CHAPTER XIX
They ate, facing each other, on a clean, flat stone that was like a table. There was no hesitation on the girl's part, no false pride in the concealment of her hunger. To David it was a joy to watch her eat, and to catch the changing expressions in her eyes, and the little half-smiles that took the place of words as he helped her diligently to bacon and bannock and potatoes and coffee. The bright glow went only once out of her eyes, and that was when she looked at Tara and Baree.
"Tara has been eating roots all day," she said, "But what will he eat?" and she nodded at the dog.
"He had a whistler for breakfast," David assured her. "Fat as butter. He wouldn't eat now anyway. He is too much interested in the bear." She had finished, with a little sigh of content, when he asked: "What do you mean when you say that you have trained Tara to kill? Why have you trained him?"
"I began the day after Brokaw did that—held me there in his arms, with my head bent back.Ugh!he was terrible, with his face so close to mine!" She shuddered. "Afterward I washed my face, and scrubbed it hard, but I could stillfeelit. I can feel it now!" Her eyes were darkening again, as the sun darkens when a thunder cloud passes under it. "I wanted to make Tara understand what he must do after that, so I stole some of Brokaw'sclothes and carried them up to a little plain on the side of the mountain. I stuffed them with grass, and made a ... what do you call it? In Indian it isissena-koosewin...."
"A dummy," he said.
She nodded.
"Yes, that is it. Then I would go with it a little distance from Tara, and would begin to struggle with it, and scream. The third time, when Tara saw me lying under it, kicking and screaming, he gave it a blow with his paw that ripped it clean in two! And after that...."
Her eyes were glorious in their wild triumph.
"He would tear it into bits," she cried breathlessly. "It would take me a whole day to mend it again, and at last I had to steal more clothes. I took Hauck's this time. And soon they were gone, too. That is just what Tara will do to a man—when I fight and scream!"
"And a little while ago you were ready to jump at me, and fight and scream!" he reminded her, smiling across their rock table.
"Not after you spoke to me," she said, so quickly that the words seemed to spring straight from her heart. "I wasn't afraid then. I was—glad. No, I wouldn't scream—not even if you held me like Brokaw did!"
He felt the warm blood rising under his skin again. It was impossible to keep it down. And he was ashamed of it—ashamed of the thought that for an instant was in his mind. The soul of the wild, little mountain creature was in her eyes. Her lips made no concealment of its thoughts or its emotions, pure as the blue skies above them and as ungoverned by conventionality as the winds that shiftedup and down the valleys. She was a new sort of being to him, a child-woman, a little wonder-nymph that had grown up with the flowers. And yet not so little after all. He had noticed that the top of her shining head came considerably above his chin.
"Then you will not be afraid to go back to the Nest—with me?" he asked.
"No," she said with a direct and amazing confidence. "But I'd rather run away with you." Then she added quickly, before he could speak: "Didn't you say you came all that way—hundreds of miles—to findme? Then why must we go back?"
He explained to her as clearly as he could, and as reason seemed to point out to him. It was impossible, he assured her, that Brokaw or Hauck or any other man could harm her now that he was here to take care of her and straighten matters out. He was as frank with her as she had been with him. Her eyes widened when he told her that he did not believe Hauck was her uncle, and that he was certain the woman whom he had met that night on the Transcontinental, and who was searching for an O'Doone, had some deep interest in her. He must discover, if possible, how the picture had got to her, and who she was, and he could do this only by going to the Nest and learning the truth straight from Hauck. Then they would go on to the coast, which would be an easy journey. He told her that Hauck and Brokaw would not dare to cause them trouble, as they were carrying on a business of which the provincial police would make short work, if they knew of it. They held the whip hand, he and Marge. Her eyes shone with increasing faith as he talked.
She had leaned a little over the narrow rock between them so that her thick curls fell in shining clusters under his eyes, and suddenly she reached out her arms through them and her two hands touched his face.
"And you will take me away? You promise?"
"My dear child, that is just what I came for," he said, feigning to be surprised at her questions. "Fifteen hundred miles for just that.Nowdon't you believe all that I've told you about the picture?"
"Yes," she nodded.
She had drawn back, and was looking at him so steadily and with such wondering depths in her eyes that he found himself compelled for an instant to turn his own gaze carelessly away.
"And you used to talk to it," she said, "and it seemedalive?"
"Very much alive, Marge."
"And youdreamedabout me?"
Hehadsaid that, and he felt again that warm rise of blood. He felt himself in a difficult place. If she had been older, or even younger....
"Yes," he said truthfully.
He feared one other question was quite uncomfortably near. But it didn't come. The girl rose suddenly to her feet, flung back her hair, and ran to Tara, dozing in the sun. What she was saying to the beast, with her arms about his shaggy neck, David could only guess. He found himself laughing again, quietly of course, with his back to her, as he picked up their dinner things. He had not anticipated such an experience as this. It rather unsettled him. It was amusing—and had a decided thrill to it.Undoubtedly Hauck and Brokaw were rough men; from what she had told him he was convinced they were lawless men, engaged in a very wide "underground" trade in whisky. But he believed that he would not find them as bad as he had pictured them at first, even though the Nest was a horrible place for the girl. Her running away was the most natural thing in the world—for her. She was an amazingly spontaneous little creature, full of courage and a fierce determination to fight some one, but probably to-day or to-morrow she would have been forced to turn homeward, quite exhausted with her adventure, and nibbling roots along with Tara to keep herself alive. The thought of her hunger and of the dire necessity in which he had found her, drove the smile from his lips. He was finishing his pack when she left the bear and came to him.
"If we are to get over the mountain before dark we must hurry," she said. "See—it is a big mountain!"
