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+Project Gutenberg's The Valley Of Silent Men, by James Oliver Curwood
+#8 in our series by James Oliver Curwood
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+Title: The Valley Of Silent Men
+       A Story of the Three River Company
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4707]
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+
+THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
+
+A STORY OF THE THREE RIVER COUNTRY
+
+BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER'S END," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
+
+
+Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through
+the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold
+over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and
+adventure of the great white North. It is still Iskwatam--the
+"door" which opens to the lower reaches of the Athabasca, the
+Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is somewhat difficult to find on the
+map, yet it is there, because its history is written in more than
+a hundred and forty years of romance and tragedy and adventure in
+the lives of men, and is not easily forgotten. Over the old trail
+it was about a hundred and fifty miles north of Edmonton. The
+railroad has brought it nearer to that base of civilization, but
+beyond it the wilderness still howls as it has howled for a
+thousand years, and the waters of a continent flow north and into
+the Arctic Ocean. It is possible that the beautiful dream of the
+real-estate dealers may come true, for the most avid of all the
+sportsmen of the earth, the money-hunters, have come up on the
+bumpy railroad that sometimes lights its sleeping cars with
+lanterns, and with them have come typewriters, and stenographers,
+and the art of printing advertisements, and the Golden Rule of
+those who sell handfuls of earth to hopeful purchasers thousands
+of miles away--"Do others as they would do you." And with it, too,
+has come the legitimate business of barter and trade, with eyes on
+all that treasure of the North which lies between the Grand Rapids
+of the Athabasca and the edge of the polar sea. But still more
+beautiful than the dream of fortunes quickly made is the deep-
+forest superstition that the spirits of the wilderness dead move
+onward as steam and steel advance, and if this is so, the ghosts
+of a thousand Pierres and Jacquelines have risen uneasily from
+their graves at Athabasca Landing, hunting a new quiet farther
+north.
+
+For it was Pierre and Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his
+Jeanne, whose brown hands for a hundred and forty years opened and
+closed this door. And those hands still master a savage world for
+two thousand miles north of that threshold of Athabasca Landing.
+South of it a wheezy engine drags up the freight that came not so
+many months ago by boat.
+
+It is over this threshold that the dark eyes of Pierre and
+Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his Jeanne, look into the
+blue and the gray and the sometimes watery ones of a destroying
+civilization. And there it is that the shriek of a mad locomotive
+mingles with their age-old river chants; the smut of coal drifts
+over their forests; the phonograph screeches its reply to le
+violon; and Pierre and Henri and Jacques no longer find themselves
+the kings of the earth when they come in from far countries with
+their precious cargoes of furs. And they no longer swagger and
+tell loud-voiced adventure, or sing their wild river songs in the
+same old abandon, for there are streets at Athabasca Landing now,
+and hotels, and schools, and rules and regulations of a kind new
+and terrifying to the bold of the old voyageurs.
+
+It seems only yesterday that the railroad was not there, and a
+great world of wilderness lay between the Landing and the upper
+rim of civilization. And when word first came that a steam thing
+was eating its way up foot by foot through forest and swamp and
+impassable muskeg, that word passed up and down the water-ways for
+two thousand miles, a colossal joke, a stupendous bit of drollery,
+the funniest thing that Pierre and Henri and Jacques had heard in
+all their lives. And when Jacques wanted to impress upon Pierre
+his utter disbelief of a thing, he would say:
+
+"It will happen, m'sieu, when the steam thing comes to the
+Landing, when cow-beasts eat with the moose, and when our bread is
+found for us in yonder swamps!"
+
+And the steam thing came, and cows grazed where moose had fed, and
+bread WAS gathered close to the edge of the great swamps. Thus did
+civilization break into Athabasca Landing.
+
+Northward from the Landing, for two thousand miles, reached the
+domain of the rivermen. And the Landing, with its two hundred and
+twenty-seven souls before the railroad came, was the wilderness
+clearing-house which sat at the beginning of things. To it came
+from the south all the freight which must go into the north; on
+its flat river front were built the great scows which carried this
+freight to the end of the earth. It was from the Landing that the
+greatest of all river brigades set forth upon their long
+adventures, and it was back to the Landing, perhaps a year or more
+later, that still smaller scows and huge canoes brought as the
+price of exchange their cargoes of furs.
+
+Thus for nearly a century and a half the larger craft, with their
+great sweeps and their wild-throated crews, had gone DOWN the
+river toward the Arctic Ocean, and the smaller craft, with their
+still wilder crews, had come UP the river toward civilization. The
+River, as the Landing speaks of it, is the Athabasca, with its
+headwaters away off in the British Columbian mountains, where
+Baptiste and McLeod, explorers of old, gave up their lives to find
+where the cradle of it lay. And it sweeps past the Landing, a slow
+and mighty giant, unswervingly on its way to the northern sea.
+With it the river brigades set forth. For Pierre and Henri and
+Jacques it is going from one end to the other of the earth. The
+Athabasca ends and is replaced by the Slave, and the Slave empties
+into Great Slave Lake, and from the narrow tip of that Lake the
+Mackenzie carries on for more than a thousand miles to the sea.
+
+In this distance of the long water trail one sees and hears many
+things. It is life. It is adventure. It is mystery and romance and
+hazard. Its tales are so many that books could not hold them. In
+the faces of men and women they are written. They lie buried in
+graves so old that the forest trees grow over them. Epics of
+tragedy, of love, of the fight to live! And as one goes farther
+north, and still farther, just so do the stories of things that
+have happened change.
+
+For the world is changing, the sun is changing, and the breeds of
+men are changing. At the Landing in July there are seventeen hours
+of sunlight; at Fort Chippewyan there are eighteen; at Fort
+Resolution, Fort Simpson, and Fort Providence there are nineteen;
+at the Great Bear twenty-one, and at Fort McPherson, close to the
+polar sea, from twenty-two to twenty-three. And in December there
+are also these hours of darkness. With light and darkness men
+change, women change, and life changes. And Pierre and Henri and
+Jacques meet them all, but always THEY are the same, chanting the
+old songs, enshrining the old loves, dreaming the same dreams, and
+worshiping always the same gods. They meet a thousand perils with
+eyes that glisten with the love of adventure.
+
+The thunder of rapids and the howlings of storm do not frighten
+them. Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle
+joyously with it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is
+red and strong. Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves
+up to the skies. Yet they are simple as children, and when they
+are afraid, it is of things which children fear. For in those
+hearts of theirs is superstition--and also, perhaps, royal blood.
+For princes and the sons of princes and the noblest aristocracy of
+France were the first of the gentlemen adventurers who came with
+ruffles on their sleeves and rapiers at their sides to seek furs
+worth many times their weight in gold two hundred and fifty years
+ago, and of these ancient forebears Pierre and Henri and Jacques,
+with their Maries and Jeannes and Jacquelines, are the living
+voices of today.
+
+And these voices tell many stories. Sometimes they whisper them,
+as the wind would whisper, for there are stories weird and strange
+that must be spoken softly. They darken no printed pages. The
+trees listen to them beside red camp-fires at night. Lovers tell
+them in the glad sunshine of day. Some of them are chanted in
+song. Some of them come down through the generations, epics of the
+wilderness, remembered from father to son. And each year there are
+the new things to pass from mouth to mouth, from cabin to cabin,
+from the lower reaches of the Mackenzie to the far end of the
+world at Athabasca Landing. For the three rivers are always makers
+of romance, of tragedy, of adventure. The story will never be
+forgotten of how Follette and Ladouceur swam their mad race
+through the Death Chute for love of the girl who waited at the
+other end, or of how Campbell O'Doone, the red-headed giant at
+Fort Resolution, fought the whole of a great brigade in his effort
+to run away with a scow captain's daughter.
+
+And the brigade loved O'Doone, though it beat him, for these men
+of the strong north love courage and daring. The epic of the lost
+scow--how there were men who saw it disappear from under their
+very eyes, floating upward and afterward riding swiftly away in
+the skies--is told and retold by strong-faced men, deep in whose
+eyes are the smoldering flames of an undying superstition, and
+these same men thrill as they tell over again the strange and
+unbelievable story of Hartshope, the aristocratic Englishman who
+set off into the North in all the glory of monocle and
+unprecedented luggage, and how he joined in a tribal war, became a
+chief of the Dog Ribs, and married a dark-eyed, sleek-haired,
+little Indian beauty, who is now the mother of his children.
+
+But deepest and most thrilling of all the stories they tell are
+the stories of the long arm of the Law--that arm which reaches for
+two thousand miles from Athabasca Landing to the polar sea, the
+arm Of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
+
+And of these it is the story of Jim Kent we are going to tell, of
+Jim Kent and of Marette, that wonderful little goddess of the
+Valley of Silent Men, in whose veins there must have run the blood
+of fighting men--and of ancient queens. A story of the days before
+the railroad came.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In the mind of James Grenfell Kent, sergeant in the Royal
+Northwest Mounted Police, there remained no shadow of a doubt. He
+knew that he was dying. He had implicit faith in Cardigan, his
+surgeon friend, and Cardigan had told him that what was left of
+his life would be measured out in hours--perhaps in minutes or
+seconds. It was an unusual case. There was one chance in fifty
+that he might live two or three days, but there was no chance at
+all that he would live more than three. The end might come with
+any breath he drew into his lungs. That was the pathological
+history of the thing, as far as medical and surgical science knew
+of cases similar to his own.
+
+Personally, Kent did not feel like a dying man. His vision and his
+brain were clear. He felt no pain, and only at infrequent
+intervals was his temperature above normal. His voice was
+particularly calm and natural.
+
+At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan broke the news.
+That the bullet which a drunken half-breed had sent into his chest
+two weeks before had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an
+aneurism, was a statement by Cardigan which did not sound
+especially wicked or convincing to him. "Aorta" and "aneurism"
+held about as much significance for him as his perichondrium or
+the process of his stylomastoid. But Kent possessed an unswerving
+passion to grip at facts in detail, a characteristic that had
+largely helped him to earn the reputation of being the best man-
+hunter in all the northland service. So he had insisted, and his
+surgeon friend had explained.
+
+The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching over and
+leading from the heart, and in nicking it the bullet had so
+weakened its outer wall that it bulged out in the form of a sack,
+just as the inner tube of an automobile tire bulges through the
+outer casing when there is a blowout.
+
+"And when that sack gives way inside you," Cardigan had explained,
+"you'll go like that!" He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive
+the fact home.
+
+After that it was merely a matter of common sense to believe, and
+now, sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting
+in the full health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the
+paralyzing shock he was contributing as a final legacy to the
+world at large, or at least to that part of it which knew him or
+was interested. The tragedy of the thing did not oppress him. A
+thousand times in his life he had discovered that humor and
+tragedy were very closely related, and that there were times when
+only the breadth of a hair separated the two. Many times he had
+seen a laugh change suddenly to tears, and tears to laughter.
+
+The tableau, as it presented itself about his bedside now, amused
+him. Its humor was grim, but even in these last hours of his life
+he appreciated it. He had always more or less regarded life as a
+joke--a very serious joke, but a joke for all that--a whimsical
+and trickful sort of thing played by the Great Arbiter on humanity
+at large; and this last count in his own life, as it was solemnly
+and tragically ticking itself off, was the greatest joke of all.
+The amazed faces that stared at him, their passing moments of
+disbelief, their repressed but at times visible betrayals of
+horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the tenseness of their lips
+--all added to what he might have called, at another time, the
+dramatic artistry of his last great adventure.
+
+That he was dying did not chill him, or make him afraid, or put a
+tremble into his voice. The contemplation of throwing off the mere
+habit of breathing had never at any stage of his thirty-six years
+of life appalled him. Those years, because he had spent a
+sufficient number of them in the raw places of the earth, had
+given him a philosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he
+kept unto himself without effort to impress them on other people.
+He believed that life itself was the cheapest thing on the face of
+all the earth. All other things had their limitations.
+
+There was so much water and so much land, so many mountains and so
+many plains, so many square feet to live on and so many square
+feet to be buried in. All things could be measured, and stood up,
+and catalogued--except life itself. "Given time," he would say, "a
+single pair of humans can populate all creation." Therefore, being
+the cheapest of all things, it was true philosophy that life
+should be the easiest of all things to give up when the necessity
+came.
+
+Which is only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and
+never had been, afraid to die. But it does not say that he
+treasured life a whit less than the man in another room, who, a
+day or so before, had fought like a lunatic before going under an
+anesthetic for the amputation of a bad finger. No man had loved
+life more than he. No man had lived nearer it.
+
+It had been a passion with him. Full of dreams, and always with
+anticipations ahead, no matter how far short realizations fell, he
+was an optimist, a lover of the sun and the moon and the stars, a
+worshiper of the forests and of the mountains, a man who loved his
+life, and who had fought for it, and yet who was ready--at the
+last--to yield it up without a whimper when the fates asked for
+it.
+
+Bolstered up against his pillows, he did not look the part of the
+fiend he was confessing himself to be to the people about him.
+Sickness had not emaciated him. The bronze of his lean, clean-cut
+face had faded a little, but the tanning of wind and sun and
+campfire was still there. His blue eyes were perhaps dulled
+somewhat by the nearness of death. One would not have judged him
+to be thirty-six, even though over one temple there was a streak
+of gray in his blond hair--a heritage from his mother, who was
+dead. Looking at him, as his lips quietly and calmly confessed
+himself beyond the pale of men's sympathy or forgiveness, one
+would have said that his crime was impossible.
+
+Through his window, as he sat bolstered up in his cot, Kent could
+see the slow-moving shimmer of the great Athabasca River as it
+moved on its way toward the Arctic Ocean. The sun was shining, and
+he saw the cool, thick masses of the spruce and cedar forests
+beyond, the rising undulations of wilderness ridges and hills, and
+through that open window he caught the sweet scents that came with
+a soft wind from out of the forests he had loved for so many
+years.
+
+"They've been my best friends," he had said to Cardigan, "and when
+this nice little thing you're promising happens to me, old man, I
+want to go with my eyes on them."
+
+So his cot was close to the window.
+
+Nearest to him sat Cardigan. In his face, more than in any of the
+others, was disbelief. Kedsty, Inspector of the Royal Northwest
+Mounted Police, in charge of N Division during an indefinite leave
+of absence of the superintendent, was paler even than the girl
+whose nervous fingers were swiftly putting upon paper every word
+that was spoken by those in the room. O'Connor, staff-sergeant,
+was like one struck dumb. The little, smooth-faced Catholic
+missioner whose presence as a witness Kent had requested, sat with
+his thin fingers tightly interlaced, silently placing this among
+all the other strange tragedies that the wilderness had given up
+to him. They had all been Kent's friends, his intimate friends,
+with the exception of the girl, whom Inspector Kedsty had borrowed
+for the occasion. With the little missioner he had spent many an
+evening, exchanging in mutual confidence the strange and
+mysterious happenings of the deep forests, and of the great north
+beyond the forests. O'Connor's friendship was a friendship bred of
+the brotherhood of the trails. It was Kent and O'Connor who had
+brought down the two Eskimo murderers from the mouth of the
+Mackenzie, and the adventure had taken them fourteen months. Kent
+loved O'Connor, with his red face, his red hair, and his big
+heart, and to him the most tragic part of it all was that he was
+breaking this friendship now.
+
+But it was Inspector Kedsty, commanding N Division, the biggest
+and wildest division in all the Northland, that roused in Kent an
+unusual emotion, even as he waited for that explosion just over
+his heart which the surgeon had told him might occur at any
+moment. On his death-bed his mind still worked analytically. And
+Kedsty, since the moment he had entered the room, had puzzled
+Kent. The commander of N Division was an unusual man. He was
+sixty, with iron-gray hair, cold, almost colorless eyes in which
+one would search long for a gleam of either mercy or fear, and a
+nerve that Kent had never seen even slightly disturbed. It took
+such a man, an iron man, to run N Division according to law, for N
+Division covered an area of six hundred and twenty thousand square
+miles of wildest North America, extending more than two thousand
+miles north of the 70th parallel of latitude, with its farthest
+limit three and one-half degrees within the Arctic Circle. To
+police this area meant upholding the law in a country fourteen
+times the size of the state of Ohio. And Kedsty was the man who
+had performed this duty as only one other man had ever succeeded
+in doing it.
+
+Yet Kedsty, of the five about Kent, was most disturbed. His face
+was ash-gray. A number of times Kent had detected a broken note in
+his voice. He had seen his hands grip at the arms of the chair he
+sat in until the cords stood out on them as if about to burst. He
+had never seen Kedsty sweat until now.
+
+Twice the Inspector had wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He
+was no longer Minisak--"The Rock"--a name given to him by the
+Crees. The armor that no shaft had ever penetrated seemed to have
+dropped from him. He had ceased to be Kedsty, the most dreaded
+inquisitor in the service. He was nervous, and Kent could see that
+he was fighting to repossess himself.
+
+"Of course you know what this means to the Service," he said in a
+hard, low voice. "It means--"
+
+"Disgrace," nodded Kent. "I know. It means a black spot on the
+otherwise bright escutcheon of N Division. But it can't be helped.
+I killed John Barkley. The man you've got in the guard-house,
+condemned to be hanged by the neck until he is dead, is innocent.
+I understand. It won't be nice for the Service to let it be known
+that a sergeant in His Majesty's Royal Mounted is an ordinary
+murderer, but--"
+
+"Not an ORDINARY murderer," interrupted Kedsty. "As you have
+described it, the crime was deliberate--horrible and inexcusable
+to its last detail. You were not moved by a sudden passion. You
+tortured your victim. It is inconceivable!"
+
+"And yet true," said Kent.
+
+He was looking at the stenographer's slim fingers as they put down
+his words and Kedsty's. A bit of sunshine touched her bowed head,
+and he observed the red lights in her hair. His eyes swept to
+O'Connor, and in that moment the commander of N Division bent over
+him, so close that his face almost touched Kent's, and he
+whispered, in a voice so low that no one of the other four could
+hear,
+
+"KENT--YOU LIE!"
+
+"No, it is true," replied Kent.
+
+Kedsty drew back, again wiping the moisture from his forehead.
+
+"I killed Barkley, and I killed him as I planned that he should
+die," Kent went on. "It was my desire that he should suffer. The
+one thing which I shall not tell you is WHY I killed him. But it
+was a sufficient reason."
+
+He saw the shuddering tremor that swept through the shoulders of
+the girl who was putting down the condemning notes.
+
+"And you refuse to confess your motive?"
+
+"Absolutely--except that he had wronged me in a way that deserved
+death."
+
+"And you make this confession knowing that you are about to die?"
+
+The flicker of a smile passed over Kent's lips. He looked at
+O'Connor and for an instant saw in O'Connor's eyes a flash of
+their old comradeship.
+
+"Yes. Dr. Cardigan has told me. Otherwise I should have let the
+man in the guard-house hang. It's simply that this accursed bullet
+has spoiled my luck--and saved him!"
+
+Kedsty spoke to the girl. For half an hour she read her notes, and
+after that Kent wrote his name on the last page. Then Kedsty rose
+from his chair.
+
+"We have finished, gentlemen," he said.
+
+They trailed out, the girl hurrying through the door first in her
+desire to free herself of an ordeal that had strained every nerve
+in her body. The commander of N Division was last to go. Cardigan
+hesitated, as if to remain, but Kedsty motioned him on. It was
+Kedsty who closed the door, and as he closed it he looked back,
+and for a flash Kent met his eyes squarely. In that moment he
+received an impression which he had not caught while the Inspector
+was in the room. It was like an electrical shock in its
+unexpectedness, and Kedsty must have seen the effect of it in his
+face, for he moved back quickly and closed the door. In that
+instant Kent had seen in Kedsty's eyes and face a look that was
+not only of horror, but what in the face and eyes of another man
+he would have sworn was fear.
+
+It was a gruesome moment in which to smile, but Kent smiled. The
+shock was over. By the rules of the Criminal Code he knew that
+Kedsty even now was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail
+an officer to guard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop
+off at any moment would make no difference in the regulations of
+the law. And Kedsty was a stickler for the law as it was written.
+Through the closed door he heard voices indistinctly. Then there
+were footsteps, dying away. He could hear the heavy thump, thump
+of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor had always walked like that, even
+on the trail.
+
+Softly then the door reopened, and Father Layonne, the little
+missioner, came in. Kent knew that this would be so, for Father
+Layonne knew neither code nor creed that did not reach all the
+hearts of the wilderness. He came back, and sat down close to
+Kent, and took one of his hands and held it closely in both of his
+own. They were not the soft, smooth hands of the priestly
+hierarchy, but were hard with the callosity of toil, yet gentle
+with the gentleness of a great sympathy. He had loved Kent
+yesterday, when Kent had stood clean in the eyes of both God and
+men, and he still loved him today, when his soul was stained with
+a thing that must be washed away with his own life.
+
+"I'm sorry, lad," he said. "I'm sorry."
+
+Something rose up in Kent's throat that was not the blood he had
+been wiping away since morning. His fingers returned the pressure
+of the little missioner's hands. Then he pointed out through the
+window to the panorama of shimmering river and green forests.
+
+"It is hard to say good-by to all that, Father," he said. "But, if
+you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm not afraid of
+it. And why be unhappy because one has only a little while to
+live? Looking back over your life, does it seem so very long ago
+that you were a boy, a small boy?"
+
+"The time has gone swiftly, very swiftly."
+
+"It seems only yesterday--or so?"
+
+"Yes, only yesterday--or so."
+
+Kent's face lit up with the whimsical smile that long ago had
+reached the little missioner's heart. "Well, that's the way I'm
+looking at it, Father. There is only a yesterday, a today, and a
+tomorrow in the longest of our lives. Looking back from seventy
+years isn't much different from looking back from thirty-six WHEN
+you're looking back and not ahead. Do you think what I have just
+said will free Sandy McTrigger?"
+
+"There is no doubt. Your statements have been accepted as a death-
+bed confession."
+
+The little missioner, instead of Kent, was betraying a bit of
+nervousness.
+
+"There are matters, my son--some few matters--which you will want
+attended to. Shall we not talk about them?"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Your people, first. I remember that once you told me there was no
+one. But surely there is some one somewhere."
+
+Kent shook his head. "There is no one now. For ten years those
+forests out there have been father, mother, and home to me."
+
+"But there must be personal affairs, affairs which you would like
+to entrust, perhaps, to me?"
+
+Kent's face brightened, and for an instant a flash of humor leaped
+into his eyes. "It is funny," he chuckled. "Since you remind me of
+it, Father, it is quite in form to make my will. I've bought a few
+little pieces of land here. Now that the railroad has almost
+reached us from Edmonton, they've jumped up from the seven or
+eight hundred dollars I gave for them to about ten thousand. I
+want you to sell the lots and use the money in your work. Put as
+much of it on the Indians as you can. They've always been good
+brothers to me. And I wouldn't waste much time in getting my
+signature on some sort of paper to that effect."
+
+Father Layonne's eyes shone softly. "God will bless you for that,
+Jimmy," he said, using the intimate name by which he had known
+him. "And I think He is going to pardon you for something else, if
+you have the courage to ask Him."
+
+"I am pardoned," replied Kent, looking out through the window. "I
+feel it. I know it, Father."
+
+In his soul the little missioner was praying. He knew that Kent's
+religion was not his religion, and he did not press the service
+which he would otherwise have rendered. After a moment he rose to
+his feet, and it was the old Kent who looked up into his face, the
+clean-faced, gray-eyed, unafraid Kent, smiling in the old way.
+
+"I have one big favor to ask of you, Father," he said. "If I've
+got a day to live, I don't want every one forcing the fact on me
+that I'm dying. If I've any friends left, I want them to come in
+and see me, and talk, and crack jokes. I want to smoke my pipe.
+I'll appreciate a box of cigars if you'll send 'em up. Cardigan
+can't object now. Will you arrange these things for me? They'll
+listen to you--and please shove my cot a little nearer the window
+before you go."
+
+Father Layonne performed the service in silence. Then at last the
+yearning overcame him to have the soul speak out, that his God
+might be more merciful, and he said: "My boy, you are sorry? You
+repent that you killed John Barkley?"
+
+"No, I'm not sorry. It had to be done. And please don't forget the
+cigars, will you, Father?"
+
+"No, I won't forget," said the little missioner, and turned away.
+
+As the door opened and closed behind him, the flash of humor
+leaped into Kent's eyes again, and he chuckled even as he wiped
+another of the telltale stains of blood from his lips. He had
+played the game. And the funny part about it was that no one in
+all the world would ever know, except himself--and perhaps one
+other.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Outside Kent's window was Spring, the glorious Spring of the
+Northland, and in spite of the death-grip that was tightening in
+his chest he drank it in deeply and leaned over so that his eyes
+traveled over wide spaces of the world that had been his only a
+short time before.
+
+It occurred to him that he had suggested this knoll that
+overlooked both settlement and river as the site for the building
+which Dr. Cardigan called his hospital. It was a structure rough
+and unadorned, unpainted, and sweetly smelling with the aroma of
+the spruce trees from the heart of which its unplaned lumber was
+cut. The breath of it was a thing to bring cheer and hope. Its
+silvery walls, in places golden and brown with pitch and freckled
+with knots, spoke joyously of life that would not die, and the
+woodpeckers came and hammered on it as though it were still a part
+of the forest, and red squirrels chattered on the roof and
+scampered about in play with a soft patter of feet.
+
+"It's a pretty poor specimen of man that would die up here with
+all that under his eyes," Kent had said a year before, when he and
+Cardigan had picked out the site. "If he died looking at that,
+why, he just simply ought to die, Cardigan," he had laughed.
+
+And now he was that poor specimen, looking out on the glory of the
+world!
+
+His vision took in the South and a part of the East and West, and
+in all those directions there was no end of the forest. It was
+like a vast, many-colored sea with uneven billows rising and
+falling until the blue sky came down to meet them many miles away.
+More than once his heart ached at the thought of the two thin ribs
+of steel creeping up foot by foot and mile by mile from Edmonton,
+a hundred and fifty miles away. It was, to him, a desecration, a
+crime against Nature, the murder of his beloved wilderness. For in
+his soul that wilderness had grown to be more than a thing of
+spruce and cedar and balsam, of poplar and birch; more than a
+great, unused world of river and lake and swamp. It was an
+individual, a thing. His love for it was greater than his love for
+man. It was his inarticulate God. It held him as no religion in
+the world could have held him, and deeper and deeper it had drawn
+him into the soul of itself, delivering up to him one by one its
+guarded secrets and its mysteries, opening for him page by page
+the book that was the greatest of all books. And it was the wonder
+of it now, the fact that it was near him, about him, embracing
+him, glowing for him in the sunshine, whispering to him in the
+soft breath of the air, nodding and talking to him from the crest
+of every ridge, that gave to him a strange happiness even in these
+hours when he knew that he was dying.
+
+And then his eyes fell nearer to the settlement which nestled
+along the edge of the shining river a quarter of a mile away.
+That, too, had been the wilderness, in the days before the
+railroad came. The poison of speculation was stirring, but it had
+not yet destroyed. Athabasca Landing was still the door that
+opened and closed on the great North. Its buildings were scattered
+and few, and built of logs and rough lumber. Even now he could
+hear the drowsy hum of the distant sawmill that was lazily turning
+out its grist. Not far away the wind-worn flag of the British
+Empire was floating over a Hudson Bay Company's post that had
+bartered in the trades of the North for more than a hundred years.
+Through that hundred years Athabasca Landing had pulsed with the
+heart-beats of strong men bred to the wilderness. Through it,
+working its way by river and dog sledge from the South, had gone
+the precious freight for which the farther North gave in exchange
+its still more precious furs. And today, as Kent looked down upon
+it, he saw that same activity as it had existed through the years
+of a century. A brigade of scows, laden to their gunwales, was
+just sweeping out into the river and into its current. Kent had
+watched the loading of them; now he saw them drifting lazily out
+from the shore, their long sweeps glinting in the sun, their crews
+singing wildly and fiercely their beloved Chanson des Voyageurs as
+their faces turned to the adventure of the North.
+
+In Kent's throat rose a thing which he tried to choke back, but
+which broke from his lips in a low cry, almost a sob. He heard the
+distant singing, wild and free as the forests themselves, and he
+wanted to lean out of his window and shout a last good-by. For the
+brigade--a Company brigade, the brigade that had chanted its songs
+up and down the water reaches of the land for more than two
+hundred and fifty years--was starting north. And he knew where it
+was going--north, and still farther north; a hundred miles, five
+hundred, a thousand--and then another thousand before the last of
+the scows unburdened itself of its precious freight. For the lean
+and brown-visaged men who went with them there would be many
+months of clean living and joyous thrill under the open skies.
+Overwhelmed by the yearning that swept over him, Kent leaned back
+against his pillows and covered his eyes.
+
+In those moments his brain painted for him swiftly and vividly the
+things he was losing. Tomorrow or next day he would be dead, and
+the river brigade would still be sweeping on--on into the Grand
+Rapids of the Athabasca, fighting the Death Chute, hazarding
+valiantly the rocks and rapids of the Grand Cascade, the
+whirlpools of the Devil's Mouth, the thundering roar and boiling
+dragon teeth of the Black Run--on to the end of the Athabasca, to
+the Slave, and into the Mackenzie, until the last rock-blunted
+nose of the outfit drank the tide-water of the Arctic Ocean. And
+he, James Kent, would be DEAD!
+
+He uncovered his eyes, and there was a wan smile on his lips as he
+looked forth once more. There were sixteen scows in the brigade,
+and the biggest, he knew, was captained by Pierre Rossand. He
+could fancy Pierre's big red throat swelling in mighty song, for
+Pierre's wife was waiting for him a thousand miles away. The scows
+were caught steadily now in the grip of the river, and it seemed
+to Kent, as he watched them go, that they were the last fugitives
+fleeing from the encroaching monsters of steel. Unconscious of the
+act, he reached out his arms, and his soul cried out its farewell,
+even though his lips were silent.
+
+He was glad when they were gone and when the voices of the
+chanting oarsmen were lost in the distance. Again he listened to
+the lazy hum of the sawmill, and over his head he heard the
+velvety run of a red squirrel and then its reckless chattering.
+The forests came back to him. Across his cot fell a patch of
+golden sunlight. A stronger breath of air came laden with the
+perfume of balsam and cedar through his window, and when the door
+opened and Cardigan entered, he found the old Kent facing him.
+
+There was no change in Cardigan's voice or manner as he greeted
+him. But there was a tenseness in his face which he could not
+conceal. He had brought in Kent's pipe and tobacco. These he laid
+on a table until he had placed his head close to Kent's hearty
+listening to what he called the bruit--the rushing of blood
+through the aneurismal sac.
+
+"Seems to me that I can hear it myself now and then," said Kent.
+"Worse, isn't it?"
+
+Cardigan nodded. "Smoking may hurry it up a bit," he said. "Still,
+if you want to--"
+
+Kent held out his hand for the pipe and tobacco. "It's worth it.
+Thanks, old man."
+
+Kent loaded the pipe, and Cardigan lighted a match. For the first
+time in two weeks a cloud of smoke issued from between Kent's
+lips.
+
+"The brigade is starting north," he said.
+
+"Mostly Mackenzie River freight," replied Cardigan. "A long run."
+
+"The finest in all the North. Three years ago O'Connor and I made
+it with the Follette outfit. Remember Follette--and Ladouceur?
+They both loved the same girl, and being good friends they decided
+to settle the matter by a swim through the Death Chute. The man
+who came through first was to have her. Gawd, Cardigan, what funny
+things happen! Follette came out first, but he was dead. He'd
+brained himself on a rock. And to this day Ladouceur hasn't
+married the girl, because he says Follette beat him; and that
+Follette's something-or-other would haunt him if he didn't play
+fair. It's a queer--"
+
+He stopped and listened. In the hall was the approaching tread of
+unmistakable feet.
+
+"O'Connor," he said.
+
+Cardigan went to the door and opened it as O'Connor was about to
+knock. When the door closed again, the staff-sergeant was in the
+room alone with Kent. In one of his big hands he clutched a box of
+cigars, and in the other he held a bunch of vividly red fire-
+flowers.
+
+"Father Layonne shoved these into my hands as I was coming up," he
+explained, dropping them on the table. "And I--well--I'm breaking
+regulations to come up an' tell you something, Jimmy. I never
+called you a liar in my life, but I'm calling you one now!"
+
+He was gripping Kent's hands in the fierce clasp of a friendship
+that nothing could kill. Kent winced, but the pain of it was joy.
+He had feared that O'Connor, like Kedsty, must of necessity turn
+against him. Then he noticed something unusual in O'Connor's face
+and eyes. The staff-sergeant was not easily excited, yet he was
+visibly disturbed now.
+
+"I don't know what the others saw, when you were making that
+confession, Kent. Mebby my eyesight was better because I spent a
+year and a half with you on the trail. You were lying. What's your
+game, old man?"
+
+Kent groaned. "Have I got to go all over it again?" he appealed.
+
+O'Connor began thumping back and forth over the floor. Kent had
+seen him that way sometimes in camp when there were perplexing
+problems ahead of them.
+
+"You didn't kill John Barkley," he insisted. "I don't believe you
+did, and Inspector Kedsty doesn't believe it--yet the mighty queer
+part of it is--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That Kedsty is acting on your confession in a big hurry. I don't
+believe it's according to Hoyle, as the regulations are written.
+But he's doing it. And I want to know--it's the biggest thing I
+EVER wanted to know--did you kill Barkley?"
+
+"O'Connor, if you don't believe a dying man's word--you haven't
+much respect for death, have you?"
+
+"That's the theory on which the law works, but sometimes it ain't
+human. Confound it, man, DID YOU?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+O'Connor sat down and with his finger-nails pried open the box of
+cigars. "Mind if I smoke with you?" he asked. "I need it. I'm shot
+up with unexpected things this morning. Do you care if I ask you
+about the girl?"
+
+"The girl!" exclaimed Kent. He sat up straighter, staring at
+O'Connor.
+
+The staff-sergeant's eyes were on him with questioning steadiness.
+"I see--you don't know her," he said, lighting his cigar. "Neither
+do I. Never saw her before. That's why I am wondering about
+Inspector Kedsty. I tell you, it's queer. He didn't believe you
+this morning, yet he was all shot up. He wanted me to go with him
+to his house. The cords stood out on his neck like that--like my
+little finger.
+
+"Then suddenly he changed his mind and said we'd go to the office.
+That took us along the road that runs through the poplar grove. It
+happened there. I'm not much of a girl's man, Kent, and I'd be a
+fool to try to tell you what she looked like. But there she was,
+standing in the path not ten feet ahead of us, and she stopped me
+in my tracks as quick as though she'd sent a shot into me. And she
+stopped Kedsty, too. I heard him give a sort of grunt--a funny
+sound, as though some one had hit him. I don't believe I could
+tell whether she had a dress on or not, for I never saw anything
+like her face, and her eyes, and her hair, and I stared at them
+like a thunder-struck fool. She didn't seem to notice me any more
+than if I'd been thin air, a ghost she couldn't see.
+
+"She looked straight at Kedsty, and she kept looking at him--and
+then she passed us. Never said a word, mind you. She came so near
+I could have touched her with my hand, and not until she was that
+close did she take her eyes from Kedsty and look at me. And when
+she'd passed I thought what a couple of cursed idiots we were,
+standing there paralyzed, as if we'd never seen a beautiful girl
+before in our lives. I went to remark that much to the Old Man
+when--"
+
+O'Connor bit his cigar half in two as he leaned nearer to the cot.
+
+"Kent, I swear that Kedsty was as white as chalk when I looked at
+him! There wasn't a drop of blood left in his face, and he was
+staring straight ahead, as though the girl still stood there, and
+he gave another of those grunts--it wasn't a laugh--as if
+something was choking him. And then he said:
+
+"'Sergeant, I've forgotten something important. I must go back to
+see Dr. Cardigan. You have my authority to give McTrigger his
+liberty at once!'"
+
+O'Connor paused, as if expecting some expression of disbelief from
+Kent. When none came, he demanded,
+
+"Was that according to the Criminal Code? Was it, Kent?"
+
+"Not exactly. But, coming from the S.O.D., it was law."
+
+"And I obeyed it," grunted the staff-sergeant. "And if you could
+have seen McTrigger! When I told him he was free, and unlocked his
+cell, he came out of it gropingly, like a blind man. And he would
+go no farther than the Inspector's office. He said he would wait
+there for him."
+
+"And Kedsty?"
+
+O'Connor jumped from his chair and began thumping back and forth
+across the room again. "Followed the girl," he exploded. "He
+couldn't have done anything else. He lied to me about Cardigan.
+There wouldn't be anything mysterious about it if he wasn't sixty
+and she less than twenty. She was pretty enough! But it wasn't her
+beauty that made him turn white there in the path. Not on your
+life it wasn't! I tell you he aged ten years in as many seconds.
+There was something in that girl's eyes more terrifying to him
+than a leveled gun, and after he'd looked into them, his first
+thought was of McTrigger, the man you're saving from the hangman.
+It's queer, Kent. The whole business is queer. And the queerest of
+it all is your confession."
+
+"Yes, it's all very funny," agreed Kent. "That's what I've been
+telling myself right along, old man. You see, a little thing like
+a bullet changed it all. For if the bullet hadn't got me, I assure
+you I wouldn't have given Kedsty that confession, and an innocent
+man would have been hanged. As it is, Kedsty is shocked,
+demoralized. I'm the first man to soil the honor of the finest
+Service on the face of the earth, and I'm in Kedsty's division.
+Quite natural that he should be upset. And as for the girl--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh. "Perhaps she came in
+this morning with one of the up-river scows and was merely taking
+a little constitutional," he suggested. "Didn't you ever notice,
+O'Connor, that in a certain light under poplar trees one's face is
+sometimes ghastly?"
+
+"Yes, I've noticed it, when the trees are in full leaf, but not
+when they're just opening, Jimmy. It was the girl. Her eyes
+shattered every nerve in him. And his first words were an order
+for me to free McTrigger, coupled with the lie that he was coming
+back to see Cardigan. And if you could have seen her eyes when she
+turned them on me! They were blue--blue as violets--but shooting
+fire. I could imagine black eyes like that, but not blue ones.
+Kedsty simply wilted in their blaze. And there was a reason--I
+know it--a reason that sent his mind like lightning to the man in
+the cell!"
+
+"Now, that you leave me out of it, the thing begins to get
+interesting," said Kent. "It's a matter of the relationship of
+this blonde girl and--"
+
+"She isn't blonde--and I'm not leaving you out of it," interrupted
+O'Connor. "I never saw anything so black in my life as her hair.
+It was magnificent. If you saw that girl once, you would never
+forget her again as long as you lived. She has never been in
+Athabasca Landing before, or anywhere near here. If she had, we
+surely would have heard about her. She came for a purpose, and I
+believe that purpose was accomplished when Kedsty gave me the
+order to free McTrigger."
+
+"That's possible, and probable," agreed Kent. "I always said you
+were the best clue-analyst in the force, Bucky. But I don't see
+where I come in."
+
+O'Connor smiled grimly. "You don't? Well, I may be both blind and
+a fool, and perhaps a little excited. But it seemed to me that
+from the moment Inspector Kedsty laid his eyes on that girl he was
+a little too anxious to let McTrigger go and hang you in his
+place. A little too anxious, Kent."
+
+The irony of the thing brought a hard smile to Kent's lips as he
+nodded for the cigars. "I'll try one of these on top of the pipe,"
+he said, nipping off the end of the cigar with his teeth. "And you
+forget that I'm not going to hang, Bucky. Cardigan has given me
+until tomorrow night. Perhaps until the next day. Did you see
+Rossand's fleet leaving for up north? It made me think of three
+years ago!"
+
+O'Connor was gripping his hand again. The coldness of it sent a
+chill into the staff-sergeant's heart. He rose and looked through
+the upper part of the window, so that the twitching in his throat
+was hidden from Kent. Then he went to the door.
+
+"I'll see you again tomorrow," he said. "And if I find out
+anything more about the girl, I'll report."
+
+He tried to laugh, but there was a tremble in his voice, a break
+in the humor he attempted to force.
