Kitabı oku: «The Valley of Silent Men», sayfa 11

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CHAPTER XIX

To the cabin Kent groped his way, and knocked, and it was Marette who opened the door for him and stepped back for him to enter. Like a great wet dog he came in, doubling until his hands almost touched the floor. He sensed the incongruity of it, the misplacement of his overgrown body in this playhouse thing, and he grinned through the trickles of wet that ran down his face, and tried to see. Marette had taken off her turban and rain-coat, and she, too, stooped low in the four-feet space of the cabin – but not so ridiculously low as Kent. He dropped on his knees again. And then he saw that in the tiny stove a fire was burning. The crackle of it rose above the beat of the rain on the roof, and the air was already mellowing with the warmth of it. He looked at Marette. Her wet hair was still clinging to her face, her feet and arms and part of her body were wet; but her eyes were shining, and she was smiling at him. She seemed to him, in this moment, like a child that was glad it had found refuge. He had thought that the terror of the night would show in her face, but it was gone. She was not thinking of the thunder and the lightning, the black trail, or of Kedsty lying dead in his bungalow. She was thinking of him.

He laughed outright. It was a joyous, thrilling thing, this black night with the storm over their heads and the roll of the great river under them – they two – alone – in this cockleshell cabin that was not high enough to stand in and scarcely big enough in any direction to turn round in. The snug cheer of it, the warmth of the fire beginning to reach their chilled bodies, and the inspiring crackle of the birch in the little stove filled Kent, for a space, with other thoughts than those of the world they were leaving. And Marette, whose eyes and lips were smiling at him softly in the candle-glow, seemed also to have forgotten. It was the little window that brought them back to the tragedy of their flight. Kent visioned it as it must look from the shore – a telltale blotch of light traveling through the darkness. There were occasional cabins for several miles below the Landing, and eyes turned riverward in the storm might see it. He made his way to the window and fastened his slicker over it.

"We're off, Gray Goose," he said then, rubbing his hands. "Would it seem more homelike if I smoked?"

She nodded, her eyes on the slicker at the window.

"It's pretty safe," said Kent, fishing out his pipe, and beginning to fill it. "Everybody asleep, probably. But we won't take any chances." The scow was swinging sideways in the current. Kent felt the change in its movement, and added: "No danger of being wrecked, either. There isn't a rock or rapids for thirty miles. River clear as a floor. If we bump ashore, don't get frightened."

"I'm not afraid – of the river," she said. Then, with rather startling unexpectedness, she asked him, "Where will they look for us tomorrow?"

Kent lighted his pipe, eyeing her a bit speculatively as she seated herself on the stool, leaning toward him as she waited for an answer to her question.

"The woods, the river, everywhere," he said. "They'll look for a missing boat, of course. We've simply got to watch behind us and take advantage of a good start."

"Will the rain wipe out our footprints, Jeems?"

"Yes. Everything in the open."

"But – perhaps – in a sheltered place – ?"

"We were in no sheltered place," he assured her. "Can you remember that we were, Gray Goose?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. But there was Mooie, under the window."

"His footprints will be wiped out."

"I am glad. I would not have him, or M'sieu Fingers, or any of our friends brought into this trouble."

She made no effort to hide the relief his words brought her. He was a little amazed that she should worry over Fingers and the old Indian in this hour of their own peril. That danger he had decided to keep as far from her mind as possible. But she could not help realizing the impending menace of it. She must know that within a few hours Kedsty would be found, and the long arm of the wilderness police would begin its work. And if it caught them —

She had thrust her feet toward him and was wriggling them inside her boots, so that he heard the slushing sound of water. "Ugh, but they are wet!" she shivered. "Will you unlace them and pull them off for me, Jeems?"

He laid his pipe aside and knelt close to her. It took him five minutes to get the boots off. Then he held one of her sodden little feet close between his two big hands.

"Cold – cold as ice," he said. "You must take off your stockings, Marette. Please."

He arranged a pile of wood in front of the stove and covered it with a blanket which he pulled from one of the bunks. Then, still on his knees, he drew the cane chair close to the fire and covered it with a second blanket. A few moments later Marette was tucked comfortably in this chair, with her bare feet on the blanketed pile of wood. Kent opened the stove door. Then he extinguished one of the smoking candles, and after that, the other. The flaming birch illumined the little cabin with a mellower light. It gave a subdued flush to the girl's face. Her eyes seemed to Kent wonderfully soft and beautiful in that changed light. And when he had finished, she reached out a hand, and for an instant it touched his face and his wet hair so lightly that he sensed the thrilling caress of it without feeling its weight.

"You are so good to me, Jeems," she said, and he thought there was a little choking note in her throat.

He had seated himself on the floor, close to her chair, with his back to the wall. "It is because I love you, Gray Goose," he replied quietly, looking straight into the fire.

