"What's that?" he cried aloud. He saw a dark figure against the lucid night beyond the door.
"What's that?" he cried again. His voice shook.
"It's Mary," said the ghost he saw and feared.
"Oh, you——" he cried. She heard him shake. "Have you come back?"
She fell upon her knees by the bed.
"Yes, Ned."
He reached out a hand to her. It was cold as ice: for the blood had gone to his heart and brain.
"You've come back—to me?"
He knew it was a miracle, and, brutish and besotted as he was, he felt the awful benediction of her presence.
"To me!"
To him, to a man who had cursed her life at its springs, who had given her no joy, who had cut her to pieces by their bed and warm hearth! She had come back.
"If you want me," she murmured.
He shook and trembled. If he wanted her! He wanted nothing but her: she was the world to him.
"If I want you!"
He clutched her hands and kissed them. She felt the hot tears run on them. He wept for her, the poor man wept. She dragged herself close to the bed and tried to speak, tried to tell him that she was so altered. She spoke as if he had nothing to do with it: as if she had been smitten by some strange accident, by some disease, by some malignant and most unhappy fate. He heard her whisper.
"I'm, I'm not pretty now," she sobbed dryly. "Ned, I'm not toketie any more!"
For once, perhaps, he suffered more than she did: for that time he exceeded her grief, because this was his deed. He groaned.
"But if you want me!"
"I want you, Mary," he screamed suddenly, "no one else, dear Mary: oh, what a wretch I am!"
The best of him, long hidden, long concealed, in a drought of tears, came up at last. He hid his head in the pillow and cried like a child. She sat upon the bed in an urgent desire of maternal help and held his head between her hands.
"Poor Ned!"
She took him at last in her arms and murmured to him gently.
"Oh, oh, my man, my Ned!"
He felt the linen on her face and shivered, but spoke no more. She lay down by him and, overcome by her strange pure passion and the fatigue of the miles she had travelled to come to him, she at last fell asleep.
Then the slow dawn grew up over the clouds, and came in colour across the sunburnt hills and entered their home. Ned sat up in bed beside her and saw her dear face covered by its shroud.
"Help me, oh, God!" said the man.
And perhaps help might come, not from any God, but from the deep heart that prayed to the spirit of man which hides in all hearts and only answers to prayer, if it answers at all to any pleading.
Though the railroad, the mighty railroad, the one and only Railroad of the Big Admiring World, was the chief topic of talk from Montreal to the Pacific, and not least so in little Kamloops by her blue river and lake, yet there was time for talk of other things even there. The men cackled and chattered in saloons and out of them, as is the fashion in sparsely inhabited countries as well as in suburbs, of all the windy ways of men. Like dust was the talk lifted up, like dust it fell and rose again. And the boys often talked of Ned, who, it seemed, had struck a new streak of virtue and avoidance of liquor.
"'Twas nip and tuck with him and the law," said one, "and he's still scared."
"True 'nough, Indian Mary nigh payssed in her checks. One more cut and she'd ha' bin mimaloose. They say so at the hawspital," said another.
"I wonder if he's done with Pitt River Pete, yet," wondered a third. "D'ye think he druv them steers into the cañon?"
"Who else? No, Ned Quin ain't through with Pete. Now I like Pete, he's a first-class Siwash, not bad by no means. And I never cottoned to Ned. He's got religion now, eh? Oh, shucks!"
So the fates and men disposed of things even at the time that theKamloopssternwheeler came sweeping west through the quiet waters of the lakes and the quick stream of the connecting river, bearing Pete and his strange fortunes.
He fell instantly among such thieves of reputation, such usual slanderers of hope in sorrowful men, and heard the worst there was to hear, made better by no kindly word. Perhaps they knew well in their hearts that reformation was a vain thing: they scorned Ned's efforts to be better, and made the worst, as the world is apt to do, of all he had done. They drew frenzying pictures of Mary with the half-hid face: they told Pete of her sad aspect, and related, in gross passages of bloody words, exaggerations constructed out of stories from the hospital of mercy.
As if their incitements were insufficient, the coast talk of George and Jenny came up stream to him.
"Him and her's havin' a hell of a good time, Pete. He took your pretty klootchman over to Victoria as bold as brass, as if he was Lord High Muckamuck and she my Lady Dandy oh! Druv her araound in carriages, little Jenny as we knowed in Mis' Alexander's kitchen: she ez praoud ez any white woman, dressed to kill, and no fatal error. He's giv' her silks and satins like as if she wuz his wife, and she gigglin' happy. I say it's a dern shame for a man to kapsualla a chap's klootchman. Bymby he'll throw her over, chuck her out. And they say she's got a kid now, and it ain't yours, Pete."
There was love of offspring deep in Pete's heart, hidden from himself till this moment. He ran out of the shanty into the street.
"There ain't no need to fill the boy up the way you're doin'," said one of the loafers uneasily. "If ain't no good to make him so ez he'll murder them Quins."
The others laughed.
"None of us is stuck on the Quins," they declared. "And if Pete is burro enough to bray too loud and kick up his heels, forgettin' he's only a Siwash, they'll fill him up with lead. And even in this yer British Columbia, which is a dern sight too law-abidin' for a man, we reckon that self-defence is a good defence sometimes. Here's the worst of luck to Judge Begbie, anyhaow."
Next morning Pete rode on a hired horse towards the Nikola, being full of liquor ere he set out with a bottle in his pocket. He had tried to buy a gun, a six-shooter, but there are few in most British Columbia towns, and those who wore them by habit, in spite of the law, were not sellers. When a man has carried a "gun" for years he feels cold and helpless without it. That's one of the facts that are facts, tilikum.
But Pete didn't care. There were such things as shovels, said Pete furiously.
It was a heavenly bright morning, and the far distance of the warm hills, rising in terraces above the Lake, shone clear and warm. Such is the summer there, so sweet, so tender, so clear, and every day is a bride of kindly earth.
Pete rode hard and saw nothing but the wan aspect of his sister, and the giggling jeer of Jenny, clad in scarlet and bright shame.
The good brown earth with the lordly bull-pines scattered on rising hills was very fair to look upon. On the higher levels of the terraces were pools of shining lakes: some shone with shores of alkali and some were pure sweet water.
Pete, riding a doomed man however he wrought, drank no pure water with his heart. He sucked bitter water from the bitterest lakes, poor fool, going to do his duty, as his Indian blood said, and as much white blood would have said as well.
The sun, unclouded as it was, shone without the fierceness of the later summer. The grass, though it was browned, had still sap within it.
Pete rode half-drunken, with fire within him.