+
+Kent listened to the tramp of his heavy feet as they went down the
+hall.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Again the world came back to Kent, the world that lay just beyond
+his open window. But scarcely had O'Connor gone when it began to
+change, and in spite of his determination to keep hold of his
+nerve Kent felt creeping up with that change a thing that was
+oppressive and smothering. Swiftly the distant billowings of the
+forests were changing their tones and colors under the darkening
+approach of storm. The laughter of the hills and ridges went out.
+The shimmer of spruce and cedar and balsam turned to a somber
+black. The flashing gold and silver of birch and poplar dissolved
+into a ghostly and unanimated gray that was almost invisible. A
+deepening and somber gloom spread itself like a veil over the
+river that only a short time before had reflected the glory of the
+sun in the faces of dark-visaged men of the Company brigade. And
+with the gloom came steadily nearer a low rumbling of thunder.
+
+For the first time since the mental excitement of his confession
+Kent felt upon him an appalling loneliness. He still was not
+afraid of death, but a part of his philosophy was gone. It was,
+after all, a difficult thing to die alone. He felt that the
+pressure in his chest was perceptible greater than it had been an
+hour or two before, and the thought grew upon him that it would be
+a terrible thing for the "explosion" to come when the sun was not
+shining. He wanted O'Connor back again. He had the desire to call
+out for Cardigan. He would have welcomed Father Layonne with a
+glad cry. Yet more than all else would he have had at his side in
+these moments of distress a woman. For the storm, as it massed
+heavier and nearer, filling the earth with its desolation, bridged
+vast spaces for him, and he found himself suddenly face to face
+with the might-have-beens of yesterday.
+
+He saw, as he had never guessed before, the immeasurable gulf
+between helplessness and the wild, brute freedom of man, and his
+soul cried out--not for adventure, not for the savage strength of
+life--but for the presence of a creature frailer than himself, yet
+in the gentle touch of whose hand lay the might of all humanity.
+
+He struggled with himself. He remembered that Dr. Cardigan had
+told him there would be moments of deep depression, and he tried
+to fight himself out of the grip of this that was on him. There
+was a bell at hand, but he refused to use it, for he sensed his
+own cowardice. His cigar had gone out, and he relighted it. He
+made an effort to bring his mind back to O'Connor, and the mystery
+girl, and Kedsty. He tried to visualize McTrigger, the man he had
+saved from the hangman, waiting for Kedsty in the office at
+barracks. He pictured the girl, as O'Connor had described her,
+with her black hair and blue eyes--and then the storm broke.
+
+The rain came down in a deluge, and scarcely had it struck when
+the door opened and Cardigan hurried in to close the window. He
+remained for half an hour, and after that young Mercer, one of his
+two assistants, came in at intervals. Late in the afternoon it
+began to clear up, and Father Layonne returned with papers
+properly made out for Kent's signature. He was with Kent until
+sundown, when Mercer came in with supper.
+
+Between that hour and ten o'clock Kent observed a vigilance on the
+part of Dr. Cardigan which struck him as being unusual. Four times
+he listened with the stethoscope at his chest, but when Kent asked
+the question which was in his mind, Cardigan shook his head.
+
+"It's no worse, Kent. I don't think it will happen tonight."
+
+In spite of this assurance Kent was positive there was in
+Cardigan's manner an anxiety of a different quality than he had
+perceived earlier in the day. The thought was a definite and
+convincing one. He believed that Cardigan was smoothing the way
+with a professional lie.
+
+He had no desire to sleep. His light was turned low, and his
+window was open again, for the night had cleared. Never had air
+tasted sweeter to him than that which came in through his window.
+The little bell in his watch tinkled the hour of eleven, when he
+heard Cardigan's door close for a last time across the hall. After
+that everything was quiet. He drew himself nearer to the window,
+so that by leaning forward he could rest himself partly on the
+sill. He loved the night. The mystery and lure of those still
+hours of darkness when the world slept had never ceased to hold
+their fascination for him. Night and he were friends. He had
+discovered many of its secrets. A thousand times he had walked
+hand in hand with the spirit of it, approaching each time a little
+nearer to the heart of it, mastering its life, its sound, the
+whispering languages of that "other side of life" which rises
+quietly and as if in fear to live and breathe long after the sun
+has gone out. To him it was more wonderful than day.
+
+And this night that lay outside his window now was magnificent.
+Storm had washed the atmosphere between earth and sky, and it
+seemed as though the stars had descended nearer to his forests,
+shining in golden constellations. The moon was coming up late, and
+he watched the ruddy glow of it as it rode up over the wilderness,
+a splendid queen entering upon a stage already prepared by the
+lesser satellites for her coming. No longer was Kent oppressed or
+afraid. In still deeper inhalations he drank the night air into
+his lungs, and in him there seemed to grow slowly a new strength.
+His eyes and ears were wide open and attentive. The town was
+asleep, but a few lights burned dimly here and there along the
+river's edge, and occasionally a lazy sound came up to him--the
+clink of a scow chain, the bark of a dog, the rooster crowing. In
+spite of himself he smiled at that. Old Duperow's rooster was a
+foolish bird and always crowed himself hoarse when the moon was
+bright. And in front of him, not far away, were two white,
+lightning-shriven spruce stubs standing like ghosts in the night.
+In one of these a pair of owls had nested, and Kent listened to
+the queer, chuckling notes of their honeymooning and the flutter
+of their wings as they darted out now and then in play close to
+his window. And then suddenly he heard the sharp snap of their
+beaks. An enemy was prowling near, and the owls were giving
+warning. He thought he heard a step. In another moment or two the
+step was unmistakable. Some one was approaching his window from
+the end of the building. He leaned over the sill and found himself
+staring into O'Connor's face.
+
+"These confounded feet of mine!" grunted the staff-sergeant. "Were
+you asleep, Kent?"
+
+"Wide-awake as those owls," assured Kent.
+
+O'Connor drew up to the window. "I saw your light and thought you
+were awake," he said. "I wanted to make sure Cardigan wasn't with
+you. I don't want him to know I am here. And--if you don't mind--
+will you turn off the light? Kedsty is awake, too--as wide-awake
+as the owls."
+
+Kent reached out a hand, and his room was in darkness except for
+the glow of moon and stars. O'Connor's bulk at the window shut out
+a part of this. His face was half in gloom.
+
+"It's a crime to come to you like this, Kent," he said, keeping
+his big voice down to a whisper. "But I had to. It's my last
+chance. And I know there's something wrong. Kedsty is getting me
+out of the way--because I was with him when he met the girl over
+in the poplar bush. I'm detailed on special duty up at Fort
+Simpson, two thousand miles by water if it's a foot! It means six
+months or a year. We leave in the motor boat at dawn to overtake
+Rossand and his outfit, so I had to take this chance of seeing
+you. I hesitated until I knew that some one was awake in your
+room."
+
+"I'm glad you came," said Kent warmly. "And--good God, how I would
+like to go with you, Bucky! If it wasn't for this thing in my
+chest, ballooning up for an explosion--"
+
+"I wouldn't be going," interrupted O'Connor in a low voice. "If
+you were on your feet, Kent, there are a number of things that
+wouldn't be happening. Something mighty queer has come over Kedsty
+since this morning. He isn't the Kedsty you knew yesterday or for
+the last ten years. He's nervous, and I miss my guess if he isn't
+constantly on the watch for some one. And he's afraid of me. I
+know it. He's afraid of me because I saw him go to pieces when he
+met that girl. Fort Simpson is simply a frame-up to get me away
+for a time. He tried to smooth the edge off the thing by promising
+me an inspectorship within the year. That was this afternoon, just
+before the storm. Since then--"
+
+O'Connor turned and faced the moonlight for a moment.
+
+"Since then I've been on a still-hunt for the girl and Sandy
+McTrigger," he added. "And they've disappeared, Kent. I guess
+McTrigger just melted away into the woods. But it's the girl that
+puzzles me. I've questioned every scow cheman at the Landing. I've
+investigated every place where she might have got food or lodging,
+and I bribed Mooie, the old trailer, to search the near-by timber.
+The unbelievable part of it isn't her disappearance. It's the fact
+that not a soul in Athabasca Landing has seen her! Sounds
+incredible, doesn't it? And then, Kent, the big hunch came to me.
+Remember how we've always played up to the big hunch? And this one
+struck me strong. I think I know where the girl is."
+
+Kent, forgetful of his own impending doom, was deeply interested
+in the thrill of O'Connor's mystery. He had begun to visualize the
+situation. More than once they had worked out enigmas of this kind
+together, and the staff-sergeant saw the old, eager glow in his
+eyes. And Kent chuckled joyously in that thrill of the game of
+man-hunting, and said:
+
+"Kedsty is a bachelor and doesn't even so much as look at a woman.
+But he likes home life--"
+
+"And has built himself a log bungalow somewhat removed from the
+town," added O'Connor.
+
+"And his Chinaman cook and housekeeper is away."
+
+"And the bungalow is closed, or supposed to be."
+
+"Except at night, when Kedsty goes there to sleep."
+
+O'Connor's hand gripped Kent's. "Jimmy, there never was a team in
+N Division that could beat us, The girl is hiding at Kedsty's
+place!"
+
+"But why HIDING?" insisted Kent. "She hasn't committed a crime."
+
+O'Connor sat silent for a moment. Kent could hear him stuffing the
+bowl of his pipe.
+
+"It's simply the big hunch," he grunted. "It's got hold of me,
+Kent, and I can't throw it off. Why, man--"
+
+He lighted a match in the cup of his hands, and Kent saw his face.
+There was more than uncertainty in the hard, set lines of it.
+
+"You see, I went back to the poplars again after I left you
+today," O'Connor went on. "I found her footprints. She had turned
+off the trail, and in places they were very clear.
+
+"She had on high-heeled shoes, Kent--those Frenchy things--and I
+swear her feet can't be much bigger than a baby's! I found where
+Kedsty caught up with her, and the moss was pretty well beaten
+down. He returned through the poplars, but the girl went on and
+into the edge of the spruce. I lost her trail there. By traveling
+in that timber it was possible for her to reach Kedsty's bungalow
+without being seen. It must have been difficult going, with shoes
+half as big as my hand and heels two inches high! And I've been
+wondering, why didn't she wear bush-country shoes or moccasins?"
+
+"Because she came from the South and not the North," suggested
+Kent. "Probably up from Edmonton."
+
+"Exactly. And Kedsty wasn't expecting her, was he? If he had been,
+that first sight of her wouldn't have shattered every nerve in his
+body. That's why the big hunch won't let loose of me, Kent. From
+the moment he saw her, he was a different man. His attitude toward
+you changed instantly. If he could save you now by raising his
+little finger, he wouldn't do it, simply because it's absolutely
+necessary for him to have an excuse for freeing McTrigger. Your
+confession came at just the psychological moment. The girl's
+unspoken demand there in the poplars was that he free McTrigger,
+and it was backed up by a threat which Kedsty understood and which
+terrified him to his marrow. McTrigger must have seen him
+afterward, for he waited at the office until Kedsty came. I don't
+know what passed between them. Constable Doyle says they were
+together for half an hour. Then McTrigger walked out of barracks,
+and no one has seen him since. It's mighty queer. The whole thing
+is queer. And the queerest part of the whole business is this
+sudden commission of mine at Fort Simpson."
+
+Kent leaned back against his pillows. His breath came in a series
+of short, hacking coughs. In the star glow O'Connor saw his face
+grow suddenly haggard and tired-looking, and he leaned far in so
+that in both his own hands he held one of Kent's.
+
+"I'm tiring you, Jimmy," he said huskily. "Good-by, old pal! I--I--"
+He hesitated and then lied steadily. "I'm going up to take a
+look around Kedsty's place. I won't be gone more than half an hour
+and will stop on my way back. If you're asleep--"
+
+"I won't be asleep," said Kent.
+
+O'Connor's hands gripped closer. "Good-by, Jimmy."
+
+"Good-by." And then, as O'Connor stepped back into the night,
+Kent's voice called after him softly: "I'll be with you on the
+long trip, Bucky. Take care of yourself--always."
+
+O'Connor's answer was a sob, a sob that rose in his throat like a
+great fist, and choked him, and filled his eyes with scalding
+tears that shut out the glow of moon and stars. And he did not go
+toward Kedsty's, but trudged heavily in the direction of the
+river, for he knew that Kent had called his lie, and that they had
+said their last farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It was a long time after O'Connor had gone before Kent at last
+fell asleep. It was a slumber weighted with the restlessness of a
+brain fighting to the last against exhaustion and the inevitable
+end. A strange spirit seemed whirling Kent back through the years
+he had lived, even to the days of his boyhood, leaping from crest
+to crest, giving to him swift and passing visions of valleys
+almost forgotten, of happenings and things long ago faded and
+indistinct in his memory. Vividly his dreams were filled with
+ghosts--ghosts that were transformed, as his spirit went back to
+them, until they were riotous with life and pulsating with the red
+blood of reality. He was a boy again, playing three-old-cat in
+front of the little old red brick schoolhouse half a mile from the
+farm where he was born, and where his mother had died.
+
+And Skinny Hill, dead many years ago, was his partner at the bat--
+lovable Skinny, with his smirking grin and his breath that always
+smelled of the most delicious onions ever raised in Ohio. And
+then, at dinner hour, he was trading some of his mother's cucumber
+pickles for some of Skinny's onions--two onions for a pickle, and
+never a change in the price. And he played old-fashioned casino
+with his mother, and they were picking blackberries together in
+the woods, and he killed over again a snake that he had clubbed to
+death more than twenty years ago, while his mother ran away and
+screamed and then sat down and cried.
+
+He had worshiped that mother, and the spirit of his dreams did not
+let him look down into the valley where she lay dead, under a
+little white stone in the country cemetery a thousand miles away,
+with his father close beside her. But it gave him a passing thrill
+of the days in which he had fought his way through college--and
+then it brought him into the North, his beloved North.
+
+For hours the wilderness was heavy about Kent. He moved
+restlessly, at times he seemed about to awaken, but always he
+slipped back into the slumberous arms of his forests. He was on
+the trail in the cold, gray beginning of Winter, and the glow of
+his campfire made a radiant patch of red glory in the heart of the
+night, and close to him in that glow sat O'Connor. He was behind
+dogs and sledge, fighting storm; dark and mysterious streams
+rippled under his canoe; he was on the Big River, O'Connor with
+him again--and then, suddenly, he was holding a blazing gun in his
+hand, and he and O'Connor stood with their backs to a rack, facing
+the bloodthirsty rage of McCaw and his free-traders. The roar of
+the guns half roused him, and after that came pleasanter things--
+the droning of wind in the spruce tops, the singing of swollen
+streams in Springtime, the songs of birds, the sweet smells of
+life, the glory of life as he had lived it, he and O'Connor. In
+the end, half between sleep and wakefulness, he was fighting a
+smothering pressure on his chest. It was an oppressive and
+torturing thing, like the tree that had fallen on him over in the
+Jackfish country, and he felt himself slipping off into darkness.
+Suddenly there was a gleam of light. He opened his eyes. The sun
+was flooding in at his window, and the weight on his chest was the
+gentle pressure of Cardigan's stethoscope.
+
+In spite of the physical stress of the phantoms which his mind has
+conceived, Kent awakened so quietly that Cardigan was not
+conscious of the fact until he raised his head. There was
+something in his face which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught
+it before it was gone. There were dark hollows under his eyes. He
+was a bit haggard, as though he had spent a sleepless night. Kent
+pulled himself up, squinting at the sun and grinning
+apologetically. He had slept well along into the day, and--
+
+He caught himself with a sudden grimace of pain. A flash of
+something hot and burning swept through his chest. It was like a
+knife. He opened his mouth to breathe in the air. The pressure
+inside him was no longer the pressure of a stethoscope. It was
+real.
+
+Cardigan, standing over him, was trying to look cheerful. "Too
+much of the night air, Kent," he explained. "That will pass away--
+soon."
+
+It seemed to Kent that Cardigan gave an almost imperceptible
+emphasis to the word "soon," but he asked no question. He was
+quite sure that he understood, and he knew how unpleasant for
+Cardigan the answer to it would be. He fumbled under his pillow
+for his watch. It was nine o'clock. Cardigan was moving about
+uneasily, arranging the things on the table and adjusting the
+shade at the window. For a few moments, with his back to Kent, he
+stood without moving. Then he turned, and said:
+
+"Which will you have, Kent--a wash-up and breakfast, or a
+visitor?"
+
+"I am not hungry, and I don't feel like soap and water just now.
+Who's the visitor? Father Layonne or--Kedsty?"
+
+"Neither. It's a lady."
+
+"Then I'd better have the soap and water! Do you mind telling me
+who it is?"
+
+Cardigan shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen her
+before. She came this morning while I was still in pajamas, and
+has been waiting ever since. I told her to come back again, but
+she insisted that she would remain until you were awake. She has
+been very patient for two hours."
+
+A thrill which he made no effort to conceal leaped through Kent.
+"Is she a young woman?" he demanded eagerly. "Wonderful black
+hair, blue eyes, wears high-heeled shoes just about half as big as
+your hand--and very beautiful?"
+
+"All of that," nodded Cardigan. "I even noticed the shoes, Jimmy.
+A very beautiful young woman!"
+
+"Please let her come in," said Kent. "Mercer scrubbed me last
+night, and I feel fairly fit. She'll forgive this beard, and I'll
+apologize for your sake. What is her name?"
+
+"I asked her, and she didn't seem to hear. A little later Mercer
+asked her, and he said she just looked at him for a moment and he
+froze. She is reading a volume of my Plutarch's 'Lives'--actually
+reading it. I know it by the way she turns the pages!"
+
+Kent drew himself up higher against his pillows and faced the door
+when Cardigan went out. In a flash all that O'Connor had said
+swept back upon him--this girl, Kedsty, the mystery of it all. Why
+had she come to see him? What could be the motive of her visit--
+unless it was to thank him for the confession that had given Sandy
+McTrigger his freedom? O'Connor was right. She was deeply
+concerned in McTrigger and had come to express her gratitude. He
+listened. Distant footsteps sounded in the hall. They approached
+quickly and paused outside his door. A hand moved the latch, but
+for a moment the door did not open. He heard Cardigan's voice,
+then Cardigan's footsteps retreating down the hall. His heart
+thumped. He could not remember when he had been so upset over an
+unimportant thing.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The latch moved slowly, and with its movement came a gentle tap on
+the panel.
+
+"Come in," he said.
+
+The next instant he was staring. The girl had entered and closed
+the door behind her. O'Connor's picture stood in flesh and blood
+before him. The girl's eyes met his own. They were like glorious
+violets, as O'Connor had said, but they were not the eyes he had
+expected to see. They were the wide-open, curious eyes of a child.
+He had visualized them as pools of slumbering flame--the idea
+O'Connor had given him--and they were the opposite of that. Their
+one emotion seemed to be the emotion roused by an overwhelming,
+questioning curiosity. They were apparently not regarding him as a
+dying human being, but as a creature immensely interesting to look
+upon. In place of the gratitude he had anticipated, they were
+filled with a great, wondering interrogation, and there was not
+the slightest hint of embarrassment in their gaze. For a space it
+seemed to Kent that he saw nothing but those wonderful,
+dispassionate eyes looking at him. Then he saw the rest of her--
+her amazing hair, her pale, exquisite face, the slimness and
+beauty of her as she stood with her back to the door, one hand
+still resting on the latch. He had never seen anything quite like
+her. He might have guessed that she was eighteen, or twenty, or
+twenty-two. Her hair, wreathed in shimmering, velvety coils from
+the back to the crown of her head, struck him as it had struck
+O'Connor, as unbelievable. The glory of it gave to her an
+appearance of height which she did not possess, for she was not
+tall, and her slimness added to the illusion.
+
+And then, greatly to his embarrassment in the next instant, his
+eyes went to her feet. Again O'Connor was right--tiny feet, high-
+heeled pumps, ravishingly turned ankles showing under a skirt of
+some fluffy brown stuff or other--
+
+Correcting himself, his face flushed red. The faintest tremble of
+a smile was on the girl's lips. She looked down, and for the first
+time he saw what O'Connor had seen, the sunlight kindling
+slumberous fires in her hair.
+
+Kent tried to say something, but before he succeeded she had taken
+possession of the chair near his bedside.
+
+"I have been waiting a long time to see you," she said. "You are
+James Kent, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, I'm Jim Kent. I'm sorry Dr. Cardigan kept you waiting. If I
+had known--"
+
+He was getting a grip on himself again, and smiled at her. He
+noticed the amazing length of her dark lashes, but the violet eyes
+behind them did not smile back at him. The tranquillity of their
+gaze was disconcerting. It was as if she had not quite made up her
+mind about him yet and was still trying to classify him in the
+museum of things she had known.
+
+"He should have awakened me," Kent went on, trying to keep himself
+from slipping once more. "It isn't polite to keep a young lady
+waiting two hours!"
+
+This time the blue eyes made him feel that his smile was a maudlin
+grin.
+
+"Yes--you are different." She spoke softly, as if expressing the
+thought to herself. "That is what I came to find out, if you were
+different. You are dying?"
+
+"My God--yes--I'm dying!" gasped Kent. "According to Dr. Cardigan
+I'm due to pop off this minute. Aren't you a little nervous,
+sitting so near to a man who's ready to explode while you're
+looking at him?"
+
+For the first time the eyes changed. She was not facing the
+window, yet a glow like the glow of sunlight flashed into them,
+soft, luminous, almost laughing.
+
+"No, it doesn't frighten me," she assured him. "I have always
+thought I should like to see a man die--not quickly, like drowning
+or being shot, but slowly, an inch at a time. But I shouldn't like
+to see YOU die."
+
+"I'm glad," breathed Kent. "It's a great satisfaction to me."
+
+"Yet I shouldn't be frightened if you did."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Kent drew himself up straighter against his pillows. He had been a
+man of many adventures. He had faced almost every conceivable kind
+of shock. But this was a new one. He stared into the blue eyes,
+tongueless and mentally dazed. They were cool and sweet and not at
+all excited. And he knew that she spoke the truth. Not by a quiver
+of those lovely lashes would she betray either fear or horror if
+he popped off right there. It was astonishing.
+
+Something like resentment shot for an instant into his bewildered
+brain. Then it was gone, and in a flash it came upon him that she
+was but uttering his own philosophy of life, showing him life's
+cheapness, life's littleness, the absurdity of being distressed by
+looking upon the light as it flickered out. And she was doing it,
+not as a philosopher, but with the beautiful unconcern of a child.
+
+Suddenly, as if impelled by an emotion in direct contradiction to
+her apparent lack of sympathy, she reached out a hand and placed
+it on Kent's forehead. It was another shock. It was not a
+professional touch, but a soft, cool little pressure that sent a
+comforting thrill through him. The hand was there for only a
+moment, and she withdrew it to entwine the slim fingers with those
+of the others in her lap.
+
+"You have no fever," she said. "What makes you think you are
+dying?"
+
+Kent explained what was happening inside him. He was completely
+shunted off his original track of thought and anticipation. He had
+expected to ask for at least a mutual introduction when his
+visitor came into his room, and had anticipated taking upon
+himself the position of a polite inquisitor. In spite of O'Connor,
+he had not thought she would be quite so pretty. He had not
+believed her eyes would be so beautiful, or their lashes so long,
+or the touch of her hand so pleasantly unnerving. And now, in
+place of asking for her name and the reason for her visit, he
+became an irrational idiot, explaining to her certain matters of
+physiology that had to do with aortas and aneurismal sacs. He had
+finished before the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him,
+and with absurdity came the humor of it. Even dying, Kent could
+not fail to see the funny side of a thing It struck him as
+suddenly as had the girl's beauty and her bewildering and
+unaffected ingenuousness.
+
+Looking at him, that same glow of mysterious questioning in her
+eyes, the girl found him suddenly laughing straight into her face.
+
+"This is funny. It's very funny, Miss--Miss--"
+
+"Marette," she supplied, answering his hesitation.
+
+"It's funny, Miss Marette."
+
+"Not Miss Marette. Just Marette," she corrected.
+
+"I say, it's funny," he tried again. "You see, it's not so
+terribly pleasant as you might think to--er--be here, where I am,
+dying. And last night I thought about the finest thing in the
+world would be to have a woman beside me, a woman who'd be sort of
+sympathetic, you know, ease the thing off a little, maybe say she
+was sorry. And then the Lord answers my prayer, and YOU come--and
+you sort of give me the impression that you made the appointment
+with yourself to see how a fellow looks when he pops off."
+
+The shimmer of light came into the blue eyes again. She seemed to
+have done with her mental analysis of him, and he saw that a bit
+of color was creeping into her cheeks, pale when she had entered
+the room.
+
+"You wouldn't be the first I've seen pop off," she assured him.
+"There have been a number, and I've never cried very much. I'd
+rather see a man die than some animals. But I shouldn't like to
+see YOU do it. Does that comfort you--like the woman you prayed
+the Lord for?"
+
+"It does," gasped Kent. "But why the devil, Miss Marette--"
+
+"Marette," she corrected again.
+
+"Yes, Marette--why the devil have you come to see me at just the
+moment I'm due to explode? And what's your other name, and how old
+are you, and what do you want of me?"
+
+"I haven't any other name, I'm twenty, and I came to get
+acquainted with you and see what you are like."
+
+"Bully!" exclaimed Kent. "We're getting there fast! And now, why?"
+
+The girl drew her chair a few inches nearer, and for a moment Kent
+thought that her lovely mouth was trembling on the edge of a
+smile.
+
+"Because you have lied so splendidly to save another man who was
+about to die."
+
+"Et tu, Brute!" sighed Kent, leaning back against his pillows.
+"Isn't it possible for a decent man to kill another man and not be
+called a liar when he tells about it? Why do so many believe that
+I lie?"
+
+"They don't," said the girl. "They believe you--now. You have gone
+so completely into the details of the murder in your confession
+that they are quite convinced. It would be too bad if you lived,
+for you surely would be hanged. Your lie sounds and reads like the
+truth. But I know it is a lie. You did not kill John Barkley."
+
+"And the reason for your suspicion?"
+
+For fully half a minute the girl's eyes rested on, his own. Again
+they seemed to be looking through him and into him. "Because I
+know the man who DID kill him," she said quietly, "and it was not
+you."
+
+Kent made a mighty effort to appear calm. He reached for a cigar
+from the box that Cardigan had placed on his bed, and nibbled the
+end of it. "Has some one else been confessing?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head the slightest bit.
+
+"Did you--er--see this other gentleman kill John Barkley?" he
+insisted.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I must answer you as I have answered at least one other. I
+killed John Barkley. If you suspect some other person, your
+suspicion is wrong."
+
+"What a splendid liar!" she breathed softly. "Don't you believe in
+God?"
+
+Kent winced. "In a large, embracing sense, yes," he said. "I
+believe in Him, for instance, as revealed to our senses in all
+that living, growing glory you see out there through the window
+Nature and I have become pretty good pals, and you see I've sort
+of built up a mother goddess to worship instead of a he-god.
+Sacrilege, maybe, but it's a great comfort at times. But you
+didn't come to talk religion?"
+
+The lovely head bent still nearer him. He felt an impelling desire
+to put up his hand and touch her shining hair, as she laid her
+hand on his forehead.
+
+"I know who killed John Barkley," she insisted. "I know how and
+when and why he was killed. Please tell me the truth. I want to
+know. Why did you confess to a crime which you did not commit?"
+
+Kent took time to light his cigar. The girl watched him closely,
+almost eagerly.
+
+"I may be mad," he said. "It is possible for any human being to be
+mad and not know it. That's the funny part about insanity. But if
+I'm not insane, I killed Barkley; if I didn't kill him, I must be
+insane, for I'm very well convinced that I did. Either that, or
+you are insane. I have my suspicions that you. are. Would a sane
+person wear pumps with heels like those up here?" He pointed
+accusingly to the floor.
+
+For the first time the girl smiled, openly, frankly, gloriously.
+It was as if her heart had leaped forth for an instant and had
+greeted him. And then, like sunlight shadowed by cloud, the smile
+was gone. "You are a brave man," she said. "You are splendid. I
+hate men. But I think if you lived very long, I should love you. I
+will believe that you killed Barkley. You compel me to believe it.
+You confessed, when you found you were going to die, that an
+innocent man might be saved. Wasn't that it?"
+
+Kent nodded weakly. "That's it. I hate to think of it that way,
+but I guess it's true. I confessed because I knew I was going to
+die. Otherwise I am quite sure that I should have let the other
+fellow take my medicine for me. You must think I am a beast."
+
+"All men are beasts," she agreed quickly. "But you are--a
+different kind of beast. I like you. If there were a chance, I
+might fight for you. I can fight." She held up her two small
+hands, half smiling at him again.
+
+"But not with those," he exclaimed. "I think you would fight with
+your eyes. O'Connor told me they half killed Kedsty when you met
+them in the poplar grove yesterday."
+
+He had expected that the mention of Inspector Kedsty's name would
+disturb her. It had no effect that he could perceive.
+
+"O'Connor was the big, red-faced man with Mr. Kedsty?"
+
+"Yes, my trail partner. He came to me yesterday and raved about
+your eyes. They ARE beautiful; I've never seen eyes half so
+lovely. But that wasn't what struck Bucky so hard. It was the
+effect they had on Kedsty. He said they shattered every nerve in
+Kedsty's body, and Kedsty isn't the sort to get easily frightened.
+And the queer part of it was that the instant you had gone, he
+gave O'Connor an order to free McTrigger--and then turned and
+followed you. All the rest of that day O'Connor tried to discover
+something about you at the Landing. He couldn't find hide nor
+hair--I beg pardon!--I mean he couldn't find out anything about
+you at all. We made up our minds that for some reason or other you
+were hiding up at Kedsty's bungalow. You don't mind a fellow
+saying all this--when he is going to pop off soon--do you?"
+
+He was half frightened at the directness with which he had
+expressed the thing. He would gladly have buried his own curiosity
+and all of O'Connor's suspicions for another moment of her hand on
+his forehead. But it was out, and he waited.
+
+She was looking down, her fingers twisting some sort of tasseled
+dress ornament in her lap, and Kent mentally measured the length
+of her lashes with a foot rule in mind. They were superb, and in
+the thrill of his admiration he would have sworn they were an inch
+long. She looked up suddenly and caught the glow in his eyes and
+the flush that lay under the tan of his cheeks. Her own color had
+deepened a little.
+
+"What if you shouldn't die?" she asked him bluntly, as if she had
+not heard a word of all he had said about Kedsty. "What would you
+do?"
+
+"I'm going to."
+
+"But if you shouldn't?"
+
+Kent shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I'd have to take my
+medicine. You're not going?"
+
+She had straightened up and was sitting on the edge of her chair.
+"Yes, I'm going. I'm afraid of my eyes. I may look at you as I
+looked at Mr. Kedsty, and then--pop you'd go, quick! And I don't
+want to be here when you die!"
+
+He heard a soft little note of laughter in her throat. It sent a
+chill through him. What an adorable, blood-thirsty little wretch
+she was! He stared at her bent head, at the shining coils of her
+wonderful hair. Undone, he could see it completely hiding her. And
+it was so soft and warm that again he was tempted to reach out and
+touch it. She was wonderful, and yet it was not possible that she
+had a heart. Her apparent disregard of the fact that he was a
+dying man was almost diabolic. There was no sympathy in the
+expression of her violet eyes as she looked at him. She was even
+making fun of the fact that he was about to die!
+
+She stood up, surveying for the first time the room in which she
+had been sitting. Then she turned to the window and looked out.
+She reminded Kent of a beautiful young willow that had grown at
+the edge of a stream, exquisite, slender, strong. He could have
+picked her up in his arms as easily as a child, yet he sensed in
+the lithe beauty of her body forces that could endure
+magnificently. The careless poise of her head fascinated him. For
+that head and the hair that crowned it he knew that half the women
+of the earth would have traded precious years of their lives.
+
+And then, without turning toward him, she said, "Some day, when I
+die, I wish I might have as pleasant a room as this."
+
+"I hope you never die," he replied devoutly.
+
+She came back and stood for a moment beside him.
+
+"I have had a very pleasant time," she said, as though he had
+given her a special sort of entertainment. "It's too bad you are
+going to die. I'm sure we should have been good friends. Aren't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, very sure. If you had only arrived sooner--"
+
+"And I shall always think of you as a different kind of man-
+beast," she interrupted him. "It is really true that I shouldn't
+like to see you die. I want to get away before it happens. Would
+you care to have me kiss you?"
+
+For an instant Kent felt that his aorta was about to give away.
+"I--I would," he gasped huskily.
+
+"Then--close your eyes, please."
+
+He obeyed. She bent over him. He felt the soft touch of her hands
+and caught for an instant the perfume of her face and hair, and
+then the thrill of her lips pressed warm and soft upon his.
+
+She was not flushed or embarrassed when he looked at her again. It
+was as if she had kissed a baby and was wondering at its red face.
+"I've only kissed three men before you," she avowed. "It is
+strange. I never thought I should do it again. And now, good-by!"
+She moved quickly to the door.
+
+"Wait," he cried plaintively. "Please wait. I want to know your
+name. It is Marette--"
+
+"Radisson," she finished for him. "Marette Radisson, and I come
+from away off there, from a place we call the Valley of Silent
+Men." She was pointing into the north.
+
+"The North!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it is far north. Very far."
+
+Her hand was on the latch. The door opened slowly.
+
+"Wait," he pleaded again. "You must not go."
+
+"Yes, I must go. I have remained too long. I am sorry I kissed
+you. I shouldn't have done that. But I had to because you are such
+a splendid liar!"
+
+The door opened quickly and closed behind her. He heard her steps
+almost running down the hall, where not long ago he had listened
+to the last of O'Connor's.
+
+And then there was silence, and in that silence he heard her words
+again, drumming like little hammers in his head, "BECAUSE YOU ARE
+SUCH A SPLENDID LIAR!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+James Kent, among his other qualities good and bad, possessed a
+merciless opinion of his own shortcomings, but never, in that
+opinion, had he fallen so low as in the interval which immediately
+followed the closing of his door behind the mysterious girl who
+had told him that her name was Marette Radisson. No sooner was she
+gone than the overwhelming superiority of her childlike cleverness
+smote him until, ashamed of himself, he burned red in his
+aloneness.
+
+He, Sergeant Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector
+Kedsty, the most dreaded of catechists when questioning criminals,
+the man who had won the reputation of facing quietly and with
+deadly sureness the most menacing of dangers, had been beaten--
+horribly beaten--by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible
+and at times distorted sense of humor made him give credit to the
+victor. The shame of the thing was his acknowledgment that a bit
+of feminine beauty had done the trick. He had made fun of O'Connor
+when the big staff-sergeant had described the effect of the girl's
+eyes on Inspector Kedsty. And, now, if O'Connor could know of what
+had happened here--
+
+And then, like a rubber ball, that saving sense of humor bounced
+up out of the mess, and Kent found himself chuckling as his face
+grew cooler. His visitor had come, and she had gone, and he knew
+no more about her than when she had entered his room, except that
+her very pretty name was Marette Radisson. He was just beginning
+to think of the questions he had wanted to ask, a dozen, half a
+hundred of them--more definitely who she was; how and why she had
+come to Athabasca Landing; her interest in Sandy McTrigger; the
+mysterious relationship that must surely exist between her and
+Inspector Kedsty; and, chiefly, her real motive in coming to him
+when she knew that he was dying. He comforted himself by the
+assurance that he would have learned these things had she not left
+him so suddenly. He had not expected that.
+
+The question which seated itself most insistently in his mind was,
+why had she come? Was it, after all, merely a matter of curiosity?
+Was her relationship to Sandy McTrigger such that inquisitiveness
+alone had brought her to see the man who had saved him? Surely she
+had not been urged by a sense of gratitude, for in no way had she
+given expression to that. On his death-bed she had almost made fun
+of him. And she could not have come as a messenger from McTrigger,
+or she would have left her message. For the first time he began to
+doubt that she knew the man at all, in spite of the strange thing
+that had happened under O'Connor's eyes. But she must know Kedsty.
+She had made no answer to his half-accusation that she was hiding
+up at the Inspector's bungalow. He had used that word--"hiding."
+It should have had an effect. And she was as beautifully
+unconscious of it as though she had not heard him, and he knew
+that she had heard him very distinctly. It was then that she had
+given him that splendid view of her amazingly long lashes and had
+countered softly,
+
+"What if you shouldn't die?"
+
+Kent felt himself suddenly aglow with an irresistible appreciation
+of the genius of her subtlety, and with that appreciation came a
+thrill of deeper understanding. He believed that he knew why she
+had left him so suddenly. It was because she had seen herself
+close to the danger-line. There were things which she did not want
+him to know or question her about, and his daring intimation that
+she was hiding in Kedsty's bungalow had warned her. Was it
+possible that Kedsty himself had sent her for some reason which he
+could not even guess at? Positively it was not because of
+McTrigger, the man he had saved. At least she would have thanked
+him in some way. She would not have appeared quite so adorably
+cold-blooded, quite so sweetly unconscious of the fact that he was
+dying. If McTrigger's freedom had meant anything to her, she could
+not have done less than reveal to him a bit of sympathy. And her
+greatest compliment, if he excepted the kiss, was that she had
+called him a splendid liar!
+
+Kent grimaced and drew in a deep breath because of the tightness
+in his chest. Why was it that every one seemed to disbelieve him?
+Why was it that even this mysterious girl, whom he had never seen
+before in his life, politely called him a liar when he insisted
+that he had killed John Barkley? Was the fact of murder
+necessarily branded in one's face? If so, he had never observed
+it. Some of the hardest criminals he had brought in from the down-
+river country were likable-looking men. There was Horrigan, for
+instance, who for seven long weeks kept him in good humor with his
+drollery, though he was bringing him in to be hanged. And there
+were McTab, and le Bete Noir--the Black Beast--a lovable vagabond
+in spite of his record, and Le Beau, the gentlemanly robber of the
+wilderness mail, and half a dozen others he could recall without
+any effort at all. No one called them liars when, like real men,
+they confessed their crimes when they saw their game was up. To a
+man they had given up the ghost with their boots on, and Kent
+respected their memory because of it. And he was dying--and even
+this stranger girl called him a liar? And no case had ever been
+more complete than his own. He had gone mercilessly into the
+condemning detail of it all. It was down in black and white. He
+had signed it. And still he was disbelieved. It was funny, deuced
+funny, thought Kent.
+
+Until young Mercer opened the door and came in with his late
+breakfast, he had forgotten that he had really been hungry when he
+awakened with Cardigan's stethoscope at his chest. Mercer had
+amused him from the first. The pink-faced young Englishman, fresh
+from the old country, could not conceal in his face and attitude
+the fact that he was walking in the presence of the gallows
+whenever he entered the room. He was, as he had confided in
+Cardigan, "beastly hit up" over the thing. To feed and wash a man
+who would undoubtedly die, but who would be hanged by the neck
+until he was dead if he lived, filled him with peculiar and at
+times conspicuous emotions. It was like attending to a living
+corpse, if such a thing could be conceived. And Mercer had
+conceived it. Kent had come to regard him as more or less of a
+barometer giving away Cardigan's secrets. He had not told
+Cardigan, but had kept the discovery for his own amusement.
+
+This morning Mercer's face was less pink, and his pale eyes were
+paler, Kent thought. Also he started to sprinkle sugar on his eggs
+in place of salt.
+
+Kent laughed and stopped his hand. "You may sugar my eggs when I'm
+dead, Mercer," he said, "but while I'm alive I want salt on 'em!
+Do you know, old man, you look bad this morning. Is it because
+this is my last breakfast?"
+
+"I hope not, sir, I hope not," replied Mercer quickly. "Indeed, I
+hope you are going to live, sir."
+
+"Thanks!" said Kent dryly. "Where is Cardigan?"
+
+"The Inspector sent a messenger for him, sir. I think he has gone
+to see him. Are your eggs properly done, sir?"
+
+"Mercer, if you ever worked in a butler's pantry, for the love of
+heaven forget it now!" exploded Kent, "I want you to tell me
+something straight out. How long have I got?"