She pointed to a barren break in the northward range, close up to the snow-covered peaks.
"And it's cold up there when night comes," she added.
"Can you make it?" David asked. "Aren't you tired? Your feet sore? We can wait here until morning...."
"I can climb it," she cried, with an excitement which he had not seen in her before. "I can climb it—and travel all night—to tell Brokaw and Hauck I don't belong to them any more, and that we're going away! Brokaw will be like a mad beast, and before we go I'll scratch his eyes out!"
"Good Lord!" gasped David under his breath.
"And if Hauck swears at me I'll scratchhisout!" she declared, trembling in the glorious anticipation of hervengeance. "I'll ... I'll scratchhisout, anyway, for what he did to Nisikoos!"
David stared at her. She was looking away from him, her eyes on the break between the mountains, and he noticed how tense her slender body had become and how tightly her hands were clenched.
"They won't dare to touch me or swear at me when you are there," she added, with sublime faith.
She turned in time to catch the look in his face. Swiftly the excitement faded out of her own. She touched his arm, hesitatingly.
"Wouldn't ... you want me ... to scratch out their eyes?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"It wouldn't do," he said. "We must be very careful. We mustn't let them know you ran away. We must tell them you climbed up the mountain, and got lost."
"I never get lost," she protested.
"But we must tell them that just the same," he insisted. "Will you?"
She nodded emphatically.
"And now, before we start, tell me why they haven't followed you?"
"Because I came over the mountain," she replied, pointing again toward the break. "It's all rock, and Tara left no marks. They wouldn't think we'd climb over the range. They've been looking for us in the other valley if they have hunted for us at all. We were going to climb overthatrange, too." She turned so that she was pointing to the south.
"And then?"
"There are people over there. I've heard Hauck talk about them."
"Did you ever hear him speak of a man by the name of Tavish?" he asked, watching her closely.
"Tavish?" She pursed her lips into a red "O," and little lines gathered thoughtfully between her eyes. "Tavish? No-o-o, I never have."
"He lived at one time on Firepan Creek. Had small-pox," said David.
"That is terrible," the girl shuddered. "The Indians die of it up here. Hauck says that my father and mother died of small-pox, before I could remember. It is all like a dream. I can see a woman's face sometimes, and I can remember a cabin, and snow, and lots of dogs. Are you ready to go?"
He shouldered his pack, and as he arranged the straps Marge ran to Tara. At her command the big beast rose slowly and stood before her, swinging his head from side to side, his jaws agape. David called to Baree and the dog came to him like a streak and stood against his leg, snarling fiercely.
"Tut, tut," admonished David, softly, laying a hand on Baree's head. "We're all friends, boy. Look here!"
He walked straight over to the grizzly and tried to induce Baree to follow him. Baree came half way and then sat himself on his haunches and refused to budge another inch, an expression so doleful in his face that it drew from the girl's lips a peal of laughter in which David found it impossible not to join. It was delightfully infectious; he was laughing more with her than at Baree. In the same breath his merriment was cut short by an unexpectedand most amazing discovery. Tara, after all, had his usefulness. His mistress had vaulted astride of him, and was nudging him with her heels, leaning forward so that with one hand she was pulling at his left ear. The bear turned slowly, his finger-long claws clicking on the stones, and when his head was in the right direction Marge released his ear and spoke sharply, beating a tattoo with her heels at the same time.
"Neah, Tara,Neah!" she cried.
After a moment's hesitation, in which the grizzly seemed to be getting his bearings, Tara struck out straight for the break between the mountains, with his burden. The girl turned and waved a beckoning hand at David.
"Pao! you must hurry!" she called to him, laughing at the astonishment in his face.
He had started to fill his pipe, but for the next few minutes he forgot that the pipe was in his hand. His eyes did not leave the huge beast, ambling along a dozen paces ahead of him, or the slip of a girl who rode him. He had caught a glimpse of Baree, and the dog's eyes seemed to be bulging. He half believed that his own mouth was open when the girl called to him. What had happened was most startlingly unexpected, and what he stared at now was a wondrous sight! Tara travelled with the rolling, slouching gait typical of the wide-quartered grizzly, and the girl was a sinuous part of him—by all odds the most wonderful thing in the world to David at this moment. Her hair streamed down her back in a cascade of sunlit glory. She flung back her head, and he thought of a wonderful golden-bronze flower. He heard her laugh, and cry out to Tara, and when the grizzly climbed up a bit of steepslide she leaned forward and became a part of the bear's back, her curls shimmering in the thick ruff of Tara's neck. As he toiled upward in their wake, he caught a glimpse of her looking back at him from the top of the slide, her eyes shining and her lips smiling at him. She reminded him of something he had read about Leucosia, his favorite of the "Three Sirens," only in this instance it was a siren of the mountains and not of the sea that was leading him on to an early doom—if he had to keep up with that bear! His breath came more quickly. In ten minutes he was gasping for wind, and in despair he slackened his pace as the bear and his rider disappeared over the crest of the first slope. She was waving at him then, fully two hundred yards up that infernal hill, and he was sure that she was laughing. He had almost reached the top when he saw her sitting in the shade of a rock, watching him as he toiled upward. There was a mischievous seriousness in the blue of her eyes when he reached her side.
"I'm sorry,Sakewawin," she said, lowering her eyes until they were hidden under the silken sheen of her long lashes, "I couldn't make Tara go slowly. He is hungry, and he knows that he is going home."
"And I thought you had sore feet," he managed to say.
"I don't ride him goingdowna mountain," she explained, thrusting out her ragged little feet. "I can't hang on, and I slip over his head. You must walk ahead of Tara. That will hold him back."
