THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS
THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS
THE VALLEY OF THE FIRE HILLS
The sun blazed down on a silent world. The glare was merciless, and the heat, by reason of the weight of moisture saturating the atmosphere of the valley, was almost a torture.
The stillness of the world was awesome. The hum of insect life accentuated it, and so, too, with the murmur of summer waters, which is the real music of the silent places. The breathlessness of it all suggested suspense, threat. So it is always in the great hill countries. The sense of threat is ever present to the human mind, driving men to seek companionship, even if it be only association with the creatures who are there to bear his burdens.
Threat was stirring acutely now. It was in the profound quiet, in the saturating heat; it was in the portentous silence wrapt about the hidden habitation which the man at the water’s edge had just left behind him.
Leaning on his old-fashioned rifle the Indian, Usak, was gazing out northwards over the winding course of the river. His dark eyes were alert, fiercely alert. No detail of the scene escaped his searching gaze as he followed the little water-course on its way to the mountain lake beyond. He searched it closely right up to the great bend where stood the three isolated fire hills. His Indian mind was calculating; it was seeking answers to doubts and questions besetting him. For he knew that on the result of his right thinking now depended the achievement he had marked out for himself.
Quite motionless he stood for many minutes. Yet for all his great height and the physical strength of his muscular body his presence was without effect upon the immense solitude of the world about him. It had no more impression than had one single creature amongst the myriads of flies and mosquitoes swarming hungrily about his dark head.
The house in the woods behind him was no longer of any concern. There, as he had set out to do, he had already worked his fierce will. It was sufficient. That which was yet to be accomplished he knew to lie on the waterway approach, and his mind was focussed upon the three black, smoking hills which he had passed on his way from the distant lake.
He stirred out of his deep contemplation. He raised his rifle and slung it upon his buckskin-clad shoulder. Then he turned about, and raised one lean, brown hand. It was an expressive gesture. There was something in it similar to the shoulder-shrug of callous indifference. He passed on down the river.
The canoe was making its leisurely way up the river. The dip of the paddles was easy; it was rhythmic and full of the music so perfectly in tune with Nature in her gentler mood. The vessel was long and low, and built for rapid, heavy transport where the waters were not always at rest, and the battle with the elements was fierce and unrelenting. It was the hide-built craft native to the Eskimo, whose life is spent in the Polar hunt.
The vessel was served by eight paddles. But there were two other occupants lounging amidships against the rolls of blankets and furs which were part of their camp outfit. These two were talking in low voices while the men at the paddles, stripped to the waist, squat, powerful, yellow-skinned creatures whose muscles rippled in response to their efforts under a skin that shone like satin, remained concerned only for their labours.
“There will be a big noise—later.”
The snapping eyes of the younger man were half smiling as he contemplated the shimmering waters of the river ahead. The man beside him stirred. His curious eyes lit with a gleam of irony as he withdrew his gaze from the distant smoke cloud which lolled ponderously on the still air.
“Oh, yes. There will be a big noise,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Maybe p’lice will come.” He laughed coldly. “An’ when they come—what? Later they go away. Later it is forgotten. Winter comes and everything is forgotten. It is the way of this far-north country. Only is this country for the man who lives in it. Not for those who mark it on a map, and say—‘it is mine.’ No. It is for us, Sate. It is ours. We make the law which says the thing we desire must be ours. Le Gros was a big fool. But it would have been useless to have his secret and leave him living. One word, and they would have flooded the country with white trash from every corner of the earth. It will not be that way now. We wait for the p’lice to come. We wait for them to go. Then this thing is ours, the same as all the rest.”
Sate turned his dark eyes upon the strong profile of his father.
“Yes,” he agreed, while his eyes questioned.
There was usually a question in his eyes when regarding his parent; a question in his hot impulsive mind when he listened to the cold tone of authority that was always addressed to him. The filial attitude of the youth was no more than skin deep.
“You have the plans safe?” he inquired presently, while he watched the brown fingers of the other filling the familiar red-clay pipe. “You have not passed them for me to read?”
The tone was a complaint, and it brought the curious regard of the tawny eyes to the discontented face. For a moment Sate confronted them boldly. Then he yielded, and his gaze was turned upon the scenes of the river. “You will see them when—it is necessary.”