+
+Mercer fidgeted for a moment, and a shade or two more of the red
+went out of his face. "I can't say, sir. Doctor Cardigan hasn't
+told me. But I think not very long, sir. Doctor Cardigan is cut up
+all in rags this morning. And Father Layonne is coming to see you
+at any moment."
+
+"Much obliged," nodded Kent, calmly beginning his second egg.
+"And, by the way, what did you think of the young lady?"
+
+"Ripping, positively ripping!" exclaimed Mercer.
+
+"That's the word," agreed Kent. "Ripping. It sounds like the
+calico counter in a dry-goods store, but means a lot. Don't happen
+to know where she is staying or why she is at the Landing, do
+you?"
+
+He knew that he was asking a foolish question and scarcely
+expected an answer from Mercer. He was astonished when the other
+said:
+
+"I heard Doctor Cardigan ask her if we might expect her to honor
+us with another visit, and she told him it would be impossible,
+because she was leaving on a down-river scow tonight. Fort
+Simpson, I think she said she was going to, sir."
+
+"The deuce you say!" cried Kent, spilling a bit of his coffee in
+the thrill of the moment. "Why, that's where Staff-Sergeant
+O'Connor is bound for!"
+
+"So I heard Doctor Cardigan tell her. But she didn't reply to
+that. She just--went. If you don't mind a little joke in your
+present condition, sir, I might say that Doctor Cardigan was
+considerably flayed up over her. A deuced pretty girl, sir, deuced
+pretty! And I think he was shot through!"
+
+"Now you're human, Mercer. She was pretty, wasn't she?"
+
+"Er--yes--stunningly so, Mr. Kent," agreed Mercer, reddening
+suddenly to the roots of his pasty, blond hair. "I don't mind
+confessing that in this unusual place her appearance was quite
+upsetting."
+
+"I agree with you, friend Mercer," nodded Kent. "She upset me.
+And--see here, old man!--will you do a dying man the biggest favor
+he ever asked in his life?"
+
+"I should be most happy, sir, most happy."
+
+"It's this," said Kent. "I want to know if that girl actually
+leaves on the down-river scow tonight. If I'm alive tomorrow
+morning, will you tell me?"
+
+"I shall do my best, sir."
+
+"Good. It's simply the silly whim of a dying man, Mercer. But I
+want to be humored in it. And I'm sensitive--like yourself. I
+don't want Cardigan to know. There's an old Indian named Mooie,
+who lives in a shack just beyond the sawmill. Give him ten dollars
+and tell him there is another ten in it if he sees the business
+through, and reports properly to you, and keeps his mouth shut
+afterward. Here--the money is under my pillow."
+
+Kent pulled out a wallet and put fifty dollars in Mercer's hands.
+
+"Buy cigars with the rest of it, old man. It's of no more use to
+me. And this little trick you are going to pull off is worth it.
+It's my last fling on earth, you might say."
+
+"Thank you, sir. It is very kind of you."
+
+Mercer belonged to a class of wandering Englishmen typical of the
+Canadian West, the sort that sometimes made real Canadians wonder
+why a big and glorious country like their own should cling to the
+mother country. Ingratiating and obsequiously polite at all times,
+he gave one the impression of having had splendid training as a
+servant, yet had this intimation been made to him, he would have
+become highly indignant. Kent had learned their ways pretty well.
+He had met them in all sorts of places, for one of their
+inexplicable characteristics was the recklessness and apparent
+lack of judgment with which they located themselves. Mercer, for
+instance, should have held a petty clerical job of some kind in a
+city, and here he was acting as nurse in the heart of a
+wilderness!
+
+After Mercer had gone with the breakfast things and the money,
+Kent recalled a number of his species. And he knew that under
+their veneer of apparent servility was a thing of courage and
+daring which needed only the right kind of incentive to rouse it.
+And when roused, it was peculiarly efficient in a secretive,
+artful-dodger sort of way. It would not stand up before a gun. But
+it would creep under the mouths of guns on a black night. And Kent
+was positive his fifty dollars would bring him results--if he
+lived.
+
+Just why he wanted the information he was after, he could not have
+told himself. It was a pet aphorism between O'Connor and him that
+they had often traveled to success on the backs of their hunches.
+And his proposition to Mercer was made on the spur of one of those
+moments when the spirit of a hunch possessed him. His morning had
+been one of unexpected excitement, and now he leaned back in an
+effort to review it and to forget, if he could, the distressing
+thing that was bound to happen to him within the next few hours.
+But he could not get away from the thickening in his chest. It
+seemed growing on him. Now and then he was compelled to make quite
+an effort to get sufficient air into his lungs.
+
+He found himself wondering if there was a possibility that the
+girl might return. For a long time he lay thinking about her, and
+it struck him as incongruous and in bad taste that fate should
+have left this adventure for his last. If he had met her six
+months ago--or even three--it was probable that she would so have
+changed the events of life for him that he would not have got the
+half-breed's bullet in his chest. He confessed the thing
+unblushingly. The wilderness had taken the place of woman for him.
+It had claimed him, body and soul. He had desired nothing beyond
+its wild freedom and its never-ending games of chance. He had
+dreamed, as every man dreams, but realities and not the dreams had
+been the red pulse of his life. And yet, if this girl had come
+sooner--
+
+He revisioned for himself over and over again her hair and eyes,
+the slimness of her as she had stood at the window, the freedom
+and strength of that slender body, the poise of her exquisite
+head, and he felt again the thrill of her hand and the still more
+wonderful thrill of her lips as she had pressed them warmly upon
+his.
+
+AND SHE WAS OF THE NORTH! That was the thought that overwhelmed
+him. He did not permit himself to believe that she might have told
+him an untruth. He was confident, if he lived until tomorrow, that
+Mercer would corroborate his faith in her. He had never heard of a
+place called the Valley of Silent Men, but it was a big country,
+and Fort Simpson with its Hudson Bay Company's post and its half-
+dozen shacks was a thousand miles away. He was not sure that such
+a place as that valley really existed. It was easier to believe
+that the girl's home was at Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort
+Good Hope, or even at Fort McPherson. It was not difficult for him
+to picture her as the daughter of one of the factor lords of the
+North. Yet this, upon closer consideration, he gave up as
+unreasonable. The word "Fort" did not stand for population, and
+there were probably not more than fifty white people at all the
+posts between the Great Slave and the Arctic. She was not one of
+these, or the fact would have been known at the Landing.
+
+Neither could she be a riverman's daughter, for it was
+inconceivable that either a riverman or a trapper would have sent
+this girl down into civilization, where this girl had undoubtedly
+been. It was that point chiefly which puzzled Kent. She was not
+only beautiful. She had been tutored in schools that were not
+taught by wilderness missioners. In her, it seemed to him, he had
+seen the beauty and the wild freedom of the forests as they had
+come to him straight out of the heart of an ancient aristocracy
+that was born nearly two hundred years ago in the old cities of
+Quebec and Montreal.
+
+His mind flashed back at that thought: he remembered the time when
+he had sought out every nook and cranny of that ancient town of
+Quebec, and had stood over graves two centuries old, and deep in
+his soul had envied the dead the lives they had lived. He had
+always thought of Quebec as a rare old bit of time-yellowed lace
+among cities--the heart of the New World as it had once been,
+still beating, still whispering of its one-time power, still
+living in the memory of its mellowed romance, its almost forgotten
+tragedies--a ghost that lived, that still beat back defiantly the
+destroying modernism that would desecrate its sacred things. And
+it pleased him to think of Marette Radisson as the spirit of it,
+wandering north, and still farther north--even as the spirits of
+the profaned dead had risen from the Landing to go farther on.
+
+And feeling that the way had at last been made easy for him, Kent
+smiled out into the glorious day and whispered softly, as if she
+were standing there, listening to him:
+
+"If I had lived--I would have called you--my Quebec. It's pretty,
+that name. It stands for a lot. And so do you."
+
+And out in the hall, as Kent whispered those words, stood Father
+Layonne, with a face that was whiter than the mere presence of
+death had ever made it before. At his side stood Cardigan, aged
+ten years since he had placed his stethoscope at Kent's chest that
+morning. And behind these two were Kedsty, with a face like gray
+rock, and young Mercer, in whose staring eyes was the horror of a
+thing he could not yet quite comprehend. Cardigan made an effort
+to speak and failed. Kedsty wiped his forehead, as he had wiped it
+the morning of Kent's confession. And Father Layonne, as he went
+to Kent's door, was breathing softly to himself a prayer.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+From the window, the glorious day outside, and the vision he had
+made for himself of Marette Radisson, Kent turned at the sound of
+a hand at his door and saw it slowly open. He was expecting it. He
+had read young Mercer like a book. Mercer's nervousness and the
+increased tightening of the thing in his chest had given him
+warning. The thing was going to happen soon, and Father Layonne
+had come. He tried to smile, that he might greet his wilderness
+friend cheerfully and unafraid. But the smile froze when the door
+opened and he saw the missioner standing there.
+
+More than once he had accompanied Father Layonne over the
+threshold of life into the presence of death, but he had never
+before seen in his face what he saw there now. He stared. The
+missioner remained in the doorway, hesitating, as if at the last
+moment a great fear held him back. For an interval the eyes of the
+two men rested upon each other in a silence that was like the grip
+of a living thing. Then Father Layonne came quietly into the room
+and closed the door behind him.
+
+Kent drew a deep breath and tried to grin. "You woke me out of a
+dream," he said, "a day-dream. I've had a very pleasant experience
+this morning, mon pere."
+
+"So some one was trying to tell me, Jimmy," replied the little
+missioner with an effort to smile back.
+
+"Mercer?"
+
+"Yes. He told me about it confidentially. The poor boy must have
+fallen in love with the young lady."
+
+"So have I, mon pere. I don't mind confessing it to you. I'm
+rather glad. And if Cardigan hadn't scheduled me to die--"
+
+"Jimmy," interrupted the missioner quickly, but a bit huskily,
+"has it ever occurred to you that Doctor Cardigan may be
+mistaken?"
+
+He had taken one of Kent's hands. His grip tightened. It began to
+hurt. And Kent, looking into his eyes, found his brain all at once
+like a black room suddenly illuminated by a flash of fire. Drop by
+drop the blood went out of his face until it was whiter than
+Father Layonne's.
+
+"You--you don't--mean--"
+
+"Yes, yes, boy, I mean just that," said the missioner, in a voice
+so strange that it did not seem to be his own. "You are not going
+to die, Jimmy. You are going to live!"
+
+"Live!" Kent dropped back against his pillows. "LIVE!" His lips
+gasped the one word.
+
+He closed his eyes for an instant, and it seemed to him that the
+world was aflame. And he repeated the word again, but only his
+lips formed it, and there came no sound. His senses, strained to
+the breaking-point to meet the ordeal of death, gave way slowly to
+the mighty reaction. He felt in those moments like a reeling man.
+He opened his eyes, and there was a meaningless green haze through
+the window where the world should have been. But he heard Father
+Layonne's voice. It seemed a great distance off, but it was very
+clear. Doctor Cardigan had made an error, it was saying. And
+Doctor Cardigan, because of that error, was like a man whose heart
+had been taken out of him. But it was an excusable error.
+
+If there had been an X-ray--But there had been none. And Doctor
+Cardigan had made the diagnosis that nine out of ten good surgeons
+would probably have made. What he had taken to be the aneurismal
+blood-rush was an exaggerated heart murmur, and the increased
+thickening in his chest was a simple complication brought about by
+too much night air. It was too bad the error had happened. But he
+must not blame Cardigan!
+
+HE MUST NOT BLAME CARDIGAN! Those last words pounded like an
+endless series of little waves in Kent's brain. He must not blame
+Cardigan! He laughed, laughed before his dazed senses readjusted
+themselves, before the world through the window pieced itself into
+shape again. At least he thought he was laughing. He must--not--
+blame--Cardigan! What an amazingly stupid thing for Father Layonne
+to say! Blame Cardigan for giving him back his life? Blame him for
+the glorious knowledge that he was not going to die? Blame him
+for--
+
+Things were coming clearer. Like a bolt slipping into its groove
+his brain found itself. He saw Father Layonne again, with his
+white, tense face and eyes in which were still seated the fear and
+the horror he had seen in the doorway. It was not until then that
+he gripped fully at the truth.
+
+"I--I see," he said. "You and Cardigan think it would have been
+better if I had died!"
+
+The missioner was still holding his hand. "I don't know, Jimmy, I
+don't know. What has happened is terrible."
+
+"But not so terrible as death," cried Kent, suddenly growing rigid
+against his pillows. "Great God, mon pere, I want to live! Oh--"
+
+He snatched his hand free and stretched forth both arms to the
+open window. "Look at it out there! My world again! MY WORLD! I
+want to go back to it. It's ten times more precious to me now than
+it was. Why should I blame Cardigan? Mon pere--mon pere--listen to
+me. I can say it now, because I've got a right to say it. I LIED.
+I didn't kill John Barkley!"
+
+A strange cry fell from Father Layonne's lips. It was a choking
+cry, a cry, not of rejoicing, but of a grief-stung thing. "Jimmy!"
+
+"I swear it! Great heaven, mon pere, don't you believe me?"
+
+The missioner had risen. In his eyes and face was another look. It
+was as if in all his life he had never seen James Kent before. It
+was a look born suddenly of shock, the shock of amazement, of
+incredulity, of a new kind of horror. Then swiftly again his
+countenance changed, and he put a hand on Kent's head.
+
+"God forgive you, Jimmy," he said. "And God help you, too!"
+
+Where a moment before Kent had felt the hot throb of an inundating
+joy, his heart was chilled now by the thing he sensed in Father
+Layonne's voice and saw in his face and eyes. It was not entirely
+disbelief. It was a more hopeless thing than that.
+
+"You do not believe me!" he said.
+
+"It is my religion to believe, Jimmy," replied Father Layonne in a
+gentle voice into which the old calmness had returned. "I must
+believe, for your sake. But it is not a matter of human sentiment
+now, lad. It is the Law! Whatever my heart feels toward you can do
+you no good. You are--" He hesitated to speak the words.
+
+Then it was that Kent saw fully and clearly the whole monstrous
+situation. It had taken time for it to fasten itself upon him. In
+a general way it had been clear to him a few moments before; now,
+detail by detail, it closed in upon him, and his muscles
+tightened, and Father Layonne saw his jaw set hard and his hands
+clench. Death was gone. But the mockery of it, the grim exultation
+of the thing over the colossal trick it had played, seemed to din
+an infernal laughter in his ears. But--he was going to live! That
+was the one fact that rose above all others. No matter what
+happened to him a month or six months from now, he was not going
+to die today. He would live to receive Mercer's report. He would
+live to stand on his feet again and to fight for the life which he
+had thrown away. He was, above everything else, a fighting man. It
+was born in him to fight, not so much against his fellow men as
+against the overwhelming odds of adventure as they came to him.
+And now he was up against the deadliest game of all. He saw it. He
+felt it. The thing gripped him. In the eyes of that Law of which
+he had so recently been a part he was a murderer. And in the
+province of Alberta the penalty for killing a man was hanging.
+Because horror and fear did not seize upon him, he wondered if he
+still realized the situation. He believed that he did. It was
+merely a matter of human nature. Death, he had supposed, was a
+fixed and foregone thing. He had believed that only a few hours of
+life were left for him. And now it was given back to him, for
+months at least. It was a glorious reprieve, and--
+
+Suddenly his heart stood still in the thrill of the thought that
+came to him. Marette Radisson had known that he was not going to
+die! She had hinted the fact, and he, like a blundering idiot, had
+failed to catch the significance of it. She had given him no
+sympathy, had laughed at him, had almost made fun of him, simply
+because she knew that he was going to live!
+
+He turned suddenly on Father Layonne.
+
+"They shall believe me!" he cried. "I shall make them believe me!
+Mon pere, I lied! I lied to save Sandy McTrigger, and I shall tell
+them why. If Doctor Cardigan has not made another mistake, I want
+them all here again. Will you arrange it?"
+
+"Inspector Kedsty is waiting outside," said Father Layonne
+quietly, "but I should not act in haste, Jimmy. I should wait. I
+should think--think."
+
+"You mean take time to think up a story that will hold water, mon
+pere? I have that. I have the story. And yet--" He smiled a bit
+dismally. "I did make one pretty thorough confession, didn't I,
+Father?"
+
+"It was very convincing, Jimmy. It went so particularly into the
+details, and those details, coupled with the facts that you were
+seen at John Barkley's earlier in the evening, and that it was you
+who found him dead a number of hours later--"
+
+"All make a strong case against me," agreed Kent. "As a matter of
+fact, I was up at Barkley's to look over an old map he had made of
+the Porcupine country twenty years ago. He couldn't find it. Later
+he sent word he had run across it. I returned and found him dead."
+
+The little missioner nodded, but did not speak.
+
+"It is embarrassing," Kent went on. "It almost seems as though I
+ought to go through with it, like a sport. When a man loses, it
+isn't good taste to set up a howl. It makes him sort of yellow-
+backed, you know. To play the game according to rules, I suppose I
+ought to keep quiet and allow myself to be hung without making any
+disturbance. Die game, and all that, you know. Then there is the
+other way of looking at it. This poor neck of mine depends on me.
+It has given me a lot of good service. It has been mighty loyal.
+It has even swallowed eggs on the day it thought it was going to
+die. And I'd be a poor specimen of humanity to go back on it now.
+I want to do that neck a good turn. I want to save it. And I'm
+going to--if I can!"
+
+In spite of the unpleasant tension of the moment, it cheered
+Father Layonne to see this old humor returning into the heart of
+his friend. With him love was an enduring thing. He might grieve
+for James Kent, he might pray for the salvation of his soul, he
+might believe him guilty, yet he still bore for him the affection
+which was too deeply rooted in his heart to be uptorn by physical
+things or the happenings of chance. So the old cheer of his smile
+came back, and he said:
+
+"To fight for his life is a privilege which God gives to every
+man, Jimmy. I was terrified when I came to you. I believed it
+would have been better if you had died. I can see my error. It
+will be a terrible fight. If you win, I shall be glad. If you
+lose, I know that you will lose bravely. Perhaps you are right. It
+may be best to see Inspector Kedsty before you have had time to
+think. That point will have its psychological effect. Shall I tell
+him you are prepared to see him?"
+
+Kent nodded. "Yes. Now."
+
+Father Layonne went to the door. Even there he seemed to hesitate
+an instant, as if again to call upon Kent to reconsider. Then he
+opened it and went out.
+
+Kent waited impatiently. His hand, fumbling at his bedclothes,
+seized upon the cloth with which he had wiped his lips, and it
+suddenly occurred to him that it had been a long time since it had
+shown a fresh stain of blood. Now that he knew it was not a deadly
+thing, the tightening in his chest was less uncomfortable. He felt
+like getting up and meeting his visitors on his feet. Every nerve
+in his body wanted action, and the minutes of silence which
+followed the closing of the door after the missioner were drawn
+out and tedious to him. A quarter of an hour passed before he
+heard returning footsteps, and by the sound of them he knew Kedsty
+was not coming alone. Probably le pere would return with him. And
+possibly Cardigan.
+
+What happened in the next few seconds was somewhat of a shock to
+him. Father Layonne entered first, and then came Inspector Kedsty.
+Kent's eyes shot to the face of the commander of N Division. There
+was scarcely recognition in it. A mere inclination of the head,
+not enough to call a greeting, was the reply to Kent's nod and
+salute. Never had he seen Kedsty's face more like the face of an
+emotionless sphinx. But what disturbed him most was the presence
+of people he had not expected. Close behind Kedsty was McDougal,
+the magistrate, and behind McDougal entered Constables Felly and
+Brant, stiffly erect and clearly under orders. Cardigan, pale and
+uneasy, came in last, with the stenographer. Scarcely had they
+entered the room when Constable Pelly pronounced the formal
+warning of the Criminal Code of the Royal Northwest Mounted
+Police, and Kent was legally under arrest.
+
+He had not looked for this. He knew, of course, that the process
+of the Law would take its course, but he had not anticipated this
+bloodthirsty suddenness. He had expected, first of all, to talk
+with Kedsty as man to man. And yet--it was the Law. He realized
+this as his eyes traveled from Kedsty's rock-like face to the
+expressionless immobility of his old friends, Constables Pelly and
+Brant. If there was sympathy, it was hidden except in the faces of
+Cardigan and Father Layonne. And Kent, exultantly hopeful a little
+while before, felt his heart grow heavy within him as he waited
+for the moment when he would begin the fight to repossess himself
+of the life and freed which he had lost.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+For some time after the door to Kent's room had closed upon the
+ominous visitation of the Law, young Mercer remained standing in
+the hall, debating with himself whether his own moment had not
+arrived. In the end he decided that it had, and with Kent's fifty
+dollars in his pocket he made for the shack of the old Indian
+trailer, Mooie. It was an hour later when he returned, just in
+time to see Kent's door open again. Doctor Cardigan and Father
+Layonne reappeared first, followed in turn by the blonde
+stenographer, the magistrate, and Constables Pelly and Brant. Then
+the door closed.
+
+Within the room, sweating from the ordeal through which he had
+passed, Kent sat bolstered against his pillows, facing Inspector
+Kedsty with blazing eyes.
+
+"I've asked for these few moments alone with you, Kedsty, because
+I wanted to talk to you as a man, and not as my superior officer.
+I am, I take it, no longer a member of the force. That being the
+case, I owe you no more respect than I owe to any other man. And I
+am pleased to have the very great privilege of calling you a
+cursed scoundrel!"
+
+Kedsty's face was hot, but as his hands clenched slowly, it turned
+redder. Before he could speak, Kent went on.
+
+"You have not shown me the courtesy or the sympathy you have had
+for the worst criminals that ever faced you. You amazed every man
+that was in this room, because at one time--if not now--they were
+my friends. It wasn't what you said. It was how you said it.
+Whenever there was an inclination on their part to believe, you
+killed it--not honestly and squarely, by giving me a chance.
+Whenever you saw a chance for me to win a point, you fell back
+upon the law. And you don't believe that I killed John Barkley. I
+know it. You called me a liar the day I made that fool confession.
+You still believe that I lied. And I have waited until we were
+alone to ask you certain things, for I still have something of
+courtesy left in me, if you haven't. What is your game? What has
+brought about the change in you? Is it--"
+
+His right hand clenched hard as a rock as he leaned toward Kedsty.
+
+"Is it because of the girl hiding up at your bungalow, Kedsty?"
+
+Even in that moment, when he had the desire to strike the man
+before him, it was impossible for him not to admire the stone-like
+invulnerability of Kedsty. He had never heard of another man
+calling Kedsty a scoundrel or dishonest. And yet, except that his
+faced burned more dully red, the Inspector was as impassively calm
+as ever. Even Kent's intimation that he was playing a game, and
+his direct accusation that he was keeping Marette Radisson in
+hiding at his bungalow, seemed to have no disturbing effect on
+him. For a space he looked at Kent, as if measuring the poise of
+the other's mind. When he spoke, it was in a voice so quiet and
+calm that Kent stared at him in amazement.
+
+"I don't blame you, Kent," he said. "I don't blame you for calling
+me a scoundrel, or anything else you want to. I think I should do
+the same if I were in your place. You think it is incredible,
+because of our previous association, that I should not make every
+effort to save you. I would, if I thought you were innocent. But I
+don't. I believe you are guilty. I cannot see where there is a
+loophole in the evidence against you, as given in your own
+confession. Why, man, even if I could help to prove you innocent
+of killing John Barkley--"
+
+He paused and twisted one of his gray mustaches, half facing the
+window for a moment. "Even if I did that," he went on, "you would
+still have twenty years of prison ahead of you for the worst kind
+of perjury on the face of the earth, perjury committed at a time
+when you thought you were dying! You are guilty, Kent. If not of
+one thing, then of the other. I am not playing a game. And as for
+the girl--there is no girl at my bungalow."
+
+He turned to the door; and Kent made no effort to stop him. Words
+came to his lips and died there, and for a space after Kedsty had
+gone he stared out into the green forest world beyond his window,
+seeing nothing. Inspector Kedsty, quietly and calmly, had spoken
+words that sent his hopes crashing in ruin about him. For even if
+he escaped the hangman, he was still a criminal--a criminal of the
+worst sort, perhaps, next to the man who kills another. If he
+proved that he had not killed John Barkley, he would convict
+himself, at the same time, of having made solemn oath to a lie on
+what he supposed was his death-bed. And for that, a possible
+twenty years in the Edmonton penitentiary! At best he could not
+expect less than ten. Ten years--twenty years--in prison! That, or
+hang.
+
+The sweat broke out on his face. He did not curse Kedsty now. His
+anger was gone. Kedsty had seen all the time what he, like a fool,
+had not thought of. No matter how the Inspector might feel in that
+deeply buried heart of his, he could not do otherwise than he was
+doing. He, James Kent, who hated a lie above all the things on the
+earth, was kin-as-kisew--the blackest liar of all, a man who lied
+when he was dying.
+
+And for that lie there was a great punishment. The Law saw with
+its own eyes. It was a single-track affair, narrow-visioned,
+caring nothing for what was to the right or the left. It would
+tolerate no excuse which he might find for himself. He had lied to
+save a human life, but that life the Law itself had wanted. So he
+had both robbed and outraged the Law, even though a miracle saved
+him the greatest penalty of all.
+
+The weight of the thing crushed him. It was as if for the first
+time a window had opened for him, and he saw what Kedsty had seen.
+And then, as the minutes passed, the fighting spirit in him rose
+again. He was not of the sort to go under easily. Personal danger
+had always stirred him to his greatest depths, and he had never
+confronted a danger greater than this he was facing now. It was
+not a matter of leaping quickly and on the spur of the moment. For
+ten years his training had been that of a hunter of men, and the
+psychology of the man hunt had been his strong point. Always, in
+seeking his quarry, he had tried first to bring himself into a
+mental sympathy and understanding with that quarry. To analyze
+what an outlaw would do under certain conditions and with certain
+environments and racial inheritances behind him was to Kent the
+premier move in the thrilling game. He had evolved rules of great
+importance for himself, but always he had worked them out from the
+vantage point of the huntsman. Now he began to turn them around.
+He, James Kent, was no longer the hunter, but the hunted, and all
+the tricks which he had mastered must now be worked the other way.
+His woodcraft, his cunning, the fine points he had learned of the
+game of one-against-one would avail him but little when it came to
+the witness chair and a trial.
+
+The open window was his first inspiration. Adventure had been the
+blood of his life. And out there, behind the green forests rolling
+away like the billows of an ocean, lay the greatest adventure of
+all. Once in those beloved forests covering almost the half of a
+continent, he would be willing to die if the world beat him. He
+could see himself playing the game of the hunted as no other man
+had ever played it before. Let him once have his guns and his
+freedom, with all that world waiting for him--
+
+Eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and then, slowly, it died out. The
+open window, after all, was but a mockery. He rolled sideways from
+his bed and partly balanced himself on his feet. The effort made
+him dizzy. He doubted if he could have walked a hundred yards
+after climbing through the window. Instantly another thought
+leaped into his brain. His head was clearing. He swayed across the
+room and back again, the first time he had been on his feet since
+the half-breed's bullet had laid him out. He would fool Cardigan.
+He would fool Kedsty. As he recovered his strength, he would keep
+it to himself. He would play sick man to the limit, and then some
+night he would take advantage of the open window!
+
+The thought thrilled him as no other thing in the world had ever
+thrilled him before. For the first time he sensed the vast
+difference between the hunter and the hunted, between the man who
+played the game of life and death alone and the one who played it
+with the Law and all its might behind him. To hunt was thrilling.
+To be hunted was more thrilling. Every nerve in his body tingled.
+A different kind of fire burned in his brain. He was the creature
+who was at bay. The other fellow was the hunter now.
+
+He went back to the window and leaned far out. He looked at the
+forest and saw it with new eyes. The gleam of the slowly moving
+river held a meaning for him that it had never held before. Doctor
+Cardigan, seeing him then, would have sworn the fever had
+returned. His eyes held a slumbering fire. His face was flushed.
+In these moments Kent did not see death. He was not visioning the
+iron bars of a prison. His blood pulsed only to the stir of that
+greatest of all adventures which lay ahead of him. He, the best
+man-hunter in two thousand miles of wilderness, would beat the
+hunters themselves. The hound had turned fox, and that fox knew
+the tricks of both the hunter and the hunted. He would win! A
+world beckoned to him, and he would reach the heart of that world.
+Already there began to flash through his mind memory of the places
+where he could find safety and freedom for all time. No man in all
+the Northland knew its out-of-the-way corners better than he--its
+unmapped and unexplored places, the far and mysterious patches of
+terra incognita, where the sun still rose and set without
+permission of the Law, and God laughed as in the days when
+prehistoric monsters fed from the tops of trees no taller than
+themselves. Once through that window, with the strength to travel,
+and the Law might seek him for a hundred years without profit to
+itself.
+
+It was not bravado in his blood that stirred these thoughts. It
+was not panic or an unsound excitement. He was measuring things
+even as he visioned them. He would go down-river way, toward the
+Arctic. And he would find Marette Radisson! Yes, even though she
+lived at Barracks at Fort Simpson, he would find her! And after
+that? The question blurred all other questions in his mind. There
+were many answers to it.
+
+Knowing that it would be fatal to his scheme if he were found on
+his feet, he returned to his bed. The flush of his exertion and
+excitement was still in his face when Doctor Cardigan came half an
+hour later.
+
+Within the next few minutes he put Cardigan more at his ease than
+he had been during the preceding day and night. It was, after all,
+an error which made him happier the more he thought about it, he
+told the surgeon. He admitted that at first the discovery that he
+was going to live had horrified him. But now the whole thing bore
+a different aspect for him. As soon as he was sufficiently strong,
+he would begin gathering the evidences for his alibi, and he was
+confident of proving himself innocent of John Barkley's murder.
+
+He anticipated ten years in the Edmonton penitentiary. But what
+were ten years there as compared with forty or fifty under the
+sod? He wrung Cardigan's hand. He thanked him for the splendid
+care he had given him. It was he, Cardigan, who had saved him from
+the grave, he said--and Cardigan grew younger under his eyes.
+
+"I thought you'd look at it differently, Kent," he said, drawing
+in a deep breath. "My God, when I found I had made that mistake--"
+
+"You figured you were handing me over to the hangman," smiled
+Kent. "It's true I shouldn't have made that confession, old man,
+if I hadn't rated you right next to God Almighty when it came to
+telling whether a man was going to live or die. But we all make
+slips. I've made 'em. And you've got no apology to make. I may ask
+you to send me good cigars now and then while I'm in retirement at
+Edmonton, and I shall probably insist that you come to smoke with
+me occasionally and tell me the news of the rivers. But I'm
+afraid, old chap, that I'm going to worry you a bit more here. I
+feel queer today, queer inside me. Now it would be a topping joke
+if some other complication should set in and fool us all again,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+He could see the impression he was making on Cardigan. Again his
+faith in the psychology of the mind found its absolute
+verification. Cardigan, lifted unexpectedly out of the slough of
+despond by the very man whom he expected to condemn him, became
+from that moment, in the face of the mental reaction, almost
+hypersympathetic. When finally he left the room, Kent was inwardly
+rejoicing. For Cardigan had told him it would be some time before
+he was strong enough to stand on his feet.
+
+He did not see Mercer all the rest of that day. It was Cardigan
+who personally brought his dinner and his supper and attended him
+last at night. He asked not to be interrupted again, as he felt
+that he wanted to sleep. There was a guard outside his door now.
+
+Cardigan scowled when he volunteered this information. It was
+sheer nonsense in Kedsty taking such a silly precaution. But he
+would give the guard rubber-soled shoes and insist that he make no
+sound that would disturb him. Kent thanked him, and grinned
+exultantly when he was gone.
+
+He waited until his watch told him it was ten o'clock before he
+began the exercise which he had prescribed for himself.
+Noiselessly he rolled out of bed. There was no sensation of
+dizziness when he stood on his feet this time. His head was as
+clear as a bell. He began experimenting by inhaling deeper and
+still deeper breaths and by straightening his chest.
+
+There was no pain, as he had expected there would be. He felt like
+crying out in his joy. One after the other he stretched up his
+arms. He bent over until the tips of his fingers touched the
+floor. He crooked his knees, leaned from side to side, changed
+from one attitude to another, amazed at the strength and
+elasticity of his body. Twenty times, before he returned to his
+bed, he walked back and forth across his room.
+
+He was sleepless. Lying with his back to the pillows he looked out
+into the starlight, watching for the first glow of the moon and
+listening again to the owls that had nested in the lightning-
+shriven tree. An hour later he resumed his exercise.
+
+He was on his feet when through his window he heard the sound of
+approaching voices and then of running feet. A moment later some
+one was pounding at a door, and a loud voice shouted for Doctor
+Cardigan. Kent drew cautiously nearer the window. The moon had
+risen, and he saw figures approaching, slowly, as if weighted
+under a burden. Before they turned out of his vision, he made out
+two men bearing some heavy object between them. Then came the
+opening of a door, other voices, and after that an interval of
+quiet.
+
+He returned to his bed, wondering who the new patient could be.
+
+He was breathing easier after his exertion. The fact that he was
+feeling keenly alive, and that the thickening in his chest was
+disappearing, flushed him with elation. An unbounded optimism
+possessed him. It was late when he fell asleep, and he slept late.
+It was Mercer's entrance into his room that roused him. He came in
+softly, closed the door softly, yet Kent heard him. The moment he
+pulled himself up, he knew that Mercer had a report to make, and
+he also saw that something upsetting had happened to him. Mercer
+was a bit excited.
+
+"I beg pardon for waking you, sir," he said, leaning close over
+Kent, as though fearing the guard might be listening at the door.
+"But I thought it best for you to hear about the Indian, sir."
+
+"The Indian?"
+
+"Yes, sir--Mooie, sir. I am quite upset over it, Mr. Kent. He told
+me early last evening that he had found the scow on which the girl
+was going down-river. He said it was hidden in Kim's Bayou."
+
+"Kim's Bayou! That was a good hiding-place, Mercer!"
+
+"A very good place of concealment indeed, sir. As soon as it was
+dark, Mooie returned to watch. What happened to him I haven't
+fully discovered, sir. But it must have been near midnight when he
+staggered up to Crossen's place, bleeding and half out of his
+senses. They brought him here, and I watched over him most of the
+night. He says the girl went aboard the scow and that the scow
+started down-river. That much I learned, sir. But all the rest he
+mumbles in a tongue I can not understand. Crossen says it's Cree,
+and that old Mooie believes devils jumped on him with clubs down
+at Kim's Bayou. Of course they must have been men. I don't believe
+in Mooie's devils, sir."
+
+"Nor I," said Kent, the blood stirring strangely in his veins.
+"Mercer, it simply means there was some one cleverer than old
+Mooie watching that trail."
+
+With a curiously tense face Mercer was looking cautiously toward
+the door. Then he leaned still lower over Kent.
+
+"During his mumblings, when I was alone with him, I heard him
+speak a name, sir. Half a dozen times, sir--and it was--KEDSTY!"
+
+Kent's fingers gripped the young Englishman's hand.
+
+"You heard THAT, Mercer?"
+
+"I am sure I could not have been mistaken, sir. It was repeated a
+number of times."
+
+Kent fell back against his pillows. His mind was working swiftly.
+He knew that behind an effort to appear calm Mercer was uneasy
+over what had happened.
+
+"We mustn't let this get out, Mercer," he said. "If Mooie should
+be badly hurt--should die, for instance--and it was discovered
+that you and I--"
+
+He knew he had gone far enough to give effect to his words. He did
+not even look at Mercer.
+
+"Watch him closely, old man, and report to me everything that
+happens. Find out more about Kedsty, if you can. I shall advise
+you how to act. It is rather ticklish, you know--for you! And"--he
+smiled at Mercer--"I'm unusually hungry this morning. Add another
+egg, will you, Mercer? Three instead of two, and a couple of extra
+slices of toast. And don't let any one know that my appetite is
+improving. It may be best for both of us--especially if Mooie
+should happen to die. Understand, old man?"
+
+"I--I think I do, sir," replied Mercer, paling at the grimly
+smiling thing he saw in Kent's eyes. "I shall do as you say, sir."
+
+When he had gone, Kent knew that he had accurately measured his
+man. True to a certain type, Mercer would do a great deal for
+fifty dollars--under cover. In the open he was a coward. And Kent
+knew the value of such a man under certain conditions. The present
+was one of those conditions. From this hour Mercer would be a
+priceless asset to his scheme for personal salvation.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+That morning Kent ate a breakfast that would have amazed Doctor
+Cardigan and would have roused a greater caution in Inspector
+Kedsty had he known of it. While eating he strengthened the bonds
+already welded between himself and Mercer. He feigned great
+uneasiness over the condition of Mooie, who he knew was not
+fatally hurt because Mercer had told him there was no fracture.
+But if he should happen to die, he told Mercer, it would mean
+something pretty bad for them, if their part in the affair leaked
+out.
+
+As for himself, it would make little difference, as he was "in
+bad" anyway. But he did not want to see a good friend get into
+trouble on his account. Mercer was impressed. He saw himself an
+instrument in a possible murder affair, and the thought terrified
+him. Even at best, Kent told him, they had given and taken bribes,
+a fact that would go hard with them unless Mooie kept his mouth
+shut. And if the Indian knew anything out of the way about Kedsty,
+it was mighty important that he, Mercer, get hold of it, for it
+might prove a trump card with them in the event of a showdown with
+the Inspector of Police. As a matter of form, Mercer took his
+temperature. It was perfectly normal, but it was easy for Kent to
+persuade a notation on the chart a degree above.
+
+"Better keep them thinking I'm still pretty sick," he assured
+Mercer. "They won't suspect there is anything between us then."
+
+Mercer was so much in sympathy with the idea that he suggested
+adding another half-degree.
+
+It was a splendid day for Kent. He could feel himself growing
+stronger with each hour that passed. Yet not once during the day
+did he get out of his bed, fearing that he might be discovered.
+Cardigan visited him twice and had no suspicion of Mercer's
+temperature chart. He dressed his wound, which was healing fast.
+It was the fever which depressed him. There must be, he said, some
+internal disarrangement which would soon clear itself up.
+Otherwise there seemed to be no very great reason why Kent should
+not get on his feet. He smiled apologetically.
+
+"Seems queer to say that, when a little while ago I was telling
+you it was time to die," he said.
+
+That night, after ten o'clock, Kent went through his setting-up
+exercises four times. He marveled even more than the preceding
+night at the swiftness with which his strength was returning. Half
+a dozen times the little devils of eagerness working in his blood
+prompted him to take to the window at once.
+
+For three days and nights thereafter he kept his secret and added
+to his strength. Doctor Cardigan came in to see him at intervals,
+and Father Layonne visited him regularly every afternoon. Mercer
+was his most frequent visitor. On the third day two things
+happened to create a little excitement. Doctor Cardigan left on a
+four-day journey to a settlement fifty miles south, leaving Mercer
+in charge--and Mooie came suddenly out of his fever into his
+normal senses again. The first event filled Kent with joy. With
+Cardigan out of the way there would be no immediate danger of the
+discovery that he was no longer a sick man. But it was the
+recovery of Mooie from the thumping he had received about the head
+that delighted Mercer. He was exultant. With the quick reaction of
+his kind he gloated over the fact before Kent. He let it be known
+that he was no longer afraid, and from the moment Mooie was out of
+danger his attitude was such that more than once Kent would have
+taken keen pleasure in kicking him from the room. Also, from the
+hour he was safely in charge of Doctor Cardigan's place, Mercer
+began to swell with importance. Kent saw the new danger and began
+to humor him. He flattered him. He assured him that it was a
+burning shame Cardigan had not taken him into partnership. He
+deserved it. And, in justice to himself, Mercer should demand that
+partnership when Cardigan returned. He, Kent, would talk to Father
+Layonne about it, and the missioner would spread the gospel of
+what ought to be among others who were influential at the Landing.
+For two days he played with Mercer as an angler plays with a
+treacherous fish. He tried to get Mercer to discover more about
+Mooie's reference to Kedsty. But the old Indian had shut up like a
+clam.