And then at last he topped the rise that hid Ned's shack. He saw a woman by the shack, and with his eyes discerned even from afar that she wore white linen on her head. But he could not hear her sing. And yet poor Mary sang: it seemed that out of her sorrow there had grown so great a joy that song would come from her wounded healing heart.
Pete rode down the trail. So in fine weather among the hills a storm may break. So may a cyclone, a tornado, approach a city. So may fire burst out at quiet, sleepy midnight. In one moment there was horror in the happy and repentant and praying home where Ned and Mary had come together once again.
"Oh, Mary," said Pete. He came riding fast. She looked up, did not know him, and looked again, and knew him. She called to Ned, who came out at the sound of galloping.
"It's Pete," she cried, but Ned stood there stupidly. In his great repentance and his new found peace he could not believe in bitter enmity, in war or in revenge.
There is a power of strange madness in the Indian blood, diluted though it be. Under the maddening influence of liquor the nature of the Indian flowers in dreadful passions, forgetful of new circumstances, oblivious of punishment and of law. None knew this better than Ned Quin, and yet he stood there foolishly, with a doubtful smile upon his face, a smile almost of greeting. He was even ready to forgive Pete for what he had done. He felt his heart was changed, and without a touch of religion or creed this was a natural and sweet conversion. But Mary tugged at his arm, for she knew.
The whirlwind came down on them: Pete rode at him and, ere he awakened and turned, rode him down. Ned fell and was struck by the horse, reluctant to ride over him, and Pete leapt from the saddle. He saw Mary with her hands up, but chiefly saw the white shroud on her face. He forgot her, forgot his horse, and only remembered that one of the brothers he hated lay sprawling before him, half stunned, raised on one hand. With a club, a branch of knotted fir, that he seized on, he went for the man and battered him. Mary flew at him, and he sent her headlong with a backward motion of his left arm. She reeled and fell and got upon her knees, screaming with bitter rage at her brother. But she was weak, and though she got to her feet again, she fell once more. She saw Ned bleeding, saw him fall supine, saw his empty hands open and shut: she heard the blows.
"Oh, God," she cried. Within the shack there was a shot-gun. It stood in the corner, there were cartridges handy. She crawled for the house, and got on her feet again and staggered till she reached it. She found the gun and the cartridges, threw the breech open, rammed one in and closed it. The possession of the weapon gave her strength. She ran out, and Pete saw her coming, saw the gun go to her shoulder. With the club in his hand he ran at her as quick as he had been in the Mill. And as he nearly closed with her she fired. He felt the very heat of the discharge, was blinded by it and by the grains of powder, and fell unhurt, save for a burnt and bloody ear. Mary struck him with the butt and knocked him senseless: he lay before her like a log. She dropped the gun and ran to Ned and fell upon her knees. She lifted his battered head and prayed for his life, and even as she prayed she believed that he was killed. There was no motion in him; her trembling hand could feel no heart-beat. She heard her brother groan.
"He's killed him," she screamed, "he's killed him!"
She laid her man down with his head upon a sack that lay near by. She turned to Pete with blazing eyes and saw the man she believed she had slain sitting up and staring about him foolishly. From one car blood ran: his white face was powder-scorched.
"You devil," said his sister, "you've killed my man, the man I loved; oh, you wicked beast, you cruel wretch, you pig——"
She screamed horrible abuse at her brother, dreadful abuse and foolish.
"They'll hang you, hang you, hang you!"
She yelled this at him as she stood before him like a fury. The words went by him like a breeze: they entered his ears but not his brain: he was still stupefied, half unconscious. He turned away and was violently sick. She pitied him not and was remorseless. She took him by the shoulder and shook him. He turned a foolish and wondering face at her, with some dawn, a very dim dawn, of consciousness in him.
"I'll get you hanged," she said. He heard the word "hanged" and again "hanged" and wondered sickly what it meant. She ran from him and he watched her. She went to the horse which stood some twenty yards away. The animal started and walked away and she stopped and spoke soothingly to it, using low words and bidding it be gentle. She went round in a circle and got upon the other side of it, and at last the horse stood still and let her grasp the bridle. Pete wondered what horse it was and why she was catching it. She brought it to the shack and slipped the bridle reins over a post.
He saw her use incredible strength and drag Ned Quin into the house. She cried aloud and sobbed most dreadfully. She put her man in the shadow, laid his head upon a pillow and covered his wounded face with white, even as her own was covered. She shut the door and came out. Pete still sat upon the ground with both hands outspread behind him. She said that he would be hanged, again she said it. He saw her get upon his horse and ride away towards the road. Where was she going? Who was it that was going? What was this woman going for?
These were horrible problems, but he knew, as a man knows things in a nightmare, when he cannot move, that their solution concerned him. They concerned him seriously. He struggled to solve them. It seemed that he spent years, aye, centuries, in the bitter attempt and still he saw the woman astraddle on a horse go up the rise to the north. This was a woman, oh, God, what woman?—a woman with a white cloth on her face, a ridiculous fierce figure who had said "hanged!" What was "hanged"? What did it mean? And why did she say it to him? What was he for that matter, and who was he? He struggled hard to discover that. So far as he could see, he was an unnamed, peculiarly solitary speck of aching, struggling matter in a world of pain. So they say the disembodied may feel. His senses were numbed: they sent foolish messages to him, messages that warned him and alarmed him without being intelligible. He knew that he was in some great danger. He saw a house, but did not know it; a gun, but could not say what it was and why it lay there in the pounded, trodden dust. Something wet dripped from his head: he put his hand up and saw blood upon it. Whoever he was, he was hurt in some way. He sighed and still saw the woman. Now she disappeared. It mattered very much. Why was she leaving him? He spoke suddenly.
"What's my name?" said Pete.
If he could only get that. On that point hung everything: he felt sure of that. Now he knew he was a man; he had got so far. But what manner of man he could not tell. How silly everything was! He groaned and grinned. Then he started.
"My name's Pete," he said suddenly. "It's Pete!"
This was the clue: this the end of the tangled cord of things. It was, he felt, utterly idiotic and alarming to know so much and no more. It was infinitely annoying. He said "I'm Pete, am I Pete, I'm Pete, eh!" and then sat staring. He wanted some kind of help, but what help he did not know. The task of discovering what all things were from what seemed the primal fact of all, that he was called Pete, appeared hugely difficult. He cried about it at last. And then some chickens came round the corner of the shack, and pecked in the dust. A big rooster came after them and stood upon a log, and whooped a loud cock-a-doodle-doo! It was a natural sound. Pete knew it and stared with sudden intelligence at the brilliant bird upon the log. Of a sudden the whole veil over all things was lifted. He knew who he was and why he was there and what he had done! Above all he knew what the word "hanged" meant. It was his sister who had said it. He got upon his knees and staggered till he could hold on to the house. It was a help to hold on to something while he thought.
