A WHITEMAN’S WORD
A WHITEMAN’S WORD
A WHITEMAN’S WORD
The grey dawn yielded to the many hues of the sunrise. For the moment a cloudless azure dome smiled down upon a world with a soft crystal-white carpet outspread. For days the temperature had hovered about zero, and ice had formed upon the waterways with that fierce rapidity which the northern man knows so well. Its frigid grip was reaching in every direction seeking to seal the world under iron bonds.
But the Valley of the Fire Hills was dripping and steaming. Everywhere the snow was melting, and the dark waters of the little river flowed smoothly on still free from the smallest trace of ice. The temperature was well above freezing, for the terrestrial furnaces of the blackened hills were banked and glowing.
The valley was dense with a fog of steam. It was a ghostly world without shape or form. A blind world with only the river bank to guide the adventurer through its heart. There was no sound of life for all the coming of the pitiful light of the briefest day. The world was still, remote, bewildering.
Yet life was there; staunch, indomitable life. It was there with purpose, simple, unwavering, and no qualm or doubt marred the clarity of its resolution. A boat, a small whiteman-built canoe, was moving up the eastern bank of the stream, feeling groping, taking every chance so that it made its final destination.
With the first lift of the sun above the horizon a current of air stirred the fog, and a cold breath shot through the tepid air. It came and passed. Then it came again with added force. It was low on the ground and the fog lifted. Swift and keen it pursued its advantage, and the blinding mist thinned, and a dull sheen of the risen sun replaced the cold grey. The wind increased. It bit fiercely as it swept down the heated valley. And in a moment, it seemed, out of the bewildering fog there appeared the graceful outline of the nosing canoe.
Bill Wilder breathed a sigh of relief. At last the scales had fallen from before his eyes, and his way lay open to him. Instantly his paddle dipped, and his boat shot out into midstream. It leapt forward under the mighty thrusts of his arms, and as it raced on a fervent prayer went up that the wind might hold and increase in strength.
The canoe lay moored at the old log landing. There had been no hesitation. No doubt had been entertained for its security. Wilder had left it to such chances as might befall, his only means of return to the outer world, while he made his way over the snow-slush to the shades of the woodlands surrounding the secret habitation that was his goal.
Half way through the woods the thing Wilder looked for came to pass. Eyes and ears were keenly alert. He had realised that his approach would be observed. That seeing eyes, faithful to the service of the woman’s blinded charge, would be unfailing in their watch. The terror he had once witnessed in them had been sufficient to warn him that her life was comparable to that of a vigilant watchdog, everlastingly searching for the approach of the dark, avenging figure that hypnotized her with the horror of its return.
The diminutive figure of the Japanese woman came hurriedly to meet him from her hiding somewhere screened amidst the dull green foliage of these northern woods. She stood before him, her slanting black eves widely gazing, and her thin, lined face eagerly demanding in its expression of scarcely suppressed agitation.
Crysa began at once. She had no fear of this white-man. But she realised that his coming had to do with her safety and the safety of her charge. His promise had been her comfort, her most treasured memory.
“You give him the paper?” she said, as though no space of time had elapsed since their last meeting, and the memory of every word then spoken was as fresh in her mind as though their meeting had occurred only the day before. “You give him this thing? And now you come that I may know it is so? And Usak is satisfied? Oh, yes. You come to say that thing? There is no more fear? None? I sleep, I eat, I know peace. Usak will not come?”
Wilder gripped himself before this poor creature’s heart-breaking appeal. He knew he must dash her last hope, and hurl her again to that despair which had beset her so long. It was useless to attempt to soften the facts. His resolve was clear in his mind. He shook his head.
“Nothing will satisfy him,” he said sombrely, “but the life of your man. He’s on his way now, I guess. But I got away first. I came right along up to get you folks away to safety. I don’t reckon to know how you’re fixed for a quick get-away. But you both got to make it right now, or Usak’ll be along and kill you both up. Maybe I can get you right out of the country back to your own folk. That’s how I figger. But if I’m to do that you need to beat it down the river with me—now. I came because of my promise. See? I’m here with a white-man’s word to do the best I know. You’ve got to take me to Ukisama, and both of you need to make up your minds right away. Money don’t need to worry you. Only outfit for the journey along down to Placer. Well?”