+
+"He was frightened when I told him he had said things about the
+Inspector," Mercer reported. "He disavowed everything. He shook
+his head--no, no, no. He had not seen Kedsty. He knew nothing
+about him. I can do nothing with him, Kent."
+
+He had dropped his "sirs," also his servant-like servility. He
+helped to smoke Kent's cigars with the intimacy of proprietorship,
+and with offensive freedom called him "Kent." He spoke of the
+Inspector as "Kedsty," and of Father Layonne as "the little
+preacher." He swelled perceptibly, and Kent knew that each hour of
+that swelling added to his own danger.
+
+He believed that Mercer was talking. Several times a day he heard
+him in conversation with the guard, and not infrequently Mercer
+went down to the Landing, twirling a little reed cane that he had
+not dared to use before. He began to drop opinions and information
+to Kent in a superior sort of way. On the fourth day word came
+that Doctor Cardigan would not return for another forty-eight
+hours, and with unblushing conceit Mercer intimated that when he
+did return he would find big changes. Then it was that in the
+stupidity of his egotism he said:
+
+"Kedsty has taken a great fancy to me, Kent. He's a square old
+top, when you take him right. Had me over this afternoon, and we
+smoked a cigar together. When I told him that I looked in at your
+window last night and saw you going through a lot of exercises, he
+jumped up as if some one had stuck a pin in him. 'Why, I thought
+he was sick--BAD!' he said. And I let him know there were better
+ways of making a sick man well than Cardigan's. 'Give them plenty
+to eat,' I said. 'Let 'em live normal,' I argued. 'Look at Kent,
+for instance,' I told him. 'He's been eating like a bear for a
+week, and he can turn somersaults this minute!' That topped him
+over, Kent. I knew it would be a bit of a surprise for him, that I
+should do what Cardigan couldn't do. He walked back and forth,
+black as a hat--thinking of Cardigan, I suppose. Then he called in
+that Pelly chap and gave him something which he wrote on a piece
+of paper. After that he shook hands with me, slapped me on the
+shoulder most intimately, and gave me another cigar. He's a keen
+old blade, Kent. He doesn't need more than one pair of eyes to see
+what I've done since Cardigan went away!"
+
+If ever Kent's hands had itched to get at the throat of a human
+being, the yearning convulsed his fingers now. At the moment when
+he was about to act Mercer had betrayed him to Kedsty! He turned
+his face away so that Mercer could not see what was in his eyes.
+Under his body he concealed his clenched hands. Within himself he
+fought against the insane desire that was raging in his blood, the
+desire to leap on Mercer and kill him. If Cardigan had reported
+his condition to Kedsty, it would have been different. He would
+have accepted the report as a matter of honorable necessity on
+Cardigan's part. But Mercer--a toad blown up by his own wind, a
+consummate fiend who would sell his best friend, a fool, an ass--
+
+For a space he held himself rigid as a stone, his face turned away
+from Mercer. His better sense won. He knew that his last chance
+depended upon his coolness now. And Mercer unwittingly helped him
+to win by slyly pocketing a couple of his cigars and leaving the
+room. For a minute or two Kent heard him talking to the guard
+outside the door.
+
+He sat up then. It was five o'clock. How long ago was it that
+Mercer had seen Kedsty? What was the order that the Inspector had
+written on a sheet of paper for Constable Pelly? Was it simply
+that he should be more closely watched, or was it a command to
+move him to one of the cells close to the detachment office? If it
+was the latter, all his hopes and plans were destroyed. His mind
+flew to those cells.
+
+The Landing had no jail, not even a guard-house, though the
+members of the force sometimes spoke of the cells just behind
+Inspector Kedsty's office by that name. The cells were of cement,
+and Kent himself had helped to plan them! The irony of the thing
+did not strike him just then. He was recalling the fact that no
+prisoner had ever escaped from those cement cells. If no action
+were taken before six o'clock, he was sure that it would be
+postponed until the following morning. It was possible that
+Kedsty's order was for Pelly to prepare a cell for him. Deep in
+his soul he prayed fervently that it was only a matter of
+preparation. If they would give him one more night--just one!
+
+His watch tinkled the half-hour. Then a quarter of six. Then six.
+His blood ran feverishly, in spite of the fact that he possessed
+the reputation of being the coolest man in N Division. He lighted
+his last cigar and smoked it slowly to cover the suspense which he
+feared revealed itself in his face, should any one come into his
+room. His supper was due at seven. At eight it would begin to get
+dusk. The moon was rising later each night, and it would not
+appear over the forests until after eleven. He would go through
+his window at ten o'clock. His mind worked swiftly and surely as
+to the method of his first night's flight. There were always a
+number of boats down at Crossen's place. He would start in one of
+these, and by the time Mercer discovered he was gone, he would be
+forty miles on his way to freedom. Then he would set his boat
+adrift, or hide it, and start cross-country until his trail was
+lost. Somewhere and in some way he would find both guns and food.
+It was fortunate that he had not given Mercer the other fifty
+dollars under his pillow.
+
+At seven Mercer came with his supper. A little gleam of
+disappointment shot into his pale eyes when he found the last
+cigar gone from the box. Kent saw the expression and tried to grin
+good-humoredly.
+
+"I'm going to have Father Layonne bring me up another box in the
+morning, Mercer," he said. "That is, if I can get hold of him."
+
+"You probably can," snapped Mercer. "He doesn't live far from
+barracks, and that's where you are going. I've got orders to have
+you ready to move in the morning."
+
+Kent's blood seemed for an instant to flash into living flame. He
+drank a part of his cup of coffee and said then, with a shrug of
+his shoulders: "I'm glad of it, Mercer. I'm anxious to have the
+thing over. The sooner they get me down there, the quicker they
+will take action. And I'm not afraid, not a bit of it. I'm bound
+to win. There isn't a chance in a hundred that they can convict
+me." Then he added: "And I'm going to have a box of cigars sent up
+to you, Mercer. I'm grateful to you for the splendid treatment you
+have given me."
+
+No sooner had Mercer gone with the supper things than Kent's
+knotted fist shook itself fiercely in the direction of the door.
+
+"My God, how I'd like to have you out in the woods--alone--for
+just one hour!" he whispered.
+
+Eight o'clock came, and nine. Two or three times he heard voices
+in the hall, probably Mercer talking with the guard. Once he
+thought he heard a rumble of thunder, and his heart throbbed
+joyously. Never had he welcomed a storm as he would have welcomed
+it tonight. But the skies remained clear. Not only that, but the
+stars as they began to appear seemed to him more brilliant than he
+had ever seen them before. And it was very still. The rattle of a
+scow-chain came up to him from the river as though it were only a
+hundred yards away. He knew that it was one of Mooie's dogs he
+heard howling over near the sawmill. The owls, flitting past his
+window, seemed to click their beaks more loudly than last night. A
+dozen times he fancied he could hear the rippling voice of the
+river that very soon was to carry him on toward freedom.
+
+The river! Every dream and aspiration found its voice for him in
+that river now. Down it Marette Radisson had gone. And somewhere
+along it, or on the river beyond, or the third river still beyond
+that, he would find her. In the long, tense wait between the hours
+of nine and ten he brought the girl back into his room again. He
+recalled every gesture she had made, every word she had spoken. He
+felt the thrill of her hand on his forehead, her kiss, and in his
+brain her softly spoken words repeated themselves over and over
+again, "I think that if you lived very long I should love you."
+And as she had spoken those words SHE KNEW THAT HE WAS NOT GOING
+TO DIE!
+
+Why, then, had she gone away? Knowing that he was going to live,
+why had she not remained to help him if she could? Either she had
+spoken the words in jest, or--
+
+A new thought flashed into his mind. It almost drew a cry from his
+lips. It brought him up tense, erect, his heart pounding. Had she
+gone away? Was it not possible that she, too, was playing a game
+in giving the impression that she was leaving down-river on the
+hidden scow? Was it conceivable that she was playing that game
+against Kedsty? A picture, clean-cut as the stars in the sky,
+began to outline itself in his mental vision. It was clear, now,
+what Mooie's mumblings about Kedsty had signified. Kedsty had
+accompanied Marette to the scow. Mooie had seen him and had given
+the fact away in his fever. Afterward he had clamped his mouth
+shut through fear of the "big man" of the Law. But why, still
+later, had he almost been done to death? Mooie was a harmless
+creature. He had no enemies.
+
+There was no one at the Landing who would have assaulted the old
+trailer, whose hair was white with age. No one, unless it was
+Kedsty himself--Kedsty at bay, Kedsty in a rage. Even that was
+inconceivable. Whatever the motive of the assault might be, and no
+matter who had committed it, Mooie had most certainly seen the
+Inspector of Police accompany Marette Radisson to the scow. And
+the question which Kent found it impossible to answer was, had
+Marette Radisson really gone down the river on that scow?
+
+It was almost with a feeling of disappointment that he told
+himself it was possible she had not. He wanted her on the river.
+He wanted her going north and still farther north. The thought
+that she was mixed up in some affair that had to do with Kedsty
+was displeasing to him. If she was still in the Landing or near
+the Landing, it could no longer be on account of Sandy McTrigger,
+the man his confession had saved. In his heart he prayed that she
+was many days down the Athabasca, for it was there--and only
+there--that he would ever see her again. And his greatest desire,
+next to his desire for his freedom, was to find her. He was frank
+with himself in making that confession. He was more than that. He
+knew that not a day or night would pass that he would not think or
+dream of Marette Radisson. The wonder of her had grown more vivid
+for him with each hour that passed, and he was sorry now that he
+had not dared to touch her hair. She would not have been offended
+with him, for she had kissed him--after he had killed the impulse
+to lay his hand on that soft glory that had crowned her head.
+
+And then the little bell in his watch tinkled the hour of ten! He
+sat up with a jerk. For a space he held his breath while he
+listened. In the hall outside his room there was no sound. An inch
+at a time he drew himself off his bed until he stood on his feet.
+His clothes hung on hooks in the wall, and he groped his way to
+them so quietly that one listening at the crack of his door would
+not have heard him. He dressed swiftly. Then he made his way to
+the window, looked out, and listened.
+
+In the brilliant starlight he saw nothing but the two white stubs
+of the lightning-shattered trees in which the owls lived. And it
+was very still. The air was fresh and sweet in his face. In it he
+caught the scent of the distant balsams and cedars. The world,
+wonderful in its night silence, waited for him. It was impossible
+for him to conceive of failure or death out there, and it seemed
+unreal and trivial that the Law should expect to hold him, with
+that world reaching out its arms to him and calling him.
+
+Assured that the moment for action was at hand, he moved quickly.
+In another ten seconds he was through the window, and his feet
+were on the ground. For a space he stood out clear in the
+starlight. Then he hurried to the end of the building and hid
+himself in the shadow. The swiftness of his movement had brought
+him no physical discomfort, and his blood danced with the thrill
+of the earth under his feet and the thought that his wound must be
+even more completely healed than he had supposed. A wild
+exultation swept over him. He was free! He could see the river
+now, shimmering and talking to him in the starlight, urging him to
+hurry, telling him that only a little while ago another had gone
+north on the breast of it, and that if he hastened it would help
+him to overtake her. He felt the throb of new life in his body.
+His eyes shone strangely in the semi-gloom.
+
+It seemed to him that only yesterday Marette had gone. She could
+not be far away, even now. And in these moments, with the breath
+of freedom stirring him with the glory of new life, she was
+different for him from what she had ever been. She was a part of
+him. He could not think of escape without thinking of her. She
+became, in these precious moments, the living soul of his
+wilderness. He felt her presence. The thought possessed him that
+somewhere down the river she was thinking of him, waiting,
+expecting him. And in that same flash he made up his mind that he
+would not discard the boat, as he had planned; he would conceal
+himself by day, and float downstream by night, until at last he
+came to Marette Radisson. And then he would tell her why he had
+come. And after that--
+
+He looked toward Crossen's place. He would make straight for it,
+openly, like a man bent on a mission there was no reason to
+conceal. If luck went right, and Crossen was abed, he would be on
+the river within fifteen minutes. His blood ran faster as he took
+his first step out into the open starlight. Fifty yards ahead of
+him was the building which Cardigan used for his fuel. Safely
+beyond that, no one could see him from the windows of the
+hospital. He walked swiftly. Twenty paces, thirty, forty--and he
+stopped as suddenly as the half-breed's bullet had stopped him
+weeks before. Round the end of Cardigan's fuel house came a
+figure. It was Mercer. He was twirling his little cane and
+traveling quietly as a cat. They were not ten feet apart, yet Kent
+had not heard him.
+
+Mercer stopped. The cane dropped from his hand. Even in the
+starlight Kent could see his face turn white.
+
+"Don't make a sound, Mercer," he warned. "I'm taking a little
+exercise in the open air. If you cry out, I'll kill you!"
+
+He advanced slowly, speaking in a voice that could not have been
+heard at the windows behind him. And then a thing happened that
+froze the blood in his veins. He had heard the scream of every
+beast of the great forests, but never a scream like that which
+came from Mercer's lips now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent
+it was the voice of a fiend, a devil. It did not call for help. It
+was wordless. And as the horrible sound issued from Mercer's mouth
+he could see the swelling throat and bulging eyes that accompanied
+the effort. They made him think of a snake, a cobra.
+
+The chill went out of his blood, replaced by a flame of hottest
+fire. He forgot everything but that this serpent was in his path.
+Twice he had stood in his way. And he hated him. He hated him with
+a virulency that was death. Neither the call of freedom nor the
+threat of prison could keep him from wreaking vengeance now.
+Without a sound he was at Mercer's throat, and the scream ended in
+a choking shriek. His fingers dug into flabby flesh, and his
+clenched fist beat again and again into Mercer's face.
+
+He went to the ground, crushing the human serpent under him. And
+he continued to strike and choke as he had never struck or choked
+another man, all other things overwhelmed by his mad desire to
+tear into pieces this two-legged English vermin who was too foul
+to exist on the face of the earth.
+
+And he still continued to strike--even after the path lay clear
+once more between him and the river.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+What a terrible and inexcusable madness had possessed him, Kent
+realized the instant he rose from Mercer's prostrate body. Never
+had his brain flamed to that madness before. He believed at first
+that he had killed Mercer. It was neither pity nor regret that
+brought him to his senses. Mercer, a coward and a traitor, a sneak
+of the lowest type, had no excuse for living. It was the thought
+that he had lost his chance to reach the river that cleared his
+head as he swayed over Mercer.
+
+He heard running feet. He saw figures approaching swiftly through
+the starlight. And he was too weak to fight or run. The little
+strength he had saved up, and which he had planned to use so
+carefully in his flight, was gone. His wound, weeks in bed,
+muscles unaccustomed to the terrific exertion he had made in these
+moments of his vengeance, left him now panting and swaying as the
+running footsteps came nearer.
+
+His head swam. For a space he was sickeningly dizzy, and in the
+first moment of that dizziness, when every drop of blood in his
+body seemed rushing to his brain, his vision was twisted and his
+sense of direction gone. In his rage he had overexerted himself.
+He knew that something had gone wrong inside him and that he was
+helpless. Even then his impulse was to stagger toward the
+inanimate Mercer and kick him, but hands caught him and held him.
+He heard an amazed voice, then another--and something hard and
+cold shut round his wrists like a pair of toothless jaws.
+
+It was Constable Carter, Inspector Kedsty's right-hand man about
+barracks, that he saw first; then old Sands, the caretaker at
+Cardigan's place. Swiftly as he had turned sick, his brain grew
+clear, and his blood distributed itself evenly again through his
+body. He held up his hands. Carter had slipped a pair of irons on
+him, and the starlight glinted on the shining steel. Sands was
+bending over Mercer, and Carter was saying in a low voice:
+
+"It's too bad, Kent. But I've got to do it. I saw you from the
+window just as Mercer screamed. Why did you stop for him?"
+
+Mercer was getting up with the assistance of Sands. He turned a
+bloated and unseeing face toward Kent and Carter. He was
+blubbering and moaning, as though entreating for mercy in the fear
+that Kent had not finished with him. Carter pulled Kent away.
+
+"There's only one thing for me to do now," he said. "It isn't
+pleasant. But the law says I must take you to barracks."
+
+In the sky Kent saw the stars clearly again, and his lungs were
+drinking in the cool air as in the wonderful moments before his
+encounter with Mercer.
+
+He had lost. And it was Mercer who had made him lose. Carter felt
+the sudden tightening of his muscles as he walked with a hand on
+his arm. And Kent shut his teeth close and made no answer to what
+Carter had said, except that Carter heard something which he
+thought was a sob choked to death in the other's throat.
+
+Carter, too, was a man bred of the red blood of the North, and he
+knew what was in Kent's heart. For only by the breadth of a hair
+had Kent failed in his flight.
+
+Pelly was on duty at barracks, and it was Pelly who locked him in
+one of the three cells behind the detachment office. When he was
+gone, Kent sat down on the edge of his prison cot and for the
+first time let the agony of his despair escape in a gasping breath
+from between his lips. Half an hour ago the world had reached out
+its arms to him, and he had gone forth to its welcome, only to
+have the grimmest tragedy of all his life descend upon him like
+the sword of Damocles. For this was real tragedy. Here there was
+no hope. The tentacles of the law had him in their grip, and he
+could no longer dream of escape.
+
+Ghastly was the thought that it was he, James Kent, who had
+supervised the building of these cells! Acquainted with every
+trick and stratagem of the prisoner plotting for his freedom, he
+had left no weak point in their structure. Again he clenched his
+hands, and in his soul he cursed Mercer as he went to the little
+barred window that overlooked the river from his cell. The river
+was near now. He could hear the murmur of it. He could see its
+movement, and that movement, played upon by the stars, seemed now
+a writhing sort of almost noiseless laughter taunting him in his
+folly.
+
+He went back to his cot, and in his despair buried his face in his
+hands. In the half-hour after that he did not raise his head. For
+the first time in his life he knew that he was beaten, so utterly
+beaten that he no more had the desire to fight, and his soul was
+dark with the chaos of the things he had lost.
+
+At last he opened his eyes to the blackness of his prison room,
+and he beheld a marvelous thing. Across the gloom of the cell lay
+a shaft of golden fire. It was the light of the rising moon coming
+through his little, steel-barred window. To Kent it had crept into
+his cell like a living thing. He watched it, fascinated. His eyes
+followed it to the foot-square aperture, and there, red and
+glorious as it rose over the forests, the moon itself filled the
+world. For a space he saw nothing but that moon crowding the frame
+of his window. And as he rose to his feet and stood where his face
+was flooded in the light of it, he felt stirring within him the
+ghosts of his old hopes. One by one they rose up and came to life.
+He held out his hands, as if to fill them with the liquid glow;
+his heart beat faster in that glory of the moonrise. The taunting
+murmur of the river changed once more into hopeful song, his
+fingers closed tightly around the bars, and the fighting spirit
+rose in him again. As that spirit surged stronger, beating down
+his despair, driving the chaos out of his brain, he watched the
+moon as it climbed higher, changing from the red of the lower
+atmosphere to the yellow gold of the greater heights, marveling at
+the miracle of light and color that had never failed to stir him.
+
+And then he laughed. If Pelly or Carter had heard him, they would
+have wondered if he was mad. It was madness of a sort--the madness
+of restored confidence, of an unlimited faith, of an optimism that
+was bound to make dreams come true. Again he looked beyond the
+bars of his cell. The world was still there; the river was there;
+all the things that were worth fighting for were there. And he
+would fight. Just how, he did not try to tell himself now. And
+then he laughed again, softly, a bit grimly, for he saw the
+melancholy humour of the fact that he had built his own prison.
+
+He sat down again on the edge of his cot, and the whimsical
+thought struck him that all those he had brought to this same
+cell, and who had paid the first of their penance here, must be
+laughing at him now in the spirit way. In his mental fancy a
+little army of faces trooped before him, faces dark and white,
+faces filled with hatred and despair, faces brave with the cheer
+of hope and faces pallid with the dread of death. And of these
+ghosts of his man-hunting prowess it was Anton Fournet's face that
+came out of the crowd and remained with him. For he had brought
+Anton to this same cell--Anton, the big Frenchman, with his black
+hair, his black beard, and his great, rolling laugh that even in
+the days when he was waiting for death had rattled the paper-
+weights on Kedsty's desk.
+
+Anton rose up like a god before Kent now. He had killed a man, and
+like a brave man he had not denied it. With a heart in his great
+body as gentle as a girl's, Anton had taken pride in the killing.
+In his prison days he sang songs to glorify it. He had killed the
+white man from Chippewyan who had stolen his neighbor's wife! Not
+HIS wife, but his neighbor's! For Anton's creed was, "Do unto
+others as you would have others do unto you," and he had loved his
+neighbor with the great forest love of man for man. His neighbor
+was weak, and Anton was strong with the strength of a bull, so
+that when the hour came, it was Anton who had measured out
+vengeance. When Kent brought Anton in, the giant had laughed first
+at the littleness of his cell, then at the unsuspected strength of
+it, and after that he had laughed and sung great, roaring songs
+every day of the brief tenure of life that was given him. When he
+died, it was with the smiling glory in his face of one who had
+cheaply righted a great wrong.
+
+Kent would never forget Anton Fournet. He had never ceased to
+grieve that it had been his misfortune to bring Anton in, and
+always, in close moments, the thought of Anton, the stout-hearted,
+rallied him back to courage. Never would he be the man that Anton
+Fournet had been, he told himself many times. Never would his
+heart be as great or as big, though the Law had hanged Anton by
+the neck until the soul was choked out of his splendid body, for
+it was history that Anton Fournet had never harmed man, woman, or
+child until he set out to kill a human snake and the Law placed
+its heel upon him and crushed him.
+
+And tonight Anton Fournet came into the cell again and sat with
+Kent on the cot where he had slept many nights, and the ghosts of
+his laughter and his song filled Kent's ears, and his great
+courage poured itself out in the moonlit prison room so that at
+last, when Kent stretched himself on the cot to sleep, it was with
+the knowledge that the soul of the splendid dead had given him a
+strength which it was impossible to have gained from the living.
+For Anton Fournet had died smiling, laughing, singing--and it was
+of Anton Fournet that he dreamed when he fell asleep. And in that
+dream came also the vision of a man called Dirty Fingers--and with
+it inspiration.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Where a bit of the big river curved inward like the tongue of a
+friendly dog, lapping the shore at Athabasca Landing, there still
+remained Fingers' Row--nine dilapidated, weather-worn, and
+crazily-built shacks put there by the eccentric genius who had
+foreseen a boom ten years ahead of its time. And the fifth of
+these nine, counting from either one end or the other, was named
+by its owner, Dirty Fingers himself, the Good Old Queen Bess. It
+was a shack covered with black tar paper, with two windows, like
+square eyes, fronting the river as if always on the watch for
+something. Across the front of this shack Dirty Fingers had built
+a porch to protect himself from the rain in springtime, from the
+sun in Summer time, and from the snow in the months of Winter. For
+it was here that Dirty Fingers sat out all of that part of his
+life which was not spent in bed.
+
+Up and down two thousand miles of the Three Rivers was Dirty
+Fingers known, and there were superstitious ones who believed that
+little gods and devils came to sit and commune with him in the
+front of the tar-papered shack. No one was so wise along those
+rivers, no one was so satisfied with himself, that he would not
+have given much to possess the many things that were hidden away
+in Dirty Fingers' brain. One would not have suspected the workings
+of that brain by a look at Dirty Fingers on the porch of his Good
+Old Queen Bess. He was a great soft lump of a man, a giant of
+flabbiness. Sitting in his smooth-worn, wooden armchair, he was
+almost formless. His head was huge, his hair uncut and scraggy,
+his face smooth as a baby's, fat as a cherub's, and as
+expressionless as an apple. His folded arms always rested on a
+huge stomach, whose conspicuousness was increased by an enormous
+watch-chain made from beaten nuggets of Klondike gold, and Dirty
+Fingers' thumb and forefinger were always twiddling at this chain.
+How he had come by the name of Dirty Fingers, when his right name
+was Alexander Toppet Fingers, no one could definitely say, unless
+it was that he always bore an unkempt and unwashed appearance.
+
+Whatever the quality of the two hundred and forty-odd pounds of
+flesh in Dirty Fingers' body, it was the quality of his brain that
+made people hold him in a sort of awe. For Dirty Fingers was a
+lawyer, a wilderness lawyer, a forest bencher, a legal strategist
+of the trail, of the river, of the great timber-lands.
+
+Stored away in his brain was every rule of equity and common law
+of the great North country. For his knowledge he went back two
+hundred years. He knew that a law did not die of age, that it must
+be legislated to death, and out of the moldering past he had dug
+up every trick and trap of his trade. He had no law-books. His
+library was in his head, and his facts were marshaled in pile
+after pile of closely-written, dust-covered papers in his shack.
+He did not go to court as other lawyers; and there were barristers
+in Edmonton who blessed him for that.
+
+His shack was his tabernacle of justice. There he sat, hands
+folded, and gave out his decisions, his advice, his sentences. He
+sat until other men would have gone mad. From morning until night,
+moving only for his meals or to get out of heat or storm, he was a
+fixture on the porch of the Good Old Queen Bess. For hours he
+would stare at the river, his pale eyes never seeming to blink.
+For hours he would remain without a move or a word. One constant
+companion he had, a dog, fat, emotionless, lazy, like his master.
+Always this dog was sleeping at his feet or dragging himself
+wearily at his heels when Dirty Fingers elected to make a journey
+to the little store where he bartered for food and necessities.
+
+It was Father Layonne who came first to see Kent in his cell the
+morning after Kent's unsuccessful attempt at flight. An hour later
+it was Father Layonne who traveled the beaten path to the door of
+Dirty Fingers' shack. If a visible emotion of pleasure ever
+entered into Dirty Fingers' face, it was when the little missioner
+came occasionally to see him. It was then that his tongue let
+itself loose, and until late at night they talked of many things
+of which other men knew but little. This morning Father Layonne
+did not come casually, but determinedly on business, and when
+Dirty Fingers learned what that business was, he shook his head
+disconsolately, folded his fat arms more tightly over his stomach,
+and stated the sheer impossibility of his going to see Kent. It
+was not his custom. People must come to him. And he did not like
+to walk. It was fully a third of a mile from his shack to
+barracks, possibly half a mile. And it was mostly upgrade! If Kent
+could be brought to him--
+
+In his cell Kent waited. It was not difficult for him to hear
+voices in Kedsty's office when the door was open, and he knew that
+the Inspector did not come in until after the missioner had gone
+on his mission to Dirty Fingers. Usually he was at the barracks an
+hour or so earlier. Kent made no effort to figure out a reason for
+Kedsty's lateness, but he did observe that after his arrival there
+was more than the usual movement between the office door and the
+outside of the barracks. Once he was positive that he heard
+Cardigan's voice, and then he was equally sure that he heard
+Mercer's. He grinned at that. He must be wrong, for Mercer would
+be in no condition to talk for several days. He was glad that a
+turn in the hall hid the door of the detachment office from him,
+and that the three cells were in an alcove, safely out of sight of
+the curious eyes of visitors. He was also glad that he had no
+other prisoner for company. His situation was one in which he
+wanted to be alone. To the plan that was forming itself in his
+mind, solitude was as vital as the cooperation of Alexander Toppet
+Fingers.
+
+Just how far he could win that cooperation was the problem which
+confronted him now, and he waited anxiously for the return of
+Father Layonne, listening for the sound of his footsteps in the
+outer hall. If, after all, that inspirational thought of last
+night came to nothing, if Fingers should fail him--
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. If that happened, he could see no other
+chance. He would have to go on and take his medicine at the hands
+of a jury. But if Fingers played up to the game--
+
+He looked out on the river again, and again it was the river that
+seemed to answer him. If Fingers played with him, they would beat
+Kedsty and the whole of N Division! And in winning he would prove
+out the greatest psychological experiment he had ever dared to
+make. The magnitude of the thing, when he stopped to think of it,
+was a little appalling, but his faith was equally large. He did
+not consider his philosophy at all supernatural. He had brought it
+down to the level of the average man and woman.
+
+He believed that every man and woman possessed a subliminal
+consciousness which it was possible to rouse to tremendous heights
+if the right psychological key was found to fit its particular
+lock, and he believed he possessed the key which fitted the
+deeply-buried and long-hidden thing in Dirty Fingers' remarkable
+brain. Because he believed in this metaphysics which he had not
+read out of Aristotle, he had faith that Fingers would prove his
+salvation. He felt growing in him stronger than ever a strange
+kind of elation. He felt better physically than last night. The
+few minutes of strenuous action in which he had half killed Mercer
+had been a pretty good test, he told himself. It had left no bad
+effect, and he need no longer fear the reopening of his wound.
+
+A dozen times he had heard a far door open and close. Now he heard
+it again, and a few moments later it was followed by a sound which
+drew a low cry of satisfaction from him. Dirty Fingers, because of
+overweight and lack of exercise, had what he called an "asthmatic
+wind," and it was this strenuous working of his lungs that
+announced his approach to Kent. His dog was also afflicted and for
+the same reasons, so that when they traveled together there was
+some rivalry between them.
+
+"We're both bad put out for wind, thank God," Dirty Fingers would
+say sometimes. "It's a good thing, for if we had more of it, we'd
+walk farther, and we don't like walking."
+
+The dog was with Fingers now, also Father Layonne, and Pelly.
+Pelly unlocked the cell, then relocked it again after Fingers and
+the dog entered. With a nod and a hopeful look the missioner
+returned with Pelly to the detachment office. Fingers wiped his
+red face with a big handkerchief, gasping deeply for breath. Togs,
+his dog, was panting as if he had just finished the race of his
+life.
+
+"A difficult climb," wheezed Fingers. "A most difficult climb."
+
+He sat down, rolling out like a great bag of jelly in the one
+chair in the cell, and began to fan himself with his hat. Kent had
+already taken stock of the situation. In Fingers' florid
+countenance and in his almost colorless eyes he detected a bit of
+excitement which Fingers was trying to hide. Kent knew what it
+meant. Father Layonne had found it necessary to play his full hand
+to lure Fingers up the hill, and had given him a hint of what it
+was that Kent had in store for him. Already the psychological key
+had begun to work.
+
+Kent sat down on the edge of his cot and grinned sympathetically.
+"It hasn't always been like this, has it, Fingers?" he said then,
+leaning a bit forward and speaking with a sudden, low-voiced
+seriousness. "There was a time, twenty years ago, when you didn't
+puff after climbing a hill. Twenty years make a big difference,
+sometimes."
+
+"Yes, sometimes," agreed Fingers in a wheezy whisper.
+
+"Twenty years ago you were--a fighter."
+
+It seemed to Kent that a deeper color came into Dirty Fingers'
+pale eyes in the few seconds that followed these words.
+
+"A fighter," he repeated. "Most men were fighters in those days of
+the gold rushes, weren't they, Fingers? I've heard a lot of the
+old stories about them in my wanderings, and some of them have
+made me thrill. They weren't afraid to die. And most of them were
+pretty white when it came to a show-down. You were one of them,
+Fingers. I heard the story one Winter far north. I've kept it to
+myself, because I've sort of had the idea that you didn't want
+people to know or you would have told it yourself. That's why I
+wanted you to come to see me, Fingers. You know the situation.
+It's either the noose or iron bars for me. Naturally one would
+seek for assistance among those who have been his friends. But I
+do not, with the exception of Father Layonne. Just friendship
+won't save me, not the sort of friendship we have today. That's
+why I sent for you. Don't think that I am prying into secrets that
+are sacred to you, Fingers. God knows I don't mean it that way.
+But I've got to tell you of a thing that happened a long time ago,
+before you can understand. You haven't forgotten--you will never
+forget--Ben Tatman?"
+
+As Kent spoke the name, a name which Dirty Fingers had heard no
+lips but his own speak aloud in nearly a quarter of a century, a
+strange and potent force seemed suddenly to take possession of the
+forest bencher's huge and flabby body. It rippled over and through
+him like an electrical voltaism, making his body rigid, stiffening
+what had seemed to be fat into muscle, tensing his hands until
+they knotted themselves slowly into fists. The wheeze went out of
+his breath, and it was the voice of another man who answered Kent.
+
+"You have heard--about--Ben Tatman?"
+
+"Yes. I heard it away up in the Porcupine country. They say it
+happened twenty years ago or more. This Tatman, so I was told, was
+a young fellow green from San Francisco--a bank clerk, I think--
+who came into the gold country and brought his wife with him. They
+were both chuck-full of courage, and the story was that each
+worshiped the ground the other walked on, and that the girl had
+insisted on being her husband's comrade in adventure. Of course
+neither guessed the sort of thing that was ahead of them.
+
+"Then came that death Winter in Lost City. You know better than I
+what the laws were in those days, Fingers. Food failed to come up.
+Snow came early, the thermometer never rose over fifty below zero
+for three straight months, and Lost City was an inferno of
+starvation and death. You could go out and kill a man, then, and
+perhaps get away with it, Fingers. But if you stole so much as a
+crust of bread or a single bean, you were taken to the edge of the
+camp and told to go! And that meant certain death--death from
+hunger and cold, more terrible than shooting or hanging, and for
+that reason it was the penalty for theft.
+
+"Tatman wasn't a thief. It was seeing his young wife slowly dying
+of hunger, and his horror at the thought of seeing her fall, as
+others were falling, a victim to scurvy, that made him steal. He
+broke into a cabin in the dead of night and stole two cans of
+beans and a pan of potatoes, more precious than a thousand times
+their weight in gold. And he was caught. Of course, there was the
+wife. But those were the days when a woman couldn't save a man, no
+matter how lovely she was. Tatman was taken to the edge of camp
+and given his pack and his gun--but no food. And the girl, hooded
+and booted, was at his side, for she was determined to die with
+him. For her sake Tatman had lied up to the last minute,
+protesting his innocence.
+
+"But the beans and the potatoes were found in his cabin, and that
+was evidence enough. And then, just as they were about to go
+straight out into the blizzard that meant death within a few
+hours, then--"
+
+Kent rose to his feet, and walked to the little window, and stood
+there, looking out. "Fingers, now and then a superman is born on
+earth. And a superman was there in that crowd of hunger-stricken
+and embittered men. At the last moment he stepped out and in a
+loud voice declared that Tatman was innocent and that he was
+guilty. Unafraid, he made a remarkable confession. He had stolen
+the beans and the potatoes and had slipped them into the Tatman
+cabin when they were asleep. Why? Because he wanted to save the
+woman from hunger! Yes, he lied, Fingers. He lied because he loved
+the wife that belonged to another man--lied because in him there
+was a heart as true as any heart God ever made. He lied! And his
+lie was a splendid thing. He went out into that blizzard,
+strengthened by a love that was greater than his fear of death,
+and the camp never heard of him again. Tatman and his wife
+returned to their cabin and lived. Fingers--" Kent whirled
+suddenly from the window. "Fingers--"
+
+And Fingers, like a sphynx, sat and stared at Kent.
+
+"You were that man," Kent went on, coming nearer to him. "You
+lied, because you loved a woman, and you went out to face death
+because of that woman. The men at Lost City didn't know it,
+Fingers. The husband didn't know it. And the girl, that girl-wife
+you worshiped in secret, didn't dream of it! But that was the
+truth, and you know it deep down in your soul. You fought your way
+out. You lived! And all these years, down here on your porch,
+you've been dreaming of a woman, of the girl you were willing to
+die for a long time ago. Fingers, am I right? And if I am, will
+you shake hands?"
+
+Slowly Fingers had risen from his chair. No longer were his eyes
+dull and lifeless, but flaming with a fire that Kent had lighted
+again after many years. And he reached out a hand and gripped
+Kent's, still staring at him as though something had come back to
+him from the dead.
+
+"I thank you, Kent, for your opinion of that man," he said.
+"Somehow, you haven't made me--ashamed. But it was only the shell
+of a man that won out after that day when I took Tatman's place.
+Something happened. I don't know what. But--you see me now. I
+never went back into the diggings. I degenerated. I became what I
+am."
+
+"And you are today just what you were when you went out to die for
+Mary Tatman," cried Kent. "The same heart and the same soul are in
+you. Wouldn't you fight again today for her?"
+
+A stifled cry came from Fingers' lips. "My God, yes, Kent--I
+would!"
+
+"And that's why I wanted you, of all men, to come to me, Fingers,"
+Kent went on swiftly. "To you, of all the men on earth, I wanted
+to tell my story. And now, will you listen to it? Will you forgive
+me for bringing up this memory that must be precious to you, only
+that you might more fully understand what I am going to say? I
+don't want you to think of it as a subterfuge on my part. It is
+more than that. It is--Fingers, is it inspiration? Listen, and
+tell me."
+
+And for a long time after that James Kent talked, and Fingers
+listened, the soul within him writhing and dragging itself back
+into fierce life, demanding for the first time in many years the
+something which it had once possessed, but which it had lost. It
+was not the lazy, mysterious, silent Dirty Fingers who sat in the
+cell with Kent. In him the spirit of twenty years ago had roused
+itself from long slumber, and the thrill of it pounded in his
+blood. Two-Fisted Fingers they had called him then, and he was
+Two-Fisted Fingers in this hour with Kent. Twice Father Layonne
+came to the head of the cell alcove, but turned back when he heard
+the low and steady murmur of Kent's voice. Nothing did Kent keep
+hidden, and when he had finished, something that was like the fire
+of a revelation had come into Fingers' face.
+
+"My God!" he breathed deeply. "Kent, I've been sitting down there
+on my porch a long time, and a good many strange things have come
+to me, but never anything like this. Oh, if it wasn't for this
+accursed flesh of mine!"
+
+He jumped from his chair more quickly than he had moved in ten
+years, and he laughed as he had not laughed in all that time. He
+thrust out a great arm and doubled it up, like a prizefighter
+testing his muscle. "Old? I'm not old! I was only twenty-eight
+when that happened up there, and I'm forty-eight now. That isn't
+old. It's what is in me that's grown old. I'll do it, Kent! I'll
+do it, if I hang for it!"
+
+Kent fairly leaped upon him. "God bless you!" he cried huskily.
+"God bless you, Fingers! Look! Look at that!" He pulled Fingers to
+the little window, and together they looked out upon the river,
+shimmering gloriously under a sun-filled sky of blue. "Two
+thousand miles of it," he breathed. "Two thousand miles of it,
+running straight through the heart of that world we both have
+known! No, you're not old, Fingers. The things you used to know
+are calling you again, as they are calling me, for somewhere off
+there are the ghosts of Lost City, ghosts--and realities!"
+
+"Ghosts--and hopes," said Fingers.
+
+"Hopes make life," softly whispered Kent, as if to himself. And
+then, without turning from the window, his hand found Fingers' and
+clasped it tight. "It may be that mine, like yours, will never
+come true. But they're fine to think about, Fingers. Funny, isn't
+it, that their names should be so strangely alike--Mary and
+Marette? I say, Fingers--"
+
+Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. Both turned from the window
+as Constable Pelly came to the door of the cell. They recognized
+this intimation that their time was up, and with his foot Fingers
+roused his sleeping dog.
+
+It was a new Fingers who walked back to the river five minutes
+later, and it was an amazed and discomfited dog who followed at
+his heels, for at times the misshapen and flesh-ridden Togs was
+compelled to trot for a few steps to keep up. And Fingers did not
+sink into the chair on the shady porch when he reached his shack.
+He threw off his coat and waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, and
+for hours after that he was buried deep in the accumulated masses
+of dust-covered legal treasures stored away in hidden corners of
+the Good Old Queen Bess.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+That morning Kent had heard wild songs floating up from the river,
+and now he felt like shouting forth his own joy and exultation in
+song. He wondered if he could hide the truth from the eyes of
+others, and especially from Kedsty if he came to see him. It
+seemed that some glimmer of the hope blazing within him must
+surely reveal itself, no matter how he tried to hold it back. He
+felt the vital forces of that hope more powerful within him now
+than in the hour when he had crept from the hospital window with
+freedom in his face. For then he was not sure of himself. He had
+not tested his physical strength. And in the present moment,
+fanned by his unbounded optimism, the thought came to him that
+perhaps it was good luck and not bad that had thrown Mercer in his
+way. For with Fingers behind him now, his chances for a clean get-
+away were better. He would not be taking a hazardous leap chanced
+on the immediate smiles of fortune. He would be going
+deliberately, prepared.
