THE EURALIANS
THE EURALIANS
THE EURALIANS
Marty Le Gros lay sprawled on the ground. He had scarcely moved from the position in which he had fallen. Pri-loo, her handsome eyes aflame with fierce anger, was standing just within the doorway leading to the kitchen place. A man stood guard over her, a small dark-skinned creature whose eyes slanted with a suggestion of Mongol obliqueness. It was obvious that she was only held silent under threat of the gun that her guard held ready. Two other dark-skinned strangers moved about the living room clearly searching, and a third stood looking on, propped against the table which served the missionary for writing. Beyond the movements of the searching men, and such disturbance as the process of their work entailed, and the insistent cries of the child Felice in the adjoining room, an ominous silence prevailed.
The expression of the almost yellow eyes of the man at the table was intense with cold, deliberate purpose. It was without one gleam of pity for the fallen missionary. It was without concern for the angry woman held silent in the doorway. He was regarding only the movements of the men acting under his orders. He, like the man in charge of Pri-loo, was clad in the ordinary garb customary to whitemen of the northern trail. But the others, the searchers, had no such pretensions. They were in the rough clothing native to the Eskimo when Arctic summer prevails.
After awhile the terrified cries of the suddenly awakened Felice died down to the intermittent sobs which so surely claim the sympathies of the mother-heart. Even Pri-loo’s fierce native anger yielded before their appeal. Distress stirred her, and only the threatening gun held her from rushing to comfort the helpless babe who was her treasured charge.
The great prone figure of the missionary on the ground stirred. It was the preliminary to returning consciousness. Quite abruptly his head was raised. Then, by a great effort, he propped himself on to his elbow and gazed about him. Finally his dark, troubled eyes came to rest on the face of the still figure of the man who stood regarding him.
There was a searching pause while eye met eye. Then the missionary sought to moisten his lips with a tongue little less parched.
“Well?” he demanded in the low, husky voice of a man whose strength is rapidly waning.
The man at the table turned to the searchers whose task seemed complete.
“Nothing?” he said. And his tone was almost without question.
One of the searchers offered a negative gesture. There was no verbal reply.
“So.”
The man at the table inclined his dark, close-cropped head and turned again to the man on the ground.
“You’re going to tell us of that gold ‘strike,’ Le Gros,” he said simply, without the slightest sign of foreign or native accent. “You’re going to tell us right away. Because if you don’t we’ve a way of making you. Do you get that? You’d better get it. It’ll be easier for you and for those belonging to you. We’ve come many miles to hear about that ‘strike,’ and we aren’t returning empty-handed. Do you fancy handing your story? Or—”
“You’ll get nothing from me.”
Marty Le Gros’ voice had suddenly become harsh and furious. All his ebbing strength was flung into his retort.
The man with the cold eyes shook his head.
“I shall,” he said, with calm decision. “I’m not here to ask twice. You’ve seen the—remains—of your Mission, ’way up the river. Doesn’t that tell you about things? It should—if you have sense.”
The man’s threat was the more deeply sinister for the frigidity of his tone.
The missionary’s eyes lit. For all his growing weakness, for all the suffering the wound in his side was causing him, a tinge of hot colour mounted to his pallid cheeks.
“I tell you you’ll get nothing from me,” he said, and the strength of his voice had ominously lessened. He raised his body till he was supporting himself on one hand which rested in the pool of his own life-blood staining the earthen floor. His dark eyes were fiercely defiant as they gazed up at the other.
The Euralian leader nodded.
“We’ll see.” Then he pointed at Pri-loo standing in the doorway watching the pitiful duel, hardly realising the full meaning of what she beheld. “You see her? Watch!”
There was a sign. It was given on the instant. And the dying man gasped in horror.
“Your woman, eh?” The Euralian went on. “Well, she won’t be any longer. Are you going to—speak?”
“She’s not my woman. She’s the wife of Usak. If—if you harm her it’s—it’s sheer, wanton—”
The words died on the missionary’s lips. There was a sharp report. It was the gun of the man guarding Pri-loo fired at close range. It rang out tremendously in the narrow confines of the room. The foster-mother of Felice was shot through the head, which was completely shattered. The poor dead creature dropped where she stood, without a sound, without a cry. To the last moment of her staunch life her angry eyes had defied her captors.
