Kitabı oku: «The La Chance Mine Mystery», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XV
THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS
Every man carries his skull under his face, but
God alone knows the marks on it.
Indian Proverb.
For a man moved, silent and furtive, in the tunnel between me and the stope!
At the knowledge something flared up in me that had been pretty well burnt out: and that was Hope. That any one was in the place showed Macartney had either put a guard on me – which meant Thompson's abandoned stope was not sealed so mighty securely as I thought – or else it was he himself facing me in the dark, and I might get even with him yet. I let out a string of curses at him on the chance. There was not one single thing he had done – to me, Paulette, or any one else – that I did not put a name to. And I trusted Macartney, or any man he had left in the ink-dark stope, would be fool enough to jump at me for what I said.
But no one jumped. And out of the graveyard blackness in front of me came a muffled chuckle!
It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it would have you. For the chuckle was Dunn's: Dunn's, – who was dead and buried, and Collins with him! But suddenly I was blazing angry, for the chuckle came again, and – dead man's or not – it was mocking! I jumped to it and caught a live throat, hard. But before I could choke the breath out of it a voice that was not Dunn's shouted at me: "Hold your horses, for any sake, Stretton! It's us."
A match rasped, flared in my eyes, and I saw Dunn and Collins! Saw Dunn's stubbly fair hair, clipped close till it stood on end, as it had on the skull I'd said a prayer over and buried; saw Collins standing on the long shank bones I knew I had buried in the bush!
I stared, dazed, facing the two boys I could have sworn were dead and buried. And instead Dunn gasped wheezingly from the rock where I had let him drop, and Collins drawled as if we had met yesterday:
"We heard we were dead! But it wasn't us you buried, or any of Hutton's men either, for he'd have missed 'em. I expect you'd better put your funeral down to two stray prospectors, and let it go at that!" He looked curiously into my face. "You don't seem to have got much yourself by playing the giddy goat with Hutton!"
In the dying flicker of his match I saw his young, sneering eyes, as he called Macartney "Hutton," and realized furiously that Paulette had been right, not only that Dunn and Collins were alive, but that they were on Macartney's side. I blazed out at the two of them:
"So you've been in with Hutton all along, you young swine! I've been a blank fool; I ought to have guessed Hutton had bought you!"
Dunn let out a sharp oath, but Collins only threw down the glowing end of his match. "I wouldn't say we were on Hutton's pay roll exactly, since you seem to have found out Macartney's real name at last," he retorted scornfully. "We've been on our own, ever since we saw fit to disappear and bunk in here. Though by luck Hutton hasn't guessed it, or we wouldn't be here now!"
"I don't know that it's any too clear why you are here," I flung out hotly. "D'ye mean to say you've been living here, hiding, ever since you cleared out, and I thought the wolves ate you? That you knew all along who Macartney was – and never told me?"
"Not exactly here, if you mean Thompson's old stope you're corked up in; but of course we knew Macartney was Hutton," Collins returned categorically. "As for telling you about him – well, we weren't any too sure you weren't Hutton's man yourself – till to-night!"
"What?" said I.
But Collins apologized calmly. "We were asses, of course; but we couldn't tell we'd made a mistake. We didn't have as much fun as a bag of monkeys while we were making it, either, especially when there was that – trouble – in the assay office. We came in on the tail-end of that, only we'd no guns, and it was too late to help our poor chaps, anyway. Besides, we thought you – " but he checked abruptly. "It's too long to explain in this freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not corked up here so dead tight as Hutton-Macartney thinks," and in the dark I knew he grinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide what we're going to do before he discovers that!"
"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I lurched as I turned back to the blocked tunnel entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoulder.
"You can't get her," said he succinctly, "unless we help you! Going to trust us?"
It didn't seem to me that I had any choice; so I said yes. Then I gaped like a fool. Dunn and Collins had me by the arms and were marching me through the dark, not toward the tunnel where I'd been slung in, but back through Thompson's black, abandoned stope, as if it had been Broadway, till the side wall of it brought us up. "Over you go," said Collins gruffly. He gave me a boost against the smooth wall of the stope, and my clawing fingers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf of stone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically, and felt my feet go through the solid stope wall, into space. There was an opening in the living rock, and as Collins lit another match where he stood below me, I saw it: a practicable manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so sharply that it must have been invisible from Thompson's stope, even in candlelight. Collins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the next second we all three slid through the black slit behind our ledge, and out – somewhere else. Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in a second tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe tunnel, too, if I'd been worrying about trifles, but not Thompson's!