"Hanged," said Pete. He had killed a man. Where was he? It was Ned Quin. But if he had killed him how had he got away?
"I won't be hanged," said Pete. "I won't. She's gone to tell 'em I've made Ned mimaloose, killed him. I'll stop her!"
That was a very clear idea, and the notion satisfied him for a while as he swayed to and fro. But how? The woman with the white linen had taken his horse. It was again a hard problem, but since he knew who he was, things were very much easier, though they were still a struggle. He didn't know how he got there, but presently he found himself in the stable, leading out Ned Quin's horse, a lean and old, but still sound, sorrel. It was wonderful to find that he had a horse already saddled and bridled. He didn't know that he had put the saddle on and cinched up the girths himself.
"Now I'm all right. That kloshe," said Pete. He almost forgot in his satisfaction what he wanted the horse for. But presently he remembered that he had to stop that woman (his sister, was she?) from going somewhere. Was there such a place as Kamloops? Very likely there was. Then he saw the gun.
"She shot at me," he said with feeble indignation, "I'm bleeding."
He wept again.
And suddenly he saw all things as clear as day. He had killed Ned: she had shot him and then she had said she would go into Kamloops and denounce him. There wasn't any time to lose. He "hung up" the horse and picked the gun from the ground. He went to the house and opened the door. It was very dark inside and the outside sun was now burning bright. He stumbled across something and only saved himself from falling with great difficulty. What had he stumbled over? He peered on the ground and as the pupils of his eyes dilated he saw a body stretched out with a white cloth over the face. He trembled.
"It's—it's Ned," he said, shaking. "They'll hang me!"
He wanted to lift the white cloth but dared not. He went round the body to the shelf where he knew the cartridges were kept. He put a handful in his pocket and then went out with his eyes straight before him. But he still saw the white cloth. When he was outside he loaded the gun in both barrels and clambered on the old sorrel with great difficulty. As he rode he swayed to and fro in the saddle.
But he had to catch Mary, had to stop her. That notion was all the thought in him. It helped to keep him from falling off. Yet he rode like a drunken man, and the landscape reeled and shifted and danced. The big bull-pines swayed as if there were a great wind and the road was sometimes a double track. Yet far ahead of him he saw a figure on a horse. It must be Mary. He clutched the gun and the horn of the saddle and spurred the old sorrel with a solitary Mexican spur which he had borrowed in the town. And as he rode the world began to settle down before him at last. Though his head was splitting he rode without his hat. It lay in red dust by Ned's house.
At first he went at a walk, but presently he urged the sorrel to a reluctant lope. The figure before him loped too. He saw he made little headway. He put the sorrel into a gallop and knew that he gained on her who now hated him. It was unjust of her: what he had done was for her, not for himself. Ned had hurt her horribly. Pete couldn't understand her. She appeared to love the man who had cut her down. It was foolish, strange.
And she meant to have him "hanged." That was the last spur to him: his vision cleared and became normal. The shifting planes of the terraced land in front of him sat down at last. He drove the spur into the sorrel brutally and set him at a furious gallop. He knew the horse that Mary rode was tired: it was not much of a cayuse at any time. He saw her plainly now.
And then she looked round and saw a horseman coming furiously. What horseman it was she knew not. Yet it might be Pete, though he was disabled. She made her horse gallop: she flogged him with a heavy quirt that hung to Pete's saddle.
But the man behind her gained. She saw him coming in front of a cloud of white dust. She looked back through dust. But perhaps it wasn't Pete.
Then she knew the action of the old sorrel, and panic got hold of her. It was Pete. Yes, that was certain. She screamed to her horse, and struck him hard. Now she heard above the sound of his hoofs upon the road the following echo-like thud of the sorrel as he crept up to her. She topped a little rise and raced down hill recklessly. Behind her now there was a moment's cessation of the following sound. Then she heard it again and looking back saw Pete come down the hill. He was within a quarter of a mile of her and she was not yet half-way to Kamloops!
She was his sister and an Indian. She was usually merciful to animals in spite of that: merciful and kind. But now she feared for herself, and the deep nature within her flowered as it had done when she sought Pete's life. She flogged the horse till she was weary and then pulled out a little knife she carried and stabbed it through the hide just behind the saddle. It was a bitter and cruel spurring. Under the dreadful stimulus her tired horse responded and galloped furiously. But the old horse behind her was the better animal: he answered that gallop of his own accord and was emulous, eager.
She heard Pete's voice, she turned and saw him creeping up to her: she saw he had the gun. She looked at him over her shoulder as they galloped: his face was dreadful to see: part of his ear was hanging loose: the blood was on his neck and shoulder. She saw him open his mouth: he was speaking: telling her to stop!
But he had killed her man! She believed it! She would not stop.
Now he crept further up to her, and her old horse was urged on by the following thunder of near hoofs. She turned from her pursuer: he saw nothing of her face but the white cloth. She heard him cursing awfully. He called her foul names: he screamed insults. Though she kept her eyes upon the road she saw dimly that he was ranging up alongside her.
"Stop," cried Pete. She answered on her horse with the quirt: she had dropped her knife a mile back. Behind the saddle there were blood marks. She was in a whirlwind: the sun burnt: the dust rose: she saw cattle run across the road. Beyond that slope Kamloops lay: through a fold of one of the terraces she saw a patch of the lake away to the east: yonder was the crystalline and azure Thompson. In front, the dark stained hill beyond the river and beyond Kamloops rose more clearly. Then she heard nothing of what he said: she saw his furious face, saw the blood again, the flapping cartilage of his ear, and then she saw him lift the gun. This then meant death! But when the explosion burst upon her like a blow, she felt the horse throw up his head, and knew that they were both falling. She saw, even as she fell, the one clear picture: the horse with his bleeding neck outstretched and his legs failing: the white road: the radiant prairie: the tall brown trees: the splendid river. Then the earth rose at her: she pitched headlong, and rolled over motionless.
On the road the wounded horse lay, lifting up his head as one aghast at death. He made no sound: the blood poured from the burst arteries and his head sank back.
Pete never looked behind him as he threw the gun away and went at a merciless gallop for the last level mile before the uplands opened on the valley of the Lake. He cursed his sister and Ned Quin and himself. How could he get away?
Before he got to the pitch of the road he turned in his saddle and looked back. He saw the dark patch that the dead horse made. He saw the cattle coming to find out what the unusual spectacle meant, for their curiosity was insatiable. Some already stood, staring and tossing their heads, in a half-circle round Mary and the horse.