She was silent. She, too, was looking into the fire. Close over their heads they heard the beating of the rain, like a thousand soft little fists pounding the top of the cabin. Under them they could feel the slow swinging of the scow as it responded to the twists and vagaries of the current that was carrying them on. And Kent, unseen by the girl who was looking away from him, raised his eyes. The birch light was glowing in her hair; it trembled on her white throat; her long lashes were caught in the shimmer of it. And, looking at her, Kent thought of Kedsty lying back in his bungalow room, choked to death by a tress of that glorious hair, so near to him now that, by leaning a little forward, he might have touched it with his lips. The thought brought him no horror. For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek – the small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as a bit of thistle-down – and he knew that two hands like that could not have killed a man who was fighting for life when he died.

And Kent reached up, and took the hand, and held it close in his own, as he said, "Little Gray Goose, please tell me now – what happened in Kedsty's room?"

His voice thrilled with an immeasurable faith. He wanted her to know, no matter what had happened, that this faith and his love for her could not be shaken. He believed in her, and would always believe in her.

Already he was sure that he knew how Kedsty had died. The picture of the tragedy had pieced itself together in his mind, bit by bit. While he slept, Marette and a man were down in the big room with the Inspector of Police. The climax had come, and Kedsty was struck a blow – in some unaccountable way – with his own gun. Then, just as Kedsty was recovering sufficiently from the shock of the blow to fight, Marette's companion had killed him. Horrified, dazed by what had already happened, perhaps unconscious, she had been powerless to prevent the use of a tress of her hair in the murderer's final work. Kent, in this picture, eliminated the boot-laces and the curtain cords. He knew that the unusual and the least expected happened frequently in crime. And Marette's long hair was flowing loose about her. To use it had simply been the first inspiration of the murderer. And Kent believed, as he waited for her answer now, that Marette would tell him this.

And as he waited, he felt her fingers tighten in his hand.

"Tell me, Gray Goose – what happened?"

"I – don't – know – Jeems – "

His eyes went to her suddenly from the fire, as if he was not quite sure he had heard what she had said. She did not move her head, but continued to gaze unseeingly into the flames. Inside his palm her fingers worked to his thumb and held it tightly again, as they had clung to it when she was frightened by the thunder and lightning.

"I don't know what happened, Jeems."

This time he did not feel the clinging thrill of her little fingers and soft palm. Deep within him he experienced something that was like a sudden and unexpected blow. He was ready to fight for her until his last breath was gone. He was ready to believe anything she told him – anything except this impossible thing which she had just spoken. For she did know what had happened in Kedsty's room. She knew – unless —

Suddenly his heart leaped with joyous hope. "You mean – you were unconscious?" he cried in a low voice that trembled with his eagerness. "You fainted – and it happened then?"

She shook her head. "No. I was asleep in my room. I didn't intend to sleep, but – I did. Something awakened me. I thought I had been dreaming. But something kept pulling me, pulling me downstairs. And when I went, I found Kedsty like that. He was dead. I was paralyzed, standing there, when you came."

She drew her, hand away from him, gently, but significantly. "I know you can't believe me, Jeems. It is impossible for you to believe me."

"And you don't want me to believe you, Marette."

"Yes – I do. You must believe me."

"But the tress of hair – your hair – round Kedsty's neck – "

He stopped. His words, spoken gently as they were, seemed brutal to him. Yet he could not see that they affected her. She did not flinch. He saw no tremor of horror. Steadily she continued to look into the fire. And his brain grew confused. Never in all his experience had he seen such absolute and unaffected self-control. And somehow, it chilled him. It chilled him even as he wanted to reach out and gather her close in his arms, and pour his love into her ears, entreating her to tell him everything, to keep nothing back from him that might help in the fight he was going to make.

And then she said, "Jeems, if we should be caught by the Police – it would probably be quite soon, wouldn't it?"

"They won't catch us."

"But our greatest danger of being caught is right now, isn't it?" she insisted.

Kent took out his watch and leaned over to look at it in the fireglow. "It is three o'clock," he said. "Give me another day and night, Gray Goose, and the Police will never find us."

For a moment or two more she was silent. Then her hand reached out, and her fingers twined softly round his thumb again. "Jeems – when we are safe – when we are sure the Police won't find us – I will tell you all that I know – about what happened in Kedsty's room. And I will tell you – about – the hair. I will tell you – everything." Her fingers tightened almost fiercely. "Everything," she repeated. "I will tell you about that in Kedsty's room – and I will tell you about myself – and after that – I am afraid – you won't like me."

"I love you," he said, making no movement to touch her. "No matter what you tell me, Gray Goose, I shall love you."

She gave a little cry, scarcely more than a broken note in her throat, and Kent – had her face been turned toward him then – would have seen the glory that came into it, and into her eyes, like a swift flash of light – and passed as swiftly away.