+
+He blessed the man who had been known as Dirty Fingers, but whom
+he could not think of now in the terms of that name. He blessed
+the day he had heard that chance story of Fingers, far north. He
+no longer regarded him as the fat pig of a man he had been for so
+many years. For he looked upon the miracle of a great awakening.
+He had seen the soul of Fingers lift itself up out of its
+tabernacle of flesh and grow young again; he had seen stagnant
+blood race with new fire. He had seen emotions roused that had
+slept for long years. And he felt toward Fingers, in the face of
+that awakening, differently than he had felt toward any other
+living man. His emotion was one of deep and embracing comradeship.
+
+Father Layonne did not come again until afternoon, and then he
+brought information that thrilled Kent. The missioner had walked
+down to see Fingers, and Fingers was not on his porch. Neither was
+the dog. He had knocked loudly on the door, but there was no
+answer. Where was Fingers? Kent shook his head, feigning an
+anxious questioning, but inside him his heart was leaping. He
+knew! He told Father Layonne he was afraid all Fingers' knowledge
+of the law could do him but little good, that Fingers had told him
+as much, and the little missioner went away considerably
+depressed. He would talk with Fingers again, he said, and offer
+certain suggestions he had in mind. Kent chuckled when he was
+gone. How shocked le Pere would be if he, too, could know!
+
+The next morning Father Layonne came again, and his information
+was even more thrilling to Kent. The missioner was displeased with
+Fingers. Last night, noticing a light in his shack, he had walked
+down to see him. And he had found three men closely drawn up about
+a table with Dirty Fingers. One of them was Ponte, the half-breed;
+another was Kinoo the outcast Dog Rib from over on Sand Creek; the
+third was Mooie, the old Indian trailer. Kent wanted to jump up
+and shout, for those three were the three greatest trailers in all
+that part of the Northland. Fingers had lost no time, and he
+wanted to voice his approbation like a small boy on the Fourth of
+July.
+
+But his face, seen by Father Layonne, betrayed none of the
+excitement that was in his blood. Fingers had told him he was
+going into a timber deal with these men, a long-distance deal
+where there would be much traveling, and that he could not
+interrupt himself just then to talk about Kent. Would Father
+Layonne come again in the morning? And he had gone again that
+morning, and Fingers' place was locked up!
+
+All the rest of the day Kent waited eagerly for Fingers. For the
+first time Kedsty came to see him, and as a matter of courtesy
+said he hoped Fingers might be of assistance to him. He did not
+mention Mercer and remained no longer than a couple of minutes,
+standing outside the cell. In the afternoon Doctor Cardigan came
+and shook hands warmly with Kent. He had found a tough job waiting
+for him, he said. Mercer was all cut up, in a literal as well as a
+mental way. He had five teeth missing, and he had to have
+seventeen stitches taken in his face. It was Cardigan's opinion
+that some one had given him a considerable beating--and he grinned
+at Kent. Then he added in a whisper,
+
+"My God, Kent, how I wish you had made it!"
+
+It was four o'clock when Fingers came. Even less than yesterday
+did he look like the old Fingers. He was not wheezing. He seemed
+to have lost flesh. His face was alive. That was what struck Kent
+--the new life in it. There was color in his eyes. And Togs, the
+dog, was not with him. He smiled when he shook hands with Kent,
+and nodded, and chuckled. And Kent, after that, gripped him by the
+shoulders and shook him in his silent joy.
+
+"I was up all last night," said Fingers in a low voice. "I don't
+dare move much in the day, or people will wonder. But, God bless
+my soul!--I did move last night, Kent. I must have walked ten
+miles, more or less. And things are coming--coming!"
+
+"And Ponte, Kinoo, Mooie--?"
+
+"Are working like devils," whispered Fingers. "It's the only way,
+Kent. I've gone through all my law, and there's nothing in man-
+made law that can save you. I've read your confession, and I don't
+think you could even get off with the penitentiary. A noose is
+already tied around your neck. I think you'd hang. We've simply
+got to get you out some other way. I've had a talk with Kedsty. He
+has made arrangements to have you sent to Edmonton two weeks from
+tomorrow. We'll need all that time, but it's enough."
+
+For three days thereafter Fingers came to Kent's cell each
+afternoon, and each time was looking better. Something was swiftly
+putting hardness into his flesh and form into his body. The second
+day he told Kent that he had found the way at last, and that when
+the hour came, escape would be easy, but he thought it best not to
+let Kent in on the little secret just yet. He must be patient and
+have faith. That was the chief thing, to have faith at all times,
+no matter what happened. Several times he emphasized that "no
+matter what happens." The third day he puzzled Kent. He was
+restless, a bit nervous. He still thought it best not to tell Kent
+what his scheme was, until to-morrow. He was in the cell not more
+than five or ten minutes, and there was an unusual pressure in the
+grip of his hand when he bade Kent good-by. Somehow Kent did not
+feel so well when he had gone. He waited impatiently for the next
+day. It came, and hour after hour he listened for Fingers' heavy
+tread in the hall. The morning passed. The afternoon lengthened.
+Night came, and Fingers had not come. Kent did not sleep much
+between the hour when he went to bed and morning. It was eleven
+o'clock when the missioner made his call. Before he left, Kent
+gave him a brief note for Fingers. He had just finished his
+dinner, and Carter had taken the dishes away, when Father Layonne
+returned. A look at his face, and Kent knew that he bore
+unpleasant tidings.
+
+"Fingers is an--an apostate," he said, his lips twitching as if to
+keep back a denunciation still more emphatic. "He was sitting on
+his porch again this morning, half asleep, and says that after a
+great deal of thought he has come to the definite opinion that he
+can do nothing for you. He read your note and burned it with a
+match. He asked me to tell you that the scheme he had in mind was
+too risky--for him. He says he won't come up again. And--"
+
+The missioner was rubbing his brown, knotted hands together
+raspingly.
+
+"Go on," said Kent a little thickly.
+
+"He has also sent Inspector Kedsty the same word," finished Father
+Layonne. "His word to Kedsty is that he can see no fighting chance
+for you, and that it is useless effort on his part to put up a
+defense for you. Jimmy!" His hand touched Kent's arm gently.
+
+Kent's face was white. He faced the window, and for a space he did
+not see. Then with pencil and paper he wrote again to Fingers.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before Father Layonne returned with
+an answer. Again it was verbal. Fingers had read his note and had
+burned it with a match. He was particular that the last scrap of
+it was turned into ash, the missioner said. And he had nothing to
+say to Kent that he had not previously said. He simply could not
+go on with their plans. And he requested Kent not to write to him
+again. He was sorry, but that was his definite stand in the
+matter.
+
+Even then Kent could not bring himself to believe. All the rest of
+the day he tried to put himself in Fingers' brain, but his old
+trick of losing his personality in that of another failed him this
+time. He could find no reason for the sudden change in Fingers,
+unless it was what Fingers had frankly confessed to Father
+Layonne--fear. The influence of mind, in this instance, had failed
+in its assault upon a mass of matter. Fingers' nerve had gone back
+on him.
+
+The fifth day Kent rose from his cot with hope still not quite
+dead in his heart. But that day passed and the sixth, and the
+missioner brought word that Fingers was the old Dirty Fingers
+again, sitting from morning till night on his porch.
+
+On the seventh day came the final crash to Kent's hopes. Kedsty's
+program had changed. He, Kent, was to start for Edmonton the
+following morning under charge of Pelly and a special constable!
+
+After this Kent felt a strange change come over him. Years seemed
+to multiply themselves in his body. His mind, beaten back, no
+longer continued in its old channels of thought. The thing pressed
+upon him now as fatalistic. Fingers had failed him. Fortune had
+failed him. Everything had failed, and for the first time in the
+weeks of his struggle against death and a thing worse than death,
+he cursed himself. There was a limit to optimism and a limit to
+hope. His limit was reached.
+
+In the afternoon of this seventh day came a depressing gloom. It
+was filled with a drizzling rain. Hour after hour this drizzle
+kept up, thickening as the night came. He ate his supper by the
+light of a cell lamp. By eight o'clock it was black outside. In
+that blackness there was an occasional flash of lightning and
+rumble of thunder. On the roof of the barracks the rain beat
+steadily and monotonously.
+
+His watch was in his hand--it was a quarter after nine o'clock,
+when he heard the door at the far exit of the hall open and close.
+He had heard it a dozen times since supper and paid no attention
+to it, but this time it was followed by a voice at the detachment
+office that hit him like an electrical shock. Then, a moment
+later, came low laughter. It was a woman who laughed.
+
+He stood up. He heard the detachment office door close, and
+silence followed. The watch in his hand seemed ticking off the
+seconds with frantic noise. He shoved it into his pocket and stood
+staring out into the prison alcove. A few minutes later the office
+door opened again. This time it was not closed. He heard
+distinctly a few light, hesitating footsteps, and his heart seemed
+to stop its beating. They came to the head of the lighted alcove,
+and for perhaps the space of a dozen seconds there was silence
+again. Then they advanced.
+
+Another moment, and Kent was staring through the bars into the
+glorious eyes of Marette Radisson!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In that moment Kent did not speak. He made no sound. He gave no
+sign of welcome, but stood in the middle of his cell, staring. If
+life had hung upon speech in those few seconds, he would have
+died, but everything he would have said, and more, was in his
+face. The girl must have seen it. With her two hands she was
+gripping at the bars of the cell and looking through at him. Kent
+saw that her face was pale in the lamp glow. In that pallor her
+violet eyes were like pools of black. The hood of her dripping
+raincoat was thrown partly back, and against the whiteness of her
+cheeks her hair glistened wet, and her long lashes were heavy with
+the rain.
+
+Kent, without moving over the narrow space between them, reached
+out his hands and found his voice. "Marette!"
+
+Her hands had tightened about the bars until they were bloodless.
+Her lips were parted. She was breathing quickly, but she did not
+smile; she made no response to his greeting, gave no sign even of
+recognition. What happened after that was so sudden and amazing
+that his heart stopped dead still. Without warning she stepped
+back from the cell and began to scream and then drew away from
+him, still facing him and still screaming, as if something had
+terrified her.
+
+Kent heard the crash of a chair in the detachment office, excited
+voices, and the running of feet. Marette Radisson had withdrawn to
+the far corner of the alcove, and as Carter and Pelly ran toward
+her, she stood, a picture of horror, pointing at Kent's cell. The
+two constables rushed past her. Close behind them followed the
+special officer detailed to take Kent to Edmonton.
+
+Kent had not moved. He was like one petrified. Close up against
+the bars came the faces of Pelly, Carter, and the special
+constable, filled with the expressions of men who had expected to
+look in upon tragedy. And then, behind their backs, Kent saw the
+other thing happen. Swift as a flash Marette Radisson's hand went
+in and out of her raincoat, and at the backs of the three men she
+was leveling a revolver! Not only did Kent see that swift change,
+but the still swifter change that came into her face. Her eyes
+shot to his just once, and they were filled with a laughing,
+exultant fire. With one mighty throb Kent's heart seemed to leap
+out through the bars of his prison, and at the look in his face
+and eyes Carter swung suddenly around.
+
+"Please don't make any disturbance, gentlemen," said Marette
+Radisson. "The first man that makes a suspicious move, I shall
+kill!"
+
+Her voice was calm and thrilling. It had a deadly ring in it. The
+revolver in her hand was held steadily. It was a slim-barreled,
+black thing. The very color of it was menacing. And behind it were
+the girl's eyes, pools of flame. The three men were facing them
+now, shocked to speechlessness. Automatically they seemed to obey
+her command to throw up their hands. Then she leveled her grim
+little gun straight at Pelly's heart.
+
+"You have the key," she said. "Unlock the cell!" Felly fumbled and
+produced the key. She watched him closely. Then suddenly the
+special constable dropped his arms with a coarse laugh. "A pretty
+trick," he said, "but the bluff won't work!"
+
+"Oh, but it will!" came the reply.
+
+The little black gun was shifted to him, even as the constable's
+fingers touched his revolver holster. With half-smiling lips,
+Marette's eyes blazed at him.
+
+"Please put up your hands," she commanded.
+
+The constable hesitated; then his fingers gripped the butt of his
+gun. Kent, holding his breath, saw the almost imperceptible
+tensing of Marette's body and the wavering of Pelly's arms over
+his head. Another moment and he, too, would have called the bluff
+if it were that. But that moment did not come. From the slim,
+black barrel of the girl's revolver leaped forth a sudden spurt of
+smoke and flame, and the special constable lurched back against
+the cell bars, caught himself as he half fell, and then stood with
+his pistol arm hanging limp and useless at his side. He had not
+made a sound, but his face was twisted in pain.
+
+"Open the cell door!"
+
+A second time the deadly-looking little gun was pointed straight
+at Pelly's heart. The half-smile was gone from the girl's lips
+now. Her eyes blazed a deeper fire. She was breathing quickly, and
+she leaned a little toward Pelly, repeating her command. The words
+were partly drowned in a sudden crash of thunder. But Pelly
+understood. He saw her lips form the words, and half heard,
+
+"Open the door, or I shall kill you!"
+
+He no longer hesitated. The key grated in the lock, and Kent
+himself flung the door wide open and sprang out. He was quick to
+see and seize upon opportunity and swift to act. The astounding
+audacity of the girl's ruse, her clever acting in feigning horror
+to line the guards up at the cell door and the thrilling
+decisiveness with which she had used the little black gun in her
+hand set every drop of blood in his body afire. No sooner was he
+outside his cell than he was the old Jim Kent, fighting man. He
+whipped Carter's automatic out of its holster and, covering Pelly
+and the special constable, relieved them of their guns. Behind him
+he heard Marette's voice, calm and triumphant,
+
+"Lock them in the cell, Mr. Kent!"
+
+He did not look at her, but swung his gun on Pelly and the special
+constable, and they backed through the door into the cell. Carter
+had not moved. He was looking straight at the girl, and the little
+black gun was leveled at his breast. Pelly and the wounded man did
+not see, but on Carter's lips was a strange smile. His eyes met
+Kent's, and there was revealed for an instant a silent flash of
+comradeship and an unmistakable something else. Carter was glad!
+It made Kent want to reach out and grip his hand, but in place of
+that he backed him into the cell, turned the key in the lock, and
+with the key in his hand faced Marette Radisson. Her eyes were
+shining gloriously. He had never seen such splendid, fighting
+eyes, nor the birdlike swiftness with which she turned and ran
+down the hall, calling him to follow her.
+
+He was only a step behind her in passing Kedsty's office. She
+reached the outer door and opened it. It was pitch-dark outside,
+and a deluge of rain beat into their faces. He observed that she
+did not replace the hood of her raincoat when she darted out. As
+he closed the door, her hand groped to his arm and from that found
+his hand. Her fingers clung to his tightly.
+
+He did not ask questions as they faced the black chaos of rain. A
+rending streak of lightning revealed her for an instant, her bare
+head bowed to the wind. Then came a crash of thunder that shook
+the earth under their feet, and her fingers closed more tightly
+about his hand. And in that crash he heard her voice, half
+laughing, half broken, saying,
+
+"I'm afraid--of thunder!"
+
+In that storm his laugh rang out, a great, free, joyous laugh. He
+wanted to stop in that instant, sweep her up into his arms, and
+carry her. He wanted to shout like an insane man in his mad joy.
+And a moment before she had risked everything in facing three of
+the bravest men in the service and had shot one of them! He
+started to say something, but she increased her speed until she
+was almost running.
+
+She was not leading Jim in the direction of the river, but toward
+the forest beyond Kedsty's bungalow. Not for an instant did she
+falter in that drenched and impenetrable darkness. There was
+something imperative in the clasp of her fingers, even though they
+tightened perceptibly when the thunder crashed. They gave Kent the
+conviction that there was no doubt in her mind as to the point she
+was striving for. He took advantage of the lightning, for each
+time it gave him a glimpse of her bare, wet head bowed to the
+storm, her white profile, and her slim figure fighting over the
+sticky earth under her feet.
+
+It was this presence of her, and not the thought of escape, that
+exalted him now. She was at his side. Her hand lay close in his.
+The lightning gave him glimpses of her. He felt the touch of her
+shoulder, her arm, her body, as they drew close together. The life
+and warmth and thrill of her seemed to leap into his own veins
+through the hand he held. He had dreamed of her. And now suddenly
+she had become a part of him, and the glory of it rode
+overwhelmingly over all other emotions that were struggling in his
+brain--the glory of the thought that it was she who had come to
+him in the last moment, who had saved him, and who was now leading
+him to freedom through the crash of storm.
+
+At the crest of a low knoll between barracks and Kedsty's bungalow
+she stopped for the first time. He had there, again, the almost
+irresistible impulse to reach out in the darkness and take her
+into his arms, crying out to her of his joy, of a happiness that
+had come to him greater even than the happiness of freedom. But he
+stood, holding her hand, his tongue speechless, and he was looking
+at her when the lightning revealed her again. In a rending flash
+it cut open the night so close that the hiss of it was like the
+passing of a giant rocket, and involuntarily she shrank against
+him, and her free hand caught his arm at the instant thunder
+crashed low over their heads. His own hand groped out, and in the
+blackness it touched for an instant her wet face and then her
+drenched hair.
+
+"Marette," he cried, "where are we going?"
+
+"Down there," came her voice.
+
+Her hand had left his arm, and he sensed that she was pointing,
+though he could not see. Ahead of them was a chaotic pit of gloom,
+a sea of blackness, and in the heart of that sea he saw a light.
+He knew that it was a lamp in one of Kedsty's windows and that
+Marette was guiding herself by that light when she started down
+the slope with her hand still in his. That she had made no effort
+to withdraw it made him unconscious of the almost drowning
+discomfort of the fresh deluge of rain that beat their faces. One
+of her fingers had gripped itself convulsively about his thumb,
+like a child afraid of falling. And each time the thunder crashed
+that soft hold on his thumb tightened, and Kent's soul acclaimed.
+
+They drew swiftly nearer to the light, for it was not far from the
+knoll to Kedsty's place. Kent's mind leaped ahead. A little west
+by north from the inspector's bungalow was Kim's Bayou and it was
+undoubtedly to the forest trail over which she had gone at least
+once before, on the night of the mysterious assault upon Mooie,
+that Marette was leading him. Questions began to rush upon him
+now, immediate demanding questions. They were going to the river.
+They must be going to the river. It was the quickest and surest
+way of escape. Had Marette prepared for that? And was she going
+with him?
+
+He had no time to answer. Their feet struck the gravel path
+leading to the door of Kedsty's place, and straight up this path
+the girl turned, straight toward the light blazing in the window.
+Then, to his amazement, he heard in the sweep of storm her voice
+crying out in glad triumph,
+
+"We're home!"
+
+Home! His breath came in a sudden gulp. He was more than
+astounded. He was shocked. Was she mad or playing an amazingly
+improper joke? She had freed him from a cell to lead him to the
+home of the Inspector of Police, the deadliest enemy the world now
+held for him. He stopped, and Marette Radisson tugged at his hand,
+pulling him after her, insisting that he follow. She was clutching
+his thumb as though she thought he might attempt to escape.
+
+"It is safe, M'sieu Jeems," she cried. "Don't be afraid!"
+
+M'sieu Jeems! And the laughing note of mockery in her voice! He
+rallied himself and followed her up the three steps to the door.
+Her hand found the latch, the door opened, and swiftly they were
+inside. The lamp in the window was close to them, but for a space
+he could not see because of the water in his eyes. He blinked it
+out, drew a hand across his face, and looked at Marette. She stood
+three or four paces from him. Her face was very white, and she was
+panting as if hard-run for breath, but her eyes were shining, and
+she was smiling at him. The water was running from her in streams.
+
+"You are wet," she said. "And I am afraid you will catch cold.
+Come with me!"
+
+Again she was making fun of him just as she had made fun of him at
+Cardigan's! She turned, and he ran upstairs behind her. At the top
+she waited for him, and as he came up, she reached out her hand,
+as if apologizing for having taken it from him when they entered
+the bungalow. He held it again as she led him down the hall to a
+door farthest from the stair. This she opened, and they entered.
+It was dark inside, and the girl withdrew her hand again, and Kent
+heard her moving across the room. In that darkness a new and
+thrilling emotion possessed him. The air he was breathing was not
+the air he had breathed in the hall. In it was the sweet scent of
+flowers, and of something else--the faint and intangible perfume
+of a woman's room. He waited, staring. His eyes were wide when a
+match leaped into flame in Marette's fingers. Then he stood in the
+glow of a lamp.
+
+He continued to stare in the stupidity of a shock to which he was
+not accustomed. Marette, as if to give him time to acquaint
+himself with his environment, was taking off her raincoat. Under
+it her slim little figure was dry, except where the water had run
+down from her uncovered head to her shoulders. He noticed that she
+wore a short skirt, and boots, adorably small boots of splendidly
+worked caribou. And then suddenly she came toward him with both
+hands reaching out to him.
+
+"Please shake hands and say you're glad," she said. "Don't look
+so--so--frightened. This is my room and you are safe here."
+
+He held her hands tight, staring into the wonderful, violet eyes
+that were looking at him with the frank and unembarrassed
+directness of a child's. "I--I don't understand," he struggled.
+"Marette, where is Kedsty?"
+
+"He should be returning very soon."
+
+"And he knows you are here, of course?"
+
+She nodded. "I have been here for a month."
+
+Kent's hands closed tighter about hers. "I--I don't understand,"
+he repeated. "Tonight Kedsty will know that it was you who rescued
+me and you who shot Constable Willis. Good God, we must lose no
+time in getting away!"
+
+"There is great reason why Kedsty dare not betray my presence in
+his house," she said quietly. "He would die first! And he will not
+suspect that I have brought you to my room, that an escaped
+murderer is hiding under the very roof of the Inspector of Police!
+They will search for you everywhere but here! Isn't it splendid?
+He planned it all, every move, even to the screaming in front of
+your cell--"
+
+"You mean--Kedsty?"
+
+She withdrew her hands and stepped back from him, and again he saw
+in her eyes a flash of the fire that had come into them when she
+leveled her gun at the three men in the prison alcove. "No, not
+Kedsty. He would hang you, and he would kill me, if he dared. I
+mean that great, big, funny-looking friend of yours, M'sieu
+Fingers!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The manner in which Kent stared at Marette Radisson after her
+announcement that it was Dirty Fingers who had planned his escape
+must have been, he thought afterward, little less than imbecile.
+He had wronged Fingers, he believed. He had called him a coward
+and a backslider. In his mind he had reviled him for helping to
+raise his hopes to the highest pitch, only to smash them in the
+end. And all the time Dirty Fingers had been planning this! Kent
+began to grin. The thing was clear in a moment--that is, the
+immediate situation was clear--or he thought it was. But there
+were questions--one, ten, a hundred of them. They wanted to pile
+over the end of his tongue, questions that had little or nothing
+to do with Kedsty. He saw nothing now but Marette.
+
+She had begun to take down her hair. It fell about her in wet,
+shining masses. Kent had never seen anything like it. It clung to
+her face, her neck, her shoulders and arms, and shrouded her
+slender body to her hips, lovely in its confusion. Little drops of
+water glistened in it like diamonds in the lamp glow, trickling
+down and dropping to the floor. It was like a glowing coat of
+velvety sable beaten by storm. Marette ran her arms up through it,
+shaking it out in clouds, and a mist of rain leaped out from it,
+some of it striking Kent in the face. He forgot Fingers. He forgot
+Kedsty. His brain flamed only with the electrifying nearness of
+her. It was the thought of her that had inspired the greatest hope
+in him. It was his dreams of her, somewhere on the Big River, that
+had given him his great courage to believe in the ultimate of
+things. And now time and space had taken a leap backward. She was
+not four or five hundred miles north. There was no long quest
+ahead of him. She was here, within a few feet of him, tossing the
+wet from that glorious hair he had yearned to touch, brushing it
+out now, with her back toward him, in front of her mirror.
+
+And as he sat there, uttering no word, looking at her, the demands
+of the immense responsibility that had fallen upon him and of the
+great fight that lay ahead pounded within him with naked fists.
+Fingers had planned. She had executed. It was up to him to finish.
+
+He saw her, not as a creature to win, but as a priceless
+possession. Her fight had now become his fight. The rain was
+beating against the window near him. Out there was blackness, the
+river, the big world. His blood leaped with the old fighting fire.
+They were going tonight; they must be going tonight! Why should
+they wait? Why should they waste time under Kedsty's roof when
+freedom lay out there for the taking? He watched the swift
+movements of her hand, listened to the silken rustle of the brush
+as it smoothed out her long hair. Bewilderment, reason, desire for
+action fought inside him.
+
+Suddenly she faced him again. "It has just this moment occurred to
+me," she said, "that you haven't said 'Thank you.'"
+
+So suddenly that he startled her he was at her side. He did not
+hesitate this time, as he had hesitated in his room at Cardigan's
+place. He caught her two hands in his, and with them he felt the
+soft, damp crush of her hair between his fingers. Words tumbled
+from his lips. He could not remember afterward all that he said.
+Her eyes widened, and they never for an instant left his own.
+Thank her! He told her what had happened to him--in the heart and
+soul of him--from the hour she had come to him at Cardigan's. He
+told her of dreams and plans, of his determination to find her
+again after he had escaped, if it took him all his life. He told
+her of Mercer, of his discovery of her visit to Kim's Bayou, of
+his scheme to follow her down the Three Rivers, to seek for her at
+Fort Simpson, to follow her to the Valley of Silent Men, wherever
+it was. Thank her! He held her hands so tight they hurt, and his
+voice trembled. Under the cloud of her hair a slow fire burned in
+Marette Radisson's cheeks. But it did not show in her eyes. They
+looked at him so steadily, so unfalteringly, that his own face
+burned before he had finished what was in his mind to say, and he
+freed her hands and stepped back from her again.
+
+"Forgive me for saying all that," he entreated. "But it's true.
+You came to me there, at Cardigan's place, like something I'd
+always dreamed about, but never expected to find. And you came to
+me again, at the cell, like--"
+
+"Yes, I know how I came," she interrupted him. "Through the mud
+and the rain, Mr. Kent. And it was so black I lost my way and was
+terrified to think that I might not find barracks. I was half an
+hour behind Mr. Fingers' schedule. For that reason I think
+Inspector Kedsty may return at any moment, and you must not talk
+so loud--or so much."
+
+"Lord!" he breathed in a whisper. "I have said a lot in a short
+time, haven't I? But it isn't a hundredth part of what I want to
+get out of my system. I won't ask the million questions that want
+to be asked. But I must know why we are here. Why have we come to
+Kedsty's? Why didn't we make for the river? There couldn't be a
+better night to get away."
+
+"But it is not so good as the fifth night from now will be," she
+said, resuming the task of drying her hair. "On that night you may
+go to the river. Our plans were a little upset, you know, by
+Inspector Kedsty's change in the date on which you were to leave
+for Edmonton. Arrangements have been made so that on the fifth
+night you may leave safely."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I shall remain here." And then she added in a low voice that
+struck his heart cold, "I shall remain to pay Kedsty the price
+which he will ask for what has happened tonight."
+
+"Good God!" he cried. "Marette!"
+
+She turned on him swiftly. "No, no, I don't mean that he will hurt
+me," she cried, a fierce little note in her voice. "I would kill
+him before that! I'm sorry I told you. But you must not question
+me. You shall not!"
+
+She was trembling. He had never seen her excited like that before,
+and as she stood there before him, he knew that he was not afraid
+for her in the way that had flashed into his mind. She had not
+spoken empty words. She would fight. She would kill, if it was
+necessary to kill. And he saw her, all at once, as he had not seen
+her before. He remembered a painting which he had seen a long time
+ago in Montreal. It was L'Esprit de la Solitude--The Spirit of the
+Wild--painted by Conne, the picturesque French-Canadian friend of
+Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and a genius of the far backwoods
+who had drawn his inspiration from the heart of the wilderness
+itself. And that painting stood before him now in flesh and blood,
+its crudeness gone, but the marvelous spirit it had breathed
+remaining. Shrouded in her tumbled hair, her lips a little parted,
+every line of her slender body vibrant with an emotion which
+seemed consuming her, her beautiful eyes aglow with its fire, he
+saw in her, as Conne must have seen at another time, the soul of
+the great North itself. She seemed to him to breathe of the God's
+country far down the Three Rivers; of its almost savage
+fearlessness; its beauty, its sunshine, and its storm; its
+tragedy, its pathos, and its song. In her was the courage and the
+glory of that North. He had seen; and now he felt these things,
+and the thrill of them swept over him like an inundation.
+
+He had heard her soft laugh, she had made fun of him when he
+thought he was dying; she had kissed him, she had fought for him,
+she had clung in terror to his hand when the lightning flashed;
+and now she stood with her little hands clenched in her hair, like
+a storm about to break. A moment ago she was so near that he had
+almost taken her in his arms. Now, in an instant, she had placed
+something so vast between them that he would not have dared to
+touch her hand or her hair. Like sun and cloud and wind she
+changed, and for him each change added to the wonder of her. And
+now it was storm. He saw it in her eyes, her hands, her body. He
+felt the electrical nearness of it in those low-spoken, trembling
+words, "YOU SHALL NOT!" The room seemed surcharged for a moment
+with impending shock. And then his physical eyes took in again the
+slimness of her, seized upon the alluring smallness of her and the
+fact that he could have tossed her to the ceiling without great
+effort. And yet he saw her as one sees a goddess.
+
+"No, I won't ask you questions, when you look at me like that," he
+said, finding his tongue. "I won't ask you what this price is that
+Kedsty may demand, because you're not going to pay it. If you
+won't go with me, I won't go. I'd rather stay here and be hung.
+I'm not asking you questions, so please don't shoot, but if you
+told me the truth, and you belong in the North, you're going back
+with me--or I'm not going. I'll not budge an inch."
+
+She drew a deep breath, as if something had greatly relieved her.
+Again her violet eyes came out from the shadow into sunlight, and
+her trembling mouth suddenly broke into a smile. It was not
+apologetic. There was about it a quick and spontaneous gladness
+which she made no effort at all to conceal.
+
+"That is nice of you," she said. "I'm glad to hear you say it. I
+never knew how pleasant it was to have some one who was willing to
+be hung for me. But you will go. And I will not go. There isn't
+time to explain all about it just now, for Inspector Kedsty will
+be here very soon, and I must dry my hair and show you your
+hiding-place--if you have to hide."
+
+She began to brush her hair again. In the mirror Kent caught a
+glimpse of the smile still trembling on her lips.
+
+"I'm not questioning you," he guarded himself again, "but if you
+could only understand how anxious I am to know where Kedsty is,
+how Fingers found you, why you made us believe you were leaving
+the Landing and then returned--and--how badly I want to know
+something about you--I almost believe you'd talk a little while
+you are drying your hair."
+
+"It was Mooie, the old Indian," she said. "It was he who found out
+in some way that I was here, and then M'sieu Fingers came himself
+one night when the Inspector was away--got in through a window and
+simply said that you had sent him, when I was just about to shoot
+him. You see, I knew you weren't going to die. Kedsty had told me
+that. I was going to help you in another way, if M'sieu Fingers
+hadn't come. Inspector Kedsty was over there tonight, at his
+cabin, when the thing happened down there. It was a part of
+Fingers' scheme--to keep him out of the way."
+
+Suddenly she grew rigid. The brush remained poised in her hair.
+Kent, too, heard the sound that she had heard. It was a loud
+tapping at one of the curtained windows, the tapping of some
+metallic object. And that window was fifteen feet above the
+ground!
+
+With a little cry the girl threw down her brush, ran to the
+window, and raised and lowered the curtain once. Then she turned
+to Kent, swiftly dividing her hair into thick strands and weaving
+them into a braid.
+
+"It is Mooie," she cried. "Kedsty is coming!"
+
+She caught his hand and hurried him toward the head of the bed,
+where two long curtains were strung on a wire. She drew these
+apart. Behind them were what seemed to Kent an innumerable number
+of feminine garments.
+
+"You must hide in them, if you have to," she said, the excited
+little tremble in her voice again. "I don't think it will come to
+that, but if it does, you must! Bury yourself way back in them,
+and keep quiet. If Kedsty finds you are here--"
+
+She looked into his eyes, and it seemed to Kent that there was
+something which was very near to fear in them now.
+
+"If he should find you here, it would mean something terrible for
+me," she went on, her hands creeping to his arms. "I can not tell
+you what it is now, but it would be worse than death. Will you
+promise to stay here, no matter what happens down there, no matter
+what you may hear? Will you--Mr. Kent?"
+
+"Not if you call me Mr. Kent," he said, something thickening in
+his throat.
+
+"Will you--Jeems? Will you--no matter what happens--if I promise--
+when I come back--to kiss you?"
+
+Her hands slipped almost caressingly from his arms, and then she
+had turned swiftly and was gone through the partly open door,
+closing it after her, before he could give his promise.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+For a space he stood where she had left him, staring at the door
+through which she had gone. The nearness of her in those last few
+seconds of her presence, the caressing touch of her hands, what he
+had seen in her eyes, her promise to kiss him if he did not reveal
+himself--these things, and the thought of the splendid courage
+that must be inspiring her to face Kedsty now, made him blind even
+to the door and the wall at which he was apparently looking. He
+saw only her face, as he had seen it in that last moment--her
+eyes, the tremble of her lips, and the fear which she had not
+quite hidden from him. She was afraid of Kedsty. He was sure of
+it. For she had not smiled; there was no flicker of humor in her
+eyes, when she called him Jeems, an intimate use of the names Jim
+and James in the far North. It was not facetiously that she had
+promised to kiss him. An almost tragic seriousness had possessed
+her. And it was that seriousness that thrilled him--that, and the
+amazing frankness with which she had coupled the name Jeems with
+the promise of her lips. Once before she had called him Jeems. But
+it was M'sieu Jeems then, and there had been a bit of taunting
+laughter in her voice. Jim or James meant nothing, but Jeems--He
+had heard mothers call little children that, in moments of
+endearment. He knew that wives and sweethearts used it in that
+same way. For Jim and James were not uncommon names up and down
+the Three Rivers, even among the half-breeds and French, and Jeems
+was the closer and more intimate thing bred of it.
+
+His heart was thumping riotously as he went to the door and
+listened. A little while ago, when she faced him with flashing
+eyes, commanding him not to question her, he had felt an abyss
+under his feet. Now he was on a mountain. And he knew that no
+matter what he heard, unless it was her cry for help, he would not
+go down.
+
+After a little he opened the door a mere crack so that sound might
+come to him. She had not forbidden that. Through the crack he
+could see a dim glow of light in the lower hall. But he heard no
+sound, and it occurred to him that old Mooie could still run
+swiftly, and that it might be some time before Kedsty would
+arrive.
+
+As he waited, he looked about the room. His first impression was
+that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a
+woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated
+occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but
+nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering
+eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with
+amazing significance. He no longer doubted that Marette Radisson
+was of the far Northland. His faith in that was absolute. If there
+had been a last question in his mind, it was wiped away because
+she called him Jeems. Yet this room seemed to give the lie to his
+faith. Fascinated by his discovery of things, he drew away from
+the door and stood over the dressing-table in front of the mirror.
+
+Marette had not prepared the room for him, and her possessions
+were there. It did not strike him as sacrilege to look at them,
+the many intimate little things that are mysteriously used in the
+process of a lady's toilette. It was their number and variety that
+astounded him. He might have expected them in the boudoir of the
+Governor General's daughter at Ottawa, but not here--and much less
+farther north. What he saw was of exquisite material and
+workmanship. And then, as if attracted by a magnet, his eyes were
+drawn to something else. It was a row of shoes neatly and
+carefully arranged on the floor at one side of the dressing-table.
+
+He stared at them, astounded. Never had he seen such an array of
+feminine footwear intended for the same pair of feet. And it was
+not Northern footwear. Every individual little beauty in that
+amazing row stood on a high heel! Their variety was something to
+which he had long been a stranger. There were buttoned boots,
+laced boots, brown boots, black boots, and white boots, with
+dangerously high and fragile looking heels; there were dainty
+little white kid slippers, slippers with bows, slippers with cut
+steel buckles, and slippers with dainty ribbon ties; there were
+high-heeled oxfords and high-heeled patent leather pumps! He
+gasped. He reached over, moved by an automatic sort of impulse,
+and took a satiny little pump in his hand.
+
+The size of it gave him a decidedly pleasant mental shock, and,
+beginning to feel like one prying into a sleeper's secrets, he
+looked inside it. The size was there--number three. And it had
+come from Favre's in Montreal! One after another he looked inside
+half a dozen others. And all of them had come from Favre's in
+Montreal. The little shoes, more than all else that he had seen or
+that had happened, sent a question pounding through his brain. Who
+was Marette Radisson?
+
+And that question was followed by other questions, until they
+tumbled over one another in his head. If she was from Montreal,
+why was she going north? If she belonged in the North, if she was
+a part of it, why was she taking all of this apparently worthless
+footwear with her? Why had she come to Athabasca Landing? What was
+she to Kedsty? Why was she hiding under his roof? Why--
+
+He stopped himself, trying to find some one answer in all that
+chaos of questions. It was impossible for him to take his eyes
+from the shoes. A thought seized him. Ludicrously he dropped upon
+his knees in front of the row and with a face growing hotter each
+moment examined them all. But he wanted to know. And the discovery
+he made was that most of the footwear had been worn, some of it so
+slightly, however, that the impression of the foot was barely
+visible.
+
+He rose to his feet and continued his inquiry. Of course she had
+expected him to look about. One couldn't help seeing, unless one
+were blind. He would have cut off a hand before opening one of the
+dressing-table drawers. But Marette herself had told him to hide
+behind the curtains if it became necessary, and it was an
+excusable caution for him to look behind those curtains now, to
+see what sort of hiding-place he had. He returned to the door
+first and listened. There was still no sound from below. Then he
+drew the curtains apart, as Marette had drawn them. Only he looked
+longer. He would tell her about it when she returned, if the act
+needed an apology.
+
+His impression was a man's impression. What he saw was a
+billowing, filmy mass of soft stuff, and out of it there greeted
+him the faintest possible scent of lilac sachet powder. He closed
+the curtains with a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation.
+The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of
+soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The
+breath of perfume had come to him straight out of a woman's soul.
+There were seduction and witchery to it. He saw Marette, an
+enrapturing vision of loveliness, floating before his eyes in that
+sacred and mysterious vestment of which he had stolen a half-
+frightened glimpse. In white--the white, cobwebby thing of laces
+and embroidery that had hung straight before his eyes--in white--
+with her glorious black hair, her violet eyes, her--
+
+And then it was that the incongruity of the thing, the almost
+sheer impossibility of it, clashed in upon his vision. Yet his
+faith was not shaken. Marette Radisson was of the North. He could
+not disbelieve that, even in the face of these amazing things that
+confronted him.
+
+Suddenly he heard a sound that was like the explosion of a gun
+under his feet. It was the opening and closing of the hall door--
+but mostly the closing. The slam of it shook the house and rattled
+the glass in the windows. Kedsty had returned, and he was in a
+rage. Kent extinguished the light so that the room was in
+darkness. Then he went to the door. He could hear the quick, heavy
+tread of Kedsty's feet After that came the closing of a second
+door, followed by the rumble of Kedsty's voice. Kent was
+disappointed.
+
+The Inspector of Police and Marette were in a room too far distant
+for him to distinguish what was said. But he knew that Kedsty had
+returned to barracks and had discovered what had happened there.
+After an interval his voice was a steady rumble. It rose higher.