Soon all the world would be in a circle round the victims! Where was he to go and how was he to act? He pulled up suddenly and put his hand to his aching head. If he went into Kamloops as he was, with a horse all flaked with foam, and with his own ear bleeding, all the little world of the town would be agog to know what had happened.
And yet if he hid till dark, some would find Mary, perhaps dead, upon the open road. Someone might go to the shack and discover Ned. It was hard to know how to act. He remembered for the first time that he had a bottle in his pocket. He asked advice of that: it sent him flying down the road to Kamloops. It was best to risk things, best not to wait, not to dodge or to hide. His only chance was to get down to the coast and out of the country. To get north to the Columbia and then to Sand Point through Kootenay, practically the only alternative route out, was impossibly dangerous. And as he rode he saw a steamboat coming down the river from the Lakes. If he rode hard he might catch it and get away before a word was said. As he rode he bound up his head and ear with a big coloured handkerchief. It was red enough to hide the oozing blood.
It was an hour or more after noon when he rode into Kamloops. He came in at a lope and took on a careless air, calling "Klahowya" to some of his tilikums as they passed him. He even saluted a mounted policeman and went by him singing till he came to Alexander's, where he had got his horse from. He had to explain how he came back on Ned Quin's instead of the one he hired. But the stableman, who knew he had hired out a wretched crock, was easy enough to satisfy.
"That damned kieutan fell with me," said Pete, swaggering, "fell at an easy lope and burst my ear. I left him at Ned Quin's, sonny, and Ned'll bring him in to-molla and fetch out this old sorrel. Here's four bits for you."
He had paid the hire before he took out the horse that now lay dead upon the road. He heard the steamer's whistle at the nigh wharf and ran to catch her. In ten minutes he was on his way down stream to the Ferry.
He knew it would be, or so easily might be, "a close call" for him. And yet there was nothing else to do but to risk it. As the cool air of the river struck him he shivered. For he thought he had killed Ned Quin and, now that the heat went out of his blood, chilling the fever of revenge in him, he began to be very much afraid.
But he took a drink.
Far back upon the road the cattle ringed round Mary's body and the body of the horse, and a million flies blackened the pool of blood and drank against the dust that soaked it up. The cattle to leeward, smelling the horror of a spilt life, tossed their heads uneasily and challenged strange death, that horror of which their instincts spoke to them. Some to windward came closer and blew at the flies. They rose in black swarms and settled again. From a distance other cattle marched to the wavering ring about this wonder. Some came running. One of the inside steers touched Mary's body with his horn. She moaned and lifted her hand. The steer ran backwards, snorting, backing on others, who horned each other angrily. Then the steers crept up again to Mary and blew at the dust in which she lay.
But this time she rose to a sitting position, and the ring of cattle with their lowered heads retreated from her.
She wondered where she was, and how she came to be there. Then she saw the dead horse, and the gun that a cow smelt uneasily. She remembered that Pete had killed Ned, and that he had perhaps tried to kill her. She scrambled to her feet and the cattle jostled each other to get away from her. She staggered as she stood: for she had no strength, and all desire of life had gone out of her. And with that there came a sickness of the notion of revenge: it would only be trying to revenge herself on the inexorable destiny which was hers. Pete had killed her man and had gone. She would go back to her dead.
Overhead the sun burnt as she staggered on the road, the long, endless, wearying road, so like to life. She went at a foot pace, and the miles were weary endless spaces without hope. For her man was dead, and Pete was a cruel madman, and there was nothing left for her. Yet still she walked, like some painful hurt creature returning to its lair. She ached in every limb: her head seemed splitting: the physical torture of her being dulled her mind. And as it seemed to her only the sun of all things moved swiftly. It was drawing on towards evening when she came to her house and stood outside the door. Her knees trembled: she clutched at the latch and door-post to prevent herself falling.
Inside was her man dead: her man who had been so good and so cruel. She began to weep and opened the door, letting the westering sunlight in. The next moment she screamed dreadfully, for the place where she had left him was vacant!
"Oh, Ned, Ned!" she cried in a most lamentable voice. And yet within her murdered heart there sprang a faint poor flower of hope even as she cried. If he had been moved was it not that someone had come and taken him away? Then—then, oh, God, perhaps he was not dead! Her brain turned: she reeled again and clutched at the table and held to it.
"My God, listen to me, be merciful, where is my man, the man I love?"
She wrestled with the dark gods of fate whose blinded eyes knew not, nor cared, whom they trod down upon the dusty roads of earth.
And then she heard a rustle in the room, as of something stirring! She prayed that this was true: that she did not hear amiss and that when her eyes opened she would see Ned once more.
She heard a groan and ran to it blindly and found her man there, on the bed, their bed, still alive, though half blinded, blood-covered and hardly conscious!
"Ned, Ned!"
In her mad desire for revenge she had left him, believing him dead. She fell beside him with a scream that was no more than a sigh, and when she became conscious again after that awful shock of joy, she found his wounded hands seeking hers. She heard his hurt mouth whisper for water. For the little good that came with all the evil she thanked her God very humbly and brought the man water. He spoke to her and did not know that she had been away from him. He knew not how he had reached the bed, or come back to life and to her. He was very weak and gentle.
"My dear," he said feebly. She washed his wounds and bound them up. She cried softly over his pain, which was so much less than her own.
"I've been a brute to you," he mumbled. "But God help me I'll be that no more."
"You've always loved me," she said. It was true in spite of everything.
"Yes," said old Ned. Then he fell asleep and woke in an hour and wandered a little in his talk. But she soothed him into peace again and he rested quietly. Yet she could not leave him to get help till next morning, and when she went over to their nearest neighbour, Missouri Simpson, he was away from home. It was noon when he returned and rode into Kamloops for the doctor. He told the police what had happened, and found that someone had already brought into town Ned's gun and told them of the horse. They telegraphed to all stations to the Coast to hold a certain Sitcum Siwash, known as Pitt River Pete. But by that time Pete was in hiding on the south side of the Fraser, over against the Mill, with a canoe, stolen from a house near Ruby Creek, where he had left the train. For it seemed to him that he could not escape if he went further. That he had not been arrested yet was a miracle.
"They'll catch me and hang me," he said with a snarl.
He felt sure they would and he had something to do before they did.
As he lay in the brush, across the river, he tried to pick out the lights of the house, high upon the hill, in which Jenny and George Quin lived.
The news that one Pitt River Pete was wanted by the police, by the "bulls," spread fast through the town and into Shack City. As soon as they heard, and as soon as Indian Annie was chuckling grossly over the possible delight of seeing Pete hanged, the police came down and searched every hole and corner in the sawdust swamp. They routed out Annie almost the first of the lot, and she screamed insults at them as they searched her den.