What he did see, when she turned her head, were eyes caught suddenly by something at the cabin door. He looked. Water was trickling in slowly over the sill.

"I expected that," he said cheerfully. "Our scow is turning into a rain-barrel, Marette. Unless I bail out, we'll soon be flooded."

He reached for his slicker and put it on. "It won't take me long to throw the water overboard," he added. "And while I'm doing that I want you to take off your wet things and tuck yourself into bed. Will you, Gray Goose?"

"I'm not tired, but if you think it is best – " Her hand touched his arm.

"It is best," he said, and for a moment he bent over her until his lips touched her hair.

Then he seized a pail, and went out into the rain.

CHAPTER XX

It was that hour when, with clear skies, the gray northern dawn would have been breaking faintly over the eastern forests. Kent found the darkness more fog-like; about him was a grayer, ghostlier sort of gloom. But he could not see the water under his feet. Nor could he see the rail of the scow, or the river. From the stern, ten feet from the cabin door, the cabin itself was swallowed up and invisible.

With the steady, swinging motion of the riverman he began bailing. So regular became his movements that they ran in a sort of rhythmic accompaniment to his thoughts. The monotonous splash, splash, splash of the outflung pails of water assumed, after a few minutes, the character of a mechanical thing. He could smell the nearness of the shore. Even in the rain the tang of cedar and balsam came to him faintly.

But it was the river that impressed itself most upon his senses. It seemed to him, as the minutes passed, like a living thing. He could hear it gurgling and playing under the end of the scow. And with that sound there was another and more indescribable thing, the tremble of it, the pulse of it, the thrill of it in the impenetrable gloom, the life of it as it swept on in a slow and mighty flood between its wilderness walls. Kent had always said, "You can hear the river's heart beat – if you know how to listen for it." And he heard it now. He felt it. The rain could not beat it out, nor could the splash of the water he was throwing overboard drown it, and the darkness could not hide it from the vision that was burning like a living coal within him. Always it was the river that had given him consolation in times of loneliness. For him it had grown into a thing with a soul, a thing that personified hope, courage, comradeship, everything that was big and great in final achievement. And tonight – for he still thought of the darkness as night – the soul of it seemed whispering to him a sort of paean.

He could not lose. That was the thought that filled him. Never had his pulse beat with greater assurance, never had a more positive sense of the inevitable possessed him. It was inconceivable, he thought, even to fear the possibility of being taken by the Police. He was more than a man fighting for his freedom alone, more than an individual struggling for the right to exist. A thing vastly more priceless than either freedom or life, if they were to be accepted alone, waited for him in the little cabin, shut in by its sea of darkness. And ahead of them lay their world. He emphasized that. Their world – the world which, in an illusive and unreal sort of way, had been a part of his dreams all his life. In that world they would shut themselves in. No one would ever find them. And the glory of the sun and the stars and God's open country would be with them always.

Marette was the very heart of that reality which impinged itself upon him now. He did not worry about what it was she would tell him tomorrow, or day after tomorrow. He believed that it was then – when she had told him what there was to tell, and he still reached, out his arms to her – that she would come into those arms. And he knew that nothing that might have happened in Kedsty's room would keep his arms from reaching, to her. Such was his faith, potent as the mighty flood hidden in the gray-ghost gloom of approaching dawn.

Yet he did not expect to win easily. As he worked, his mind swept up and down the Three Rivers from the Landing to Fort Simpson, and mentally he pictured the situations that might arise, and how he would triumph over them. He figured that the men at Barracks would not enter Kedsty's bungalow until noon at the earliest. The Police gasoline launch would probably set out on a river search soon after. By mid-afternoon the scow would have a fifty-mile start.

Before darkness came again they would be through the Death Chute, where Follette and Ladouceur swam their mad race for the love of a girl. And not many miles below the Chute was a swampy country where he could hide the scow. Then they would start overland, west and north. Given until another sunset, and they would be safe. This was what he expected. But if it came to fighting – he would fight.

The rain had slackened to a thin drizzle by the time he finished his bailing. The aroma of cedar and balsam came to him more clearly, and he heard more distinctly the murmuring surge of the river. He tapped again at the door of the cabin, and Marette answered him.

The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals when he entered. Again he fell on his knees, and took off his dripping slicker.

The girl greeted him from the berth. "You look like a great bear, Jeems." There was a glad, welcoming note in her voice.

He laughed, and drew the stool beside her, and managed to sit on it, the roof compelling him to bend his head over a little. "I feel like an elephant in a birdcage," he replied. "Are you comfortable, little Gray Goose?"

"Yes. But you, Jeems? You are wet!"

"But so happy that I don't feel it, Gray Goose."