He tried this experiment when they continued their ascent, and Tara followed so uncomfortably close that at times David could feel his warm breath against his hand. When they reached the second slope the girl walked besidehim. For a half mile it was not a bad climb and there was soft grass underfoot. After that came the rock and shale, and the air grew steadily colder. They had started at one o'clock and it was five when they reached the first snow. It was six when they stood at the summit. Under them lay the valley of the Firepan, a broad, sun-filled sweep of scattered timber and green plain, and the girl pointed into it, north and west.
"Off there is the Nest," she said. "We could almost see it if it weren't for that big, red mountain."
She was very tired, though she had ridden Tara at least two thirds of the distance up the mountains. In her eyes was the mistiness of exhaustion, and as a chill wind swept about them she leaned against David, and he could feel that her endurance was nearly gone. As they had come up to the snow line he had made her put on the light woollen shirt he carried in his pack; and the big handkerchief, in which he had so long wrapped the picture, he had fastened scarf-like about her head, so she was not cold. But she looked pathetically childlike and out of place, standing here beside him at the very top of the world, with the valley so far down that the clumps of timber in it were like painted splashes. It was a half mile down to the first bit of timber—a small round patch of it in a narrow dip—and he pointed to it encouragingly.
"We'll camp there and have supper. I believe it is far enough down for a fire. And if it is impossible for you to ride Tara—I'm going to carry you!"
"You can't,Sakewawin" she sighed, letting her head touch his arm for a moment. "It is more difficult to carry a load down a mountain than up. I can walk."
Before he could stop her she had begun to descend. They went down quickly—three times as quickly as they had climbed the other side—and when, half an hour later, they reached the timber in the dip, he felt as if his back were broken. The girl had persistently kept ahead of him, and with a little cry of triumph she dropped down at the foot of the first balsam they came to. The pupils of her eyes were big and dark as she looked up at him, quivering with the strain of the last great effort, and yet she tried to smile at him.
"You may carry me—some time—but not down a mountain," she said, and laid her head wearily on the pillow of her arm, so that her face was concealed from him. "And now—please get supper,Sakewawin."
He spread his blanket over her before he began searching for a camp site. He noticed that Tara was already hunting for roots. Baree followed close at his master's heels. Quite near, David found a streamlet that trickled down from the snow line, and to a grassy plot on the edge of this he dragged a quantity of dry wood and built a fire. Then he made a thick couch of balsam boughs and went to his little companion. In the half hour he had been at work she had fallen asleep. Utter exhaustion was in the limpness of her slender body as he raised her gently in his arms. The handkerchief had slipped back over her shoulder and she was wonderfully sweet, and helpless, as she lay with her head on his breast. She was still asleep when he placed her on the balsams, and it was dark when he awakened her for supper. The fire was burning brightly. Tara had stretched himself out in a huge, dark bulk in the outer glow of it. Baree was close tothe fire. The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stared at David.
"Sakewawin," she whispered then, looking about her in a moment's bewilderment.
"Supper," he said, smiling. "I did it all while you were napping, little lady. Are you hungry?"
He had spread their meal so that she did not have to move from her balsams, and he had brought a short piece of timber to place as a rest at her back, cushioned by his shoulder pack and the blanket. After all his trouble she did not eat much. The mistiness was still in her eyes, so after he had finished he took away the timber and made of the balsams a deep pillow for her, that she might lie restfully, with her head well up, while he smoked. He did not want her to go to sleep. He wanted to talk. And he began by asking how she had so carelessly run away with only a pair of moccasins on her feet and no clothes but the thin garments she was wearing.
"They were in Tara's pack,Sakewawin," she explained, her eyes glowing like sleepy pools in the fireglow. "They were lost."
He began then to tell her about Father Roland. She listened, growing sleepier, her lashes drooping slowly until they formed dark curves on her cheeks. He was close enough to marvel at their length, and as he watched them, quivering in her efforts to keep awake and listen to him, they seemed to him like the dark petals of two beautiful flowers closing slumbrously for the night. It was a wonderful thing to see them open suddenly and find the full glory of the sleep-filled eyes on him for an instant, and then to watch them slowly close again as she fought valiantly to conquer her irresistible drowsiness, the merest dimpling of a smile on her lips. The last time she opened them he had her picture in his hands, and was looking at it, quite close to her, with the fire lighting it up. For a moment he thought the sight if it had awakened her completely.
"Throw it into the fire," she said. "Brokaw made me let him take it, and I hate it. I hate Brokaw. I hate the picture. Burn it."
"But I must keep it," he protested. "Burn it! Why it's...."
"You won't want it—after to-night."
Her eyes were closing again, heavily, for the last time.
"Why?" he asked, bending over her.
"Because,Sakewawin... you have me ... now," came her voice, in drowsy softness; and then the long lashes lay quietly against her cheeks.
CHAPTER XX
He thought of her words a long time after she had fallen asleep. Even in that last moment of her consciousness he had found her voice filled with a strange faith and a wonderful assurance as it had drifted away in a whisper. He would not want the picture any more—because he hadher! That was what she had said, and he knew it was her soul that had spoken to him as she had hovered that instant between consciousness and slumber. He looked at her, sleeping under his eyes, and he felt upon him for the first time the weight of a sudden trouble, a gloomy foreboding—and yet, under it all, like a fire banked beneath dead ash, was the warm thrill of his possession. He had spread his blanket over her, and now he leaned over and drew back her thick curls. They were warm and soft in his fingers, strangely sweet to touch, and for a moment or two he fondled them while he gazed steadily into the childish loveliness of her face, dimpled still by that shadow of a smile with which she had fallen asleep. He was beginning to feel that he had accepted for himself a tremendous task, and that she, not much more than a child, had of course scarcely foreseen its possibilities. Her faith in him was a pleasurable thing. It was absolute. He realized it more as the hours dragged on and he sat alone by the fire. So great was it that she was going back fearlessly to those whom she hated and feared. Shewas returning not only fearlessly but with a certain defiant satisfaction. He could fancy her saying to Hauck, and the Red Brute: "I've come back. Now touch me if you dare!" What would he have to do to live up to that surety of her confidence in him? A great deal, undoubtedly. And if he won for her, as she fully expected him to win, what would he do with her? Take her to the coast—put her into a school somewhere down south? That was his first notion. For to him she looked more than ever like a child as she lay asleep on her bed of balsams.