The dying missionary reeled. He would have fallen again to the ground. But the searchers were beside him, and they seized and held him lest he should miss a single detail of that which was intended for his infliction.
“Are you going to—say about it?”
The Euralian’s eyes lit as he made his taunting demand. The tearful cries of the terrified Felice were again raised in response to the deafening report of the gun that had slain her foster-mother.
But Marty Le Gros’ strength was oozing through the wound that had laid him low. The shock of the hideous massacre of the helpless Pri-loo was overwhelming. Consciousness was nearing its extremity.
“Not a word.”
The retort was whispered. The missionary had no strength for more.
The man at the table bestirred himself. Perhaps he realised that opportunity was slipping away from him. A swift, imperative sign to the youth who had slain Pri-loo, and the next moment he had passed into the room whence came the redoubled cries of the distracted Felice.
The closing eyes of the dying man widened on the instant. A surge of hopeless terror stared out of their dark depths. His lolling head was lifted erect and it turned in the direction of the door through which the Euralian had vanished. In supreme anguish he realised the thing contemplated. His child! Felice! In a spasm of recollection he saw again the headless trunks of the children of his Mission. The man at the table was forgotten. His own sufferings. Even he had forgotten the thing he was trying to safeguard. Felice! His babe! They—
“If the woman wasn’t yours, Le Gros, the child is,” the man at the table taunted. “Well? Will you—talk?”
The terrible yellow eyes were irresistible. There was no escape from them. And Marty Le Gros forgot everything but the anguish which the taunt inspired.
“Not her! Not that!” he cried. “Yes,” he went on urgently. “You can have it. For God’s sake spare—”
He gasped and his head lolled helplessly. But again he rallied.
“The plans? The plans you made to-night? Where are they? Quick!”
The man at the table had moved. He had approached his victim. His voice was fiercely urgent for he realised the thing that was happening.
“They’re—there,” Marty Le Gros gasped. “They’re—in—her—”
It was his supreme effort, and it remained uncompleted. His words died away in a gasping jumble of sounds that rattled in his throat. For one brief spasm his arms struggled with the men supporting him. Then his head lolled forward again, and his body limpened. A moment later the supporting hands were removed and Marty Le Gros fell back on the ground—dead.
The yellow eyes of the leader were turned on the young man who had just re-entered the room bearing in his arms the screaming Felice.
“Too late,” he said coldly. “You’ve blundered, Sate. It was that clumsy shot of yours. Maybe you’ll learn someday. Tcha!”
Sate dropped the screaming child roughly to the ground. His black eyes sparkled. There was triumph as well as resentment in them.
“That so? Oh, yes. Well, here are the plans. He sealed them when they were finished. We saw that. Eh?”
He held out the packet he had found in Felice’s cot, and the older man accepted it without a sign. In a moment he withdrew a sheath knife and severed the fastenings. Flinging off the outer cover he unfolded the contents. A glance was sufficient and he looked up without a smile.
“Set fire to the place,” he ordered coldly.
Then he glanced down at the dead man. Felice had crawled up close to the body of her father. Her baby arms were thrust about his neck as though clinging to him for protection. Or maybe it was only in that fond baby fashion she had long since learned. Her cries had wholly ceased. Even in death the comfort of her father’s presence and proximity were all sufficient to banish her every terror.
“Take her out,” he ordered, without a shadow of softening. “Set her somewhere near by in the bluff. Maybe the folk across the river will come along and find her when they see the fire. If they don’t, well, maybe the—wolves will.”
Usak gazed about him in a hopeless amazement. He was standing before the smoking remains of Marty Le Gros’ Mission. He had hastened home from the farm which lay several miles away to the east. In the midst of his work amongst his herd of reindeer he had suddenly observed the smoke cloud lolling heavily upon the near horizon, and without a moment’s hesitation he had abandoned the new-born fawn he was attending to ascertain its cause.
He had been filled with alarm at the sight. There was nothing he knew of in the neighbourhood to fire but the bluff that sheltered the Mission and the house itself. So he had come at once at a speed that only he could have achieved.
His worst fears were realised. It was not the sheltering bluff. That was still standing. It was the house itself, that home which had been his shelter as well as that of those others.