The thing made me start, and Collins grinned. "More convenient exit than old Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll come on you'll see." He and his candle disappeared round a loose looking boulder into a dark hole in the tunnel side, and his voice continued blandly as I stumbled after. "Natural cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this second cave leading out of it; and a passage from here to – outside!" He waved his hand around as I stood dumb. "Our little country home!"
What I saw was a small round cave, the glow of a fire under a shaft that led all betraying smoke heaven knew where into the side of the hill, and two spruce beds with blankets. The permanent look of the place was the last straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspecting Macartney, and I burst out, "Why the deuce, with all you knew, couldn't you have brought Paulette here and hidden her?"
"Charliet said we should have." Collins nodded when I stared. "Oh, yes, there's more to that French Canadian than just cook! He's been in the know about us here all this time, or we'd have been in a nice hole for grub. Mind, I don't say he's brave – "
"He was under his bed when I wanted him to-night," I agreed with some bitterness.
"Was he?" Collins exclaimed electrically. "He was here, giving us the office about you! He tore down and told us you'd got Hutton, and we'd better light out and help you: but when we turned out it looked more as if Hutton had got you! When you and Miss Paulette rushed out of the kitchen door you must have run straight into an ambush of his men, and I guess one of them landed you a swipe on the head. Anyhow, Dunn and I met a procession with you frog-marched in the middle of it, that was more than we could manage without guns. So we kind of retired and let the men cork you into Thompson's stope to die. And you bet they did it. Not six of us could have got you out, ever, if we hadn't known a private way."
I cursed him. "My God, stop talking! It's not me I want to hear about. Where was Paulette? D'ye mean you followed me and left her – left a girl – to Macartney? I – I've got to go for her!"
But Collins caught me as I turned. "Macartney hadn't got her – she wasn't there! We hoofed Charliet off to find her, first thing; he'll bring her here, as soon as it's safe to make a get-away. We'd have brought her ourselves, only the show would have been spoiled if Hutton had spotted us. And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out of Thompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for Miss Paulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway." I felt him staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hard ride and a fight?" he demanded irrelevantly, in a voice that sounded oddly far off.
I shook my head; and the smell of coffee smote my famished nostrils as he took a tin pot off the fire. I knew how nearly I had been done when the scalding stuff picked me up like brandy. But – "You're sure about Paulette?" I gasped. "Remember, Macartney was bound to get her!"
"Well, he didn't," Collins returned composedly. "I bet he's looking for her right now, and I'm dead sure he won't find her. Charliet wasn't born yesterday: he'll bring her here all right."
"I'll wait ten minutes," I gave in abruptly, and because I knew I couldn't do anything else till I had filled my empty stomach. But there was something I wanted to know. "What did you mean, just now, about not being sure of me – with Hutton?"
Dunn spoke up for the first time. "It was Miss Paulette; we thought it was you we heard her talking to, two nights in the dark. So when she drove off to Caraquet with you and the gold, after we'd heard her say she couldn't trust you – at least, the man we thought was you – we didn't know whether you were in with Hutton or not, or what kind of a game you were playing."
"Me?" I swore blankly. "I suppose it never struck you that I believed the man playing the game was Collins – till you both disappeared, and I decided it must be some one who never was employed around this mine!"
"Well, I'm hanged," said Collins, and suddenly knocked the wits out of me by muttering that at least we'd both had sense enough to know that Miss Valenka was square.
"Valenka? D'ye mean you knew who she was, too?" I stuttered.
"Dunn did," Collins nodded. "I only knew Hutton. But I knew more than my prayers about him, and Dunn told me about the girl. So we sort of kept guard for her and watched you and Hutton – till the day we had the row with him."
"In the mine! He told me." Only half of me heard him. The rest was listening for the sound of footsteps. But the place was still.