He tried to picture Brokaw. He tried to see Hauck in his mental vision, and he thought over again all that the girl had told him about herself and these men. As he looked at her now—a little, softly breathing thing under his gray blanket—it was hard for him to believe anything so horrible as she had suggested. Perhaps her fears had been grossly exaggerated. The exchange of gold between Hauck and the Red Brute had probably been for something else. Even men engulfed in the brutality of the trade they were in would not think of such an appalling crime. And then—with a fierceness that made his blood boil—came the thought of that time when Brokaw had caught her in his arms, and had held her head back until ithurt—and had kissed her! Baree had crept between his knees, and David's fingers closed so tightly in the loose skin of his neck that the dog whined. He rose to his feet and stood gazing down at the girl. He stood there for a long time without moving or making a sound.
"A little woman," he whispered to himself at last. "Not a child."
From that moment his blood was hot with a desire toreach the Nest. He had never thought seriously of physical struggle with men except in the way of sport. His disposition had always been to regard such a thing as barbarous, and he had never taken advantage of his skill with the gloves as the average man might very probably have done. To fight was to lower one's self-respect enormously, he thought. It was not a matter of timidity, but of very strong conviction—an entrenchment that had saved him from wreaking vengeance—in the hour when another man would have killed. But there, in that room in his home, he had stood face to face with a black, revolting sin. There had been nothing left to shield, nothing to protect. Here it was different. A soul had given itself into his protection, a soul as pure as the stars shining over the mountain tops, and its little keeper lay there under his eyes sleeping in the sweet faith that it was safe with him. A little later his fingers tingled with an odd thrill as he took his automatic out of his pack, loaded it carefully, and placed it in his pocket where it could be easily reached. The act was a declaration of something ultimately definite. He stretched himself out near the fire and went to sleep with the force of this declaration brewing strangely within him.
He was awake with the summer dawn and the sun was beginning to tint up the big red mountain when they began the descent into the valley. Before they started he loaned the girl his comb and single military brush, and for fifteen minutes sat watching her while she brushed the tangles out of her hair until it fell about her in a thick, waving splendour. At the nape of her neck she tied it with a bit of string which he found for her, and after that, as theytravelled downward, he observed how the rebellious tresses, shimmering and dancing about her, persisted in forming themselves into curls again. In an hour they reached the valley, and for a few moments they sat down to rest, while Tara foraged among the rocks for marmots. It was a wonderful valley into which they had come. From where they sat, it was like an immense park. Green slopes reached almost to the summits of the mountains, and to a point half way up these slopes—the last timber line—clumps of spruce and balsam trees were scattered over the green as if set there by hands of men. Some of these timber patches were no larger than the decorative clumps in a city park, and others covered acres and tens of acres; and at the foot of the slopes on either side, like decorative fringes, were thin and unbroken lines of forest. Between these two lines of forest lay the open valley of soft and undulating meadow, dotted with its purplish bosks of buffalo-, willow-, and mountain-sage, its green coppices of wild rose and thorn, and its clumps of trees. In the hollow of the valley ran a stream.
And this was her home! She was telling him about it as they sat there, and he listened to her, and watched her bird-like movements, without breaking in to ask questions which the night had shaped in his mind. She pointed out gray summits on which she had stood. Off there, just visible in the gray mist of early sunshine, was the mountain where she had found Tara five years ago—a tiny cub who must have lost his mother. Perhaps the Indians had killed her. And that long, rock-strewn slide, so steep in places that he shuddered when he thought of what she had done, was where she and Tara had climbed over the rangein their flight. She chose the rocks so that Tara would leave no trail. He regarded that slide as conclusive evidence of the very definite resolution that must have inspired her. A fit of girlish temper would not have taken her up that rock slide, and in the night. He thought it time to speak of what was weighing upon his mind.
"Listen to me, Marge," he said, pointing toward the red mountain ahead of them. "Off there, you say, is the Nest. What are we going to do when we arrive there?"
The little lines gathered between her eyes again as she looked at him.
"Why—tell them," she said.
"Tell them what?"
"That you've come for me, and that we're going away,Sakewawin."
"And if they object? If Brokaw and Hauck say you cannot go?"
"We'll go anyway,Sakewawin."
"That's a pretty name you've given me," he mused, thinking of something else. "I like it."
For the first time she blushed—blushed until her face was like one of the wild roses in those prickly copses of the valley.
And then he added:
"You must not tell them too much—at first, Marge. Remember that you were lost, and I found you. You must give me time to get acquainted with Hauck and Brokaw."
She nodded, but there was a moment's anxiety in her eyes, and he saw for an instant the slightest quiver in her throat.
"You won't—let them—keep me? No matter what they say—you won't let them keep me?"
He jumped up with a laugh and tilted her chin so that he looted straight into her eyes; and her faith filled them again in a flood.
"No—you're going with me," he promised. "Come. I'm quite anxious to meet Hauck and the Red Brute!"