A dark fire was burning behind the boy’s pre-occupied gaze. Nor was it likely that the father failed to understand the mood his denial had aroused. He watched the lowering of the black brows, the savage setting of the youthful jaws, and a shadowy smile that had nothing pleasant in it made its way to his cold eyes.
For all his surge of feeling Sate continued to regard the surrounding mountains through which they were passing. There was not a detail of the course of this little, hidden river that held even a passing interest for the youth. His whole life had been lived within the Valley of the Fire Hills and its beauty, the mystery of it affected him no more congenially than might a prisoner be affected by the bare walls and iron bars of his cell. His heart and mind were in fierce rebellion. He was chafing impotently. But he was held silent, for he dared not pit himself against the iron will, the inhuman cruelty which he knew to lie behind the cold eyes which, in his brief twenty years of life, he had only learned to obey through fear.
The man beside him had lit his pipe without a shadow of concern, and now he sat smoking it like any native, with its stem supported by his strong jaws thrust in the centre of his hard mouth. He held the little bowl in both hands.
The vessel passed out of the shadow of the canyon, and the welcome shade gave place to the blazing heat of full sunlight. The sky was without a cloud except for the overhanging smoke patch. The great hills had suddenly leapt back and the world had become radiant with a hundred verdant hues, and the soft purple of the distance.
It was the arena of the Fire Hills. They stood up in the heart of it, three of them. Three comparatively low, expansive hummocks dwarfed by the tremendous altitude of the surrounding mountain ring. Standing widely separated on the low flat, about which the shrunken summer river skirted, they stood ominous, black and smoking. They were bare to the basaltic rock which was their whole structure, burnt black by the centuries of fire contained within their troubled hearts. They were stark, hideous, like malevolent dwarfs, monstrous and threatening, frowning down upon a world made gracious the year round by reason of their own involuntary beneficence.
The man removed his pipe from between his lips and inclined his head in the direction of the smoking hills.
“An hour more,” he said.
Sate’s reply came without glancing round.
“Yes,” he said.
His eyes, too, were on the three hills. It would have been impossible for it to have been otherwise. Their great ugly shoulders rose high above the belt of forest trees which lined the left bank of the river, and the smoke cloud hung heavily over the summits, till their appearance was like that of giant mushrooms. The smoke was motionless, dense, threatening.
“It’s thick,” the father observed reflectively. “We need a wind to carry it away. If the weather changes it’ll come down in a fog. They’re queer—those hills. Someday they’ll—”
The sharp crack of a rifle rang out. The man in the prow of the vessel jerked forward in the act of dipping his paddle, and sprawled with his body lolling over the vessel’s side.
The man with the yellow eyes scrambled to his feet and Sate sat up. For one tense moment every eye was turned upon the belt of trees that lined the shore masking the base of the Fire Hills. The shot had come from that direction, but there was nothing, no sign of any sort to give a clue to the whereabouts of the man who had fired with such murderous accuracy.
The man standing amidships gave a sharp order. His crew had quit paddling in the complete confusion into which the attack had flung them. And, in a moment, the paddles dipped again, but only seven of them.
Sate passed forward to the wounded man, and his father waited, still standing, for the result of his investigations. It was some time before the youth gave a sign. But at last he dragged the fallen body into the boat and laid it out in the bottom of it.
“Well?”
The demand came sharply. But the tawny eyes were still steadily searching the wood-clad bank of the river.
“Dead.”
Sate’s reply was no less sharp.
“Drop him overboard. We’ve no room for dead men. Take the paddle yourself, Sate.” After delivering his order the man amidships turned about and spoke in a foreign tongue to the man in the stern. Instantly the prow of the vessel swung towards the shore.
Again a shot rang out. This time it was the man whose paddle had changed the vessel’s course who was the victim. He lolled forward like a tired man at the finish of the stroke of his paddle. Then he crumpled, collapsing against the man in front of him, shot through the heart.
The dusky figure was moving rapidly down the shadowed aisles of leafless tree-trunks. Its movements were almost without sound. They were the stealthy, swift movements of the Indian in pursuit of a wary quarry.
Every now and again Usak paused in the shelter of a great forest bole, and his fierce eyes searched for opening in the barrier of undergrowth that hid the waters of the river beyond. His patience seemed inexhaustible. Effort was unrelaxing. He was spurred by a lust that was all-consuming.