"In Thompson's stope," Collins corrected drily. "You see, we thought you and Macartney-Hutton were working together, and we didn't see our way to tackling the two of you at once. So when you went off to Caraquet with Miss Paulette, we thought we'd get Hutton cleared out of this before you got back again. We kind of let him see us leave work in the mine and sneak into the old stope. When he came after us, we dropped on him with what we knew about him; and between us we knew a deal. We gave him his choice about leaving the neighborhood that minute, or our going straight to Wilbraham and telling who he was and what he was there for – which was where we slipped up! He'd the gall to tell us to our faces that we'd no pull over him, because we were doing private work in Thompson's stope and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And – that rather gave us the check."
"But – why? There wasn't six cents' worth of gold there to steal!"
Collins smiled with shameless simplicity. "I know. But stealing gold was exactly what we were doing, only it wasn't in Thompson's old stope. We'd have been caught with the goods on us though, if any one had fussed round there to investigate. We found our way in here," he jerked his head toward his amateur tunnel, "by accident, in Thompson's time, one day when the stope happened to be empty; and we burrowed on to what looked like the anticlinal, before we heard the stope shift coming and had to slide out. But we'd seen enough to keep us burrowing. We couldn't do much, even after Hutton ran the other tunnel half a mile down the cliff and caught gold there; but we kind of slipped in, evenings, when you missed us out of the bunk house" – he grinned again – "and got the bearings of that vein. And you bet we had to find a way to stay with it; it was too good to leave! We weren't going to work in Wilbraham's mine just for our health and days' wages, when we'd struck our own gold. So we reckoned we'd just – disappear. But we didn't get out as sharp as we did simply on account of our own private affairs. Macartney-Hutton drew a gun the day we had the row he lied to you about, and I guess we just legged it out of Thompson's stope – by the front way! – in time to make the bush with our lives on us. Macartney thought he'd scared us, and we'd lit for Caraquet; but we lit back again after dark. We crawled in here by our back entrance you haven't seen yet, and here we've been ever since! We didn't confide in you, because you seemed pretty thick with Macartney, if you come to think of it; and it seemed a hefty kind of a lie, too, when you told Charliet you'd buried us. I rather think that's all, till to-night – " his indifferent drawl stopped as if it were cut off with a knife. "My God, Stretton," he jerked, "I'd forgotten! Was it true – what Charliet told us to-night – about Dudley Wilbraham?"
I was eating stuff the silent Dunn had supplied, but I put the meat down. "Wilbraham's killed," I heard my own voice say; and then told the rest of it. How Paulette had found Dudley's chewed, wolf-doped cap, and Marcia had found Dudley, silent in the silent bush, where the last wolf was sneaking away. I would not have known Collins's face as he asked what I meant about wolf dope now and when I thought I was swearing at Macartney in Thompson's stope.
I told him, with my ears straining for Charliet and a girl creeping to us, through Collins's back way out. But all I heard was silence, – that thick, underground silence that fills the ears like wool. I had said I would wait ten minutes, and nine of them were gone. I don't think I spoke. Dunn muttered suddenly, "They're not coming!"
Collins shook his head and coldly cursed himself and me for two fools who had lain low, when out in the open together we could have stopped Macartney from getting Dudley, if we couldn't have helped old Thompson. He never mentioned Paulette, or his trusted cook. But he rose, lit a second candle, and led the way out of his warm burrow by a dark hole opposite the one we had entered by, and into a cramped alley where we had to walk bent double. It felt as if it ran a mile before it turned in a sharp right angle. Collins pinched out his light and turned on me. "Just what – are you going to do?"
"Get Paulette," said I.
"M-m," said Collins. "Well, here's where we start. Get hold of my heels when I lie down and don't crowd me." And that was every word that came out of either of us as we dropped flat, and wormed head-first down a slope of smooth stone till cold, fresh air abruptly smote my face. In front of us was an opening, out of the bowels of the hill, into the night and the snow. Rooted juniper hung down over it in an impervious curtain, as it hung everywhere from the rocks at La Chance. Collins pushed it aside, and the two of us were out – out of Thompson's stope, where Macartney had meant me to lie till I died!
CHAPTER XVI
IN COLLINS'S CARE
For two breaths I did not know where I was. It was still snowing, and the night was wild, such a night as we might not have again for weeks. Any one could move in it as securely as behind a curtain, for I could not see a yard before my face, and not a track could lie five minutes. But suddenly the familiarity of the place hit me, till I could have laughed out, if I had been there on any other business. Collins's long passage had wormed behind Thompson's stope, behind the La Chance stables; and it was no wonder he had found it easy enough to get supplies from Charliet. All he had to do was to cross the clearing from the jutting rock that shielded his private entrance and walk into Charliet's kitchen door. I moved toward it, and Collins grabbed at me through the smothering snow.