It seemed singular to David that they met no one in the valley that day, and the girl's explanation that practically all travel came from the north and west, and stopped at the Nest, did not fully satisfy him. He still wondered why they did not encounter one of the searching parties that must have been sent out for her—until she told him that, since Nisikoos died, she and Tara had gone quite frequently into the mountains and remained all night, so that perhaps no search had been made for her after all. Hauck had not seemed to care. More frequently than otherwise he had not missed her. Twice she had been away for two nights and two days. It was only because Brokaw had given that gold to Hauck that she had feared pursuit. If Hauck had bought her....
She spoke of that possible sale as if she might have been the merest sort of chattel. And then she startled him by saying:
"I have known of those white men from the north buying Indian girls. I have seen them sold for whisky.Ugh!" She shuddered. "Nisikoos and I overheard them one night. Hauck was selling a girl for a little sack of gold—likethat. Nisikoos held me more tightly than ever, that night. I don't know why. She was terribly afraid of that man—Hauck. Why did she live with him if shewas afraid of him? Do you know?Iwouldn't. I'd run away."
He shook his head.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you, my child."
Her eyes turned on him suddenly.
"Why do you call me that—a child?"
"Because you're not a woman; because you're so very, very young, and I'm so very old," he laughed.
For a long time after that she was silent as they travelled steadily toward the red mountain.
They ate their dinner in the sombre shadow of it. Most of the afternoon Marge rode her bear. It was sundown when they stopped for their last meal. The Nest was still three miles farther on, and the stars were shining brilliantly before they came to the little, wooded plain in the edge of which Hauck had hidden away his place of trade. When they were some hundred yards away they came over a knoll and David saw the glow of fires. The girl stopped suddenly and her hand caught his arm. He counted four of those fires in the open. A fifth glowed faintly, as if back in timber. Sounds came to them—the slow, hollow booming of a tom-tom, and voices. They could see shadows moving. The girl's fingers were pinching David's arm.
"The Indians have come in," she whispered.
There was a thrill of uneasiness in her words. It was not fear. He could see that she was puzzled, and that she had not expected to find fires or those moving shadows. Her eyes were steady and shining as she looked at him. It seemed to him that she had grown taller, and more like a woman, as they stood there. Something in her face made him ask:
"Why have they come?"
"I don't know," she said.
She started down the knoll straight for the fires. Tara and Baree filed behind them. Beyond the glow of the camp a dark bulk took shape against the blackness of the forest. David guessed that it was the Nest. He made out a deep, low building, unlighted so far as he could see. Then they entered into the fireglow. Their appearance produced a strange and instant quiet. The beating of the tom-tom ceased. Voices died. Dark faces stared—and that was all. There were about fifty of them about the fires, David figured. And not a white man's face among them. They were all Indians. A lean, night-eyed, sinister-looking lot. He was conscious that they were scrutinizing him more than they were the girl. He could almost feel the prick of their eyes. With her head up, his companion walked between the fires and beyond them, looking neither to one side nor the other. They turned the end of the huge log building and on this side it was glowing dimly with light, and David faintly heard voices. The girl passed swiftly into a hollow of gloom, calling softly to Tara. The bear followed her, a grotesque, slowly moving hulk, and David waited. He heard the clink of a chain. A moment later she returned to him.
"There is a light in Hauck's room," she said. "His council room, he calls it—where he makes bargains. I hope they are both there,Sakewawin—both Hauck and Brokaw." She seized his hand, and held it tightly as she led him deeper into darkness. "I wonder why so many of the Indians are in? I did not know they were coming. It is the wrong time of year for—a crowd like that!"
He felt the quiver in her voice. She was quite excited, he knew. And yet not about the Indians, nor the strangeness of their presence. It was hertriumphthat made her tremble in the darkness, a wonderful anticipation of the greatest event that had ever happened in her life. She hoped that Hauck and Brokaw were in that room! She would confront them there, withhim. That was it. She felt her bondage—her prisonment—in this savage place was ended; and she was eager to find them, and let them know that she was no longer afraid, or alone—no longer need obey or fear them. He felt the thrill of it in the hot, fierce little clasp of her hand. He saw it glowing in her eyes when they passed through the light of a window. Then they turned again, at the back of the building. They paused at a door. Not a ray of light broke the gloom here. The stars seemed to make the blackness deeper. Her fingers tightened.
"You must be careful," he said. "And—remember."
"I will," she whispered.
It was his last warning. The door opened slowly, with a creaking sound, and they entered into a long, gloomy hall, illumined by a single oil lamp that sputtered and smoked in its bracket on one of the walls. The hall gave him an idea of the immensity of the building. From the far end of it, through a partly open door, came a reek of tobacco smoke, and loud voices—a burst of coarse laughter, a sudden volley of curses that died away in a still louder roar of merriment. Some one closed the door from within. The girl was staring toward the end of the hall, and shuddering.
"That is the way it has been—growing worse and worsesince Nisikoos died," she said. "In there the white men who come down from the north, drink, and gamble, and quarrel. They are always quarrelling. This room is ours—Nisikoos' and mine." She touched with her hand a door near which they were standing. Then she pointed to another. There were half a dozen doors up and down the hall. "And that is Hauck's."