"Kahta you damn plisman tink I hide Pete?" she yelled. "Pete hyu mesachie, him damn bad Siwash; if him come I say 'mahsh, klatawa, go, you damn thief.' Oh, you damn plisman, what for you make mess my house? You tink Pete him one pin I hide him lik' dat?"
They bade her dry up and when she refused they took her by the scruff of the neck and bundled her outside. She sat in sawdust and yelled till they left her shack and searched the others. They found nothing, of course, but they found out one thing, and that was the readiness of most of the men of the Mill, Siwashes or Whites, to give away Pete with both hands. For they, at any rate, were certain that it was he who had spiked the logs and killed poor old Skookum Charlie. And since he had killed a Chinaman, too, all the men from the Flowery Kingdom were ready to do the same. Old Wong said so to the "damned plismen." But as the Chinamen relied on the police to save them from abuse and injury, they were even readier to help than the Siwashes.
"Supposee we savvy Pete, we tellee you allo tim'," said Wong. "My tink Pete damn bad man, spikee logs, killee my flin Fan. Fan velly good man, my flin, and Pete spoilum 'tumach,' killee him dead. All light, we come tellee."
There wasn't a doubt about it, that if Pete turned up in Shack-Town he would be given away, and though the police went away empty-handed they had high hopes of nailing him shortly.
They had had a considerable pow-pow that morning in the Engine-Room before work started up and there wasn't a soul found there to say a word for Pete. This was natural enough.
"A man that'll spike logs ain't a human being, boys," said Long Mac seriously.
"Killing his own tilikums," said Shorty Gibbs. "It was horrid seein' pore old Skookum!"
"The Chinky was horridest," said Tenas Billy. "I picked him up."
"So you did," said Shorty. "But what d'ye think Pete's doin'?"
"He'll be on the scoot."
"To be sure, but where?"
"Oh, to hell and gone out of this."
"That's your tumtum. It ain't mine by a mile. If he's been spoilin' Ned Quin's face what'll he do 'bout George, eh?"
Mac intervened.
"Waal, boys, these Injuns are a rotten crowd. You can't bet on what they'll do. Some o' them don't care a damn if their klootchmen quit. I know, for I've run with 'em on the Eastern Slope o' the Rockies and on the plains. Sometimes they will though."
He told a ghastly tale.
"Pete's a holy terror, that's what," said Tenas Billy. "I never give him credit for sand, I admit, but he has it."
"Sand be damned," said Long Mac; "he hasn't sand. It's only Injun temper. I know 'em. They ain't sandy in the way we speak of it, boys. Bein' sandy is bein' cool. Pete don't do notion' unless he's mad. None of 'em do, at least none of these fish-fed coast Injuns. They's a measly crowd."
The men chewed on that.
"Nevertheless," said Shorty, considering the matter fully, "I'd rather be me than George Quin with Pete loose on the tear. The man that spiked our boom and hunted old Cultus Muckamuck's steers into a dry cañon and then hammered him to pulp with a club mayn't have sand, but he's dangerous."
"He's the kind of Johnny that'd fire the Mill," said Ginger White, who so far had held his tongue.
"White's on the target," said Mac as the whistle blew. But he forgot about it when the song and the dance of the day commenced. There's fine forgetfulness in work.
Quin was as foolish as the rest of them. That is to say, he talked to the police and came to the conclusion that Pete wasn't likely to be on hand now and for ever after. He knew what Mac knew and despised the average Coast Indian. It was true enough they weren't up to much unless they were "full," full, that is, of liquor. And a man like Quin knew by instinct the weakness there was in such as Pete, in spite of his now bloody record. For Quin had a fine square jaw and Pete hadn't. But then Quin was incapable of underhand night work. And he didn't know that Pete was like a rat in a trap, as a criminal is in British Columbia. And there was another thing. He knew that Ned wasn't dead, by any means. It never occurred to him that Pete believed he had killed Cultus and must be desperate if he wasn't out of the country.
"I wish the swine was dead," said George Quin. "I believe I'd marry Jenny."
She had twined herself round his heart, and when he saw her nursing the one child he had ever been father of he was as soft as cream with her. Not a soul about the City would have believed it was George Quin if they had seen him with his naked boy in his arms. Only the Chinamen knew about it, for Sam told them, being delighted, as they all are, with male offspring. They really sympathised with the big boss as they thought of their own wives far away in "China-side" and the children some of them hadn't seen. Old Wong wept secretly, for he had worked and gone home to marry a wife, and she had died. It wasn't likely he would ever make enough money to buy another, unless he got it by gambling. He was as bad at that as old Papp, the German, who still hadn't made sufficient to go home to "California," in spite of all his work, and those muscles which made him feel as if he would "braig dings" if he didn't toil.
Yes, tilikum, George Quin, "Tchorch," was happy, as happy as he could be.
And Jenny was nearly as happy as she could be. Her child was a gift from heaven, even if heaven frowned as it gave her the beautiful boy. She never saw the Bible or the horrid pictures and she saw instead the scripture of the child's pure flesh hourly and read the dark language of her man's heart. He adored what she had given him, and she knew, as a woman may know, that underneath his awkward roughness and his careless ways, sometimes not wholly gentle, there was real love for her and the wish to be good. And when he sat with her and smoked, she caught the paternal look of full satisfaction that he feigned to hide from himself. What a boy it was!
He was as fat as a prairie chicken, and as full of life as a fresh-run salmon. How pink he showed in hot water: how he squealed like a dear little pig and kicked his crumpled dimpled legs! Was there ever such a boy before?
"Oh, Tchorch, see," said Jenny. She showed him the baby's thick dark hair. The child was a garden of delight that she cultivated all day long.
But she never forgot "Tchorch," who had been so good to her, and had taken her to Victoria and driven her about in a fine carriage: who had showed her the world. If she had only been his wife the whole earth could have offered her nothing.
And yet behind her was the dark shadow of Pete. George never spoke of him, and if he had known that Sam did he would have kicked the Chinaman from the house to the Mill. Yet it wasn't Sam's fault, though he was a chatterbox and always ready for "talkee" at any time. Jenny asked him about things. She knew that men said it was Pete who had spiked the logs. Sam told her of the death of his poor countryman. She wept bitterly about Skookum, who had always been a kind, thick-headed chap, very good to his klootchman. She had now taken up with another who wasn't good to her.
"Poor old Skookum," said Jenny. Oh, it was dreadful of Pete. And yet it was her fault.
But she had her boy! Oh, not for anything, not for life or heaven or all the round world contained of good, would she have parted with her child and George's. She hadn't lived before. And now "Tchorch" loved her so much more. He was so satisfied, so content to sit and smoke. Her Indian blood was happy to see her man sit solemnly and puff the clouds into the air without a word.