So he kept pace with the moving vessel that was behind him on the river. His object was to keep ever ahead of it, not remaining a second longer at any given point than his purpose demanded. On, and on, with the swift, silent gait of the hunter, he passed from tree to tree but never did he permit himself to pass out of gunshot of his quarry.
He paused at a fallen tree. To the right of him, looking down the river, was a narrow break in the tangle of undergrowth. He rested his queer, long rifle and searched over the sights, holding a definite spot on the shining waters covered. The man was deadly in his deliberation. Twice he re-adjusted his sights. Then at last, apparently satisfied, stretched prone on the ground under cover of the protecting tree trunk, he waited with the weapon pressed hard into his shoulder, his lean tenacious finger on the trigger, and an eye, that displayed no shadow of mercy, glancing over his sights.
The moments passed in deathly silence. The trees above him creaked in the super-heated twilight. But none of the forest sounds distracted him. His keen ears were listening for one familiar sound. His searching eyes were waiting for one vision in the narrow opening of the undergrowth.
The sound came. And into the open flashed the prow of the approaching canoe. It was more than two hundred yards from the man’s place of concealment, but the distance had been calculated to a fraction with the skill of a great hunter. The finger pressed the trigger.
The hidden man leaped to his feet, a grim look of satisfaction shining in his eyes. He had witnessed the thing he desired. He had seen the man at the vessel’s prow fall forward. And he knew it was the man who had taken the place of an earlier victim.
He was off on the run as an answering shot rang out, and he heard the spat of a bullet strike one of the tree trunks somewhere behind him. There was another shot, and another. But each shot found its home in the upstanding tree-trunks far in the rear of him, and left him grimly unconcerned. It was a battle to the death in a fashion of which he was absolutely master. It mattered not to him if the canoe continued on its course, or retreated, or if the enemy abandoned the river and sought to continue the fight in the twilight of the forests. He knew he held him at his mercy on this great bend of the river. For the far bank was walled by the granite of the great hills which closed in the arena of the Fire Hills. There was no escape.
After awhile he paused again at the foot of a tree that had been rudely storm-blasted. Its crown was shorn and lay a vast tangle on the ground beside it. In a moment, with rifle slung, he had swarmed the broken trunk and lodged himself in the lower branches which still remained. He gazed out over the top of the undergrowth, and a great length of the sweep of the river was spread out before his hungry eyes. The canoe was just entering his field of vision. He settled himself with his back to the tree-trunk, and his knees were bent in a squatting posture with his feet supported on a projecting limb which also helped to screen him from those on the river. He adjusted his sights and prepared to hurl death from his hiding-place.
Slowly he pressed the trigger and his ancient weapon faithfully responded. The ivory sights were unfailing to an eye behind which burned so fierce a desire. He saw the result even with the rifle still pressed to his shoulder, and unconsciously he pronounced the triumphant thought in his mind.
“Four!”
He re-loaded. The canoe was in full view now, and the temptation was irresistible. Again he pressed the trigger, and another life had passed.
He lowered his weapon and watched. The short man amidships was about to answer. He saw a rifle raised. The shot echoed against the granite walls behind it. And something like a smile lit the hunter’s eyes, for the man had fired into the forest far below where he was securely seated. Instantly he re-loaded, and, a moment later, a sixth victim fell to his lethal weapon.
He dropped from his “crow’s nest” and ran on through the dark aisles that hid him so well. Every foot of the way was mapped in his mind. He had laid his trail with the skill of a man who, knowing his craft, will not yield one fraction of his advantage. So he passed on to where the forest narrowed down by reason of the Fire Hill, whose ponderous slopes came down almost to the river bank.
He passed from the forest and began the ascent of the hill. Here there was no cover but the rough, protruding boulders on the blackened slopes. But he had reached a point of calculated recklessness when he knew he must court greater chances for the success he desired. There had been ten men in the canoe when first he had welcomed the sight of it upon the river. Ten men, all of whom had participated in the wanton destruction of everything in the world that had meant life, and hope, and home to him. Now there were only four.
The canoe was within a mile of its destination, and he had decided before that destination was reached only one single man of its complement must remain alive. His purpose was implacable. Vengeance consumed the man. And it was the vengeance that only the savage heart of a creature of his ancestry could have contemplated.