+He heard the crash of a chair. Then the voice ceased, and after it
+came the tramping of Kedsty's feet. Not once did he catch the
+sound of Marette's voice, but he was sure that in the interval of
+silence she was talking. Then Kedsty's voice broke forth more
+furiously than before. Kent's fingers dug into the sill of the
+door. Each moment added to his conviction that Marette was in
+danger. It was not physical violence he feared. He did not believe
+Kedsty capable of perpetrating that upon a woman. It was fear that
+he would take her to barracks. The fact that Marette had told him
+there was a powerful reason why Kedsty would not do this failed to
+assure him. For she had also told him that Kedsty would kill her,
+if he dared. He held himself in readiness. At a cry from her, or
+the first move on Kedsty's part to take her from the bungalow, he
+would give battle in spite of Marette's warning.
+
+He almost hoped one of these two things would happen. As he stood
+there, listening, waiting, the thought became almost a prayer. He
+had Pelly's revolver. Within twenty seconds he could have Kedsty
+looking down the barrel of it. The night was ideal for escape.
+Within half an hour they would be on the river. They could even
+load up with provisions from Kedsty's place. He opened the door a
+little more, scarcely making an effort to combat the impulse that
+dragged him out. Marette must be in danger, or she would not have
+confessed to him that she was in the house of a man who would like
+to see her dead. Why she was there did not interest him deeply
+now. It was the fact of the moment that was moving him swiftly
+toward action.
+
+The door below opened again, and Kent's body grew rigid. He heard
+Kedsty charging through the lower hall like a mad bull. The outer
+door opened, slammed shut, and he was gone.
+
+Kent drew back into the darkness of his room. It was some moments
+before he heard Marette coming slowly up the stairs. She seemed to
+be groping her way, though there was a dim illumination out there.
+Then she came through the door into the blackness of her room.
+
+"Jeems," she whispered.
+
+He went to her. Her hands reached out, and again they rested on
+his arms.
+
+"You--you didn't come down the stair?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You--didn't hear?"
+
+"I heard no words. Only Kedsty's voice."
+
+It seemed to him that her voice, when she spoke again, trembled
+with an immeasurable relief. "You were good, Jeems. I am glad."
+
+In that darkness he could not see. Yet something reached into him,
+thrilling him, quickening his pulse with a thing to which his eyes
+were blind. He bent down. He found her lips upturned, offering him
+the sweetness of the kiss which was to be his reward; and as he
+felt their warmth upon his own, he felt also the slightest
+pressure of her hands upon his arms.
+
+"He is gone. We will light the lamp again," she said then.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Kent stood still while Marette moved in that gloom, found matches,
+and lighted the lamp. He had not spoken a word after the kiss. He
+had not taken advantage of it. The gentle pressure of her hands
+had restrained him from taking her in his arms. But the kiss
+itself fired him with a wild and glorious thrill that was like a
+vibrant music to which every atom of life in his body responded.
+If he claimed his reward at all, he had expected her kiss to be
+perhaps indifferent, at least neutral. But the lips she had given
+him there in the darkness of the room were warm, living, breathing
+lips. They had not been snatched away from him too quickly. Their
+sweetness, for an instant, had lingered.
+
+Then, in the lamp glow, he was looking into Marette Radisson's
+face. He knew that his own was aflame. He had no desire to hide
+its confession, and he was eager to find what lay in her own eyes.
+And he was astonished, and then startled. The kiss had not
+disturbed Marette. It was as if it had never happened.
+
+She was not embarrassed, and there was no hint of color in her
+face. It was her deathly whiteness that startled him, a pallor
+emphasized by the dark masses of her hair, and a strange glow in
+her eyes. It was not a glow brought there by the kiss. It was
+fear, fading slowly out of them as he looked, until at last it was
+gone, and her lips trembled with an apologetic smile.
+
+"He was very angry," she said. "How easily some men lose their
+tempers, don't they--Jeems?"
+
+The little break in her voice, her brave effort to control
+herself, and the whimsical bit of smile that accompanied her words
+made him want to do what the gentle pressure of her hands had kept
+him from doing a few moments before--pick her up in his arms. What
+she was trying to hide he saw plainly. She had been in danger, a
+danger greater than that which she had quietly and fearlessly
+faced at barracks. And she was still afraid of that menace. It was
+the last thing which she wanted him to know, and yet he knew it. A
+new force swept through him. It was the force which comes of
+mastery, of possessorship, of fighting grimly against odds. It
+rose in a mighty triumph. It told him this girl belonged to him,
+that she was his to fight for. And he was going to fight. Marette
+saw the change that came into his face. For a moment after she had
+spoken there was silence between them. Outside the storm beat in a
+fiercer blast. A roll of thunder crashed over the bungalow. The
+windows rattled in a sweep of wind and rain. Kent, looking at her,
+his muscles hardening, his face growing grimmer, nodded toward the
+window at which Mooie's signal had come.
+
+"It is a splendid night--for us," he said. "And we must go."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"In the eyes of the law I am a murderer," he went on. "You saved
+me. You shot a man. In those same eyes you are a criminal. It is
+folly to remain here. It is sheer suicide for both of us. If
+Kedsty--"
+
+"If Kedsty does not do what I told him to do to-night, I shall
+kill him!" she said.
+
+The quietness of her words, the steadiness of her eyes, held him
+speechless. Again it seemed to him, as it had seemed to him in his
+room at Cardigan's place, that it was a child who was looking at
+him and speaking to him. If she had shown fear a few moments
+before, that fear was not revealed in her face now. She was not
+excited. Her eyes were softly and quietly beautiful. She amazed
+him and discomfited him. Against that child-like sureness he felt
+himself helpless. Its potency was greater than his strength and
+greater than his determination. It placed between them instantly a
+vast gulf, a gulf that might be bridged by prayer and entreaty,
+but never by force. There was no hint of excitement in her threat
+against Kedsty, and yet in the very calmness of it he felt its
+deadliness.
+
+A whimsical half-smile was trembling on her lips again, and a
+warmer glow came into her eyes. "Do you know," she said, "that
+according to an old and sacred code of the North you belong to
+me?"
+
+"I have heard of that code," he replied. "A hundred years ago I
+should have been your slave. If it exists today, I am happy."
+
+"Yes, you see the point, Jeems, don't you? You were about to die,
+probably. I think they would have hanged you. And I saved your
+life. Therefore your life belongs to me, for I insist that the
+code still lives. You are my property, and I am going to do with
+you as I please, until I turn you over to the Rivers. And you are
+not going tonight. You shall wait here for Laselle and his
+brigade."
+
+"Laselle--Jean Laselle?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, that is why you must wait. We have made a
+splendid arrangement. When Laselle and his brigade start north,
+you go with them. And no one will ever know. You are safe here. No
+one will think of looking for you under the roof of the Inspector
+of Police."
+
+"But you, Marette!" He caught himself, remembering her injunction
+not to question her. Marette shrugged her slim shoulders the
+slightest bit and nodded for him to look upon what she knew he had
+already seen, her room.
+
+"It is not uncomfortable," she said. "I have been here for a
+number of weeks, and nothing has happened to me. I am quite safe.
+Inspector Kedsty has not looked inside that door since the day
+your big red-headed friend saw me down in the poplars. He has not
+put a foot on the stair. That is the dead-line. And--I know--you
+are wondering. You are asking yourself a great many questions--a
+bon droit, M'sieu Jeems. You are burning up with them. I can see
+it. And I--"
+
+There was something suddenly pathetic about her, as she sank into
+the big-armed, upholstered chair which had been Kedsty's favorite
+reading chair. She was tired, and for a moment it seemed to Kent
+that she was almost ready to cry. Her ringers twisted nervously at
+the shining end of the braid in her lap, and more than ever he
+thought how slim and helpless, she was, yet how gloriously
+unafraid, how unconquerable with that something within her that
+burned like the fire of a dynamo. The flame of that force had gone
+down now, as though the fire itself was dying out; but when she
+raised her eyes to him, looking up at him from out of the big
+chair, he knew that back of the yearning, child-like glow that lay
+in them the heart of that fire was living and unquenchable. Again,
+for him, she had ceased to be a woman. It was the soul of a child
+that lay in her wide-open, wonderfully blue eyes. Twice before he
+had seen that miracle, and it held him now, as it had held him
+that first time when she had stood with her back at Cardigan's
+door. And as it had changed then, so it changed now, slowly, and
+she was a woman again, with that great gulf of unapproachableness
+between them. But the yearning was still there, revealing itself
+to him, and yet, like the sun, infinitely remote from him.
+
+"I wish that I might answer those questions for you," she said, in
+a voice that was low and tired. "I should like to have you know,
+because I--I have great faith in you, Jeems. But I cannot. It is
+impossible. It is inconceivable. If I did--" She made a hopeless
+little gesture. "If I told you everything, you would not like me
+any more. And I want you to like me--until you go north with
+M'sieu Jean and his brigade."
+
+"And when I do that," cried Kent, almost savagely, "I shall find
+this place you call the Valley of Silent Men, if it takes me all
+my life."
+
+It was becoming a joy for him to see the sudden flashes of
+pleasure that leaped into her eyes. She attempted no concealment.
+Whatever her emotions were they revealed themselves unaffectedly
+and with a simple freedom from embarrassment that swept him with
+an almost reverential worship. And what he had just said pleased
+her. Unreservedly her glowing eyes and her partly smiling lips
+told him that, and she said: "I am glad you feel that way, Jeems.
+And I think you would find it--in time. Because--"
+
+Her little trick of looking at him so steadily, as if there was
+something inside him which she was trying to see more clearly,
+made him feel more helplessly than ever her slave. It was as if,
+in those moments, she forgot that he was of flesh and blood, and
+was looking into his heart to see what was there before she gave
+voice to things.
+
+And then she said, still twisting her braid between her slim
+fingers, "You would find it--perhaps--because you are one who
+would not give up easily. Shall I tell you why I came to see you
+at Doctor Cardigan's? It was curiosity, at first--largely that.
+Just why or how I was interested in the man you freed is one of
+the things I can not tell you. And I can not tell you why I came
+to the Landing. Nor can I say a word about Kedsty. It may be, some
+day, that you will know. And then you will not like me. For nearly
+four years before I saw you that day I had been in a desolation.
+It was a terrible place. It ate my heart and soul out with its
+ugliness, its loneliness, its emptiness. A little while longer and
+I would have died. Then the thing happened that brought me away.
+Can you guess where it was?"
+
+He shook his head, "No."
+
+"To all the others it was a beautiful place, Montreal."
+
+"You were at school there?" he guessed.
+
+"Yes, the Villa Maria. I wasn't quite sixteen then. They were
+kind. I think they liked me. But each night I prayed one prayer.
+You know what the Three Rivers are to us, to the people of the
+North. The Athabasca is Grandmother, the Slave is Mother, the
+Mackenzie is Daughter, and over them watches always the goddess
+Niska, the Gray Goose. And my prayer was that I might go back to
+them. In Montreal there were people, people everywhere, thousands
+and tens of thousands of them, so many that I was lonely and
+heartsick and wanted to get away. For the Gray Goose blood is in
+me, Jeems. I love the forests. And Niska's God doesn't live in
+Montreal. Her sun doesn't rise there. Her moon isn't the same
+there. The flowers are not hers. The winds tell different stories.
+The air is another air. People, when they look at you, look in
+another way. Away down the Three Rivers I had loved men. There I
+was learning to hate them. Then, something happened. I came to
+Athabasca Landing. I went to see you because--"
+
+She clasped her two hands tightly in her lap. "Because, after
+those four terrible years, you were the first man I found who was
+playing a great, big, square game to the end. Don't ask me how I
+found it out. Please don't ask me anything. I am telling you all
+you can know, all you SHALL know. But I did find it out. And then
+I learned that you were not going to die. Kedsty told me that. And
+when I had talked with you I knew that you would play any game
+square, and I made up my mind to help you. That is why I am
+telling you all this--just to let you know that I have faith in
+you, and that you must not break that faith. You must not insist
+on knowing more about me. You must still play the game. I am
+playing mine, and you must play yours. And to play yours clean,
+you must go with Laselle's brigade and leave me with Kedsty. You
+must forget what has happened. You must forget what MAY happen.
+You can not help me. You can only harm me. And if--some day, a
+long time from now--you should happen to find the Valley of Silent
+Men--"
+
+He waited, his heart pounding like a fist.
+
+"I may--be there," she finished, in a voice so low that it was
+scarcely above a whisper.
+
+It seemed to him that she was looking a long way off, and it was
+not in his direction. And then she smiled, not at him, but in a
+half-hopeless little way.
+
+"I think I shall be disappointed if you don't find it," she said
+then, and her eyes were pure as the blue flowers from which they
+had stolen their color, as she looked at him. "You know the great
+Sulphur Country beyond Fort Simpson, westward between the Two
+Nahannis?"
+
+"Yes. That is where Kilbane and his patrol were lost. The Indians
+call it the Devil Country. Is that it?"
+
+She nodded. "They say no living thing has ever been through the
+Sulphur Country," she said. "But that is not true. I have been
+through it. It is beyond the Sulphur Country you must go to find
+the Valley of Silent Men, straight through that gap between the
+North and the South Nahanni. That is the way YOU must go if you
+should ever find it, Jeems, for otherwise you would have to come
+down from Dawson or up from Skagway, and the country is so great
+that you would never come upon it in a thousand years. The police
+will not find you there. You will always be safe. Perhaps I shall
+tell you more before the Brigade comes. But that is all tonight. I
+may never tell you anything more. And you must not question me."
+
+Speechless he had stood, all the life of his soul burning like a
+fire in his eyes as he looked at her and listened to her, and now,
+quietly and unexcitedly, he said:
+
+"Marette, I am going to play this game as you want me to play it,
+because I love you. It is only honest for me to tell you in words
+what you must already know. And I am going to fight for you as
+long as there is a drop of blood in my body. If I go with Jean
+Laselle's brigade, will you promise me--"
+
+His voice trembled. He was repressing a mighty emotion. But not by
+the quiver of one of her long lashes did Marette Radisson give
+evidence that she had even heard his confession of love. She
+interrupted him before he had finished.
+
+"I can promise you nothing, no matter what you do. Jeems, Jeems,
+you are not like those other men I learned to hate? You will not
+INSIST? If you do--if you are like them--yes, you may go away from
+here tonight and not wait for Jean Laselle. Listen! The storm will
+not break for hours. If you are going to demand a price for
+playing the game as I want you to play it, you may go. You have my
+permission."
+
+She was very white. She rose from the big chair and stood before
+him. There was no anger in her voice or gesture, but her eyes
+glowed like luminous stars. There was something in them which he
+had not seen before, and suddenly a thought struck his heart cold
+as ice.
+
+With a low cry he stretched out his hands, "My God, Marette, I am
+not a murderer! I did not kill John Barkley!"
+
+She did not answer him.
+
+"You don't believe me," he cried. "You believe that I killed
+Barkley, and that now--a murderer--I dare to tell you that I love
+you!"
+
+She was trembling. It was like a little shiver running through
+her. For only a flash it seemed to him that he had caught a
+glimpse of something terrible, a thing she was hiding, a thing she
+was fighting as she stood there with her two little clenched
+hands. For in her face, in her eyes, in the beating throb of her
+white throat he saw, in that moment, the almost hidden agony of a
+hurt thing. And then it was gone, even as he entreated again,
+pleading for her faith.
+
+"I did not kill John Barkley!"
+
+"I am not thinking of that, Jeems," she said. "It is of something--"
+
+They had forgotten the storm. It was howling and beating at the
+windows outside. But suddenly there came a sound that rose above
+the monotonous tumult of it, and Marette started as if it had sent
+an electric shock through her. Kent, too, turned toward the
+window.
+
+It was the metallic tap, tap, tapping which once before had warned
+them of approaching danger. And this time it was insistent. It was
+as if a voice was crying out to them from beyond the window. It
+was more than premonition--it was the alarm of a near and
+impending menace. And in that moment Kent saw Marette Radisson's
+hands go swiftly to her throat and her eyes leap with sudden fire,
+and she gave a little cry as she listened to the sound.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+In ten seconds, it seemed to Kent, Marette Radisson was again the
+splendid creature who had held the three men at bay over the end
+of her little black gun at barracks. The sound of Mooie's second
+warning came at first as a shock. Accompanying it there was a
+moment of fear, of fear driven almost to the point of actual
+terror. Following it came a reaction so swift that Kent was dazed.
+Within those ten seconds the girl's slender body seemed to grow
+taller; a new light flamed in her face; her eyes, turning swiftly
+to him, were filled with the same fire with which they had faced
+the three constables. She was unafraid. She was ready to fight.
+
+In such moments as these it was the quiet and dispassionate
+composure of her voice that amazed him most. It was musical in its
+softness now. Yet in that softness was a hidden thing. It was like
+velvet covering steel. She had spoken of Niska, the Gray Goose,
+the goddess of the Three Rivers. And he thought that something of
+the spirit of a goddess must be in Marette Radisson to give her
+the courage with which she faced him, even as the metallic thing
+outside tapped its warning again at the window.
+
+"Inspector Kedsty is coming back," she said. "I did not think he
+would do that--tonight."
+
+"He has not had time to go to barracks," said Kent.
+
+"No. Possibly he has forgotten something. Before he arrives, I
+want to show you the nest I have made for you, Jeems. Come
+quickly!"
+
+It was her first intimation that he was not to remain in her room,
+a possibility that had already caused him some inward
+embarrassment. She seized a number of matches, turned down her
+light, and hurried into the hall. Kent followed her to the end of
+this hall, where she paused before a low half-door that apparently
+opened into some sort of a space close under the sloping roof of
+the bungalow.
+
+"It is an old storeroom," she whispered. "I have made it quite
+comfortable, I think. I have covered the window, so you may light
+the lamp. But you must see that no light shows under this door.
+Lock it on the inside, and be very quiet. For whatever you find in
+there you must thank M'sieu Fingers."
+
+She pulled the door slightly open and gave him the matches. The
+illumination in the lower hall made its way only dimly to where
+they stood. In the gloom he found himself close to the soft glow
+of her eyes. His fingers closed about her hand as he took the
+matches.
+
+"Marette, you believe me?" he entreated. "You believe that I love
+you, that I didn't kill John Barkley, that I am going to fight for
+you as long as God gives me breath to fight?"
+
+For a moment there was silence. Her hand withdrew gently from his.
+
+"Yes, I think that I believe. Good-night, Jeems."
+
+She went from him quickly. At her door she turned. "Go in now,
+please," she called back softly. "If you care as you say you do,
+go IN."
+
+She did not wait for his reply. Her own door closed behind her,
+and Kent, striking a match, stooped low and entered his hiding-
+place. In a moment he saw directly ahead of him a lamp on a box.
+He lighted this, and his first movement then was to close the door
+and turn the key that was in the lock. After that he looked about
+him. The storeroom was not more than ten feet square, and the roof
+was so close over his head that he could not stand upright. It was
+not the smallness of the place that struck him first, but the
+preparations which Marette had made for him. In a corner was a bed
+of blankets, and the rough floor of the place was carpeted with
+blankets, except for a two-or-three-foot space around the edge of
+it. Beyond the box was a table and a chair, and it was the burden
+of this table that made his pulse jump quickest. Marette had not
+forgotten that he might grow hungry. It was laid sumptuously, with
+a plate for one, but with food for half a dozen. There were a
+brace of roasted grouse, brown as nuts; a cold roast of moose meat
+or beef; a dish piled high with golden potato salad; olives,
+pickles, an open can of cherries, a loaf of bread, butter, cheese
+--and one of Kedsty's treasured thermos bottles, which undoubtedly
+held hot coffee or tea. And then he noticed what was on the chair
+--a belt and holster and a Colt automatic forty-five! Marette had
+not figured on securing a gun in the affair at barracks, and her
+foresight had not forgotten a weapon. She had placed it
+conspicuously where he could not fail to see it at once. And just
+beyond the chair, on the floor, was a shoulder-pack. It was of the
+regulation service sort, partly filled. Resting against the pack
+was a Winchester. He recognized the gun. He had seen it hanging in
+Dirty Fingers' shack.
+
+For a matter of five minutes he scarcely moved from where he stood
+beside the table. Nothing but an unplastered roof was between him
+and the storm, and over his head the thunder crashed, and the rain
+beat in torrents. He saw where the window was, carefully covered
+with a blanket. Even through the blanket he caught faintly the
+illumination of lightning. This window overlooked the entrance to
+Kedsty's bungalow, and the idea came to him of turning out the
+light and opening it. In darkness he took down the blanket. But
+the window itself was not movable, and after assuring himself of
+this fact he flattened his face against it, peering out into the
+chaos of the night.
+
+In that instant came a flare of lightning, and to Kent, looking
+down, was revealed a sight that tightened every muscle in his
+body. More vividly than if it had been day he saw a man standing
+below in the deluge. It was not Mooie. It was not Kedsty. It was
+no one that he had ever seen. Even more like a ghost than a man
+was that apparition of the lightning flare. A great, gaunt giant
+of a ghost, bare-headed, with long, dripping hair and a long,
+storm-twisted beard. The picture shot to his brain with the
+swiftness of the lightning itself. It was like the sudden throwing
+of a cinema picture on a screen. Then blackness shut it out. Kent
+stared harder. He waited.
+
+Again came the lightning, and again he saw that tragic, ghost-like
+figure waiting in the storm. Three times he saw it. And he knew
+that the mysterious, bearded giant was an old man. The fourth time
+the lightning came, the figure was gone. And in that flare it was
+the bowed figure of Kedsty he saw hurrying up the gravel path to
+the door.
+
+Quickly Kent covered the window, but he did not relight the lamp.
+Before Kedsty could have reached the foot of the stair, he had
+unlocked the door. Cautiously he opened it three or four inches
+and sat down with his back against the wall, listening. He heard
+Kedsty pass through into the big room where Marette had waited for
+him a short time before. After that there was silence except for
+the tumult of the storm.
+
+For an hour Kent listened. In all that time he did not hear a
+sound from the lower hall or from Marette's room. He wondered if
+she was sleeping, and if Kedsty had gone to bed, waiting for
+morning before he set in action his bloodhounds of the law.
+
+Kent had no intention of disturbing the comfortable looking bed of
+blankets. He was not only sleepless, but filled with a premonition
+of events about to happen. He felt impinging itself more and more
+upon him a sense of watchfulness. That Inspector Kedsty and
+Marette Radisson were under the same roof, and that there was some
+potent and mysterious reason which kept Kedsty from betraying the
+girl's presence, was the thought which troubled him most. He was
+not developing further the plans for his own escape.
+
+He was thinking of Marette. What was her power over Kedsty? Why
+was it that Kedsty would like to see her dead? Why was she in his
+house? Again and again he asked himself the questions and found no
+answers to them. And yet, even in this purgatory of mystery that
+environed him, he felt himself happier than he had ever been in
+his life. For Marette was not four or five hundred miles down the
+river. She was in the same house with him. And he had told her
+that he loved her. He was glad that he had been given courage to
+let her know that. He relighted the lamp, and opened his watch and
+placed it on the table, where frequently he could look at the
+time. He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco, he was
+sure, would reach Kedsty, unless the Inspector had actually
+retired into his bedroom for the night.
+
+Half a dozen times he questioned himself as to the identity of the
+ghostly apparition he had seen in the lightning flare of the
+storm. Perhaps it was some one of Fingers' strange friends from
+out of the wilderness, Mooie's partner in watching the bungalow.
+The picture of that giant of a man with his great beard and long
+hair, as his eyes had caught him in a sea of electrical fire, was
+indelibly burned into his brain. It was a tragic picture.
+
+Again he put out the light and bared the blanketed window, but he
+saw nothing but the sodden gleam of the earth when the lightning
+flashed. A second time he opened the door a few inches and sat
+down with his back to the wall, listening.
+
+How long it was before drowsiness stole upon him he did not know,
+but it came, and for a few moments at a time, as his eyes closed,
+it robbed him of his caution. And then, for a space, he slept. A
+sound brought him suddenly into wide wakefulness. His first
+impression was that the sound had been a cry. For a moment or two,
+as his senses adjusted themselves, he was not sure. Then swiftly
+the thing grew upon him.
+
+He rose to his feet and widened the crack of his door. A bar of
+light shot across the upper hall. It was from Marette's room. He
+had taken off his boots to deaden the sound of his feet, and he
+stepped outside his door. He was positive he heard a low cry, a
+choking, sobbing cry, only barely audible, and that it came from
+down the stair.
+
+No longer hesitating, he moved quickly to Marette's room and
+looked in. His first glimpse was of the bed. It had not been used.
+The room was empty.
+
+Something cold and chilling gripped at his heart, and an impulse
+which he no longer made an effort to resist pulled him to the head
+of the stair. It was more than an impulse--it was a demand. Step
+by step he went down, his hand on the butt of his Colt.
+
+He reached the lower hall, which was still lighted, and a step or
+two brought him to a view of the door that opened into the big
+living-room beyond. That door was partly open, and the room itself
+was filled with light. Soundlessly Kent approached. He looked in.
+
+What he saw first brought him relief together with shock. At one
+end of the long desk table over which hung a great brass lamp
+stood Marette. She was in profile to him. He could not see her
+face. Her hair fell loose about her, glowing like a rich, sable
+cape in the light of the lamp. She was safe, alive, and yet the
+attitude of her as she looked down was the thing that gave him
+shock. He was compelled to move a few inches more before he could
+see what she was staring at. And then his heart stopped dead
+still.
+
+Huddled down in his chair, with his head flung back so that the
+terrible ghastliness of his face fronted Kent, was Kedsty. And
+Kent, in an instant, knew. Only a dead man could look like that.
+
+With a cry he entered the room. Marette did not start, but an
+answering cry came into her throat as she turned her eyes from
+Kedsty to him. To Kent it was like looking upon the dead in two
+ways. Marette Radisson, living and breathing, was whiter than
+Kedsty, who was white with the unbreathing pallor of the actually
+dead. She did not speak. She made no sound after that answering
+cry in her throat. She simply looked. And Kent spoke her name
+gently as he saw her great, wide eyes blazing dully their agony
+and despair. Then, like one stunned and fascinated, she stared
+down upon Kedsty again.
+
+Every instinct of the man-hunter became alive in Kent's brain as
+he, too, turned toward the Inspector of Police. Kedsty's arms hung
+limp over the side of his chair. On the floor under his right hand
+was his Colt automatic. His head was strained so far over the back
+of the chair that it looked as though his neck had been broken. On
+his forehead, close up against his short-cropped, iron-gray hair,
+was a red stain.
+
+Kent approached and bent over him. He had seen death too many
+times not to recognize it now, but seldom had he seen a face
+twisted and distorted as Kedsty's was. His eyes were open and
+bulging in a glassy stare. His jaws hung loose. His--
+
+It was then Kent's blood froze in his veins. Kedsty had received a
+blow, but it was not the blow that had killed him. Afterward he
+had been choked to death. And the thing that had choked him was a
+TRESS OF WOMAN'S HAIR.
+
+In the seconds that followed that discovery Kent could not have
+moved if his own life had paid the penalty of inaction. For the
+story was told--there about Kedsty's throat and on his chest. The
+tress of hair was long and soft and shining and black. It was
+twisted twice around Kedsty's neck, and the loose end rippled down
+over his shoulder, GLOWING LIKE A BIT OF RICH SABLE IN THE
+LAMPLIGHT. It was that thought of velvety sable that had come to
+him at the doorway, looking at Marette. It was the thought that
+came to him now. He touched it; he took it in his fingers; he
+unwound it from about Kedsty's neck, where it had made two deep
+rings in the flesh. From his fingers it rippled out full length.
+And he turned slowly and faced Marette Radisson.
+
+Never had human eyes looked at him as she was looking at him now.
+She reached out a hand, her lips mute, and Kent gave her the tress
+of hair. And the next instant she turned, with a hand clasped at
+her own throat, and passed through the door.
+
+After that he heard her going unsteadily up the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Kent did not move. His senses for a space were stunned. He was
+almost physically insensible to all emotions but that one of shock
+and horror. He was staring at Kedsty's gray-white, twisted face
+when he heard Marette's door close. A cry came from his lips, but
+he did not hear it--was unconscious that he had made a sound. His
+body shook with a sudden tremor. He could not disbelieve, for the
+evidence was there. From behind, as he had sat in his chair
+Marette Radisson had struck the Inspector of Police with some
+blunt object. The blow had stunned him. And after that--
+
+He drew a hand across his eyes, as if to clear his vision. What he
+had seen was impossible. The evidence was impossible. Assaulted,
+in deadly peril, defending either honor or love, Marette Radisson
+was of the blood to kill. But to creep up behind her victim--it
+was inconceivable! Yet there had been no struggle. Even the
+automatic on the floor gave no evidence of that. Kent picked it
+up. He looked at it closely, and again the unconscious cry of
+despair came in a half groan from his lips. For on the butt of the
+Colt was a stain of blood and a few gray hairs. Kedsty had been
+stunned by a blow from his own gun!
+
+As Kent placed it on the table, his eyes caught suddenly a gleam
+of steel under the edge of a newspaper, and he drew out from their
+hiding-place the long-bladed clipping scissors which Kedsty had
+used in the preparation of his scrap-books and official reports.
+It was the last link in the deadly evidence--the automatic with
+its telltale stain, the scissors, the tress of hair, and Marette
+Radisson. He felt a sensation of sudden dizziness. Every nerve-
+center in his body had received its shock, and when the shock had
+passed it left him sweating.
+
+Swiftly the reaction came. It was a lie, he told himself. The
+evidence was false. Marette could not have committed that crime,
+as the crime had visualized itself before his eyes. There was
+something which he had not seen, something which he could not see,
+something that was hiding itself from him. He became, in an
+instant, the old James Kent. The instinctive processes of the man-
+hunter leaped to their stations like trained soldiers. He saw
+Marette again, as she had looked at him when he entered the room.
+It was not murder he had caught in her wide-open eyes. It was not
+hatred. It was not madness. It was a quivering, bleeding soul
+crying out to him in an agony that no other human eyes had ever
+revealed to him before. And suddenly a great voice cried out in
+his brain, drowning all other things, telling him how contemptible
+a thing was love unless in that love was faith.
+
+With his heart choking him, he turned again to Kedsty. The
+futility of the thing which he had told himself was faith gripped
+at him sickeningly, yet he fought for that faith, even as his eyes
+looked again upon the ghastly torture that was in Kedsty's face.
+
+He was becoming calmer. He touched the dead man's cheek and found
+that it was no longer warm. The tragedy must have occurred an hour
+before. He examined more closely the abrasion on Kedsty's
+forehead. It was not a deep wound, and the blow that had made it
+must have stunned the Inspector of Police for only a short time.
+In that space the other thing had happened. In spite of his almost
+superhuman effort to keep the picture away from him, Kent saw it
+vividly--the swift turning to the table, the inspiration of the
+scissors, the clipping of the long tress of hair, the choking to
+death of Kedsty as he regained consciousness. Over and over again
+he whispered to himself the impossibility of it, the absurdity of
+it, the utter incongruity of it. Only a brain gone mad would have
+conceived that monstrous way of killing Kedsty. And Marette was
+not mad. She was sane.
+
+Like the eyes of a hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about
+the room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On
+the walls, hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On
+one end of Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone
+tomahawk. Still nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by
+papers, was a boot-lace. Under his limp right hand was the
+automatic. With these possible instruments of death close at hand,
+ready to be snatched up without trouble or waste of time, why had
+the murderer used a tress of woman's hair?
+
+The boot-lace drew Kent's eyes. It was impossible not to see it,
+forty-eight inches long and quarter-inch-wide buckskin. He began
+seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marette
+Radisson had been standing. And again the unanswerable question
+pounded in Kent's brain--why had Kedsty's murderer used a tress of
+hair instead of a buckskin lace or one of the curtain cords
+hanging conspicuously at the windows?
+
+He went to each of these windows and found them locked. Then, a
+last time, he bent over Kedsty. He knew that in the final moments
+of his life Kedsty had suffered a slow and torturing agony. His
+twisted face left the story. And the Inspector of Police was a
+powerful man. He had struggled, still partly dazed by the blow.
+But it had taken strength to overcome him even then, to hold his
+head back, to choke life out of him slowly with the noose of hair.
+And Kent, now that the significance of what he saw began to grow
+upon him more clearly, felt triumphing over all other things in
+his soul a slow and mighty joy. It was inconceivable that with the
+strength of her own hands and body Marette Radisson had killed
+Kedsty. A greater strength than hers had held him in the death-
+chair, and a greater strength than hers had choked life from the
+Inspector of Police!
+
+He drew slowly out of the room, closing the door noiselessly
+behind him. He found that the front door was as Kedsty had left
+it, unlocked.
+
+Close to that door he stood for a space, scarcely allowing himself
+to breathe. He listened, but no sound came down the dimly
+illumined stairway.
+
+A new thing was pressing upon him now. It rode over the shock of
+tragedy, over the first-roused instincts of the man-hunter,
+overwhelming him with the realization of a horror such as had
+never confronted him before. It gripped him more fiercely than the
+mere killing of Kedsty. His thought was of Marette, of the fate
+which dawn and discovery would bring for her. His hands clenched
+and his jaws tightened. The world was against him, and tomorrow it
+would be against her. Only he, in the face of all that condemning
+evidence in the room beyond, would disbelieve her guilty of
+Kedsty's death. And he, Jim Kent, was already a murderer in the
+eyes of the law.
+
+He felt within him the slow-growing inspiration of a new spirit,
+the gathering might of a new force. A few hours ago he was an
+outcast. He was condemned. Life, for him, had been robbed of its
+last hope. And in that hour of his grimmest despair Marette
+Radisson had come to him. Through storm that had rocked the earth
+under her feet and set ablaze the chaotic blackness of the sky
+over her head she had struggled--for him. She had counted no cost.
+She had measured no chances. She had simply come--BECAUSE SHE
+BELIEVED IN HIM. And now, upstairs, she was the victim of the
+terrible price that was the first cost of his freedom. For he
+believed, now that the thought came to him like a dagger stroke,
+that this was so. Her act in freeing him had brought about the
+final climax, and as a result of it, Kedsty was dead.
+
+He went to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet,
+he began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marette's name even
+before he came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his
+arms outstretched. But he came silently to her door and looked in.
+
+She lay in a crumpled, huddled heap on her bed. Her face was
+hidden, and all about her lay her smothering hair. For a moment he
+was frightened. He could not see that she was breathing. So still
+was she that she was like one dead.
+
+His footsteps were unheard as he moved across the room. He knelt
+down beside her, reached out his arms, and gathered her into them.
+
+"Marette!" he cried in a low voice.
+
+He felt the sudden quiver, like a little shock, that ran through
+her. He crushed his face down, so that it lay in her hair, still
+damp from its wetting. He drew her closer, tightening his arms
+about her slender body, and a little cry came from her a cry that
+was a broken thing, a sob without tears.
+
+"Marette!"
+
+It was all he said. It was all he could say in that moment when
+his heart was beating like a drum against her breast. And then he
+felt the slow pressure of her hands against him, saw her white
+face, her wide, staring eyes within a few inches of his own, and
+she drew away from him, back against the wall, still huddled like
+a child on the bed, with her eyes fixed on him in a way that
+frightened him. There were no tears in them. She had not been
+crying. But her face was as white as he had seen it down in
+Kedsty's room. Some of the horror and shock had gone out of it. In
+it was another look as her eyes glowed upon Kent. It was a look of
+incredulity, of disbelief, a thing slowly fading away under the
+miracle of an amazing revelation. The truth thrust itself upon
+him.
+
+Marette had not expected that he would come to her like this. She
+had believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping
+from her as he would have run from a plague. She put up her two
+hands, in the trick they had of groping at her white throat, and
+her lips formed a word which she did not speak.
+
+Kent, to his own amazement, was smiling and still on his knees. He
+pulled himself to his feet, and stood up straight, looking down at
+her in that same strange, comforting, all-powerful way. The thrill
+of it was passing into her veins. A flush of color was driving the
+deathly pallor from her face. Her lips were parted, and she
+breathed quickly, a little excitedly.
+
+"I thought--you would go!" she said.
+
+"Not without you," he said. "I have come to take you with me."
+
+He drew out his watch. It was two o'clock. He held it down so that
+she could look at the dial.
+
+"If the storm keeps up, we have three hours before dawn," he said.
+"How soon can you be ready, Marette?"
+
+He was fighting to make his voice quiet and unexcited. It was a
+terrific struggle. And Marette was not blind to it. She drew
+herself from the bed and stood up before him, her two hands still
+clasped at her throbbing throat.
+
+"You believe--that I killed Kedsty," she said in a voice that was
+forced from her lips. "And you have come to help me--to pay me for
+what I tried to do for you? That is it--Jeems?"
+
+"Pay you?" he cried. "I couldn't pay you in a million years! From
+that day you first came to Cardigan's place you gave me life. You
+came when the last spark of hope in me had died. I shall always
+believe that I would have died that night. But you saved me.
+
+"From the moment I saw you I loved you, and I believe it was that
+love that kept me alive. And then you came to me again, down
+there, through this storm. Pay you! I can't. I never shall be able
+to. Because you thought I had killed a man made no difference You
+came just the same. And you came ready to kill, if necessary--for
+me. I'm not trying to tell myself WHY! But you did. You were ready
+to kill. And I am ready to kill--tonight--for you! I haven't got
+time to think about Kedsty. I'm thinking about you. If you killed
+him, I'm just telling myself there was a mighty good reason for
+it. But I don't believe it was you who killed him. You couldn't do
+it--with those hands!"
+
+He reached out suddenly and seized them, slipping his grip to her
+wrists, so that her hands lay upward in his own, hands that were
+small, slim-fingered, soft-palmed, beautiful.
+
+"They couldn't!" he cried, almost fiercely. "I swear to God they
+couldn't!"
+
+Her eyes and face flamed at his words. "You believe that, Jeems?"
+
+"Yes, just as you believe that I did not kill John Barkley. But
+the world is against us. It is against us both now. And we've got
+to hunt that hidden valley of yours together. Understand, Marette?
+And I'm--rather glad."
+
+He turned toward the door. "Will you be ready in ten minutes?" he
+asked.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, in ten minutes."
+
+He ran out into the hall and down the stair, locking the front
+door. Then he returned to his hiding-place under the roof. He knew
+that a strange sort of madness was in his blood, for in the face
+of tonight's tragedy only madness could inspire him with the
+ecstatic thrill that was in his veins. Kedsty's death seemed far
+removed from a more important thing--the fact that from this hour
+Marette was his to fight for, that she belonged to him, that she
+must go with him. He loved her. In spite of whoever she was and
+whatever she had done, he loved her. Very soon she would tell him
+what had happened in the room below, and the thing would be clear.
+
+There was one little corner of his brain that fought him. It kept
+telling him, like a parrot, that it was a tress of Marette's hair
+about Kedsty's throat, and that it was the hair that had choked
+him. But Marette would explain that, too. He was sure of it. In
+the face of the facts below he was illogical and unreasonable. He
+knew it. But his love for this girl, who had come strangely and
+tragically into his life, was like an intoxicant. And his faith
+was illimitable. She did not kill Kedsty. Another part of his
+brain kept repeating that over and over, even as he recalled that
+only a few hours before she had told him quite calmly that she
+would kill the Inspector of Police--if a certain thing should
+happen.
+
+His hands worked as swiftly as his thoughts. He laced up his
+service boots. All the food and dishes on the table he made into a
+compact bundle and placed in the shoulder-pack. He carried this
+and the rifle out into the hall. Then he returned to Marette's
+room. The door was closed. At his knock the girl's voice told him
+that she was not quite ready.
+
+He waited. He could hear her moving about quickly in her room. An
+interval of silence followed. Another five minutes passed--ten--
+fifteen. He tapped at the door again. This time it was opened.
+
+He stared, amazed at the change in Marette. She had stepped back
+from the door to let him enter, and stood full in the lamp-glow.
+Her slim, beautiful body was dressed in a velvety blue corduroy;
+the coat was close-fitting and boyish; the skirt came only a
+little below her knees. On her feet were high-topped caribou
+boots. About her waist was a holster and the little black gun. Her
+hair was done up and crowded under a close-fitting turban. She was
+exquisitely lovely, as she stood there waiting for him, and in
+that loveliness Kent saw there was not one thing out of place. The
+corduroy, the turban, the short skirt, and the high, laced boots
+were made for the wilderness. She was not a tenderfoot. She was a
+little sourdough--clear through! Gladness leaped into Kent's face.