While he was speaking the woman’s face was a study in emotions. With his first words the urgent hope fell from her in one tragic flash. There were no tears. But panic closed down upon her in a staggering contrast to her hope of the moment before. The dreadful fear she was enduring left her lips moving. She followed the man’s words, as though she was repeating them the more surely to impress them upon her staggered faculties. But a measure of comfort seemed to come to her as he propounded his purpose for their safety. And a desperate sort of calm helped her as he made his final demand.
“You come with me,” she cried at once. “I take you to Hela. You say all this thing. I, too, say much. Maybe he go. I not know. Come.”
And she turned, and led the way without waiting for any reply.
Wilder experienced a curious sensation of repugnance as he entered the presence of the blinded man. He was not usually troubled by such sensitiveness. But somehow he now realised more surely than ever contact with something inexpressively evil. The yellow face of the man was almost grey. But whether it was the result of any emotion of fear that had produced the noisome hue he could not tell. The man’s eyeless sockets seemed even more repulsive than when first he had looked upon them. Then there were his restlessly moving hands, which, in his blind helplessness, never for a moment seemed to remain quite still.
They were in the central hall of the house, that Eastern apartment so full of vivid memories for the whiteman. It was unchanged from that which he knew of it, even to the dust, and the sense of neglect and disuse that pervaded it. Wilder remembered acutely. His eyes passed over every familiar detail of the place and brought back to him a picture of the happenings of that night, when, unbidden, unwelcome, he had been a guest in the house.
The blinded man confronted him on his seat upon the cushioned divan beside the carved screen. And he spoke at once as Bill entered and moved over to the chair which was set before the bureau. Crysa went at once to her husband and took her place on the seat beside him.
“You come again?” he said in his low, harsh tones.
And the challenge warned Wilder of the amazing watchfulness which fear had inspired in these two. Crysa had said no word as she entered, yet this sightless man knew him and understood.
“Sure.”
Wilder spoke quietly.
“I’m here to help you,” he went on. “If you reckon to save the life remaining to you you’ll need to take my talk at its face value and make a quick get-away right off. I’ve just handed your wife, as quick as I could, the trouble beating up the river for you. Usak’s behind me with his gun. He’s crazy for your blood. An’ I’m crazy he shan’t get you. I took an almighty chance pushing up from the Caribou here because I handed your wife a promise I’d do the best I knew to save the murder that crazy Indian looks for. With winter closing right down no one can figger the chances of getting through back. Still, I handed my word, and it goes with me. The thing I can do is to get you down to Caribou if the winter don’t queer us. I can get you right on to your own country, which, seeing you are who and what you are, is the only thing. Maybe I’ll be going beyond the right I have in doing this, but I’ll do it because you’re blind and helpless, and because your wife seems to have suffered enough for being your wife. There’s going to be no argument as far as I’m concerned. That I’m a police officer cuts no ice. In this thing I’m just a plain whiteman who’s given his word, and it goes. Now, here’s the proposition so far as I’m concerned. I’m going right back to the landing, and I’ll wait around there till, the daylight goes. If you come along in that time with the truck you need for the journey—you needn’t worry with the food, I’ve got all we need—you have my promise I’ll get you safe through, if its humanly possible, to your own country. If I fail my life will pay just as surely as yours. You got my promise, a whiteman’s promise, and you’ve got to be satisfied with it if you fancy making a get-away. The moment night closes in I pull out, whether you come with with me or not. That’s all.”
The repulsion inspired by the blind man’s presence had a deeper effect on Wilder than he knew. He had planned his method, but his planning had not provided for the cold fashion in which he delivered his proposition. His tone was even more frigid than he realised. He rose from his seat to depart. And instantly the Count’s harsh voice stayed him.
“And how do I know Usak is on the river? How I know this is not a police trap?”
Wilder searched the ghastly features. A surge of anger leapt, and his cheeks flushed till his broad brow was suffused to the edge of his thick fur cap.