He threw off his pack, placed it on the floor, with his rifle across it. When he straightened, the girl was listening at the door of Hauck's room. Beckoning to him she knocked on it lightly, and then opened it. David entered close behind her. It was a rather large room—his one impression as he crossed the threshold. In the centre of it was a table, and over the table hung an oil lamp with a tin reflector. In the light of this lamp sat two men. In his first glance he made up his mind which was Hauck and which was Brokaw. It was Brokaw, he thought, who was facing them as they entered—a man he could hate even if he had never heard of him before. Big. Loose-shouldered. A carnivorous-looking giant with a mottled, reddish face and bleary eyes that had an amazed and watery stare in them. Apparently the girl's knock had not been heard, for it was a moment before the other man swung slowly about in his chair so that he could see them. That was Hauck. David knew it. He was almost a half smaller than the other, with round, bullish shoulders, a thick neck, and eyes wherein might lurk an incredible cruelty. He popped half out of his seat when he saw the girl, and a stranger. His jaws seemed to tighten with a snap. A snap that could almost be heard. But it was Brokaw's face that held David's eyes. He was two thirdsdrunk. There was no doubt about it, if he was any sort of judge of that kind of imbecility. One of his thick, huge hands was gripping a bottle. Hauck had evidently been reading him something out of a ledger, a Post ledger, which he held now in one hand. David was surprised at the quiet and unemotional way in which the girl began speaking. She said that she had wandered over into the other valley and was lost when this stranger found her. He had been good to her, and was on his way to the settlement on the coast. His name was....
She got no further than that. Brokaw had taken his devouring gaze from her and was staring at David. He lurched suddenly to his feet and leaned over the table, a new sort of surprise in his heavy countenance. He stretched out a hand. His voice was a bellow.
"McKenna!"
He was speaking directly at David—calling him by name. There was as little doubt of that as of his drunkenness. There was also an unmistakable note of fellowship in his voice. McKenna! David opened his mouth to correct him when a second thought occurred to him in a mildly inspirational way. Why not McKenna? The girl was looking at him, a bit surprised, questioning him in the directness of her gaze. He nodded, and smiled at Brokaw. The giant came around the table, still holding out his big, red hand.
"Mac! God! You don't mean to say you've forgotten...."
David took the hand.
"Brokaw!" he chanced.
The other's hand was as cold as a piece of beef. But itpossessed a crushing strength. Hauck was staring from one to the other, and suddenly Brokaw turned to him, still pumping David's hand.
"McKenna—that young devil of Kicking Horse, Hauck! You've heard me speak of him. McKenna...."
The girl had backed to the door. She was pale. Her eyes were shining, and she was looking straight at David when Brokaw released his hand.
"Good-night,Sakewawin!" she said.
It was very distinct, that word—Sakewawin! David had never heard it come quite so clearly from her lips. There was something of defiance and pride in her utterance of it—and intentional and decisive emphasis to it. She smiled at him as she went through the door, and in that same breath Hauck had followed her. They disappeared. When David turned he found Brokaw backed against the table, his hands gripping the edge of it, his face distorted by passion. It was a terrible face to look into—to stand before, alone in that room—a face filled with menace and murder. So sudden had been the change in it that David was stunned for a moment. In that space of perhaps a quarter of a minute neither uttered a sound. Then Brokaw leaned slowly forward, his great hands clenched, and demanded in a hissing voice:
"What did she mean when she called you that—Sakewawin? What did she mean?"
It was not now the voice of a drunken man, but the voice of a man ready to kill.
CHAPTER XXI
"Sakewawin!What did she mean when she called you that?"
It was Brokaw's voice again, turning the words round but repeating them. He made a step toward David, his hands clenched more tightly and his whole hulk growing tense. His eyes, blazing as if through a very thin film of water—water that seemed to cling there by some strange magic—were horrible, David thought.Sakewawin!A pretty name for himself, he had told the girl—and here it was raising the very devil with this drink-bloated colossus. He guessed quickly. It was decidedly a matter of guessing quickly and of making prompt and satisfactory explanation—or, a throttling where he stood. His mind worked like a race-horse. "Sakewawin" meant something that had enraged Brokaw. A jealous rage. A rage that had filled his aqueous eyes with a lurid glare. So David said, looking into them calmly, and with a little feigned surprise:
"Wasn't she speaking to you, Brokaw?"
It was a splendid shot. David scarcely knew why he made it, except that he was moved by a powerful impulse which just now he had not time to analyze. It was this same impulse that had kept him from revealing himself when Brokaw had mistaken him for someone else. Chance had thrown a course of action into his way and he had accepted it almost involuntarily. It had suddenly occurred to him that he would give much to be alone with this half-drunken man for a few hours—as McKenna. He might last long enough in that disguise to discover things. But not with Hauck watching him, for Hauck was four fifths sober, and there was a depth to his cruel eyes which he did not like. He watched the effect of his words on Brokaw. The tenseness left his body, his hands unclenched slowly, his heavy jaw relaxed—and David laughed softly. He felt that he was out of deep water now. This fellow, half filled with drink, was wonderfully credulous. And he was sure that his watery eyes could not see very well, though his ears had heard distinctly.
"She was looking at you, Brokaw—straight at you—when she said good-night," he added.
"You sure—sure she said it to me, Mac?"
David nodded, even as his blood ran a little cold.
A leering grin of joy spread over Brokaw's face.
"The—the little devil!" he said, gloatingly.
"What does it mean?" David asked. "Sakewawin—I had never heard it." He lied calmly, turning his head a bit out of the light.
Brokaw stared at him a moment before answering.
"When a girl says that—it means—she belongs to you," he said. "In Indian it means—possession! Dam' ... of course you're right! She said it to me. She's mine. She belongs to me. I own her. And I thought...."
He caught up the bottle and turned out half a glass of liquor, swaying unsteadily:
"Drink, Mac?"
David shook his head.
"Not now. Let's go to your shack if you've got one. Lots to talk about—old times—Kicking Horse, you know. And this girl? I can't believe it! If it's true, you're a lucky dog."
He was not thinking of consequences—of to-morrow. To-night was all he asked for—alone with Brokaw. That mountain of flesh, stupefied with liquor, was no match for him now. To-morrow he might hold the whip hand, if Hauck did not return too soon.