+But it was not the transformation of her dress alone that amazed
+him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were flushed. Her
+eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she looked at
+him. Her lips were red, as he had seen them that first time at
+Cardigan's place. Her pallor, her fear, her horror were gone, and
+in their place was the repressed excitement of one about to enter
+upon a strange adventure.
+
+On the floor was a pack only half as large as Kent's and when he
+picked it up, he found it of almost no weight. He fastened it to
+his own pack while Marette put on her raincoat and went down the
+stair ahead of him. In the hall below she was waiting, when he
+came down, with Kedsty's big rubber slicker in her hands.
+
+"You must put it on," she said.
+
+She shuddered slightly as she held the garment. The color was
+almost gone from her cheeks, as she faced the door beyond which
+the dead man sat in his chair, but the marvelous glow was still in
+her eyes as she helped Kent with his pack and the slicker and
+afterward stood for an instant with her hands touching his breast
+and her lips as if about to speak something which she held back.
+
+A few steps beyond them they heard the storm. It seemed to rush
+upon the bungalow in a new fury, beating at the door, crashing
+over their heads in thunder, daring them to come out. Kent reached
+up and turned out the hall light.
+
+In darkness he opened the door. Rain and wind swept in. With his
+free hand he groped out, found Marette, drew her after him, and
+closed the door again. Entering from the lighted hall into the
+storm was like being swallowed in a pit of blackness. It engulfed
+and smothered them. Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and
+he saw Marette's face, white and drenched, but looking at him with
+that same strange glow in her eyes. It thrilled him. Even in the
+darkness it was there. It had been there since he had returned to
+her from Kedsty and had knelt at her bedside, with his arms about
+her for a moment.
+
+Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle
+of it come to him. It was because of HIM. It was because of his
+FAITH in her. Even death and horror could not keep it from her
+eyes. He wanted to cry out the joy of his discovery, to give wild
+voice to it in the teeth of the wind and the rain. He felt
+sweeping through him a force mightier than that of the night. Her
+hands were on his arm, as if she was afraid of losing him in that
+pit of blackness; the soft cling of them was like a contact
+through which came a warm thrill of electrical life. He put out
+his arm and drew her to him, so that for a moment his face pressed
+against the top of her wet little turban.
+
+And then he heard her say: "There is a scow at the bayou, Jeems.
+It is close to the end of the path. M'sieu Fingers has kept it
+there, waiting, ready."
+
+He had been thinking of Crossen's place and an open boat. He
+blessed Fingers again, as he took Marette's hand in his own and
+started for the trail that led through the poplar thicket.
+
+Their feet slopped deep in wet and mud, and with the rain there
+was a wind that took their breath away. It was impossible to see a
+tree an arm's length away, and Kent hoped that the lightning would
+come frequently enough to guide him. In the first flare of it he
+looked down the slope that led riverward. Little rivulets of water
+were running down it. Rocks and stumps were in their way, and
+underfoot it was slippery. Marette's fingers were clinging to his
+again, as she had held to them on the wild race up to Kedsty's
+bungalow from the barracks. He had tingled then in the sheer joy
+of their thrill, but it was a different thrill that stirred him
+now--an overwhelming emotion of possessorship. This night, with
+its storm and its blackness, was the most wonderful of all his
+nights.
+
+He sensed nothing of its discomfort. It could not beat back the
+joyous racing of the blood in his body. Sun and stars, day and
+night, sunshine and cloud, were trivial and inconsequential to him
+now. For close to him, struggling with him, fighting through the
+night with him, trusting him, helpless without him, was the
+living, breathing thing he loved more than he loved his own life.
+For many years, without knowing it, he had waited for this night,
+and now that it was upon him, it inundated and swept away his old
+life. He was no longer the huntsman, but the hunted. He was no
+longer alone, but had a priceless thing to fight for, a priceless
+and helpless thing that was clinging to his fingers in the
+darkness. He did not feel like a fugitive, but as one who has come
+into a great triumph. He sensed no uncertainty or doubt.
+
+The river lay ahead, and for him the river had become the soul and
+the promise of life. It was Marette's river and his river, and in
+a little while they would be on it. And Marette would then tell
+him about Kedsty. He was sure of that. She would tell him what had
+happened while he slept. His faith was illimitable.
+
+They came into the sodden dip at the foot of the ridge, and the
+lightning revealed to him the edge of the poplar growth in which
+O'Connor had seen Marette many weeks ago. The bayou trail wound
+through this, and Kent struck out for it blindly in the darkness.
+He did not try to talk, but he freed his companion's hand and put
+his arm about her when they came to the level ground, so that she
+was sheltered by him from the beat of the storm. Then brush
+swished in their faces, and they stopped, waiting for the
+lightning again. Kent was not anxious for it to come. He drew the
+girl still closer, and in that pit of blackness, with the deluge
+about her and the crash of thunder over her head, she snuggled up
+against his breast, the throb of her body against him, waiting,
+watching, with him. Her frailty, the helplessness of her, the
+slimness of her in the crook of his arm, filled him with an
+exquisite exultation. He did not think of her now as the splendid,
+fearless creature who had leveled her little black gun at the
+three men in barracks. She was no longer the mysterious, defiant,
+unafraid person who had held him in a sort of awe that first hour
+in Kedsty's place. For she was crumpled against him now, utterly
+dependent and afraid. In that chaos of storm something told him
+that her nerve was broken, that without him she would be lost and
+would cry out in fear. AND HE WAS GLAD! He held her tighter; he
+bent his head until his face touched the wet, crushed hair under
+the edge of her turban. And then the lightning split open the
+night again, and he saw the way ahead of him to the trail.
+
+Even in darkness it was not difficult to follow in the clean-cut
+wagon path. Over their heads the tops of the poplars swished and
+wailed. Under their feet the roadway in places was a running
+stream or inundated until it became a pool. In pitch blackness
+they struck such a pool, and in spite of the handicap of his packs
+and rifle Kent stopped suddenly, and picked Marette up in his
+arms, and carried her until they reached high ground. He did not
+ask permission. And Marette, for a minute or two, lay crumpled up
+close in his arms, and for a thrilling instant his face touched
+her rain-wet cheek.
+
+The miracle of their adventure was that neither spoke. To Kent the
+silence between them had become a thing which he had no desire to
+break. In that silence, excused and abetted by the tumult of the
+storm, he felt that a wonderful something was drawing them closer
+and closer together, and that words might spoil the indescribable
+magic of the thing that was happening. When he set Marette on her
+feet again, her hand accidentally fell upon his, and for a moment
+her fingers closed upon it in a soft pressure that meant more to
+him than a thousand words of gratitude.
+
+A quarter of a mile beyond the poplar thicket they came to the
+edge of the spruce and cedar timber, and Soon the thick walls of
+the forest shut them in, sheltering them from the wind, but the
+blackness was even more like that of a bottomless pit. Kent had
+noticed that the thunder and lightning were drifting steadily
+eastward, and now the occasional flashes of electrical fire
+scarcely illumined the trail ahead of them. The rain was not
+beating so fiercely. They could hear the wail of the spruce and
+cedar tops and the slush of their boots in mud and water. An
+interval came, where the spruce-tops met overhead, when it was
+almost calm. It was then that Kent threw out of him a great, deep
+breath and laughed joyously and exultantly.
+
+"Are you wet, little Gray Goose?"
+
+"Only outside, Big Otter. My feathers have kept me dry."
+
+Her voice had a trembling, half-sobbing, half-rejoicing note in
+it. It was not the voice of one who had recently killed a man. In
+it was a pathos which Kent knew she was trying to hide behind
+brave words. Her hands clung to the arm of his rubber slicker even
+as they stood there, close together, as if she was afraid
+something might drag them apart in that treacherous gloom. Kent,
+fumbling for a moment, drew from an inner pocket a dry
+handkerchief. Then he found her face, tilted it a bit upward, and
+wiped it dry. He might have done the same thing to a child who had
+been crying. After that he scrubbed his own, and they went on, his
+arm about her again.
+
+It was half a mile from the edge of the forest to the bayou, and
+half a dozen times in that distance Kent took the girl in his arms
+and carried her through water that almost reached his boot tops.
+The lightning no longer served them. The rain still fell steadily,
+but the wind had gone with the eastward sweep of the storm. Close-
+hung with the forest walls, the bayou itself was indiscernible in
+the blackness. Marette guided him now, though Kent walked ahead of
+her, holding firmly to her hand. Unless Fingers had changed its
+location, the scow should be somewhere within forty or fifty paces
+of the end of the trail. It was small, a two-man scow, with a
+tight little house built amidships. And it was tied close up
+against the shore. Marette told him this as they felt their way
+through brush and reeds. Then he stumbled against something taut
+and knee-high, and he found it was the tie-rope.
+
+Leaving Marette with her back to the anchor tree, he went aboard.
+The water was three or four inches deep in the bottom of the scow,
+but the cabin was built on a platform raised above the floor of
+the boat, and Kent hoped it was still dry. He groped until he
+found the twisted wire which held the door shut. Opening it, he
+ducked his head low and entered. The little room was not more than
+four feet high, and for greater convenience he fell upon his knees
+while fumbling under his slicker for his water-proof box of
+matches. The water had not yet risen above the floor.
+
+The first light he struck revealed the interior to him. It was a
+tiny cabin, scarcely larger than some boxes he had seen. It was
+about eight feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low
+that, even kneeling, his head touched it. His match burned out,
+and he lighted another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit
+of split birch that projected from the wall. He crept to it and
+lighted it. For a moment he looked about him, and again he blessed
+Fingers. The little scow was prepared for a voyage. Two narrow
+bunks were built at the far end, one so close above the other that
+Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing between. There were
+blankets. Within reach of his arm was a tiny stove, and close to
+the stove a supply of kindling and dry wood. The whole thing made
+him think of a child's playhouse. Yet there was still room for a
+wide, comfortable, cane-bottomed chair, a stool, and a smooth-
+planed board fastened under a window, so that it answered the
+purpose of a table. This table was piled with many packages.
+
+He stripped off his packs and returned for Marette. She had come
+to the edge of the scow and called to him softly as she heard him
+splashing through the water. Her arms were reaching toward him, to
+meet him in the darkness. He carried her through the shallow sea
+about his feet and laughed as he put her down on the edge of the
+platform at the door. It was a low, joyous laugh. The yellow light
+of the candle sputtered in their wet faces. Only dimly could he
+see her, but her eyes were shining.
+
+"Your nest, little Gray Goose," he cried gently.
+
+Her hand reached up and touched his face. "You have been good to
+me, Jeems," she said, a little tremble in her voice. "You may--
+kiss me."
+
+Out in the beat of the rain Kent's heart choked him with song. His
+soul swelled with the desire to shout forth a paean of joy and
+triumph at the world he was leaving this night for all time. With
+the warm thrill of Marette's lips he had become the superman, and
+as he leaped ashore in the darkness and cut the tie-rope with a
+single slash of his knife, he wanted to give voice to the thing
+that was in him as the rivermen had chanted in the glory of their
+freedom the day the big brigade started north. And he DID sing,
+under his laughing, sobbing breath. With a giant's strength he
+sent the scow out into the bayou, and then back and forth he swung
+the long one-man sweep, twisting the craft riverward with the
+force of two pairs of arms instead of one. Behind the closed door
+of the tiny cabin was all that the world now held worth fighting
+for. By turning his head he could see the faint illumination of
+the candle at the window. The light--the cabin--Marette!
+
+He laughed inanely, foolishly, like a boy. He began to hear a
+dull, droning murmur, a sound that with each stroke of the sweep
+grew into a more distinct, cataract-like roar. It was the river.
+Swollen by flood, it was a terrifying sound. But Kent did not
+dread it. It was his river; it was his friend. It was the pulse
+and throb of life to him now. The growing tumult of it was not
+menace, but the joyous thunder of many voices calling to him,
+rejoicing at his coming. It grew in his ears. Over his head the
+black sky opened again, and a deluge of rain fell straight down.
+But above the sound of it the rush of the river drew nearer, and
+still nearer. He felt the first eddying swirl of it against the
+scow head, and powerful hands seemed to reach in out of the
+darkness. He knew that the nose of the current had caught him and
+was carrying him out on the breast of the stream. He shipped the
+sweep and straightened himself, facing the utter chaos of
+blackness ahead. He felt under him the slow and mighty pulse of
+the great flood as it swept toward the Slave, the Mackenzie, and
+the Arctic. And he cried out at last in the downpour of storm, a
+cry of joy, of exultation, of hope that reached beyond the laws of
+men--and then he turned toward the little cabin, where through the
+thickness of sodden night the tiny window was glowing yellow with
+candle-light.
+
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+He felt her arms reaching up. Her two hands touched his shoulders.
+
+"Are you listening?"
+
+"Yes, I am listening."
+
+"Because I'm not going to say it very loud." And then she
+whispered, "Jeems--I LOVE YOU!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+In the slowly breaking gloom of the cabin, with Marette's arms
+round his neck, her soft lips given him to kiss, Kent for many
+minutes was conscious of nothing but the thrill of his one great
+hope on earth come true. What he had prayed for was no longer a
+prayer, and what he had dreamed of was no longer a dream; yet for
+a space the reality of it seemed unreal. What he said in those
+first moments of his exaltation he would probably never remember.
+
+His own physical existence seemed a thing trivial and almost lost,
+a thing submerged and swallowed up by the warm beat and throb of
+that other life, a thousand times more precious than his own,
+which he held in his arms. Yet with the mad thrill that possessed
+him, in the embrace of his arms, there was an infinite tenderness,
+a gentleness, that drew from Marette's lips a low, glad whispering
+of his name. She drew his head down and kissed him, and Kent fell
+upon his knees at her side and crushed his face close down to her
+--while outside the patter of rain on the roof had ceased, and the
+fog-like darkness was breaking with gray dawn.
+
+In that dawn of the new day Kent came at last out of the cabin and
+looked upon a splendid world. In his breast was the glory of a
+thing new-born, and the world, like himself, was changed. Storm
+had passed. The gray river lay under his eyes. Shoreward he made
+out the dark outlines of the deep spruce and cedar and balsam
+forests. About him there was a great stillness, broken only by the
+murmur of the river and the ripple of water under the scow. Wind
+had gone with the black rainclouds, and Kent, as he looked about
+him, saw the swift dissolution of the last shadows of night, and
+the breaking in the East of a new paradise. In the East, as the
+minutes passed, there came a soft and luminous gray, and after
+that, swiftly, with the miracle of far Northern dawn, a vast, low-
+burning fire seemed to start far beyond the forests, tinting the
+sky with a delicate pink that crept higher and higher as Kent
+watched it. The river, all at once, came out of its last drifting
+haze of fog and night. The scow was about in the middle of the
+channel. Two hundred yards on either side were thick green walls
+of forest glistening fresh and cool with the wet of storm and
+breathing forth the perfume which Kent was drawing deep into his
+lungs.
+
+In the cabin he heard sound. Marette was up, and he was eager to
+have her come out and stand with him in this glory of their first
+day. He watched the smoke of the fire he had built, hardwood smoke
+that drifted up white and clean into the rain-washed air.
+
+The smell of it, like the smell of balsam and cedar, was to Kent
+the aroma of life. And then he began to clean out what was left of
+the water in the bottom of the scow, and as he worked he whistled.
+He wanted Marette to hear that whistle. He wanted her to know that
+day had brought with it no doubt for him. A great and glorious
+world was about them and ahead of them. And they were safe.
+
+As he worked, his mind became more than ever set upon the
+resolution to take no chances. He paused in his whistling for a
+moment to laugh softly and exultantly as he thought of the years
+of experience which were his surest safeguard now. He had become
+almost uncannily expert in all the finesse and trickery of his
+craft of hunting human game, and he knew what the man-hunters
+would do and what they would not do. He had them checkmated at the
+start. And, besides--with Kedsty, O'Connor, and himself gone--the
+Landing was short-handed just at present. There was an enormous
+satisfaction in that. But even with a score of men behind him Kent
+knew that he would beat them. His hazard, if there was peril at
+all, lay in this first day. Only the Police gasoline launch could
+possibly overtake them. And with the start they had, he was sure
+they would pass the Death Chute, conceal the scow, and take to the
+untracked forests north and west before the launch could menace
+them. After that he would keep always west and north, deeper and
+deeper into that wild and untraveled country which would be the
+last place in which the Law would seek for them. He straightened
+himself and looked at the smoke again, drifting like gray-white
+lace between him and the blue of the sky, and in that moment the
+sun capped the tall green tops of the highest cedars, and day
+broke gloriously over the earth.
+
+For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the
+scow, and then--with a suddenness that drew him up as if a whip-
+lash had snapped behind him--he caught another aroma in the clean,
+forest-scented air. It was bacon and coffee! He had believed that
+Marette was taking her time in putting on dry footwear and making
+some sort of morning toilet. Instead of that, she was getting
+breakfast. It was not an extraordinary thing to do. To fry bacon
+and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achievement.
+But at the present moment it was the crowning touch to Kent's
+paradise. She was getting HIS breakfast! And--coffee and bacon--To
+Kent those two things had always stood for home. They were
+intimate and companionable. Where there were coffee and bacon, he
+had known children who laughed, women who sang, and men with
+happy, welcoming faces. They were home-builders.
+
+"Whenever you smell coffee and bacon at a cabin," O'Connor had
+always said, "they'll ask you in to breakfast if you knock at the
+door."
+
+But Kent was not recalling his old trail mate's words. In the
+present moment all other thoughts were lost in the discovery that
+Marette was getting breakfast--for him.
+
+He went to the door and listened. Then he opened it and looked in.
+Marette was on her knees before the open door of the stove,
+toasting bread on two forks. Her face was flushed pink. She had
+not taken time to brush her hair, but had woven it carelessly into
+a thick braid that fell down her back. She gave a little
+exclamation of mock disappointment when she saw Kent.
+
+"Why didn't you wait?" she remonstrated. "I wanted to surprise
+you."
+
+"You have," he said. "And I couldn't wait. I had to come in and
+help."
+
+He was inside the door and on his knees beside her. As he reached
+for the two forks, his lips pressed against her hair. The pink
+deepened in Marette's face, and the soft little note that was like
+laughter came into her throat. Her hand caressed his cheek as she
+rose to her feet, and Kent laughed back. And after that, as she
+arranged things on the shelf table, her hand now and then touched
+his shoulder, or his hair, and two or three times he heard that
+wonderful little throat-note that sent through him a wild pulse of
+happiness. And then, he sitting in the low chair and she on the
+stool, they drew close together before the board that answered as
+a table, and ate their breakfast. Marette poured his coffee and
+stirred sugar and condensed milk in it, and so happy was Kent that
+he did not tell her he used neither milk nor sugar in his coffee.
+The morning sun burst through the little window, and through the
+open door Kent pointed to the glory of it on the river and in the
+shimmering green of the forests slipping away behind. When they
+had finished, Marette went outside with him.
+
+For a space she stood silent and without movement, looking upon
+the marvelous world that encompassed them. It seemed to Kent that
+for a few moments she did not breathe. With her head thrown back
+and her white throat bare to the soft, balsam-laden air she faced
+the forests. Her eyes became suddenly filled with the luminous
+glow of stars. Her face reflected the radiance of the rising sun,
+and Kent, looking at her, knew that he had never seen her so
+beautiful as in these wonderful moments. He held his own breath,
+for he also knew that Niska, his goddess, was looking upon her own
+world again after a long time away.
+
+Her world--and his. Different from all the other worlds God had
+ever made; different, even, from the world only a few miles behind
+them at the Landing. For here was no sound or whisper of
+destroying human life. They were in the embrace of the Great
+North, and it was drawing them closer, and with each minute nearer
+to the mighty, pulsing heart of it.
+
+The forests hung heavy and green and glistening with the wet of
+storm; out of them came the tremulous breath of life and the glory
+of living; they hugged the shores like watchful hosts guarding the
+river from civilization--and suddenly the girl held out her arms,
+and Kent heard the low, thrilling cry that came to her lips.
+
+She had forgotten him. She had forgotten everything but the river,
+the forests, and the untrod worlds beyond them, and he was glad.
+For this world that she was welcoming, that her soul was crying
+out to, was his world, for ever and ever. It held his dreams, his
+hopes, all the desires that he had in life. And when at last
+Marette turned toward him slowly, his arms were reaching out to
+her, and in his face she saw that same glory which filled her own.
+
+"I'm glad--glad," she cried softly. "Oh, Jeems--I'm glad!"
+
+She came into his arms without hesitation; her hands stroked his
+face; and then she stood with her head against his shoulder,
+looking ahead, breathing deeply now of the sweet, clear air filled
+with the elixir of the hovering forests. She did not speak, or
+move, and Kent remained quiet. The scow drifted around a bend.
+Shoreward a great moose splashed up out of the water, and they
+could hear him afterward, crashing through the forest. Her body
+tensed, but she did not speak. After a little he heard her
+whisper,
+
+"It has been a long time, Jeems. I have been away four years."
+
+"And now we are going home, little Gray Goose. You will not be
+lonely?"
+
+"No. I was lonely down there. There were so many people, and so
+many things, that I was homesick for the woods and mountains. I
+believe I would have died soon. There were only two things I
+loved, Jeems--"
+
+"What?" he asked.
+
+"Pretty dresses--and shoes."
+
+His arms closed about her a little more tightly. "I--I
+understand," he laughed softly. "That is why you came, that first
+time, with pretty high-heeled pumps."
+
+He bowed his head, and she turned her face to him. On her upturned
+mouth he kissed her.
+
+"More than any other man ever loved a woman I love you, Niska,
+little goddess," he cried.
+
+The minutes and the hours of that day stood out ever afterward in
+Kent's life as unforgettable memories. There were times when they
+seemed illusory and unreal, as though he lived and breathed in an
+insubstantial world made up of gossamer things which must be the
+fabric of dream. These were moments when the black shadow of the
+tragedy from which they were fleeing pressed upon him, when the
+thought came to him that they were criminals racing with the law;
+that they were not on enchanted ground, but in deadly peril; that
+it was all a fools' paradise from which some terrible shock would
+shortly awaken him. But these periods of apprehension were, in
+themselves, mere shadows thrown for a moment upon his happiness.
+Again and again the subconscious force within him pounded home to
+his physical brain the great truth, that it was all
+extraordinarily real.
+
+It was Marette who made him doubt himself at times. He could not,
+quite yet, comprehend the fulness of that love which she had given
+him. More than ever, in the glory of this love that had come to
+them she was like a child to him. It seemed to him in the first
+hours of the morning that she had forgotten yesterday, and the day
+before, and ill the days before that. She was going home. She
+whispered that to him so often that it became a little song in his
+brain. Yet she told him nothing of that home, and he waited,
+knowing that the fulfilment of her promise was not far away. And
+there was no embarrassment in the manner of her surrender when he
+held her in his arms, and she held her face up, so that he could
+kiss her mouth and look into her glowing, lovely eyes. What he saw
+was the flush of a great happiness, the almost childish confession
+of it along with the woman's joy of possession. And he thought of
+Kedsty, and of the Law that was rousing itself into life back at
+Athabasca Landing.
+
+And then she ran her fingers through his own and told him to wait,
+and ran into the cabin and came out a moment later with her brush;
+and after that she seated herself at the fulcrum of the big sweep
+and began to brush out her hair in the sun.
+
+"I'm glad you love it, Jeems," she said.
+
+She unbound the thick braid and let the silken strands of it run
+caressingly between her fingers. She smoothed it out, brushed it
+until it was more beautiful than he had ever seen it, in that glow
+of the sun. She held it up so that it rippled out in shimmering
+cascades about her--and then, suddenly, Kent saw the short tress
+from which had been clipped the rope of hair that he had taken
+from Kedsty's neck. And as his lips tightened, crushing fiercely
+the exclamation of his horror, there came a trembling happiness
+from Marette's lips, scarcely more than the whisper of a song, the
+low, thrilling melody of Le Chaudiere.
+
+Her arms reached up, and she drew his head down to her, so that
+for a time his visions were blinded in that sweet smother of her
+hair.
+
+The intimacy of that day was in itself like a dream. Hour after
+hour they drifted deeper into the great North. The sun shone. The
+forest-walled shores of the river grew mightier in their stillness
+and their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places
+brooded over the world. To Kent it was as if they were drifting
+through Paradise. Occasionally he found it necessary to work the
+big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter
+current.
+
+Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to
+him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left
+farther and still farther behind them. Watching the shores,
+looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind--at
+times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their
+happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness passing
+swiftly away from between them.
+
+They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the
+death of John Barkley. But Kent told of his days in the North, of
+his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest
+wildernesses. And from that he went away back into dim and distant
+yesterdays, alive with mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on
+a farm. To all these things Marette listened with glowing eyes,
+with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own
+emotions.
+
+She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling
+loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to
+live there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself or
+her life in its more vital aspects; she said nothing of the home
+in the Valley of Silent Men, nothing of father or mother, sisters
+or brothers. There was no embarrassment in her omissions. And Kent
+did not question. He knew that those were among the things she
+would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he
+would tell her they were safe.
+
+There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour,
+when they should leave the river and take to the forests. He
+explained to Marette why they could not float on indefinitely. The
+river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all
+traffic to the far North. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they
+would be discovered. In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails
+to choose, they would be safe. He had only one reason for keeping
+to the river until they passed through the Death Chute. It would
+carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward through
+which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this
+season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone ashore now. He
+loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the
+deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean swallows a ship,
+would they be beyond the peril that threatened them from the
+Landing.
+
+Three or four times between sunrise and noon they saw life ashore
+and on the stream; once a scow tied to a tree, then an Indian
+camp, and twice trappers' shacks built in the edge of little
+clearings. With the beginning of afternoon Kent felt growing
+within him something that was not altogether eagerness. It was, at
+times, a disturbing emotion, a foreshadowing of evil, a warning
+for him to be on his guard. He used the sweep more, to help their
+progress in the current, and he began to measure time and distance
+with painstaking care. He recognized many landmarks.
+
+By four o'clock, or five at the latest, they would strike the head
+of the Chute. Ten minutes of its thrilling passage and he would
+work the scow into the concealment he had in mind ashore, and no
+longer would he fear the arm of the law that reached out from the
+Landing. As he planned, he listened. From noon on he never ceased
+to listen for that distant putt, putt, putt, that would give them
+a mile's warning of the approach of the patrol launch.
+
+He did not keep his plans to himself. Marette sensed his growing
+uneasiness, and he made her a partner of his thoughts.
+
+"If we hear the patrol before we reach the Chute, we'll still have
+time to run ashore," he assured her. "And they won't catch us.
+We'll be harder to find than two needles in a haystack. But it's
+best to be prepared."
+
+So he brought out his pack and Marette's smaller bundle, and laid
+his rifle and pistol holster across them.
+
+It was three o'clock when the character of the river began to
+change, and Kent smiled happily. They were entering upon swifter
+waters. There were places where the channel narrowed, and they
+sped through rapids. Only where unbroken straight waters stretched
+out ahead of them did Kent give his arms a rest at the sweep. And
+through most of the straight water he added to the speed of the
+scow. Marette helped him. In him the exquisite thrill of watching
+her slender, glorious body as it worked with his own never grew
+old. She laughed at him over the big oar between them. The wind
+and sun played riot in her hair. Her parted lips were rose-red,
+her cheeks flushed, her eyes like sun-warmed rock violets. More
+than once, in the thrill of that afternoon flight, as he looked at
+the marvelous beauty of her, he asked himself if it could be
+anything but a dream. And more than once he laughed joyously, and
+paused in his swinging of the sweep, and proved that it was real
+and true. And Kent thanked God, and worked harder.
+
+Once, a long time ago, Marette told him, she had been through the
+Chute. It had horrified her then. She remembered it as a sort of
+death monster, roaring for its victims. As they drew nearer to it,
+Kent told her more about it. Only now and then was a life lost
+there now, he said. At the mouth of the Chute there was a great,
+knife-like rock, like a dragon's tooth, that cut the Chute into
+two roaring channels. If a scow kept to the left-hand channel it
+was safe. There would be a mighty roaring and thundering as it
+swept on its passage, but that roaring of the Chute, he told her,
+was like the barking of a harmless dog.
+
+Only when a scow became unmanageable, or hit the Dragon's Tooth,
+or made the right-hand channel instead of the left, was there
+tragedy. There was that delightful little note of laughter in
+Marette's throat when Kent told her that.
+
+"You mean, Jeems, that if one of three possible things doesn't
+happen, we'll get through safely?"
+
+"None of them is possible--with us," he corrected himself quickly.
+"We've a tight little scow, we're not going to hit the rock, and
+we'll make the left-hand channel so smoothly you won't know when
+it happens." He smiled at her with splendid confidence. "I've been
+through it a hundred times," he said.
+
+He listened. Then, suddenly, he drew out his watch. It was a
+quarter of four. Marette's ears caught what he heard. In the air
+was a low, trembling murmur. It was growing slowly but steadily.
+He nodded when she looked at him, the question in her eyes.
+
+"The rapids at the head of the Chute!" he cried, his voice vibrant
+with joy. "We've beat them out. WE'RE SAFE!"
+
+They swung around a bend, and the white spume of the rapids lay
+half a mile ahead of them. The current began to race with them
+now. Kent put his whole weight on the sweep to keep the scow in
+mid-channel.
+
+"We're safe," he repeated. "Do you understand, Marette? WE'RE
+SAFE!"
+
+He was speaking the words for which she had waited, was telling
+her that at last the hour had come when she could keep her promise
+to him. The words, as he gave them voice, thrilled him. He felt
+like shouting them. And then all at once he saw the change that
+had come into her face. Her wide, startled eyes were not looking
+at him, but beyond. She was looking back in the direction from
+which they had come, and even as he stared her face grew white.
+
+"LISTEN!"
+
+She was tense, rigid. He turned his head. And in that moment it
+came to him above the growing murmur of the river--the PUTT, PUTT,
+PUTT of the Police patrol boat from Athabasca Landing!
+
+A deep breath came from between his lips. When Marette took her
+eyes from the river and looked at him, his face was like carven
+rock. He was staring dead ahead.
+
+"We can't make the Chute," he said, his voice sounding hard and
+unreal to her. "If we do, they'll be up with us before we can land
+at the other end. We must let this current drive us ashore--NOW."
+
+As he made his decision, he put the strength of his body into
+action. He knew there was not the hundredth part of a second to
+lose. The outreaching suction of the rapids was already gripping
+the scow, and with mighty strokes he fought to work the head of
+his craft toward the westward shore. With swift understanding
+Marette saw the priceless value of a few seconds of time. If they
+were caught in the stronger swirl of the rapids before the shore
+was reached, they would be forced to run the Chute, and in that
+event the launch would be upon them before they could make a
+landing farther on. She sprang to Kent's side and added her own
+strength in the working of the sweep. Foot by foot and yard by
+yard the scow made precious westing, and Kent's face lighted up
+with triumph as he nodded ahead to a timbered point that thrust
+itself out like a stubby thumb into the river. Beyond that point
+the rapids were frothing white, and they could see the first black
+walls of rock that marked the beginning of the Chute.
+
+"We'll make it," he smiled confidently. "We'll hit that timbered
+point close inshore. I don't see where the launch can make a
+landing anywhere within a mile of the Chute. And once ashore we'll
+make trail about five times as fast they can follow it." Marette's
+face was no longer pale, but flushed with excitement. He caught
+the white gleam of teeth between her parted lips. Her eyes shone
+gloriously, and he laughed.
+
+"You beautiful little fighter," he cried exultantly. "You--you--"
+
+His words were cut short by a snap that was like the report of a
+pistol close to his ears. He pitched forward and crashed to the
+bottom of the scow, Marette's slim body clutched in his arms as he
+fell. In a flash they were up, and mutely they stared where the
+sweep had been. The blade of it was gone. Kent was conscious of
+hearing a little cry from the girl at his side, and then her
+fingers were gripping tightly again about his thumb. No longer
+possessed of the power of guidance, the scow swung sideways. It
+swept past the wooded point. The white maelstrom of the lower
+rapids seized upon it. And Kent, looking ahead to the black maw of
+the death-trap that was waiting for them, drew Marette close in
+his arms and held her tight.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+For a brief space after the breaking of the scow-sweep Kent did
+not move. He felt Marette's arms closing tighter and tighter
+around his neck. He caught a flash of her upturned face, the flush
+of a few moments before replaced by a deathly pallor, and he knew
+that without explanation on his part she understood the almost
+hopeless situation they were in. He was glad of that. It gave him
+a sense of relief to know that she would not go into a panic, no
+matter what happened. He bowed his face to hers, so that he felt
+the velvety smoothness of her cheek. She turned her mouth to him,
+and they kissed. His embrace was crushing for a moment, fierce
+with his love for her, desperate with his determination to keep
+her from harm.
+
+His brain was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in
+ten that the scow--rudderless and without human guidance--would
+sweep safely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the
+Chute. Even if the scow made this passage, they would be in the
+power of the Police, unless some splendid whimsicality of Fate
+sent it ashore before the launch came through.
+
+On the other hand, if it was carried far enough through the lower
+rapids, they might swim. And--there was the rifle laying across
+the pack. That, after all, was his greatest hope--if the scow made
+the passage of the Chute. The bulwarks of the scow would give them
+greater protection than the thinner walls of the launch would give
+to their pursuers. In his heart there raged suddenly a hatred for
+that Law of which he had been a part. It was running them to
+destruction, and he would fight. There would not be more than
+three men in the launch, and he would kill them, if killing became
+a necessity.
+
+They were speeding like an unbridled race-horse through the
+boiling rapids now. The clumsy craft under their feet twisted and
+turned. The dripping tops of great rocks shot past a little out of
+their channel. And Marette, with one arm still about his neck, was
+facing the peril ahead with him. They could see the Dragon's
+Tooth, black and grim, waiting squarely in their path. In another
+hundred and twenty seconds they would be upon it--or past it.
+There was no time for Kent to explain. He sprang to his pack,
+whipped a knife from his pocket, and cut the stout babiche rope
+that reenforced its straps. In another instant he was back at
+Marette's side, fastening the babiche about her waist. The other
+end he gave to her, and she tied it about his wrist. She smiled as
+she finished the knot. It was a strange, tense little smile, but
+it told him that she was not afraid, that she had great faith in
+him, and knew what the babiche meant.
+
+"I can swim, Jeems," she cried. "If we strike the rock."
+
+She did not finish because of the sudden cry that came to his
+lips. He had almost forgotten the most vital of all things. There
+was not time to unlace his boots. With his knife he cut the laces
+in a single downward thrust. Swiftly he freed his own feet, and
+Marette's. Even in this hour of their peril it thrilled him to see
+how quickly Marette responded to the thoughts that moved him. She
+tore at her outer garments and slipped them off as he wriggled out
+of his heavy shirt. A slim, white-underskirted little thing, her
+glorious hair flying in the wind that came through the Chute, her
+throat and arms bare, her eyes shining at Kent, she came again
+close within his arms, and her lips framed softly his name. And a
+moment later she turned her face up, and cried quickly,
+
+"Kiss me, Jeems--kiss me--"
+
+Her warm lips clung to his, and her bare arms encircled his neck
+with the choking grip of a child's. He looked ahead and braced
+himself on his feet, and after that he buried one of his hands in
+the soft mass of her hair and pressed her face against his naked
+breast.
+
+Ten seconds later the crash came. Squarely amidships the scow
+struck the Dragon's Tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but
+his attempt to hold his feet, with Marette in his arms, was
+futile. The bulwark saved them from crashing against the slippery
+face of the rock itself. Amid the roar of water that filled his
+ears he was conscious of the rending of timbers. The scow bulged
+up with the mighty force beneath, and for a second or two it
+seemed as though that force was going to overturn and submerge it.
+Then slowly it began to slip off the nose of the rock.
+
+Holding to the rail with one hand and clinging to Marette with his
+other arm, Kent was gripped in the horror of what was happening.
+The scow was slipping INTO THE RIGHT HAND CHANNEL! In that channel
+there was no hope--only death.
+
+Marette was squarely facing the thing ahead. In this hour when
+each second held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she
+understood. Yet she did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her
+hair and arms and shoulders were dripping with the splash of
+water. But she was not terrified as he had seen terror. When she
+turned her eyes to him, he was amazed by the quiet, calm look that
+was in them. Her lips trembled.
+
+His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in
+another crash of timber as a jutting snag of the Tooth crumpled up
+the little cabin as if it had been pasteboard. He felt
+overwhelming him the surge of a thing mightier than the menace of
+the Chute. He could not lose! It was inconceivable. Impossible!
+With HER to fight for--this slim, wonderful creature who smiled at
+him even as she saw death.
+
+And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the
+monsters of power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung
+free of the Dragon's Tooth, half-filled with water. Its cracked
+and broken carcass was caught in the rock jaws of the eastern
+channel. It ceased to be a floating thing. It was inundation,
+dissolution, utter obliteration almost without shock. And Kent
+found himself in the thundering rush of waters, holding to
+Marette.
+
+For a space they were under. Black water and white froth fumed and
+exploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled
+Kent's nostrils. He thrust Marette upward and cried out to her. He
+heard her answer.
+
+"I'm all right--Jeems!"
+
+His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip.
+All his effort was to make of himself a barrier between Marette's
+soft body and the rocks. It was not the water itself that he
+feared, but the rocks.
+
+There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mighty
+grinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length.
+He felt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not
+thinking of time or distance, but was fighting solely to keep
+himself between Marette and death. The first time he failed, a
+blind sort of rage burned in his brain.
+
+He saw her white body strained over a slippery, deluge-worn rock.
+Her head was flung back, and he saw the long masses of her hair
+streaming out in the white froth, and he thought for an instant
+that her fragile body had been broken. He fought still more
+fiercely after that. And she knew for what he was fighting. Only
+in an unreal sort of way was he conscious of shock and hurt. It
+gave him no physical pain. Yet he sensed the growing dizziness in
+his head, an increasing lack of strength in his arms and body.
+
+They were halfway through the Chute when he shot against a rock
+with terrific force. The contact tore Marette from him. He plunged
+for her, missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging
+to the same rock. The babiche rope had saved her. Fastened about
+her waist and tied to his wrist, it still held them together--with
+the five feet of rock between them.
+
+Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over
+that rock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began
+streaming from Kent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled
+at her as a few moments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes
+were filled with the pain of his hurts. He nodded back in the
+direction from which they had come.
+
+"We're out of the worst of it," he tried to shout. "As soon as
+we've got our wind, I will climb over the rock to you. It won't
+take us longer than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the
+quiet water at the end of the channel."
+
+She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her
+confidence. And he had no intention of resting, for her position
+filled him with a terror which he fought to hide. The babiche
+rope, not half as large around as his little finger, had swung her
+to the downstream side of the rock. It was the slender thread of
+buckskin and his own weight that were holding her. If the buckskin
+should break--
+
+He thanked God that it was the tough babiche that had been around
+his pack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the
+rock. The undertow behind the rock had flung a mass of Marette's
+long hair toward him, so that it was a foot or two nearer to him
+than her clinging hands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw
+that he could reach it more quickly than he could reach her. At
+the same time he had to keep his end of the babiche taut. It was,
+from the beginning, an almost superhuman task. The rock was
+slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shot down-stream, with the thought
+that it might be better to cast himself bodily into the water, and
+after that draw Marette to him by means of the babiche. What he
+saw convinced him that such action would be fatal. He must have
+Marette in his arms. If he lost her--even for a few seconds--the
+life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewn maelstrom
+below.
+
+And then, suddenly, the babiche cord about his wrist grew loose.
+The reaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry
+came from Marette. It all happened in an instant, in almost less
+time than his brain could seize upon the significance of it--the
+slipping of her hands from the rock, the shooting of her white
+body away from him in the still whiter spume of the rapids, The
+rock had cut the babiche, and she was gone! With a cry that was
+like the cry of a madman he plunged after her. The water engulfed
+him. He twisted himself up, freeing himself from the undertow.