"Hang on – you don't know who's there! Wait till I ring up Charliet, number one Wolf!" He stood back from me, and far, far off, with a perfect illusion of distance broken by the wind, I heard a wolf howl, once, and then twice again. If he had not stood beside me, I could not have believed the cry came from Collins's throat. But, remembering Dudley, it had an ill-omened sound to me.
"Shut up!" I breathed sharply.
Collins might have remembered Dudley too. "I wasn't going to do it again," he muttered, "but I've had to use it for a signal. It's been a fashionable kind of a sound around here, if I hadn't sense enough to know Macartney brought the beasts that made it. But Charliet knows my howl. He'll come out, if he's – Drop, quick!"
But both of us had dropped already. Some one had flung open the kitchen door and fired a charge of buckshot out into the night. I heard it scatter over my head, and a burst of uproar on its heels told me Charliet's kitchen was crowded with Macartney's men. Somebody – not Charliet – shouted over the noise, "What the devil's that for?" And another voice yelled something about wolves and firing to scare them.
"The boss'll scare you – if you get to firing guns this night," the first voice swore; and a man laughed, insolently. Then the kitchen door banged, and Collins sprang up electrically.
"I don't like this one bit," he muttered. "Macartney's not in the house, or his men wouldn't dare be yelling like that; and Charliet's not there, either, or he'd have been out. That devil must have got him somewhere – him and Miss Paulette! Can't you see there's not a light in the shack, bar the kitchen one? Come on!"
But I was gone already, around the corner of the shack to Paulette's side of it, and I knew better. There was a light – in Paulette's room – shining through a hole in the heavy wooden shutters she had had made for her window, long before I guessed why she wanted them and their bars. It ran through me like fire that Macartney was in that room, deaf to any kind of yells from the kitchen, to everything but Paulette's voice; and nobody but a man who has had to think it can guess what that thought was like to me, out there in the snow. I made for my own window, but it was locked; and God knew who might be watching me out of it, as I had watched Macartney one night, before I knew he was Hutton. I thought: "By gad, Nick Stretton, you'll go in the front door!" For that – with me shut up to die in Thompson's stope, and not one other soul alive to interfere with him – was the last thing Macartney would think to lock! Nor had he. The latch lifted just as usual, and I walked in.
The long passage through the shack was dark; and, after the storm outside, dead silent. It was empty, too, as the living room was empty; but what I thought of was my dream girl's door. That was open a foot-wide space, and somebody inside it sobbed sickeningly. But if Macartney were there he was not speaking. I daresay I forgot I had no gun to kill him with. I crept forward in the soundless moccasins I had reason to thank heaven were my only wear and suddenly felt Collins beside me, in his stocking feet.
"Hang on," he breathed; "I tell you he isn't there! If he were, you couldn't get him. One shout, and he'd have the whole gang out on us!"
I knew afterwards that he'd stubbed his toe on Marcia Wilbraham's little revolver she'd dropped on the passage floor, and was ready to keep my back if the gang did come; but then I hardly heard him. I stood rooted at Paulette's door, staring in; for Paulette was not there – Macartney was not there! What I saw was Marcia Wilbraham with her back to me, crying hysterically, as I might have known Paulette would never cry, and flinging out of a trunk, as if Paulette were dead or gone, every poor little bit of clothes and oddments that were my dream girl's own!
I can't write what that made me feel. Ribbons, bits of laces, little blue stockings, shoes, grew into a heap. And I would have been fool enough to jump in on Marcia and shake out of her how she dared to touch them, whether Paulette were dead or alive, if Collins had not gripped me hard.
"The emeralds," he muttered. "She's rooting for them!"
I had pretty well forgotten there ever were any emeralds, and I stared at him like a fool.
"Van Ruyne's emeralds – she thinks Miss Paulette has 'em," Collins's lips explained soundlessly. "And they're round Macartney's own neck – I saw them! Dunn and I were going to swipe them, only we couldn't."