He could make her out only dimly there in the darkness of the berth. Her face was a pale shadow, and she had loosened her damp hair so that the warmth and dry air might reach it more easily. Kent wondered if she could hear the beating of his heart. He forgot the fire, and the darkness grew thicker. He could no longer see the pale outline of her face, and he drew back a little, possessed by the thought that it was sacrilegious to bend nearer to her, like a thief, in that gloom. She sensed his movement, and her hand reached to him and lay lightly with its fingertips touching his arm.

"Jeems," she said softly. "I'm not sorry – now – that I came up to Cardigan's place that day – when you thought you were dying. I wasn't wrong. You are different. And I made fun of you then, and laughed at you, because I knew that you were not going to die. Will you forgive me?"

He laughed happily. "It's funny how little things work out, sometimes," he said. "Wasn't a kingdom lost once upon a time because some fellow didn't have a horseshoe? Anyway, I knew of a man whose life was saved because of a broken pipe-stem. And you came to me, and I'm here with you now, because – "

"Of what?" she whispered.

"Because of something that happened a long time ago," he said. "Something you wouldn't dream could have anything to do with you or with me. Shall I tell you about it, Marette?"

Her fingers pressed slightly upon his arm. "Yes."

"Of course, it's a story of the Police," he began. "And I won't mention this fellow's name. You may think of him as that red-headed O'Connor, if you want to. But I don't say that it was he. He was a constable in the Service and had been away North looking up some Indians who were brewing an intoxicating liquor from roots. That was six years ago. And he caught something. Le Mort Rouge, we sometimes call it – the Red Death – or smallpox. And he was alone when the fever knocked him down, three hundred miles from anywhere. His Indian ran away at the first sign of it, and he had just time to get up his tent before he was flat on his back. I won't try to tell you of the days he went through. It was a living death. And he would have died, there is no doubt of it, if it hadn't been for a stranger who came along. He was a white man. Marette, it doesn't take a great deal of nerve to go up against a man with a gun, when you've got a gun of your own; and it doesn't take such a lot of nerve to go into battle when a thousand others are going with you. But it does take nerve to face what that stranger faced. And the sick man was nothing to him. He went into that tent and nursed the other back to life. Then the sickness got him, and for ten weeks those two were together, each fighting to save the other's life, and they won out. But the glory of it was with the stranger. He was going west. The constable was going south. They shook hands and parted."

Marette's fingers tightened on Kent's arm. And Kent went on.

"And the constable never forgot, Gray Goose. He wanted the day to come when he might repay. And the time came. It was years later, and it worked out in a curious way. A man was murdered. And the constable, who had become a sergeant now, had talked with the dead man only a little while before he was killed. Returning for something he had forgotten, it was the sergeant who found him dead. Very shortly afterward a man was arrested. There was blood on his clothing. The evidence was convincing, deadly. And this man – "

Kent paused, and in the darkness Marette's hand crept down his arm to his hand, and her fingers closed round it.

"Was the man you lied to save," she whispered.

"Yes. When the halfbreed's bullet got me, I thought it was a good chance to repay Sandy McTrigger for what he did for me in that tent years before. But it wasn't heroic. It wasn't even brave. I thought I was going to die and that I was risking nothing."

And then there came a soft, joyous little laugh from where her head lay on the pillow. "And all the time you were lying so splendidly, Jeems – I KNEW," she cried. "I knew that you didn't kill Barkley, and I knew that you weren't going to die, and I knew what happened in that tent ten years ago. And – Jeems – Jeems – "

She raised herself from the pillow. Her breath was coming a little excitedly. Both her hands, instead of one, were gripping his hand now. "I knew that you didn't kill John Barkley," she repeated. "And —Sandy McTrigger didn't kill him!"

"But – "

"He didn't," she interrupted him, almost fiercely. "He was innocent, as innocent as you were. Jeems – I Jeems – I know who killed Barkley. Oh, I know– I know!"

A choking sob came into her throat, and then she added, in a voice which she was straining to make calm, "Don't think that I haven't faith in you because I can't tell you more now, Jeems," she said. "You will understand – quite soon. When we are safe from the Police, I shall tell you. I shall keep nothing from you then. I shall tell you about Barkley, and Kedsty – everything. But I can't now. It won't be long. When you tell me we are safe, I shall believe you. And then – " She withdrew her hands from his and dropped back on her pillow.

"And then – what?" he asked, leaning far over.

"You may not like me, Jeems."

"I love you," he whispered. "Nothing in the world can stop my loving you."

"Even if I tell you – soon – that I killed Barkley?"

"No. You would be lying."

"Or – if I told you – that I – killed – Kedsty?"

"No matter what you said, or what proof there might be back there, I would not believe you."

She was silent. And then, "Jeems – "

"Yes, Niska, Little Goddess – ?"

"I'm going to tell you something – now!"

He waited.

"It is going to – shock you – Jeems."