“It don’t matter a thing to me what you know, or what you don’t know,” he said sharply. “Usak’s on the river, making right here with his gun. Ther’s a getaway there at the landing till the daylight goes. You can take it or not. It’s right up to you. It’s there because murder’s going to happen around, and it’s my notion to prevent it. You’re blind, and your woman helpless. It don’t seem to me you matter a hoot in hell. But I’m glad to help a woman—any woman. You’ll think it over. An’ don’t forget there isn’t more than two hours before the daylight goes. That’s all I’ve to say.”
He turned and passed out the way he had come, and as he went he avoided the dark stains on the floor, those stains so grimly significant, which even he could not bring himself to pass over.
Half an hour before the last of the daylight a canoe crept down to the landing.
Wilder was ready to cast off. He had spent the interim in preparing room in his vessel for the added burden of his passengers. He knew they would come.
There had been no doubt in his mind whatsoever. And curiously enough, he was the more sure since the man was blind. In his philosophy the more surely the man was afflicted the more surely he would cling to life, and dread the final slaughtering of his body by an unseen enemy. Then in addition there was the urgent appealing of the little woman, who was surely something more than a ministering angel to this helpless demon.
Oh, yes, he had known they would come, but he had not suspected the manner of their coming. They came in their own canoe, the blind man paddling in the bow, and the woman, infinite in her despairing devotion, serving her man to the last at the steering paddle.
It was a display of devotion that thrilled the whiteman for all the worthlessness of the object of it. And he accepted the position readily. It might add to his care, but it would lessen his labours. Their escape from the avenging Usak was all he desired. But he was by no means blinded to the reason that they came in their own boat. It was the man’s distrust. He had no desire to yield himself a possible prisoner in the whiteman’s craft.
Wilder nodded approval as they drew alongside, and he realised the considerable outfit, including food, that had been provided.
“You prefer it that way,” he said quietly. “That’s all right. Keep right on my tail,” he went on, reaching up and casting his mooring adrift. “It’s mighty dark along the river, an’ maybe we’ll be thankful it is that way. If it beats you you can make fast to me. If you’ve sense you’ll act that way. I got two eyes an’ I know all ther’ is to this darn trail.”
He thrust out into the stream, and the second vessel followed him like a ghostly shadow in the twilight.
A man sat gazing out from his rocky shelter. His dark eyes were brooding as he contemplated the falling snow. Below him, rendered invisible by the storm, lay the still bosom of the mountain lake with shore ice supporting its white burden. The bulk of the water still resisted the grip of winter, but with every passing day, every hour, the spread of shore ice was encroaching.
The grey curtain of falling snow was impenetrable even to the accustomed eyes of Usak. The world about him was silent, and windless, and alive with that desolate threat which drives man to despair. He had reached the mouth of the Valley of the Fire Hills, and, blinded by the sudden snow-storm, had sought what shelter he could find.
His shelter was half cavern and half overhung in the towering headland at the mouth of the valley. Yet it served. His kyak was hauled from the icy water and lay on the foreshore. And the man sat over a smoulder of fire made of the driftwood he had collected on his way, and the profusion of lichen he had gathered from the snow-free shelter in which he sat.
Usak crouched huddled and smoking, over the inadequate fire. Its warmth was negligible, but it afforded that without which no human being in such desolation could endure, a mental comfort and companionship. He was content to wait. For all the winter was advancing apace, for all he knew that soon, desperately soon, the great lake, out upon which he was gazing, would be one broad sheet of ice many feet in thickness, and impossible for the light craft which was his vehicle, he was content enough. The Valley of the Fire Hills would remain unfrozen, and the great river below him would remain open long enough for his navigation. For the rest there was always portage. Oh, yes. Time was with him. The real freeze-up was not yet. The snow would cease later, and meanwhile he could contemplate the thing he had looked forward to for so many years.
So there was no impatience that the world was blinded by snowflakes half the size of his brown palm. With the passing of the silent storm, so still, so windless, doubtless the cold would increase, but also, doubtless, the sky could clear, and the Arctic twilight would again light the world with its ghostly rays.