For some moments he contemplated the scene without any attempt at active investigation. It almost seemed as if his keen wit had somehow become dulled under the shock of his discovery. Just at first it was the fire itself that pre-occupied. Somehow he did not associate it with disaster to the occupants. That did not occur to him. Doubtless at the back of his mind lay the conviction that the missionary, and Pri-loo, and little Felice had crossed the river and gone to McLeod’s store for shelter. That was at first.
A light breeze drifted the smoke down upon him. For a moment he was enveloped in it. Then it passed. A fresh current of wind—a cross current—drifted it back whence it came, and the man which the passing of the smoke revealed had somehow been transformed.
Amazement was no longer in his black eyes. They were alight and burning with a passion of anxiety. That cloud of smoke had borne upon his sensitive nostrils the smell of burning flesh.
Usak moved up to the charred walls. They were hot and smoking. Most of them were in a state of wreckage, for the roof had fallen and many of the logs had crashed from the tops of the walls. He passed round them, a swift-moving, silent figure seeking access where the smouldering fire would permit. The back door of the kitchen-place was impossible. Flames were still devouring that which remained. The windows were surrounded with hot, fiery timbers. The front door giving on to the sitting room alone seemed possible. But here again was fire, though it had almost burnt out.
But the man’s mood was not such as to leave him standing before obstacles. In his half savage heart was a native terror of fire. But just now all that was completely overborne by emotions that were irresistible. The smell of burning flesh was strong in his nostrils, he even fancied he could taste something of it on his lips.
Just for one instant he paused before the doorway measuring the chances of it all. Then he leapt forward and vanished into the smoking ruin.
Jim McLeod was standing in the doorway of his store. He had been roused from sleep by a furious hammering on the door. He had flung on a heavy skin coat over his night clothes and hastily thrust a gun in each pocket of it. Then he had cautiously proceeded to investigate, for the memory of his long talk with Marty Le Gros was still with him.
But his apprehensions had been swiftly allayed, or at least changed, for the harsh deep tones of Usak had replied to his challenge through the barred door.
Now he was listening to the thing the Indian had to say and the horror of the story he listened to found reflection in his pale blue eyes.
“They’ve killed ’em an’ burnt ’em out?” he cried incredulously as the furious man broke off the torrent of the first rush of his story.
Usak’s black eyes were aflame with a light that was bordering on frenzy. The infant Felice, wrapped in a blanket, was in his arms and clinging to him with her tiny arms about the man’s trunk-like neck, silent, wide-eyed, but content with a presence understood and loved.
“Here I tell you. I tell you quick so no time is lost. I work by the farm all night. So. It is the season when I work that way. The young deer need me. Oh, yes. So I work. Then I mak look up in the corral. There is smoke to the west. Smoke. I look some more, an’ I think quick. Smoke? Fire? What burns that way? Two things, maybe. The bluff. The house of Marty Le Gros. So I mak quick getaway. Oh, yes. Very quick. Then I come by the house. It all burn. Yes. No house. Only burning logs all break up. So I stand an’ think. An’ while I stand I smell. So. I smell the cooking of meat. Meat. First I have think Marty an’ Pri-loo mak big getaway to here. Then, when I smell this thing, I think—no. Not getaway.”
“They were—burnt?”
Jim’s horror added fuel to the fire of Usak’s surging frenzy. He nodded.
“Yes. They burn. They burn all up. But not so they die. Oh, no.” The Indian shook his head, and the brooding light in his black eyes suddenly blazed up afresh. “Listen,” he cried, in his fierce way. “I tell you. I—Usak. I see him all. I go mad. Oh, yes. I think of Pri-loo. I think of little Felice. I think of the good Marty. So I go into the house just wher’ I can. I go by the door which him burn right out. Then I find ’em. Then I find ’em all dead. An’ the fire cook ’em lak—meat.”
The great rough creature thrust the greasy fur cap back from his forehead. There was sweat on his low brow. But it was the sweat inspired by his fierce emotions.
He turned away in desperation, and so his black eyes were hidden from the search of the trader’s. A curious feeling of helplessness in the midst of the storm of rage besetting him threatened overwhelming. There was a moment even when the soft arms about his neck seemed to be stifling him. But his weakness passed in a flash. The next moment the furious onslaught of the savage in him held sway.