Now she knew of the search for Pete, and knew what he had done, just as she knew what wicked Ned had done to poor Mary. She hated Ned, and was sure he was utterly bad. Nevertheless, Mary had gone back to him. That she knew was natural.
"Poor Mary loves him," she said, "but she has no baby!"
If the sky was clear, it was for her little boy: when the breezes blew they were for him: the beauty of the river was his: the loveliness of stars and the goodness of her milk were the gifts of God, who was not angry with her but only sorrowful because she was not married.
"He would marry me if——"
Oh, yes, if Pete were dead! She could not say it, but could not help the bad thought rising within her. To be married to George! She trembled to think of it.
In her heaven Pete was the dark cloud. Perhaps her constant thought of him put it into George's head to say, as he did say, very suddenly that same night—
"I wish I could marry you, tenas!"
She crept to his knee, and laid her head on his hand. She got more beautiful every day, more gentle, more tender.
"There's not a spark of vice in the little woman," said her man, with tears in his eyes. He said he was a damn fool and spoke gruffly next time. But she understood her Chief, her great man, and was pleased to serve his gruffest speech.
"If only that cursed Siwash was dead," said George.
But if he wasn't he would either be in the "pen" for years or would be seen no more on the Fraser River. That seemed certain.
And still George was uneasy. It was impossible to say where the man was. The belief of the police that he had escaped out of the country went for nothing. British Columbia might be a mouse-trap, but it was a handy place for holing up in, and the brush alongside the river would have hidden a thousand. George had a talk about the matter with Long Mac, who was the only one of the workers in his Mill who had brains beyond his daily task.
"What do you think, McClellan?" asked the Tyee.
Mac's eyes showed that he could think.
"He's a dangerous skunk, that's my tumtum, Mr. Quin," said Mac. He told him what Ginger White had said and Quin frowned heavily.
"Fire my Mill!"
The Mill was his life, and till Jenny had borne him a child it had been his true and lasting passion. There was a fascination about it and the work of it that he loved. The scent of the lumber: the sound of the saws: the rush of the work: the hustling of the men, made something beyond words. The Mill was a live thing, warm, strong, adequate, equal to its work. It filled Quin's alert, strong mind.
"Fire my Mill!"
That was Long Mac's "tumtum," his thought, his notion.
"If he ain't really skipped out, that's what a cuss like Pete would do to you, Sir," said Mac. "He's made a holy record for himself, ain't he? We know he spiked the logs and killed poor Skookum, and there ain't the shadder of a doubt he fixed your brother's cattle. And then he's laid him out, and started off down here. They traced him to Ruby Creek, and it's tol'ble sure he kapsuallowed a canoe there. But no one's got on his tracks. It's bad luck there's been such a mighty poor salmon run this year, or he'd ha' been seen on the River."
As it was, the lordly tyee salmon, the quinnat, had been making a poor show in the Fraser that year, as he will at intervals, more or less regular. The canneries were fairly frozen out and shut down. The river was empty of boats and men.
"I'll set another night-watchman on," said Quin. "There's something in what you say, McClellan. The police are damn fools, though."
"I'll take a night or two at it myself, if you like, Mr. Quin," said Long Mac.
"You're the very man," replied Quin.
That night Pete got his hidden dug-out into the water. But his chief thoughts were not of the Mill.
It was all very well for George Quin, who had brought all the trouble on himself by running after other people's klootchmen, to say the police were fools, but as a matter of fact they had done as much as could be expected of them, and perhaps more, seeing that Quin wasn't very popular with them. His Mill with its Shack-Town gave them more trouble than the whole of the City, and within a year two "damn plismen," as Annie called them, had been laid out cold with clubs in its vicinity. And nobody had gone into the penitentiary for the murderous assaults. Nevertheless they had searched every likely hole and corner for Pete, from his old native hang-out, Pitt River, down to the Serpentine and beyond it. They had beaten the brush along both sides of the Fraser, North and South Arm and the Island. And, indeed, they came within a throw of the dice of catching Pete. One of them missed him and his canoe by a hair's-breadth, and the Sitcum Siwash had been about to cave in and show himself when the man turned aside.
As it was, the very search for Pete worked him up to desperation just as he was beginning to get cold on revenge and to think rather of escape. If the police were so keen as to search the brush and go up and down the river, how was he to get away? Like most of his sort he didn't know the country, and would have been puzzled to get even as far as Whatcom. And even if he did there would be someone waiting for him. And to go down stream in the dug-out would be to run right into a trap, like a salmon. His rage began to burn in him again, and to this was added hunger. He had over a hundred dollars in his pocket but hadn't eaten for four-and-twenty hours. He would have given his soul for a square meal and a long drink, and as hunger bit him he knew that if he lingered any longer mere famine would induce him to give himself up. Then he would be hanged, and get nothing more than he had got already as the price of his neck. When the second night fell he was wholly desperate.
"I fix heem to-night, or they catch me," said Pete. "One ting or the other, Pete, my boy!"
If he only could get a drink! With a drink inside him he would be equal to anything. He wondered if he dare trust any of his old tilikums of the Mill. He thought of Chihuahua and of Chihuahua's klootchman, Annawillee, and then of old Annie. They would give him away for a dollar; he knew that, and very likely there was a price on his head. If poor old Skookum hadn't been killed he would have done anything for him. Pete was very sorry he had killed Skookum, very sorry indeed.
But he kept on thinking about that drink. If there was one woman or man in Shack-Town who always managed to have liquor in her shanty, it was old Annie.
"I'd choke her for it," said Pete, as he shoved off in his dug-out and paddled lightly against the last of the flood coming in from the great Pacific. "I'd choke her for it."
The night was moonless and cloudy and as dark as it ever gets on the Fraser in summer. There was even a touch of an easterly wind about, and the faint chill of it made him shiver. Without a drink he felt almost hopeless.
"I try," said Pete in sudden desperation. The lights were out all over the town. Hardly a solitary lamp starred the opposing darkness of the hill above the river. The world was asleep. There was only a moving lamp in the Mill. He knew it belonged to the night-watchman, a sleepy-headed old German, once a worker in the Planing Mill with old Papp. But since he lost his hand he had been made night-watchman.
"I give heem plenty light by-by," said Pete. He slanted across the river and came to an old deserted rotten wharf a little above the Mill. There in the black shadow he ran his canoe ashore and stepped into the mud. He crept silently to where the shore shelved, and, climbing up, thrust his head out between some broken flooring of the wharf. The world was quiet as a tomb. There was even peace in Shack-Town. Whether he got that drink or not he had business there that night. Though Chihuahua most likely wouldn't give him a drink, Pete meant to make the Mexican help him. For at the back of Chihuahua's shanty, which was only a one-room hiding hole, there was a little outhouse. In that Chihuahua always kept some kerosene.