"Lucky dog! Lucky dog!" He kept repeating that. It was like music in Brokaw's ears. And such a girl! An angel! He couldn't believe it! Brokaw's face was like a red fire in his exultation, his lustful joy, his great triumph. He drank the liquor he had proffered David, and drank a second time, rumbling in his thick chest like some kind of animal. Of course she was an angel! Hadn't he, and Hauck, and that woman who had died, made her grow into an angel—just for him? She belonged to him. Always had belonged to him, and he had waited a long time. If she had ever called any other man that name—Sakewawin—he would have killed him. Certain. Killed him dead. This was the first time she had ever called him that. Lucky dog? You bet he was. They'd go to his shack—and talk. He drank a third time. He rolled heavily as they entered the hall, David praying that they would not meet Hauck. He had his victim. He was sure of him. And the hall was empty. He picked up his gun and pack, and held to Brokaw's arm as they went out into the night. Brokaw staggered guidingly into a wall of darkness, talking thickly about lucky dogs. They had gone perhaps a hundred paces when he stopped suddenly, very close to something that looked to David like a section of tall fence built of small trees. It was the cage. He jumped at that conclusion before he could see it clearly in the clouded starlight. From it there came a growling rumble, a deep breath that was like air escaping from a pair of bellows, and he saw faintly a huge, motionless shape beyond the stripped and upright sapling trunks.
"Grizzly," said Brokaw, trying to keep himself on an even balance. "Big bear-fight to-morrow, Mac. My bear—her bear—a great fight! Everybody in to see it. Nothing like a bear-fight, eh? S'prise her, won't it—pretty little wench! When she sees her bear fighting mine? Betchu hundred dollars my bear kills Tara!"
"To-morrow," said David. "I'll bet to-morrow. Where's the shack?"
He was anxious to reach that, and he hoped it was a good distance away. He feared every moment that he would hear Hauck's voice or his footsteps behind them, and he knew that Hauck's presence would spoil everything. Brokaw, in his cups, was talkative—almost garrulous. Already he had explained the mystery of the cage, and the Indians. The big fight was to take place in the cage, and the Indians had come in to see it. He found himself wondering, as they went through the darkness, how it had all been kept from the girl, and why Brokaw should deliberately lower himself still more in her esteem by allowing the combat to occur. He asked him about it when they entered the shack to which Brokaw guided him, and after they had lighted a lamp. It was a small, gloomy, whisky-smelling place. Brokaw went directly to a box nailed against the wall and returned with a quart flask that resembled an army canteen, and two tin cups. He sat down at a small table, his bloated, red face in the light of the lamp, that queer animal-like rumbling in his throat, as he turned out the liquor. David had heard porcupines make something like the same sound. He pulled his hat lower over his eyes to hide the gleam of them as Brokaw told him what he and Hauck had planned. The bear in the cage belonged to him—Brokaw. A big brute. Fierce. A fighter. Hauck and he were going to bet on his bear because it would surely kill Tara. Make a big clean-up, they would. Tara was soft. Too easy living. And they needed money because those scoundrels over on the coast had failed to get in enough whisky for their trade. The girl had almost spoiled their plans by going away with Tara. And he—Mac—was a devil of a good fellow for bringing her back! They'd pull off the fight to-morrow. If the girl—that little bird-devil that belonged to him—didn't like it....
He brought the canteen down with a bang, and shoved one of the cups across to David.
"Of course, she belongs to you," said David, encouragingly, "but—confound you—I can't believe it, you old dog! I can't believe it!" He leaned over and gave Brokaw a jocular slap, forcing a laugh out of himself. "She's too pretty for you. Prettiest kid I ever saw! How did it happen? Eh? You—lucky—dog!"
He was fairly trembling as he saw the red fire of satisfaction, of gloating pleasure, deepen in Brokaw's face.
"She hasn't belonged to you very long, eh?"
"Long time, long time," replied Brokaw, pausing with his cup half way to his mouth. "Years ago."
Suddenly he lowered the cup so forcefully that half the liquor in it was spilled over the table. He thrust his huge shoulders and red face toward David, and in an instant there was a snarl on his thick lips.
"Hauck said she didn't," he growled. "What do you think of that, Mac?—said she didn't belong to me any more, an' I'd have to pay for her keep! Gawd, I did. I gave him a lot of gold!"
"You were a fool," said David, trying to choke back his eagerness. "A fool!"
"I should have killed him, shouldn't I, Mac—killed him an'tookher?" cried Brokaw huskily, his passion rising as he knotted his huge fists on the table. "Killed him like you killed the Breed for that long-haired she-devil over at Copper Cliff!"
"I—don't—know," said David, slowly, praying that he might not say the wrong thing now. "I don't know what claim you had on her, Brokaw. If I knew...."
He waited. Brokaw did not seem altogether like a drunken man now, and for a moment he feared that discovery had come. He leaned over the table. The watery film seemed to drop from his eyes for an instant and his teeth gleamed wolfishly. David was glad the lamp chimney was black with soot, and that the rim of his hat shadowed his face, for it seemed to him that Brokaw's vision had grown suddenly better.
"I should have killed him, an' took her," repeated Brokaw, his voice heavy with passion. "I should have had her long ago, but Hauck's woman kept her from me. She's been mine all along, ever since...." His mind seemed to lag. He drew his hulking shoulders backslowly. "But I'll have her to-morrow," he mumbled, as if he had suddenly forgotten David and was talking to himself. "To-morrow. Next day we'll start north. Hauck can't say anything now. I've paid him. She's mine—mine now—to-night! By...."