He thrust out a moccasined foot and kicked the embers of his fire together. He removed the pipe from his strong jaws, and held its stem to the warmth. The saliva in it had frozen, and it had gone out.
Presently he reached down and picked up a live coal. He tossed it into the pipe bowl and sucked heavily at the stem, belching clouds of reeking smoke. His enjoyment was profound.
After awhile the pipe was neglected. His enjoyment of it was merged into something more absorbing. His savage mind was lost in the thing that had brought him to the heart of the great Alaskan hills, and he was gazing on a vision of savage delight. As his hands gripped each other about his knees there was movement in them, nervous, twitching movement. For, in fancy, they were slowly crushing out the life he was determined should know the hideous meaning of prolonged death agony.
His delight was in his darkly brooding eyes as they looked into the flicker of the fire. His mind was teeming with the thing he would say while that life was conscious and could know the terror and agony of those last moments. Oh, yes. It was worth all the waiting and he was glad, glad that now, at last, the moment of his final vengeance was approaching. Sheer insanity was driving, but it was that calm insanity where the border line is passed coldly and calmly with hate the dominating influence. Suddenly he started and leant forward.
His hands parted from about his knees, and, in a moment, he was on his feet crouching and gazing out into the impenetrable snowfall. He moved aside from his fire and crept forward. Then he stood up tall and straight, and his head was turned with an ear to the outer world.
A sound had reached ears trained to the pitch of any forest creature. It had been faint, so faint, yet to Usak it was quite unmistakable. It had come from out there on the water beyond the ground ice, and he knew that some living thing was passing, hidden by the grey of the snowfall.
He stood for a long time listening, his dark eyes no less alert than his ears. Then with something like reluctance he came back to the fire and spread his hands out over it. After awhile he returned to his seat. There was no doubt in his mind. The sound he had heard was the ruffling of the water stirred by the dip of a paddle.
But his shoulders moved in a shrug, and he dismissed the matter. Why not? There were folk in the Valley of the Fire Hills, other folk than those—Yes, far up, there were many of the folk he hated but did not fear—the Euralians.
Usak was standing on the landing almost lost in the billows of smoke surging down upon him. They belched out of the heart of the wood which concealed the clearing, wherein had stood the secret habitation of the man whom he had designed should know his final vengeance.
The whole of the dripping valley seemed to be afire. Behind him the roar and crackle of the burning forest grew louder, and the suffocating smoke grew denser and denser while the heat was blistering.
He stepped quickly into his waiting kyak and pushed out into the stream, vanishing in the twilight of the night. He paddled rapidly till he had cleared the woodland belt and approached the unlovely barrens of the Fire Hills. Then he sought the shelter of the bank and shipped his paddle.
He knelt up in the little vessel gazing back at the ruthless work of his hands. It was there plain enough for him to see. The billows of drifting smoke were darkly outlined against the moonlit, star-decked heavens. And farther inland was the glowing heart of the fire, with leaping splashes of flame lightening up the world around it, hungrily devouring the splendid dwelling that had once been the home of his most hated enemy.
But there was none of the joy in his mood that might have been looked for. No. A light of fury was burning in his merciless eyes. He had been thwarted in his long contemplated vengeance, and he had been driven to the impotent devastation which his savage heart had prompted. He had reached the place only to find it utterly deserted. The house he found devoid of all life, and his search had only yielded him further confirmation that his intended victims had escaped him. So, in his insane savagery, he had done the thing that alone would satisfy. He had fired the house, and seen to it that even the woods about it should not escape destruction.
He remained for awhile contemplating the mischief of his handiwork and drawing such comfort from it as his mood would allow. Then, at last, feasted, satiated, he dipped his paddle again into the sluggish waters.
He knew. He understood. The chance had been his far back there at the mouth of the creek. He had heard the sound of a paddle, and should have guessed. But his wits had failed him, and the snow had blinded him. But even now he did not wholly despair. There was the winter. The man was blind. And the woman—Psha! He drove his paddle with all the fury of his desire.