I damned the emeralds. What I wanted of Marcia was to find out what had become of Paulette. But Collins gripped me harder. "Let her see you, and you'll never know," he breathed fiercely. "She'd give one yell, and we'd be done. Macartney's either got the girl and Charliet, or they're lost in the snow and he's hunting for them. Let's get some guns and go see which; we're crazy to stay here!"
I nodded mechanically. I knew what it meant for a girl to be lost in the snow on such a night as I had just closed the shack door on, even with Charliet beside her; how Collins and I might tramp, search – yes, and call, too – uselessly, beside the very drift where she lay smothered. And then I realized I was a fool. Macartney would not give Paulette a chance to get lost. He had her somewhere, her and Charliet, and Collins and I had to take her from him. But something inexplicable stopped me dead as I turned for the shack door. Macartney had never been a winter at La Chance; he had no snowshoes. Charliet had some, I didn't know where. But I had two pairs in my own room. That inexplicable suggestion told me I needed them badly, though I knew it was silly; if Macartney had Paulette he would not be marching her through the snow. All the places I had to search for her were the stable and the assay office. And yet – I backed Collins noiselessly past the room where Marcia was still pulling round Paulette's trunk, with a noise that covered any we could make, and the two of us ended up in my room in the black dark. I stood Collins at the door while I felt for my snowshoes. I knew it was crazy, and I was just obsessed, but I got them. I didn't get much else. I couldn't find my rifle I had hoped for, and only a couple of boxes of revolver cartridges were in my open trunk, – that I guessed Marcia had gone through too. I would have felt like wringing her neck, if it had not been for Paulette and Macartney. I had no room for outside emotions till I knew about those two. I slid back to my doorway to get Collins, and he was gone. Where to, I had no earthly idea. I looked to see if he had been cracked enough to tackle Marcia, and Marcia was alone on her knees, chucking all Paulette's things back into her trunk again. The place suddenly felt dead quiet. Marcia had stopped sobbing, and I believe she would have heard a mouse move, – there was that kind of a listening look about her. And it was that minute – that unsuitable, inimical minute – that I heard some one move! Outside, on the doorstep, somebody stumbled. The latch lifted, the door swung in, – and I jumped to meet Macartney with not one thing on me but some fool snowshoes and a pocketful of useless cartridges. But I brought up dead still, and rigid.
"Charliet – oh, Charliet, come quick," whispered Paulette. She was snow from head to foot where she stood in the shack door. "I couldn't find – " But she recoiled as she saw me, against the light Marcia had burning inside her own half-open door. "Oh, my God, Nicky!" she cried in a voice that brought my soul alive, that fool's soul that had lost her. She caught at me like a child, incredulously, wildly. "Oh, Nicky!"
There was no time to ask where she'd been, nor even of Macartney. I think the unsuitable thing I said was "Marcia!" For I heard Marcia jump and fall over Paulette's open trunk, before she was out of her door like one of the wolves Macartney was so fond of. I didn't think she saw us, but she did see Collins. The thing that cut her off was his rush out of somewhere. I heard her scream with furious terror; heard Paulette's door bang on her; and Collins was beside me with a rifle and some dunnage I scarcely saw in the sudden dark of the passage after that banged door.
"Run," said he, through his teeth. "Gimme that stuff! Run!" he stuffed my snowshoes under the arm that held the rifle. "No, not that way! This way." He cut across the clearing in the opposite direction from the hole that led to his underground den, and it was time. Half of Macartney's men were tearing through the passage toward Marcia's screams, and the rest were pouring out of the kitchen door. In the storm we could only hear them. I was carrying Paulette like a baby, and with her head against me I could not see her face. All I could see was swirling, stinging snow in my eyes, and the sudden dark of the bush we brought up in. I kept along the edge of it, circling the clearing, and all but fell over the end of Collins's jutting rock. And this time I thanked God for the furious snow; in ten minutes there would be no sign of our tracks from the front door to the hold the rock shielded, and there was no earthly chance of Macartney's men picking them up before we were safe.
It felt like years before the three of us were inside the curtain of juniper, swarming up the smooth rock face, but Collins observed contrarily that he'd never done it so quickly. He led the way up to the passage angle where he had pinched out his light, put down the snowshoes and the rifle, laid something else on the ground with remarkable caution, and walked on some feet before he lit his candle.