Pete slipped across the road like a shadow, dodging among the piles of lumber as he went. His senses were as alert as a cougar's. And the sawdust under foot made his steps soundless. On the other side of the road he waited to be sure that no one moved. There was only one light in Shack-Town, and it was at Annie's. That meant that she was either awake or had fallen asleep drunk on the floor, forgetful of her lamp. Perhaps she had a bottle, said Pete thirstily. He felt cold and nervous and forgot about the kerosene. He ran lightly across the road and came to Annie's. He had a sheath knife in his belt. It had once belonged to Jack Mottram, but Pete had stolen it. He had no intention of using it on Annie, that is unless he had to, of course. He carried a heavy stick in his hand.
He looked into Annie's window, which was naturally enough foul within and without. He saw nothing at first but the dim light of the lamp, but as everything was quiet he rubbed the glass of one pane with his cap. Then he saw that Annie was lying on the floor, a mere bundle of rags. Was that a bottle by her?
You bet it was, tilikum! Pete knew a bottle when he saw it. Perhaps by good luck it wasn't empty. He shortened the club in his hand and tapped lightly on the door with it. Annie never moved. He pushed the door open, and still she didn't move. He crept in like a cat until he could reach out and touch the bottle. It lay on its side and the cork was out. Nevertheless, a bottle can hold quite a good drink in it even on its side. It was as full as it could be in such a position, and careless of the silent woman he drank it to its fiery dregs. Hot life ran through his veins. It was fire: such fire as makes murder light and easy. He grinned happily and put the bottle down again by Annie's limp hand.
His life ran warm within him and all his desire of vengeance grew in alcohol as grass will grow in a warm rain of spring.
He found the kerosene in Chihuahua's little den, and started, not for the Mill, but for George Quin's house.
"My klootchman, ha," said Pete fiercely. "She have a papoose!"
The papoose slumbered in his loving mother's arms. By her side big George lay. The night was so sweet and quiet. If George could marry her he would. Oh, wonderful, sorrowful world that it was. And here was the world within her arms and within her reach.
"I just love Tchorch and baby!"
She woke and slept. Oh, heavenly night and heavenly day when baby slept, or waked, or stared solemnly, as Indian blood will and must, at the strange hard world that meets its wondering eyes.
The summer had been warm and rainless, everything was dry with the good warmth of summer. The brush showed brown: the paths were white: the lumber, whether in stacked piles or in framed houses, was ready for fire. A spark would light it: a single match might cause a conflagration as it would in a dry forest of red cedar or the resinous spruce.
And Pete carried kerosene. He drenched a southern wall of boards with it and laid against the wall dry brush and pieces of sawed lumber that lay about from the building of the house. He knew the wood must flame like tinder. If it ran unchecked for a minute it would take the river to put it out. And it was high above the river. He grinned and lighted a match.
The next minute he was running down the hill like a deer. In less than a minute he dropped, still carrying the half-emptied kerosene can, through the hole in the wharf. Then he waited and saw a warm blaze high upon the hill.
"That fix heem and her," said Pete, intoxicated with his deed and with the alcohol. "That teach heem, damn Shautch Quin, heh! I kill his blother, heh, and burn his house!"
His heart was warm within him as fire. It seemed so good to be revenged. Now they would wake, and perhaps would not escape. All the world would wake and go up there, and then the Mill would be left alone. Already the flame on the hill was so fierce that many must see it.
And, indeed, many saw it, and some came running and there was a growing sound of men, and far off he heard men call. And then from up above there came the sound of firearms, used as an alarm. By this he knew that Quin was up.
"I fix heem and now I fix his Mill;" said Pete hoarsely. He had forgotten all they had told him of the scheme by which a man pays a little so that he shall not lose all. What did it matter? The Mill was Quin's, and he loved it. Pete knew that.
As all the town woke he dropped down stream in his canoe and came to the Mill.
It was built, as all such are when they border on a river or any water, partly on the land and partly on great piles sunk in the river bed. The wharves, where scows and steamboats and schooners loaded the lumber, were even further towards the deep water. At high tide a boat could pass underneath them all, and get beneath the deep shadow of the Mill. There fish played constantly, schools of little candle-fish, the oolachan that the fur-seals love, that is so fat that when it dries it drips oil. And there were places in the Mill that dripped oil, as there are in all works where machinery moves swiftly, and bearings are apt to grow hot. For many years the Mill had never ceased to run, save when heavy frost fixed the moving river in thick-ribbed ice, and it was saturated with all that burns. In every crack dry sawdust lay that was almost explosive: the bearings of belts were fat with oil. Pete knew it would burn like tinder, like dry, dead resinous spruce, like the bark of red cedar.
As he moved in the darkness, over the sound of the lapping water he heard the sound of the waking city. Where so much was built of wood, fire was dreadfully interesting. He knew the world would wake and be upon the hill. Now he saw the glimmer of the fire he had lighted show a gleam upon the water under the sky. He laughed to himself quietly, and, holding on to a pile, listened. Was there anyone above him on the floor of the Mill? Or had even the watchman run to Quin's house to help? He knew how fire drew a man, how it drew all men.
There was no sound above him. He ran his canoe into deeper darkness and left it on the mud and climbed straight among crossing interlaced timbers to the first floor, where the Shingler worked and laths were made. He moved lightly, his feet in silent mocassins, and entered the dark hole under the Chinee Trimmer. Above him was the chute by which matched-flooring came down to the Chinamen, who carried it to the Planers and the machines that worked it. He heard the hum of a far-off crowd and saw the light of the burning house. He climbed into the upper Mill. And as he thrust his head out of the chute at the left hand of the Trimmer, then idle in the casing, he saw the house itself through the great side chute of the Mill, down which he had fallen the day he struck Quin with the pickareen.
The Mill was empty. He looked round cautiously and then leapt out upon the floor. There was sufficient light for him to see by, and he saw that some man had at least taken precautions against him. There were buckets of water here and there: there was even a hose-pipe with a pump, a force-pump. There was another hose coming from the Engine-Room. These things showed him he had been feared: they showed him it would be hard to get away. But he had no time to think. With a savage grin he pulled out his knife and sliced the hose into pieces. He capsized the buckets as they stood. Then he fetched his oil-can from where he had put it, close to the Pony Saw, and emptied it at a spot which he chose, because the oil would run upon the sawdust carrier and go down past the fine cedar dust from the Shingler. Below the Shingle Mill was the water. He knew exactly where to find the spot where the oil would drip into the river. He ran back to the chute by which he had ascended and as he slipped into the chute he heard someone call.