David shuddered at what he saw in the brute's revolting face. It was the dawning of a sudden, terrible idea. To-night! It blazed there in his eyes, grown watery again. Quickly David turned out more liquor, and thrust one of the cups into Brokaw's hand. The giant drank. His body sank into piggish laxness. For a moment the danger was past. David knew that time was precious. He must force his hand.
"And if Hauck troubles you," he cried, striking the table a blow with his fist, "I'll help you settle for him, Brokaw! I'll do it for old time's sake. I'll do to him what I did to the Breed. The girl's yours. She's belonged to you for a long time, eh? Tell me about it, Brokaw—tell me before Hauck comes!"
Could he never make that bloated fiend tell him what he wanted to know? Brokaw stared at him stupidly, and then all at once he started, as if some one had pricked him into consciousness, and a slow grin began to spread over his face. It was a reminiscent, horrible sort of leer, not a smile—the expression of a man who gloats over a revolting and unspeakable thing.
"She's mine—been mine ever since she was a baby," he confided, leaning again over the table. "Good friend, give her to me, Mac—good friend but a dam' fool," he chuckled. He rubbed his huge hands together and turned out more liquor. "Dam' fool!" he repeated. "Anyman's a dam' fool to turn down a pretty woman, eh, Mac? An' she was pretty, he says.Mygirl's mother, you know. She must have been pretty. It was off there—in the bush country—years ago. The kid you brought in to-day was a baby then—alone with her mother. Ho, ho! deuced easy—deuced easy! But he was a darn' fool!"
He drank with incredible slowness, it seemed to David. It was torture to watch him, with the fear, every instant, that Hauck would come.
"What happened?" he urged.
"Bucky—my friend—in love with that woman, O'Doone's wife," resumed Brokaw. "Dead crazy, Mac. Crazier'n you were over the Breed's woman, only he didn't have the nerve. Just moped around—waiting—keeping out of O'Doone's way. Trapper, O'Doone was—or a Company runner. Forgot which. Anyway he went on a long trip, in winter, and got laid up with a broken leg long way from home. Wife and baby alone, an' Bucky sneaked up one day and found the woman sick with fever. Out of her head! Dead out, Bucky says—an' my Gawd! If she didn't think he was her husband come back! That easy, Mac—an' he lacked the nerve! Crazy in love with her, he was, an' didn't dare play the part. Told me it was conscience. Bah! it wasn't. He was afraid. Scared. A fool. Then he said the fever must have touched him. Ho, ho! it was funny. He was a scared fool. WishI'dbeen there, Mac; wishIhad!"
His eyes half closed, gleaming in narrow, shining slits. His chin dropped on his chest. David prodded him on.
"Bucky got her to run away with him," continued Brokaw. "Her and the kid, while she was still out of herhead. Bucky even got her to write a note, he said, telling O'Doone she was sick of him an' was running away with another man. Bucky didn't give his own name, of course. An' the woman didn't know what she was doing. They started west with the kid, and all the time Bucky wasafraid! He dragged the woman on a sledge, and snow covered their trail. He hid in a cabin a hundred miles from O'Doone's, an' it was there the woman come to her senses. Gawd! it must have been exciting! Bucky says she was like a mad woman, and that she ran screeching out into the night, leaving the kid with him. He followed but he couldn't find her. He waited, but she never came back. A snow storm covered her trail. Then Bucky sayshewent mad—the fool! He waited till spring, keeping that kid, and then he made up his mind to get it back to Papa O'Doone in some way. He sneaked back where the cabin had been, and found nothing but char there. It had been burned. Oh, the devil, but it was funny! And after all this trouble he hadn't dared to take O'Doone's place with the woman. Conscience? Bah! He was a fool. You don't get a pretty woman like that very often, eh, Mac?" Unsteadily he tilted the flask to turn himself out another drink. His voice was thickening. David rejoiced when he saw that the flask was empty.
"Dam'!" said Brokaw, shaking it.
"Go on," insisted David. "You haven't told me how you came by the girl, Brokaw?"
The watery film was growing thicker over Brokaw's eyes. He brought himself back to his story with an apparent effort.
"Came west, Bucky did—with the kid," he went on."Struck my cabin, on the Mackenzie, a year later. Told me all about it. Then one day he sneaked away and left her with me, begging me to put her where she'd be safe. I did. Gave her to Hauck's woman, and told her Bucky's story. Later, Hauck came over here and built this place. Three years ago I come down from the Yukon, and saw the kid. Pretty? Gawd, she was! Almost a woman. And she wasmine. I told 'em so. Mebby the woman would have cheated me, but I had Hauck on the hip because I saw him kill a man when he was drunk—a white man from Fort MacPherson. Helped him hide the body. And then—oh, it was funny!—I ran across Bucky! He was living in a shack a dozen miles from here, an' he didn't know Marge was the O'Doone baby. I told him a big lie—told him the kid died, an' that I'd heard the woman had killed herself, and that O'Doone was in a lunatic asylum. Mebby he did have a conscience, the fool! Guess he was a little crazy himself. Went away soon after that. Never heard of him since. An' I've been hanging round until the girl was old enough to live with a man. Ain't I done right, Mac? Don't she belong to me? An' to-morrow...."
His head rolled. He recovered himself with an effort, and leaned heavily against the table. His face was almost barren of human expression. It was the face of a monster, unlighted by reason, stripped of mind and soul. And David, glaring into it across the table, questioned him once more, even as he heard the crunch of footsteps outside, and knew that Hauck was coming—coming in all probability to unmask him in the part he had played. But Hauck was too late. He was ready to fight now, andas he held himself prepared for the struggle he asked that question.
"And this man—Bucky; what was his other name, Brokaw?"
Brokaw's thick lips moved, and then came his voice, in a husky whisper:
"Tavish!"