her hair from her
forehead, she glimpsed the upturned canoe a dozen yards downstream; and
looking again, she saw Behrdal clinging to its prow, clawing
frantically for a hold on its keel.
From his frenzied struggles that repeatedly pushed the craft under
water, she realized that the man could not swim, and would weaken and
sink and drown in this swift icy current. But that sight did not move
her; there was no mercy in her heart now.
Turning toward the boulder, she peered through the twilight for sight
of Lorn. The rock was bare; he no longer crouched on it. She called to
him tremulously; then she saw him, swimming down-current toward her,
with long clean strokes.
He bore down upon her, stopped a couple of yards away; and with his
eyes on Behrdal’s weakening struggle, he demanded sharply of her:
“Can you get ashore by yourself?”
“Y-yes, but Lorn--but what are you--”
“If you’re certain you can, then get on out!”
“But Lorn! Why don’t you let him _drown_?” In a flaming pitiless anger
against Slith Behrdal, she cried: “He tried to kill you! He was going
to take me--me with him! Let him drown!”
* * * * *
Lorn did not even answer, but went on past her. As she started for the
west bank, swimming easily at a diagonal down the current, she looked
back and saw him overhaul the drifting canoe, and saw the swift finale
of it all. Behrdal, a drowning man in a blind crazed frenzy, clutched
at Lorn and would have pinioned his arms and dragged him down. But Lorn
held him off at arm’s-length, and smashing the butt of his revolver
against the man’s temple, knocked him limp. And then, towing him,
swimming one-handed, he too headed for the west bank of the Packhorse.
When she reached shoal water and her feet touched, Sylvia stopped and
waited, to help Lorn with his burden, to help him retrieve the canoe
and paddle. But she dreaded to face him, to speak to him. That steely
hardness in his voice--he knew she had disobeyed his orders. And that
was not all, not the half of her guilt. Today she had been traitress to
him, disloyal to all he stood for--had wanted Behrdal to escape.
* * * * *
Overhead the two o’clock moon, riding through a gossamer mist of
clouds, silvered the clear cold waters of the Packhorse and dripped its
molten fire from Lorn’s wet paddle-blade. A stiff chilly wind, pouring
down the valley, had set the waves lap-lapping against the shores, and
was crooning in autumnal tones through the great pines and cedars.
With the current sweeping them along, with Lorn’s rhythmic tireless
paddle-strokes hastening them, they had passed the portage where Behrdal
that morning had lunged out of the windfall upon Sylvia. A dozen easy
downstream miles stretched on to Bighorn.
Bound hand and foot, Slith Behrdal lay in the prow of the canoe, a
huddled and spiritless heap, his arms over his face, being carried back
to the justice he for years had escaped. He was Lorn’s prisoner; Lorn
was taking him in. More than once in the long silent hours since this
return began, Sylvia had reflected on that stern unswerving quality in
Lorn Hastings which had impelled him to save this man when she
herself--she with the humane theories and sympathetic attitude!--had
wanted to let him drown. What had Lorn once told her about her theories
and wisps of smoke?
* * * * *
For the last half-hour she had been looking up at him, studying his
face in the moonlight; but scarcely once had he glanced down at her,
and then he had not smiled. In abject silent misery she had inched
nearer and nearer him, till her head brushed his knees. He had not
noticed her. When she thought of him swimming through the water with a
belt-gun in his teeth, she realized that in such a man forgiveness came
not lightly.
Across the moon a flock of migrant cranes flapped slowly southward, a
weird and macabre procession down the night sky--token of a summer
dying and a winter to come. From high above timberline the mournful cry
of a wolf floated down, unwordably lonely and sad. As though the sound
had its echo in Sylvia’s heart, as though the silence had broken her
heart, she stirred and rose a little, and crept nearer and nearer, till
that head of golden-reddish hair which had tossed so defiantly at Lorn
Hastings, lay now in his lap, beaten, miserable, begging forgiveness.
The rhythmic paddle missed a stroke, a single stroke; then it dipped
again, took up its relentless tempo again. The tears came blindingly
into Sylvia’s eyes; she was shaken with silent sobbing, but she fought
it down.
As though Lorn had felt her sobbing, that relentless tempo slackened;
it missed a stroke, two strokes.... As she raised her head, as she
started to creep back, it stopped altogether! Dimly through her tears
Sylvia saw him looking down at her. He seemed to be bending lower.
“Sylvia!”--a whisper, his whisper, above her. His hand was on her wet
cheek, his hand caressing her hair. “You got us into that fix, girl,
_but you got us out!_”
The tears, that came more blindingly than ever, kept her from seeing
his face.... It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be that he’d forgiven her.
“If you want to admit you were a bit wrong in our--our arguments, I’ll
meet you halfway. I’ll never remind you of today.”
Her heart ceased beating as she saw him bending lower still, and felt
him lifting her lips to his for a moment that blotted out all this
endless night of unbearable misery.
Then the rhythmic strokes again. Behrdal the criminal a huddled heap in
the prow, the sleepy sounds of this mountain wilderness, above her,
between her and the star-sprinkled heavens, a beloved face that smiled
now with that former one-ness between them--her head still lying upon
his lap, on and on and on, homeward under the moonlight.
[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the September, 1930 issue
of _Redbook_ magazine.]
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