He passed on up the slope with the speed of some swiftfooted forest creature. And the smoke haze rising from the summit partially obscured the drab of his clothing against the blackened ground. Up towards the belching crown he moved, but ever with a glance flung backward lest the increasing density of the smoke cloud should mar his view of the things below.
At last he came to a halt. The point had been reached when he dared proceed no farther. The haze, in the brilliant air, was sufficient to screen him without obscuring his vision of the river. So he took up a position behind a boulder, and leant upon it with his rifle supported for steadiness on its clean-cut surface. For some moments he watched the fierce efforts of the remainder of the crew of the canoe to make the shelter of the house something less than a mile away to his left.
Yes, there were four of them only. And all four were paddling literally for their lives. He watched them closely, a devilish smile lighting his satisfied eyes. And he saw that the rhythm of their stroke had been lost, and the speed of the vessel was infinitely slow. Oh, yes, he understood. Panic had done its work. The panic inspired by complete impotence. They were there a target for just so long as they were in the open of the river. There was no shelter for them anywhere. The granite of the far wall of the river cut off escape, and the forest on the hither side contained the deadly, unseen danger. So there was nothing left them but to race on, zigzagging a course down the river in the hope of escape from the deadly fire.
He re-adjusted the sights of his rifle and judged his distance. Slowly and very deliberately he pressed the trigger. The shot passed over the canoe. He re-loaded without concern, and his second shot left only three paddles dipping. The man in the bow of the boat squatted drooping and clutching for support.
He waited for the final result of his shot, and it came as the man yielded his hold and dropped helplessly into the bottom of the boat. Again he laid his weapon. Two more shots rang out from the smoke shroud of the burning hill. Then, after a brief interval, two more carried their deadly burden. The man re-loaded again and again till a pile of empty shells lay close beside him. Then, at last, he rose from his crouching position and stretched his cramping limbs. He slung his hot rifle upon his shoulder, and stood gazing down upon the slowly moving boat as it laboured over the water. He was completely satisfied. Now there was left but one man to drive the heavy vessel to the haven which should mean shelter from his murderous sniping.
The man with the yellow eyes drove hard with his paddle and the nose of the vessel thrust deep into the mud of the landing. For a moment he remained kneeling, supported against the strut where he had laboured. He made no attempt to leave his post. Only he gazed along down the river bank at the screen of bush which lined it. There was no emotion visible in his mask-like face. There was nothing in his eyes to tell of the swift, urgent thought behind them.
After awhile his gaze was withdrawn to the grim freight of his vessel. Then he stood up quickly and moved forward. Four bodies were lying huddled in the bottom of the canoe. With three of them he was completely unconcerned. But with the fourth it was different. He stood for a moment gazing down unemotionally at the dead body of the youthful Sate. Then he stooped, and, gathering it in his powerful arms, carried it quickly ashore. He laid it gently down on a vivid bed of Arctic wild flowers and stood over it in silent contemplation.
His pre-occupation was intense. But he gave no sign. Such emotions as were his were his alone. They were stirring in a heart deep hidden. And his tawny eyes masked no less surely now than was always their habit.
A sound disturbed him at last, and he turned like a panther ready for anything it might portend. But the flash of alertness died out of his eyes at the sight of a woman’s small figure as it broke its way through the bush in the direction of the house which was his home.
The pretty face the man was looking into was drawn and haggard. The slanting eyes were full of a terror that even the long awaited return of her man could not banish. The woman had run to him with little, hurried strides and hands outstretched in piteous appeal.
“Hela!” she cried. And into the pronunciation of the man’s name, and in the pitch of her voice she contrived to fling a world of woman’s terrified despair.
For once the man’s eyes revealed something of that which was passing behind them.
“Tell me, Crysa,” he demanded urgently. “Tell me quick.”
The distraught woman stood clinging to the arm which made no effort to yield her support. She broke at once into hysterical speech in a foreign tongue.
“They have killed them all. Even the dogs. There is not one left. All—all are killed. Myso, Oto, Lalman. Oh, they murder them with the knife. I hid in the secret place. It was Oto who gave me warning with his dying words. He was dead—all dead in a moment. I can see the blood on the floor now. Devils came to the house. An army of them. They—Oh!” she cried breaking off the torrent of her disjointed story in a spasm of new horror.