“But the fire not kill him,” he cried, his tone lowered to something like a snarl of savagery. “I look. I find ’em, Pri-loo. My woman. I find her, yes, an’ I think I go crazy sure. They kill her—my woman. My good woman. They shoot her by the head. It all break up. Oh, yes. My woman. They kill her—dead.” His voice died out and his black eyes were turned away again to hide that which looked out of them. But in a moment he went on. “Then I find him. The good boss, Marty. Him belly all shoot to pieces. Oh, yes. They kill him all up dead, too. Then I look for Felice. Little Felice.” His arms tightened about the child nestling against his shoulder. “No Felice. She all gone. I think maybe they eat her. I think. I look. No. No Felice. So I go out an’ think some more. I stand by bluff. Then I find ’em. She mak big cry out. She by the bluff. So I find her. They throw her in the bush in the blanket of my woman, Pri-loo.”
The man paused again and a deep breath said far more of the thing he was enduring than his words told. After a moment he nodded his head, and his lank, black hair brushed the fair face of the child in his arms.
“So I bring her, an’ you tak her. You, an’ your good whitewoman tak her like your own. I go. I find this Euralian mans. I know ’em wher’ they camp. Oh, yes. Usak big hunter. Shoot plenty much good. I kill ’em all up dead. They kill ’em my woman, Pri-loo. My good woman. They kill ’em my good boss, Marty. So I kill ’em, too. Now I go. You tak Felice. Bimeby I come back when all Euralian kill dead. Then I tak Felice. I raise her like the good boss, by the farm. It for her. Yes. That farm. Marty love little Felice all the time. He mak all good thing for Felice. So I mak same all good thing, too. That so.”
Jim McLeod made no attempt to reply. Somehow it seemed impossible even to offer comment in face of the terrible story the man had brought to him, and the simple irrevocable purpose in his spoken determination. He held out his arms to receive the murdered man’s child, and Usak, with infinite gentleness, released himself from the clinging arms so reluctant to part from him.
“You tak ’em. Yes,” he said as he passed the babe over. “Bimeby I come back. Sure.”
Jim folded the child to his broad bosom in clumsy, unaccustomed fashion. He was hardly conscious of the thing he did. His horrified imagination was absorbed by the terrible scene he was witnessing through the eyes of the Indian. Quite suddenly his mind leapt back to the thing Marty had intended and had been at such pains to discuss with him, and his question came on the instant.
“Everything? Everything was burnt out? There was nothing left? Books? Papers?”
“Him all burn up. Oh yes.”
Felice began to cry. In a moment her little chubby hands were beating her protest against the broad bosom of the trader. The sight of her rebellion somehow had a softening effect on the coloured man, and he spoke in a manner and in a tone of gentleness which must have seemed impossible in him a moment before.
But even his encouragement was without effect. The child’s cries rose to a fierce, healthly pitch of screaming which promptly called forth protest from the trail dogs about the camps within the stockade. For some moments pandemonium reigned, and in the midst of it the voice of Hesther, who had hurried from her bed, brought comfort to her helpless husband.
“For goodness’ sake!” she cried at the sight of the terrified child in her husband’s arms. “Are you crazy, Jim, havin’ that pore baby gal—Felice? Little Felice? Say, what—? Here, pass her to me.”
The trader made no demur. In a moment the distracted child was exchanged into his wife’s outstretched arms which tenderly embraced and snuggled her close to her soft motherly bosom.
The men looked on held silent by Hesther’s presence.
The child’s cries were quickly hushed, and the dogs abandoned their savage, responsive chorus. Hesther looked searchingly up into Jim’s troubled face. Then her gentle, inquiring eyes passed on to scrutinize the face of the Indian.
“Tell me,” she demanded. And her words were addressed to Usak, as she rocked the child to and fro in her arms.
But Usak was reluctant. He averted his gaze while the whiteman became pre-occupied with the broad expanse of the river beyond the gateway of the stockade.
“Something’s happened,” she went on urgently. “What is it? I’ve got to know. I shall know it later, anyhow, Jim!”
The trader shook his head. But it was different with the Indian. His eyes came back to the woman’s face and he nodded.
“Sure. You know him bimeby,” he said quietly. “Maybe your man tell him all now. I tell him. He know this thing. Yes. Now I go. I go hunt all him Euralian mans. I find ’em. I kill ’em all up dead, same lak him kill up Pri-loo, an’ my good boss, Marty. I go now. Bimeby I come back, an’ I mak all good thing for little Felice. I not come back, then you mak raise ’em Felice lak your child. That so.”