"Better travel light and get home. Dunn and I'll come back presently and bring up the dunnage," he observed as blandly as if the three of us had been for an evening stroll, and suddenly laughed as he saw me glance at his stockinged feet. "By golly, I've left my boots in the shack, and I haven't any others – but it was worth a pair of boots! I stubbed my toe on Miss Wilbraham's little revolver she must have dropped on the passage floor, and I've got it. Also, let alone her lost toy-dog gun, I got all her ammunition and her rifle, while she was grabbing in Miss Paulette's trunk.
"'Taffy went to my house,
Thought I was asleep.
I went to Taffy's house,
And stole a side of beef'
– as I learned when I was young. Come on, Stretton; I bet we'll be top-sides with Macartney-Hutton yet!"
"He's out, looking for me – " but Paulette's sentence broke in a gasp. "Why, it's Collins!" She stared incredulously in the candlelight.
"Just that," imperturbably. "Stretton can tell you all about me presently, Miss Paulette. For now I imagine you'd sooner see a fire and something to eat. Put her in between us, Stretton, Indian file, and we'll take her down."
Women are queer things. Tatiana Paulina Valenka had tramped the bush most of the day before looking for a dead man, had found him – a sight no girl should have looked on; had run for more than her life with me, and been through God knew what since; and she walked down that unknown, dark passage with Collins and me as if nothing had ever happened to her. She greeted Dunn, too; and then, as he and Collins disappeared to fetch down our snowshoes and rifle, went straight to pieces where she and I stood safe by their fire. "Oh, oh, oh, I thought you were dead! I saw them get you. I can't believe – can't believe – " she gasped out in jerks, as if she fought for her very breath, and suddenly dropped flat on Dunn's old blanket. "Oh, Nicky," she moaned, "don't let me faint – now. Nicky!"
There was something in her voice – I don't know – but it made me dizzy with sheer, clear joy. She had said my name as if I were the one man in the world for her, as if I had risen from the dead. But I dared not say so. I knew better than even to lift her head where she lay with closed eyes on Dunn's blanket, but I got Collins's old tin cup to her lips somehow and made her drink his strong coffee till it set her blood running, as it had set mine. After a minute she sat up dizzily, but she pushed away my bread and meat. "Presently – I'd be sick now," she whispered. "How did you get – out of Thompson's stope? And where – I mean I can't understand, about Collins and Dunn!"
"They got me out," said I, and explained about them. But there was no particular surprise on Paulette's face. She never made an earthly comment, either, when I told her they'd always known all about her and Hutton, except, "I never thought they were dead; I told you that. I'd an idea, too, that Charliet didn't think so either."
I had one arm round her by that time, feeding her with my other hand like a child, with bits of bread soaked in black coffee. If I had any thoughts they were only fear that she might move from me as soon as she really came to herself. But Charliet's name brought me back from what was next door to heaven. "Charliet," said I blankly; "where in the world is he? D'ye mean he hadn't told you about Collins and Dunn? Why, he was to bring you to them – here – hours ago!"
"Charliet was? But – " Suddenly, beyond belief, my dream girl turned and clung to me. God knows I knelt like a statue. I was afraid to stir. It was Dudley she loved: I was only a man who was trusted and a friend. "Oh, Nicky, you don't know," she cried, "you don't know! You and I ran straight into some of Dick Hutton's men when we raced out of the shack. And you threw me – just picked me up like a puppy and threw me – out of their way, into the deep snow. I heard them get you, but I was half smothered; I couldn't either see or speak. But I heard Dick shout from somewhere to 'chuck Stretton into Thompson's old stope!' I thought it meant they'd killed you; that it was another man I'd let – be murdered!"
She caught her breath as if something stabbed her, and I know it stabbed me to think I was just "another man" to her. But I knelt steady. I had been a fool to think it was I she cared for, personally, and whether she did or not she needed my arm. "Well?" I asked. "Next?"
"I was scrambling out of the snow," I felt her shiver against me, "only before I could stand up Charliet raced up from somewhere and shoved me straight down in the drift again. He said Dick was looking for me, and to lie still, while he got him away; then to race for the shack and hide just outside the front door, till he came for me – but before he could finish Dick ran down on the two of us, with a lantern. He'd have fallen over me, if Charliet hadn't stopped him by yelling that I'd run for the bush. I think he grabbed the lantern – but anyhow, they both tore off. I got to the shack, but – Oh, Nicky, I couldn't wait there. I – "