Her gaze had fallen on the still, prone figure at her man’s feet. Her hands dropped from his arm. She moved a step from him, and bending forward, peered down.
“Dead, too,” she said, in a low hushed voice. “Dead!”
Then she recognized the dark features of the boy who was her son. Suddenly a piercing cry broke the silence of the woods about them, and echoed against the far walls that shut in the river.
“Sate!” she cried. “Our Sate!” And in a moment she had flung her frail body upon the still figure stretched upon its bed of wild flowers.
The man looked on. He watched the delicate hands as they beat the ground in his wife’s paroxysm of grief. He listened to her demented shrieks of lamentation. But he gave no sign; he offered no comfort. Maybe he found himself simply helpless. Maybe in his hard, unyielding mood he felt it best that the woman’s storm of grief should spend itself. Perhaps, even, the disaster of his journey home had left him indifferent to everything else. Certainly his cruel eyes were without any softening, without any expression but that which was usual to them.
The woman’s lamentations died down to heart-racked sobs, and the man turned away. He passed slowly down to the boat, so deeply nosed into the mud, and the lessening cries of the distracted mother pursued him. But he no longer gave heed to them.
He laid hold of the canoe and set to hauling it clear of the water. Once, twice, thrice he heaved with all the strength of his powerful body. The boat was half way up the bank. Then, as he lay to the work again, a cry that was something like a snarl broke from him. Some great body had leapt on him from behind. His hold was torn loose from his task, and he was flung bodily, with terrific force, sprawling amidst the radiant flowers that littered the river bank. The dark, avenging figure of the Indian, Usak, stood over him.
For one brief instant eye searched eye. No word passed the lips of either. It was a moment of furious challenge, a moment of murderous purpose. It passed. And its passing came with the lunging of the Indian as he precipitated himself upon his victim.
They lay writhing, and twisting, and struggling on the ground. No vocal sound, no sound but the sound of furious movement came in the struggle. The Indian was uppermost, as he had intended to be from the moment and the method of his attack. He had one object, and one object only.
The Indian’s great size and strength were overwhelming with the other caught at a disadvantage. Then the man with the yellow eyes was fully two decades older. Usak was lithe, active as a wild cat, with all the bulk of a greater forest beast. Then there was his simple, terrible purpose.
It was done, finished in a few awful moments. A sound broke from the man underneath the Indian’s body. It was a half-stifled choking cry. It was inarticulate except that it was a cry of pain and suffering for which there could be no other expression. And instantly all struggling ceased.
The arms of the man underneath fell away. Usak leapt to his feet and his savage eyes glowered down on the writhing body on the ground. For a moment he watched the tortured creature, effortless except for the physical contortions of unspeakable suffering. And presently he heard the thing he had awaited. It was a faint, low moaning forced at last from between the blinded man’s stubbornly pressed lips.
Fierce, harsh words leapt in answer to the sound, and the Indian spoke out of the original savagery that was his.
“So! Euralian Chief!” he cried exultantly. “You not know all this you mak, or you not mak it so. No. I tell you this—I, Usak. You come kill my woman, Pri-loo. You kill my good boss, Marty Le Gros. You come to steal. But you not steal. Only you kill my woman, Pri-loo, an’ my good boss. So I, Usak, come. I kill up all the mans, everything. But not so I kill your woman. Not so I kill you. Oh, no. That for bimeby. Now I tak out your eyes. If I kill up your woman you die. No good. No. So I leave you your woman. She lie there by your son. She look this way now to see the thing I do. Bimeby she come. She forget the son I shoot all up. She remember only her man who will live in darkness. It good. It just how I think. Bimeby she come. She mak you live. She, your woman. She lead you by the hand. She feed you. She mak you see through her eyes. So you know the hell you show to me. Oh, yes. It black hell for you. No light no more. Your folk come. They find you. You not see them. Nothing. Then they go leave you. An’ so you live—in hell. Bimeby I come. Big long time I come. An’ when I come I kill you. I kill you an’ your woman all up dead, same as you kill my woman, Pri-loo. Now I go. I go an’ think, think, how I mak kill you—sometime.”