+Twenty feet ahead of him--thirty--he caught a glimpse of a white
+arm and then of Marette's face, before she disappeared in a wall
+of froth.
+
+Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded,
+groping wildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers caught
+the end of the babiche that was fastened about his own wrist, and
+he clutched it savagely, believing for a moment that he had found
+her. Thicker and more deadly the rocks of the lower passage rose
+in his way. They seemed like living things, like devils filled
+with the desire to torture and destroy. They struck and beat at
+him. Their laughter was the roar of a Niagara. He no longer cried
+out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs were beating him--beating and
+breaking him into a formless thing. The rock-drifts of spume,
+lather-white, like the frosting of a monster cake, turned gray and
+then black.
+
+He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night
+came. The world was oblivion. And for a space he ceased to live.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back
+into existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened
+did not at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of
+awakening from a sleep that had been filled with pain and horror.
+
+Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen
+roar of the stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light
+reflected from the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was
+on his knees, and all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--
+choking his senses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered
+to his feet, crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated
+him with its horror, deadening his tongue after that first cry,
+filling his throat with a moaning, sobbing agony. Marette was
+gone. She was lost. She was dead.
+
+Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For a
+quarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between
+the chasm walls, darkening with the approach of night. He could
+hear more clearly the roar of the death-floods. But close to him
+was smooth water, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock
+and shale, upon which the current had flung him. In front of him
+was a rock wall. Behind him was another. There was no footing
+except where he stood. And Marette was not with him.
+
+Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But
+his physical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived,
+she must live! She was there--somewhere--along the shore--among
+the rocks--
+
+The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. He
+shouted, and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to
+the boulder-strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther
+on was the opening of the Chute. He came out of this, his clothes
+torn from him, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman,--
+shouting her name more and more loudly. The glow of the setting
+sun struck him at last. He was out from between the chasm walls,
+and it lighted up the green world for him. Ahead of him the river
+widened and swept on in tranquil quiet.
+
+And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the
+horrible, overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from
+him, and he sobbed--sobbed like a boy stricken by some great
+childish grief, as he searched along the edge of the shore. Over
+and over again he cried and whispered Marette's name.
+
+But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She
+was gone from him forever. Yet he did not cease to search. The
+last of the sun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even
+in that darkness he continued to search for a mile below the
+Chute, calling her name more loudly now, and listening always for
+the answer which he knew would never come. The moon came out after
+a time, and hour after hour he kept up his hopeless quest. He did
+not know how badly the rocks had battered and hurt him, and he
+scarcely knew when it was that exhaustion dropped him like a dead
+man in his tracks. When dawn came, it found him wandering away
+from the river, and toward noon of that day, he was found by Andre
+Boileau, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped on Burntwood
+Creek. Andre was shocked at the sight of his wounds and half
+dragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the
+forest.
+
+For six days thereafter Kent remained at old Andre's place, simply
+because he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. Andre
+wondered that there were no broken bones in him. But his head was
+terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three
+nights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life
+and death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed
+him venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked
+Andre, and said that he was ready to go.
+
+Andre outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food
+and God's blessing. And Kent returned to the Chute, giving Andre
+to understand that his destination was Athabasca Landing.
+
+Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He
+knew that it would have been better for him both in mind and body
+had be gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him
+the desire to fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of
+least resistance, and these led him back to the scene of the
+tragedy. His grief, when he returned, was no longer the
+heartbreaking agony of that first night. It was a deep-seated,
+consuming fire that had already burned him out, heart and soul.
+Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing, avoided nothing.
+Had the police boat been at the Chute, he would have revealed
+himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray of hope
+would have been precious medicine to him. But there was no hope.
+Marette was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone,
+unfathomably and hopelessly alone.
+
+And now, after he had reached the river again, something held him
+there. From the head of the Chute to a bend in the river two miles
+below, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he
+would make the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in
+which he caught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a
+crevice among the rocks at the foot of the Chute. At the end of a
+week the old Jim Kent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have
+recognized him with his shaggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes,
+and the sunken cheeks which the beard failed to hide.
+
+And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice there
+leaped up in him a sudden passion demanding vengeance upon the
+accursed Law that was accountable for the death of Marette, but
+even this flame snuffed itself out quickly.
+
+And then, on the eighth day, he saw the edge of a thing that was
+almost hidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was
+Marette's little pack, and for many minutes before he opened it
+Kent crushed the sodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-
+mad eyes down where he had found it, as if Marette must be there,
+too. Then he ran with it to an open space, where the sun fell
+warmly on a great, flat rock that was level with the ground, and
+with sobbing breath he opened it. It was filled with the things
+she had picked up quickly in her room the night of their flight
+from Kedsty's bungalow, and as he drew them out one by one and
+placed them in the sun on the rock, a new and sudden rush of life
+swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced the
+river again, as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked
+down again upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms
+to them, he whispered,
+
+"Marette--my little goddess--"
+
+Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one
+who was dead brought a smile to his. haggard and bearded face. For
+Marette, in filling her little pack on that night of hurried
+flight, had chosen strange things. On the sunlit rock, where he
+had placed them, were a pair of the little pumps which he had
+fallen on his knees to worship in her room, and with these she had
+crowded into the pack one of the billowing, sweet-smelling dresses
+which had made his heart stand still for a moment when he first
+looked into their hiding-place. It was no longer soft and cobwebby
+as it had been then, like down fluttering against his cheeks, but
+sodden and discolored, as it lay on the rock with little rivulets
+of water running from it.
+
+With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities which
+Marette had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kent
+picked up and crushed close to his ragged breast--one of the two
+she had worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at
+Cardigan's place.
+
+This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed
+to him that a message had come to him from Marette herself, that
+the spirit of her had returned to him and was with him now,
+stirring strange things in his soul and warming his blood with a
+new heat. She was gone forever, and yet she had come back to him,
+and the truth grew upon him that this spirit of her would never
+leave him again as long as he lived. He felt her nearness.
+Unconsciously he reached out his arms, and a strange happiness
+entered Into him to battle with grief and loneliness. His eyes
+shone with a new glow as they looked at her little belongings on
+the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood of her, a
+part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith in
+him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first
+time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew
+that she was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to
+fight for.
+
+That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between
+the rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting
+circle of his arms as he slept.
+
+The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after
+he left the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a
+half-breed for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a
+cooking outfit. After that he had no hesitation in burying himself
+still deeper into the forests.
+
+A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time
+crack man of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered
+with no other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther
+away from the river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a
+half-breed. Each night, though the weather was very warm, he made
+himself a small camp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with
+the fire-light about him, that he felt Marette was very near. It
+was then that he took out one by one the precious things that were
+in Marette's little pack. He worshipped these things. The dress
+and each of the little shoes he had wrapped in the velvety inner
+bark of the birch tree. He protected them from wet and storm. Had
+emergency called for it, he would have fought for them. They
+became, after a time, more precious than his own life, and in a
+vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that the river
+had not robbed him of everything.
+
+Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He
+wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress
+that chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette
+became more a part of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was
+always at his side, nestling close in the shelter of his arms at
+night, walking with her hand in his during the day. And in this
+belief his grief was softened by the sweet and merciful comfort of
+a possession of which neither man nor fate could rob him--a
+beloved Presence always with him.
+
+It was this Presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up
+his head again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more
+straight in the face. It was both inspiration and courage to him
+and grew nearer and dearer to him as time passed. Early Autumn
+found him in the Fond du Lac country, two hundred miles east of
+Fort Chippewyan. That Winter he joined a Frenchman, and until
+February they trapped along the edges of the lower fingers of the
+Barrens.
+
+He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he
+revealed nothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that
+was growing in him. And as the Winter lengthened this desire
+became a deep and abiding yearning. It was with him night and day.
+He dreamed of it when he slept, and it was never out of his
+thoughts when awake. He wanted to go HOME. And when he thought of
+home, it was not of the Landing, and not of the country south. For
+him home meant only one place in the world now--the place where
+Marette had lived. Somewhere, hidden in the mountains far north
+and west, was that mysterious Valley of Silent Men where they had
+been going when her body died. And the spirit of her wanted him to
+go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him, urging him to
+go, to live there always where she had lived. He began to plan,
+and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would find
+her home, her people, the valley that was to have been their
+paradise. So late in February, with his share of the Winter catch
+in his pack, he said good-by to Picard and faced the River again.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Kent had not forgotten that he was an outlaw, but he was not
+afraid. Now that he had something new and thrilling to fight for,
+he fell back again upon what he called "the finesse of the game."
+He approached Chippewyan cautiously, although he was sure that
+even his old friends at the Landing would fail to recognize him
+now. His beard was four or five inches long, and his hair was
+shaggy and uncut. Picard had made him a coat, that winter, of
+young caribou skin, and it was fringed like an Indian's. Kent
+chose his time and entered Chippewyan just before dusk.
+
+Oil lamps were burning in the Hudson's Bay Company's store when he
+went in with his furs. The place was empty, except for the
+factor's clerk, and for an hour he bartered. He bought a new
+outfit, a Winchester rifle, and all the supplies he could carry.
+He did not forget a razor and a pair of shears, and when he was
+done he still had the value of two silver fox skins in cash. He
+left Chippewyan that same night, and by the light of a Winter moon
+made his camp half a dozen miles northward toward Smith Landing.
+
+He was on the Slave River now and for weeks traveled slowly but
+steadily northward on snowshoes. He avoided Fort Smith and Smith
+Landing and struck westward before he came to Fort Resolution. It
+was in April that he struck Hay River Post, where the Hay River
+empties into Great Slave Lake. Until the ice broke up, Kent worked
+at Hay River. When it was safe, he started down the Mackenzie in a
+canoe. It was late in June when he turned up the Liard to the
+South Nahani.
+
+"You go straight through between the sources of the North and the
+South Nahani," Marette had told him. "It is there you find the
+Sulphur Country, and beyond the Sulphur Country is the Valley of
+Silent Men."
+
+At last he came to the edge of this country. He camped with the
+stink of it in his nostrils. The moon rose, and he saw that
+desolate world as through the fumes of a yellow smoke. With dawn
+he went on.
+
+He passed through broad, low morasses out of which rose sulphurous
+fogs. Mile after mile he buried himself deeper in it, and it
+became more and more a dead country, a lost hell. There were berry
+bushes on which there grew no berries. There were forests and
+swamps, but without a living creature to inhabit them.
+
+It was a country of water in which there were no fish, of air in
+which there were no birds, of plants without flowers--a reeking,
+stinking country still with the stillness of death. He began to
+turn yellow. His clothing, his canoe, his hands, face--everything
+turned yellow. He could not get the filthy taste of sulphur out of
+his mouth. Yet he kept on, straight west by the compass Gowen had
+given him at Hay River. Even this compass became yellow in his
+pocket. It was impossible for him to eat. Only twice that day did
+he drink from his flask of water.
+
+And Marette had made this journey! He kept telling himself that.
+It was the secret way in and out of their hidden world, a region
+accursed by devils, a forbidden country to both Indian and white
+man. It was hard for him to believe that she had come this way,
+that she had drunk in the air that was filling his own lungs,
+nauseating him a dozen times to the point of sickness. He worked
+desperately. He felt neither fatigue nor the heat of the warm
+water about him.
+
+Night came, and the moon rose, lighting up with a sickly glow the
+diseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of his
+canoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to
+sleep. But sleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on,
+watching his compass by the light of matches. All that day he made
+no effort to swallow food. But with the coming of the second night
+he found the air easier to breathe. He fought his way on by the
+light of the moon which was clearer now. And at last, in a resting
+spell, he heard far ahead of him the howl of a wolf.
+
+In his joy he cried out. A western breeze brought him air that he
+drank in as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at
+his compass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh
+air. An hour later he found that he was paddling again a slow
+current, and when he tasted the water it was only slightly tainted
+with sulphur. By midnight the water was cool and clean. He landed
+on a shore of sand and pebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave
+himself such a scouring as he had never before experienced. He had
+worn his old trapping shirt and trousers, and after his bath he
+changed to the outfit which he had kept clean in his pack. Then he
+built a fire and ate his first meal in two days.
+
+The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the country
+about him. Westward there was a broad low country shut in fifteen
+or twenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose
+the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his
+hair, and went on. That night he camped only when he could drive
+his canoe no farther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he
+was among the first green shoulders of the hills when he stopped.
+With another dawn he concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and
+went on with his pack.
+
+For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid
+country into which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human
+life. The foothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was
+in the Campbell Range. Also he knew that he had followed the
+logical trail from the sulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day
+before he came upon a sign which told him that another living
+being had at some time passed that way. What he found were the
+charred remnants of an old camp-fire. It had been a white man's
+fire. He knew that by the size of it. It had been an all-night
+fire of green logs cut with an axe.
+
+On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the first range
+and looked down upon one of the most wonderful valleys his eyes
+had ever beheld. It was more than a valley. It was a broad plain.
+Fifty miles across it rose the towering majesty of the mightiest
+of all the Yukon mountains.
+
+And now, though he saw a paradise about him, his heart began to
+sink within him. It seemed to him inconceivable that in a country
+so vast he could find the spot for which he was seeking. His one
+hope lay in finding white men or Indians, some one who might guide
+him.
+
+He traveled slowly over the fifty-mile plain rich with a verdure
+of green, covered with flowers, a game paradise. Few hunters had
+come so far out of the Yukon mountains, he told himself. And none
+had come from out of the sulphur country. It was a new and
+undiscovered world. On his map it was a blank space. And there
+were no signs of people. Ahead of him the Yukon mountains rose in
+an impenetrable wall, peak after peak, crested with snow, towering
+like mighty watchdogs above the clouds. He knew what lay beyond
+them--the great rivers of the Western slope, Dawson City, the gold
+country and its civilization. But those things were on the other
+side of the mountains. On his side there was only the vast and
+undisputed silence of a paradise as yet unclaimed by man.
+
+As he went on into this valley there grew upon him a strange and
+comforting peace. Yet with it there was a steadily increasing
+belief that he would not find that for which he had come in
+search. He did not attempt to analyze this belief. It became a
+part of him, just as his mental tranquillity had grown upon him.
+His one hope of success was that nearer the mountains he might
+find white men or Indians.
+
+He no longer used his compass, but guided himself by a cluster of
+three gigantic peaks. One of these was taller than the other two.
+As he journeyed, his eyes were always returning to it. It
+fascinated him, impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a
+million years, guarding the valley. He began to think of it as the
+Watcher. Each hour of his progress seemed to bring it a little
+more intimately to his vision. From his first night's camp in the
+valley he saw the moon sink behind it. Within him a voice that
+never died kept whispering to him that this mountain, greater than
+all the others, had been Marette's guardian. Ten thousand times
+she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it that day--if
+her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range. A hundred
+miles away she could have seen the Watcher on a clear day.
+
+On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent. By
+mid-afternoon it began to take on a new character. The peak of it
+was in the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced.
+And the two lesser peaks were forming into definite contours.
+Before the haze of twilight dimmed his vision, he knew that what
+he had seen was not a whimsical invention of his imagination. The
+Watcher had grown into the shape of a mighty human head facing
+south. A restless excitement possessed him, and he traveled on
+long after dusk. At dawn he was on the trail again. Westward the
+sky cleared, and suddenly he stopped, and a cry came from him.
+
+The Watcher's head was there, as if chiseled by the hands of
+giants. The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery.
+Startling and weird, their crests had taken on the form of human
+heads. One of them was looking north. The other faced the valley.
+And Kent, his heart pounding, cried to himself,
+
+"The Silent Men!"
+
+He did not hear himself, but the thought itself was a tumultuous
+thing within him. It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden
+and thrilling inspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth.
+THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN. He repeated the words, staring at the
+three colossal heads in the sky. Somewhere near them, under them,
+--one side or the other--was Marette's hidden valley!
+
+He went on. A strange joy consumed him. In it, at times, his grief
+was obliterated, and it seemed to him in these moments that
+Marette must surely be at the valley to greet him when he came to
+it. But always the tragedy of the Death Chute came back to him,
+and with it the thought that the three giant heads were watching--
+and would always watch--for a beloved lost one who would never
+return. As the sun went down that day, the face bowed to the
+valley seemed alive with the fire of a living question sent
+directly to Kent.
+
+"Where is she?" it asked. "Where is she? Where is she?"
+
+That night Kent did not sleep.
+
+The next day there lay ahead of him a low and broken range, the
+first of the deeper mountains. He climbed this steadily, and at
+noon had reached the crest. And he knew that at last he was
+looking down into the Valley of Silent Men. It was not a wide
+valley, like the other. On the far side of it, three or four miles
+away, rose the huge mountain whose face was looking down upon the
+green meadows at its foot. Southward Kent could see for a long
+distance, and in the vivid sunlight he saw the shimmer of creeks
+and little lakes, and the rich glow of thick patches of cedar and
+spruce and balsam, scattered like great rugs of velvety luster
+amid the flowering green of the valley. Northward, three or four
+miles away the range which he had climbed made a sharp twist to
+the east, and that part of the valley--following the swing of the
+range--was lost to him. He turned in this direction after he had
+rested. It was four o'clock when he came to the elbow in the
+valley, and could look down into the hidden part of it.
+
+What he saw at first was a giant cup hollowed out of the
+surrounding mountains, a cup two miles from brim to brim, the end
+of the valley itself. It took him a few moments to focus his
+vision so that it would pick up the smaller and more intimate
+things half a mile under him, and yet, before he had done this, a
+sound came up to him that set aquiver every nerve in his body. It
+was the far-down, hollow-sounding barking of a dog.
+
+The warm, golden haze that precedes sunset in the mountains, was
+gathering between him and the valley, but through this he made out
+after a time evidences of human habitation almost straight under
+him. There was a small lake out of which ran a shimmering creek,
+and close to this lake, yet equally near to the base of the
+mountain on which he was standing, were a number of buildings and
+a stockade which looked like a toy. He could see no animals, no
+movement of any kind.
+
+Without seeking for a downward trail he began to descend. Again he
+did not question himself. An overwhelming certainty possessed him.
+Of all places in the world this must be the Valley of Silent Men.
+
+And below him, flooded and half-hidden in the illusive sun-mist,
+was Marette's old home. It seemed to him now that it belonged to
+him, that he was a part of it, that in going to it he was
+achieving his last great resting place, his final refuge, his own
+home. And the thought became strangely a part of him that a
+welcome must be waiting for him there. He hurried until his breath
+came pantingly between his lips and he was forced to rest. And at
+last he found himself where his progress was made a foot at a
+time, and again and again he was forced to climb back and detour
+around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks which left sheer
+falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sun sank
+behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom of
+twilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge
+of the plain, at least a mile below the elbow which shut out the
+cup in the valley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and
+bleeding. Darkness shut him in when he went on.
+
+When he rounded the elbow of the mountain, he did not try to keep
+back the joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were
+lights. A few of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a
+cluster of them, like the glow that comes from a number of
+illumined windows. He quickened his pace as he drew nearer to
+them, and at last he wanted to run. And then something stopped
+him, and it seemed to him that his heart had risen into his throat
+and was choking him until he could not breathe.
+
+It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom
+a name. "Marette--Marette--Marette--"
+
+Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felt
+himself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madness
+rushed like fire into his brain.
+
+Again the voice called, "Marette--Marette--Marette--"
+
+The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up the
+mountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it
+on--and suddenly the madness in Kent found voice, and he shouted,
+
+"Marette--Marette--"
+
+He ran on. His knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and the
+other voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of
+him, between him and the glowing windows. Some one--two people--
+were advancing to meet him, doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was
+staggering, but he cried the name again, and this time it was a
+woman's cry that answered, and one of the two came toward him
+swift as a flash of light.
+
+Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after-
+twilight their burning eyes looked at each other, while for a
+space their bodies remained stricken in the face of this miracle
+of a great and merciful God.
+
+The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms,
+and Marette swayed to him. When the other man came up, he found
+them crumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children
+in each other's arms. And as Kent raised his face, he saw that it
+was Sandy McTrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose
+life he had saved at Athabasca Landing.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+How long it was before his brain cleared, Kent never could have
+told. It might have been a minute or an hour. Every vital force
+that was in him had concentrated into a single consciousness--that
+the dead had come to life, that it was Marette Radisson, the flesh
+and blood and living warmth of her, he held in his arms. Like the
+flash of a picture on a screen he had seen McTrigger's face close
+to him, and then his own head was crushed down again, and if the
+valley had been filled with the roar of cannon, he would have
+heard only one sound, a sobbing voice crying over and over again,
+"Jeems--Jeems--Jeems--"
+
+It was McTrigger, in the beginning of the starlight, who alone
+looked with clear vision upon the wonder of the thing that was
+happening. After a little Kent realized that McTrigger was
+talking, that a hand was on his shoulder, that the voice was both
+joyous and insistent. He rose to his feet, still holding Marette,
+her arms clinging to him. Her breath was sobbing and broken. And
+it was impossible for Kent to speak. He seemed to stumble over the
+distance between them and the lights, with McTrigger on the other
+side of Marette. It was McTrigger who opened a door, and they came
+into a glow of lamplight. It was a great, strange-looking room
+they entered. And over the threshold Marette's hands dropped from
+Kent, and Kent stepped back, so that in the light they faced each
+other, and in that moment came the marvelous readjustment from
+shock and disbelief to a glorious certainty.
+
+Again Kent's brain was as clear as the day he faced death at the
+head of the Chute. And swift as a hot barb a fear leaped into him
+as his eyes met the eyes of the girl. She was terribly changed.
+Her face was white with a whiteness that startled him. It was
+thin. Her eyes were great, slumbering pools of violet, almost
+black in the lamp glow, and her hair--piled high on her head as he
+had seen it that first day at Cardigan's--added to the telltale
+pallor in her cheeks. A hand trembled at her throat, and its
+thinness frightened him. For a space--a flash of seconds--she
+looked at him as if possessed of the subconscious fear that he was
+not Jim Kent, and then slowly her arms opened, and she reached
+them out to him. She did not smile, she did not cry out, she did
+not speak his name now; but her arms went round his neck as he
+took her to him, and her face dropped on his breast. He looked at
+McTrigger. A woman was standing beside him, a dark-haired, dark-
+eyed woman, and she had laid a hand on McTrigger's arm, Kent,
+looking at them, understood.
+
+The woman came to him. "I had better take her now, m'sieu," she
+said. "Malcolm--will tell you. And a little later,--you may see
+her again."
+
+Her voice was low and soft. At the sound of it Marette raised her
+head, and her two hands stole to Kent's cheeks in their old sweet
+way, and she whispered,
+
+"Kiss me, Jeems--my Jeems--kiss me--"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+A little later, clasping hands in the lamp glow, Kent and Sandy
+McTrigger stood alone in the big room. In their handclasp was the
+warm thrill of strong men met in an immutable brotherhood. Each
+had faced death for the other. Yet this thought, subconsciously
+and forever a part of them, expressed itself only in the grip of
+their fingers and in the understanding that lay deep in their
+eyes.
+
+In Kent's face the great question was of Marette. McTrigger saw
+the fear of it, and slowly he smiled, a glad and yet an anxious
+smile, as he looked toward the door through which Marette and the
+older woman had gone.
+
+"Thank God you have come in time!" he said, still holding Kent's
+hand. "She thought you were dead. And I know, Kent, that it was
+killing her. We had to watch her at night. Sometimes she would
+wander out into the valley. She said she was looking for you. It
+was that way tonight."
+
+Kent gulped hard. "I understand now," he said. "It was the living
+soul of her that was pulling me here. I--"
+
+He took his pack with its precious contents from his shoulders,
+listening to McTrigger. They sat down. What McTrigger was saying
+seemed of trifling consequence beside the fact that Marette was
+somewhere beyond the other door, alive, and that he would see her
+again very soon. He did not see why McTrigger should tell him that
+the older woman was his wife. Even the fact that a splendid chance
+had thrown Marette upon a log wedged between two rocks in the
+Chute, and that this log, breaking away, had carried her to the
+opposite side of the river miles below, was trivial with the
+thought that only a door separated them now. But he listened. He
+heard McTrigger tell how Marette had searched for him those days
+when he was lost in fever at Andre Boileau's cabin, how she had
+given him up for dead, and how in those same days Laselle's
+brigade had floated down, and she had come north with it. Later he
+would marvel over these things, but now he listened, and his eyes
+turned toward the door. It was then that McTrigger drove something
+home. It was like a shot piercing Kent's brain. McTrigger was
+speaking quietly of O'Connor. He said:
+
+"But you probably came by way of Fort Simpson, Kent, and O'Connor
+has told you all this. It was he who brought Marette back home
+through the Sulphur Country."
+
+"O'Connor!"
+
+Kent sprang to his feet. It took McTrigger but a moment to read
+the truth in his face.
+
+"Good God, do you mean to tell me you don't know, Kent?" he
+whispered tensely, rising in front of the other. "Haven't you seen
+O'Connor? Haven't you come in touch with the Police anywhere
+within the last year? Don't you know--?"
+
+"I know nothing," breathed Kent.
+
+For a space McTrigger stared at him in amazement
+
+"I have been in hiding," said Kent. "All this time I have been
+keeping away from the Police."
+
+McTrigger drew a deep breath. Again his hands gripped Kent's, and
+his voice was incredulous, filled with a great wonder. "And you
+have come to her, to her old home, believing that Marette killed
+Kedsty! It is hard to believe. And yet--" Into his face came
+suddenly a look of grief, almost of pain, and Kent, following his
+eyes, saw that he was looking at a big stone fireplace in the end
+of the room.
+
+"It was O'Connor who worked the thing out last Winter," he said,
+speaking with, an effort. "I must tell you before you see her
+again. You must understand everything. It will not do to have her
+tell you. See--"
+
+Kent followed him to the fireplace. From the shelf over the
+stonework McTrigger took a picture and gave it to him. It was a
+snapshot, the picture of a bare-headed man standing in the open
+with the sun shining on him.
+
+A low cry broke from Kent's lips. It was the great, gray ghost of
+a man he had seen in the lightning flare that night from the
+window of his hiding-place in Kedsty's bungalow.
+
+"My brother," said McTrigger chokingly. "I loved him. For forty
+years we were comrades. And Marette belonged to us, half and half.
+It was he--who killed--John Barkley." And then, after a moment in
+which McTrigger fought to speak steadily, he added, "And it was
+he--my brother--who also killed Inspector Kedsty."
+
+For a matter of seconds there was a dead silence between them.
+McTrigger looked into the fireplace instead of at Kent. Then he
+said:
+
+"He killed those men, but he didn't murder them, Kent. It couldn't
+be called that. It was justice, single-man justice, without going
+to law. If it wasn't for Marette, I wouldn't tell you about it--
+not the horrible part of it. I don't like to bring it up in my
+memory. ... It happened years ago. I was not married then, but my
+brother was ten years older than I and had a wife. I think that
+Marette loves you as Marie loved Donald. And Donald's love was
+more than that. It was worship. We came into the new mountain
+country, the three of us, even before the big strikes at Dawson
+and Bonanza. It was a wild country, a savage country, and there
+were few women in it, but Marie came with Donald. She was
+beautiful, with hair and eyes like Marette's. That was the tragedy
+of it.
+
+"I won't tell you the details. They were terrible. It happened
+while Donald and I were out on a hunt. Three men--white men--
+remember that, Kent; WHITE MEN--came out of the North and stopped
+at the cabin. When we returned, what we found there drove us mad.
+Marie died in Donald's arms. And leaving her there, alone, we set
+out after the white-skinned brutes who had destroyed her. Only a
+blizzard saved them, Kent. Their trail was fresh when the storm
+came. Had it held off another two hours, I, too, would have
+killed.
+
+"From that day Donald and I became man-hunters. We traced the back
+trail of the three fiends and discovered who they were. Two years
+later Donald found one of the three on the Yukon, and before he
+killed him he made him verify the names of the other two. It was a
+long search after that, Kent. It has covered thirty years. Donald
+grew old faster than I, and I knew, after a time, that he was
+strangely mad. He would be gone for months at a time, always
+searching for the two men. Ten years passed, and then, one day, in
+the deep of Winter, we came on a cabin home that had been stricken
+with the plague--the smallpox. It was the home of Pierre Radisson
+and his wife Andrea. Both were dead. But there was a little child
+still living, almost a babe in arms. We took her, Donald and I.
+The child was--Marette."
+
+McTrigger had spoken almost in a monotone. He had not raised his
+eyes from the ash of the fireplace. But now he looked up suddenly
+at Kent.
+
+"We worshipped her from the beginning," he said, his voice a bit
+husky. "I hoped that love for her would save Donald. It did, in a
+way. But it did not cure his madness, his desire for vengeance. We
+came farther east. We found this marvelous valley, and gold in the
+mountains, untouched by other men. We built here, and I hoped even
+more that the glory of this new world we had discovered would help
+Donald to forget. I married, and my wife loved Marette. We had a
+child, and then another, and both died. We loved Marette more than
+ever after that. Anne, my wife, was the daughter of a missioner
+and capable of educating Marette up to a certain point. You will
+find this place filled with all kinds of books, and reading, and
+music. But the time came when we thought we must send Marette to
+Montreal. It broke her heart. And then--a long time after--"
+
+McTrigger paused a moment, looking into Kent's eyes. "And then--
+one day Donald came in from Dawson City, terrible in his madness,
+and told us that he had found his men. One of them was John
+Barkley, the rich timber man, and the other was Kedsty, Inspector
+of Police at Athabasca Landing."
+
+Kent made no effort to speak. His amazement, as McTrigger had gone
+on, was beyond the expression of words. The night held for him a
+cumulative shock--the discovery that Marette was not dead, but
+alive, and now the discovery that he, Jim Kent, was no longer a
+hunted man, and that it was O'Connor, his old comrade, who had run
+the truth down. With dry lips he simply nodded, urging McTrigger
+to continue.
+
+"I knew what would happen if Donald went after Barkley and
+Kedsty," said the older man. "And it was impossible to hold him
+back. He was mad, clean mad. There was just one thing for me to
+do. I left here first, with the intention of warning the two
+brutes who had killed Donald's wife. I knew, with the evidence in
+our hands, they could do nothing but make a getaway. No matter how
+rich or powerful they were, our evidence was complete, and through
+many years we had kept track of the movements of our witnesses. I
+tried to explain to Donald that we could send them to prison, but
+there was but one thought in his poor sick mind--to kill. I was
+younger and beat him south. And after that I made my fatal
+mistake. I thought I was far enough ahead of him to get down to
+the line of rail and back before he arrived. You see, I figured
+his love for Marette would take him to Montreal first, and I had
+made up my mind to tell her everything so that she might
+understand the necessity of holding him if he went to her. I wrote
+everything to her and told her to remain in Montreal. How she did
+that, you know. She set out for the North as soon as she received
+my letter."
+
+McTrigger's shoulders hunched lower. "Well, you know what
+happened, Kent. Donald got ahead of me, after all. I came the day
+after Barkley was killed. I took it as a kind fate that the day
+preceding the killing I shot a grouse for my dinner, and as the
+bird was only wounded when I picked it up, I got blood on the
+sleeves of my coat. I was arrested. Kedsty, every one, was sure
+they had the real man. And I kept quiet, except to maintain my
+innocence. I could say nothing that would turn the law on Donald's
+trail.
+
+"After that, things happened quickly. You, my friend, made your
+false confession to save one who had done you a poor service years
+ago. Almost simultaneously with that, Marette had come. She came
+quietly, in the night, and went straight to Kedsty. She told him
+everything, showed him the written evidence, telling him this
+evidence was in the hands of others and would be used if anything
+happened to her. Her power over him was complete. As the price of
+her secrecy she demanded my release, and in that black hour your
+confession gave Kedsty his opportunity.
+
+"He knew you were lying. He knew it was Donald who had killed
+Barkley. Yet he was willing to sacrifice you to save himself. And
+Marette remained in his house, waiting and watching for Donald,
+while I searched for him on the trails. That is why she secretly
+lived in Kedsty's house. She knew that Donald would come there
+sooner or later, if I did not find him and get him away. And she
+was plotting how to save you.
+
+"She loved you, Kent--from that first hour she came to you in the
+hospital. And she tried to exact your freedom also as an added
+price for her secrecy. But Kedsty had become like a cornered
+tiger. If he freed you, he saw his whole world crumbling under his
+feet. He, too, went a little mad, I think. He told Marette that he
+would not free you, that he would go to the hangman first. Then,
+Kent, came the night of your freedom, and a little later--Donald
+came to Kedsty's home. It was he whom you saw that night out in
+the storm. He entered and killed Kedsty.
+
+"Something dragged Marette down to the room that night. She found
+Kedsty in his chair--dead. Donald was gone. It was then that you
+found her there. Kent, she loved you--and you will never know how
+her heart bled when she let you think she had killed Kedsty. She
+has told me everything. It was her fear for Donald, her desire to
+keep all possible suspicion from him until he was safe, that
+compelled her not to confide even in you. Later, when she knew
+that Donald must be safe, she was going to tell you. And then--you
+were separated at the Chute." McTrigger paused, and Kent saw him
+choke back a grief that was still like the fresh cut of a knife in
+his heart.
+
+"And O'Connor found out all this?"
+
+McTrigger nodded. "Yes. He defied Kedsty's command to go to Fort
+Simpson and was on his way back to Athabasca Landing when he found
+my brother. It is strange how all things happened, Kent. But I
+guess God must have meant it that way. Donald was dying. And in
+dying, for a space, his old reason returned to him. It was from
+him, before he died, that O'Connor learned everything. The story
+is known everywhere now. It is marvelous that you did not hear--"
+
+There came an interruption, the opening of a door. Anne McTrigger
+stood looking at them where a little time before she had
+disappeared with Marette. There was a glad smile in her face. Her
+dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness. First they rested on
+McTrigger's face, and then on Kent's.
+
+"Marette is much better," she said in her soft voice. "She is
+waiting to see you, M'sieu Kent. Will you come now?"
+
+Like one in a dream Kent went toward her. He picked up his pack,
+for with its precious contents it had become to him like his own
+flesh and blood. And as the woman led the way and Kent followed
+her, McTrigger did not move from the fireplace. In a little while
+Anne McTrigger came back into the room. Her beautiful eyes were
+aglow. She was smiling softly, and putting her arms about the
+shoulders of the man at the fireplace, she whispered:
+
+"I have looked at the night through the window, Malcolm. I think
+that the stars are bigger and brighter than they have been in a
+long time. And the Watcher seems like a living god up in the sky.
+Come, please."
+
+She took his hand, and Malcolm went with her. Over their heads
+burned a glory of stars. The wind came gently up the valley, cool
+with the freshness of the mountain-tops, sweet with the smell of
+meadow and flowers. And when the woman pointed through the glow,
+Malcolm McTrigger looked up at the Watcher, and for an instant he
+fancied that he saw what she had seen--something that was life
+instead of death, a glow of understanding and of triumph in the
+mighty face of stone above the lace mists of the clouds. For a
+long time they walked on, and deep in the heart of the woman a
+voice cried out again and again that the Watcher knew, and that it
+was a living joy she saw up there, for up to that unmoving and
+voiceless god of the mountains she had cried and laughed and sung
+--and even prayed; and with her Marette had also done these
+things, until at last the pulse and beat of women's souls had
+given a spirit to a form of rock.
+
+Back in the chateau which Malcolm McTrigger and his brother Donald
+had built of logs, in a room whose windows faced the Watcher
+himself, Marette was unveiling the last of mystery for Jim Kent.
+And this, too, was her hour of triumph. Her lips were red and warm
+with the flush brought there by Kent's love.
+
+Her face was like the wild roses he had crushed under his feet all
+that day. For in this hour the world had come to her, and had
+prostrated itself at her feet. The sacred contents of the pack
+were in her lap as she leaned back in the great blanketed and
+pillowed chair that had been her invalid's nest for many days. But
+it was an invalid's nest no longer. The floods of life were
+pounding through her body again, and in that hour when Malcolm
+McTrigger and his wife were gone, Kent looked upon the miracle of
+its change. And now Marette gave to him a little packet, and while
+Kent opened it she raised both hands to her head and unbound her
+hair so that it fell about her in shining and glorious confusion.
+
+Kent, unwrapping a last bit of tissue-paper, found in his hands a
+long tress of hair.
+
+"See, Jeems, it has grown fast since I cut it that night."
+
+She leaned a little toward him, parting her hair with slim, white
+fingers so that he saw again where the hair had been clipped the
+night of Kedsty's death.
+
+And then she said: "You may keep it always if you want to, Jeems,
+for I cut it from my head when I left you in the room below, and
+when you--almost--believed I had killed Kedsty. It was this--"
+
+She gave him another packet, and her lips tightened a little as
+Kent unwrapped it, and another tress of hair shimmered in the lamp
+glow.
+
+"That was father Donald's," she whispered.
+
+"It--it was all he had left of Marie, his wife. And that night--
+when Kedsty died--"
+
+"I understand," cried Kent, stopping her. "He choked Kedsty with
+it until he was dead. And when I found it around Kedsty's neck--
+you--you let me think it was yours--to save father Donald!"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, Jeems. If the police had come, they would have
+thought I was guilty. I planned to let them think so until father
+Donald was safe. But all the time I had here in my breast this
+other tress, which would prove that I was innocent--when the time
+came. And now, Jeems--"
+
+She smiled at him again and reached out her hands. "Oh, I feel so
+strong! And I want to take you out now--and show you my valley--
+Jeems--our valley--yours and mine--in the starlight. Not tomorrow,
+Jeems. But tonight. Now."
+
+A little later the Watcher looked down on them, even as it had
+looked down on another man and another woman who had preceded
+them. But the stars were bigger and brighter, and the white cap of
+snow that rested on the Watcher's head like a crown caught the
+faint gleam of a far-away light; and after that, slowly and
+wonderfully, other snow-crested mountain-tops caught that greeting
+radiance of the moon. But it was the Watcher who stood out like a
+mighty god among them all, and when they came to the elbow in the
+plain, Marette drew Kent down beside her on a great flat rock and
+laughed softly as she held his hand tightly in her lap.
+
+"Always, from a little child, I have sat and played on this rock,
+with the Watcher looking, like that," she said in a low voice. "I
+have grown to love him, Jeems. And I have always believed that he
+was gazing off there, night and day, into the east, watching for
+something that was coming to me. Now I know. It was you, Jeems.
+And, Jeems, when I was away--down there in the big city--"
+
+Her fingers gripped his thumb in their old way, and Kent waited.
+
+"It was the Watcher that made me want to come home most of all,"
+she went on, a bit of tremble in her voice. "Oh, I grew lonely for
+him, and I could see him in my dreams at night, watching,
+watching, watching, and sometimes even calling me. Jeems, do you
+see that hump on his left shoulder, like a great epaulet?"
+
+"Yes, I see," said Kent.
+
+"Beyond that, on a straight line from here--hundreds of miles
+away--are Dawson City, the Yukon, the big gold country, men,
+women, civilization. Father Malcolm and father Donald have never
+found but one trail to this side of the mountains, and I have been
+over it three times--to Dawson. But the Watcher's back is on those
+things. Sometimes I imagine it was he who built those great
+ramparts through which few men come. He wants this valley alone.
+And so do I. Alone--with you, and with my people."
+
+Kent drew her close in his arms. "When you are stronger," he
+whispered, "we will go over that hidden trail together, past the
+Watcher, toward Dawson. For it must be that over there--we will
+find--a missioner--" He paused.
+
+"Please go on, Jeems."
+
+"And you will be--my wife."
+
+"Yes, yes, Jeems--forever and ever. But, Jeems"--her arms crept up
+about his neck--"very soon it will be the first of August."
+
+"Yes--?"
+
+"And in that month there come through the mountains, each year, a
+man and a woman to visit us--mother Anne's father and mother. And
+mother Anne's father--"
+
+"Yes--?"
+
+"Is a missioner, Jeems."
+
+And Kent, looking up in this hour of his triumph and joy, believed
+that in the Watcher's face he caught for an instant the passing
+radiance of a smile.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Valley Of Silent Men, by James Oliver Curwood
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+End of Project Gutenberg's The Valley Of Silent Men, by James Oliver Curwood
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