"Hallo, Dutchy, Dutchy!" said a voice.
But Dutchy, the old one-handed German watchman, did not answer. Pete heard him who spoke break out swearing.
"Goldarn the old idiot, I believe he ain't here," said the voice. It was the voice of Long Mac, a man to be feared, a strong man, a keen and quick man, a man with brains and skill and grit.
Pete heard him enter the Mill and run upstairs, and he knew that in another moment Mac would know someone had been there, although old Dutchy had done what he should not have done, and had left the Mill to go to the other fire. There was no time to lose. He went silently for the canoe, and found it, got into it, and worked his way to the space under the Shingle Mill. Now the light of the burning house was bright upon the lip of the river, running on the first of the ebb against a warm Chinook wind.
He heard Mac burst out into blasphemy. He had found no Dutchy, but cut hose instead. And then old Dutchy came running. He heard Mac curse him.
"What did I tell you, you old fool? Didn't I say look out lively here! That swine's about now, by God! He's cut the hose, maybe lighted the Mill already!"
"Ach, mein Gott, mein Gott," said Dutchy, "I haf not been afay von minute."
"Oh, to hell," said Mac.
He found the capsized buckets and burst out again. He spoke rapidly, and Pete, as he clutched at a pile, caught but a word or two.
"Run—police—boat!"
He understood what this meant: if he didn't do it now, he would have no time. At the sound of old Dutchy's steps on the boards as he ran overhead Pete struck a match and lighted dripping kerosene. The flame circled on a patch of board, and burnt blue and flickered, drawing upward through a crack. The Mill was fired!
"I fix heem," said Pete; "if they catch me I fix heem all the same."
He thrust his canoe for the open water and then stayed aghast. It seemed that the world was very light. His lip fell a little. And he heard a voice speak overhead, a voice which was like a bow drawn at a venture.
"I know you're about hyar, Pete," said Mac in a roar like that of a wild beast. "I know you're hyar!"
He didn't know, but his instincts and his knowledge told him the truth. Underneath him somewhere lay the incendiary. In some dark hole or corner the beast of fire was hidden. Pete's heart stood still and he knew what a fool he had been to meddle with aught on the upper floor.
And he heard the light crackle of his new fire.
"Come out, you hound," cried Mac. And then the flame caught the sawdust carrier and Mac saw the creep of light under a crack and knew the Mill was fired—fired irredeemably and beyond hope. He pulled his gun and shot down through the floor at a venture, and by a wonderful chance the bullet cleared any beam and struck the water close by Pete. The Siwash let go and thrust the dug-out into the stream.
And in the Mill the fire was like an explosion. It ran along the carriers and the ways of the belts and reached out into inaccessible corners where lay the warm dust of years and grew up through a thousand cracks like red-hot weeds at the breath of spring in a tropic garden.
"Oh, my God," said Mac. The breath of the fire choked him: he ran back from it: it burst up about him: to escape he leapt over it, but before he got to the great Chute the flame spurted from beneath the Big Hoes and licked at the teeth of shining steel. Then it played about the Pony Saw and far off under the Bull-Wheel it grew up and danced. Then it went like a fiery creeper, like a red climbing rose, and touched the dusty roof. In the next moment the body of the Mill was fire. Mac went back, missed his footing and slipped headlong down the chute, even as Pete had once fallen. He rose with a shout which was half a shriek, for he had dislocated his shoulder, and folks running in the road to the lesser fire, turned to the greater and saw the Mill ablaze.
And out in the river Pete was paddling hard. But the lamp that he had lighted was a very bright one, that made the river suddenly a golden pool and shone afar off on the other side of the white roof of the Big Cannery. One man on the wharf saw him and called to Mac, who came fast.
"By the Lord, that's Pete," said Mac, "that's Pete and my shoulder's out. Get a boat, boys, get a boat! There's one under the wharf at the other end. Get a boat and go after him!"
But to go out on the river at midnight after a killer and an incendiary from mere love of the law or even of hunting was beyond those who heard the man from Michigan speak.
"Oh, hell, not me! Tain't my funeral," they said. And then Quin came running to them. He was white as the ashes of his house would be on the morrow, but he saw what Mac and the others saw. That must be Pete on the river!
"He's got us, Sir, he's got us," said Mas.
Even in that moment Quin saw how he held his arm.
"You're hurt?"
"I fell down the chute, Sir, the fire almost caught me."
The flames roared now. The inside of the Mill was a furnace. Fire played fantastic games on the high sloping roof.
"There's a boat——"
"I know," said Quin.
"These hoosiers ain't game," said Mac.
A bigger crowd of those who weren't game to tackle wild beasts gathered round them. Faces were white in the glow of the fire.
"At the house, Sir——"
"They're all right. I'll go after him," said Quin. He ran, and Mac cried—
"Take my gun, Sir——"
But Quin did not hear him. He ran round the end of the Mill and was lost.
In another moment they saw him in the boat out upon the river. Pete went out of sight. The crowd watched till Quin was out of sight, too.
"What's the bettin' we'll see either of em' again?" asked a man in the crowd.
The odds were against it.
"I fix heem all right," said Pete.
It was Jenny who first wakened in the house on the hill, for she slept lightly as a young mother does. And yet when she woke, sleep was not wholly out of her eyes and mind, and it seemed to her that it was morning, and that Sam, her good Sam, was up betimes in the kitchen. She heard the fine crackling, at first a mere crepitation, of the crawling flame, and felt comfortable as one does at the notion of the good creature fire, the greatest servant of man. Deep in the hearts of men lies the love of it, for fire has served them through the innumerable generations of their rise from those who knew it not. A million ancestors of each have sat by brave flames in dark woodlands and have warmed themselves and found comfort in all the storms of the open world. For the house is the fire, the covering of the fire, and the hearth is the great altar, where a daily sacrifice is made to the gods.
She fell asleep again.
And then she smelt smoke and roused herself suddenly and saw a strange light outside in the darkness. The fire flickered like a serpent's tongue, and she saw it, and her heart went cold. For the servant becomes a tyrant, and the god is oftentimes cruel to his people. She clutched the child, and with her other hand caught hold of George. She cried to him aloud, and even before he was awake he stood upon the floor, knowing that some enemy was at hand. And even then the red enemy looked in at the window and there was the tinkle of broken glass.
"Oh, this is Pete's work," he said. But he said it not aloud. "Get up, girl. Come, tenas," he cried. He opened the door and found the house full of smoke. Below, he heard the work of the fire. And the outer wall below the window was one flame.
"This is Pete's work," he said. And he said to himself—
"What of the Mill?"
Jenny clutched the baby to her bosom, and he slammed the door to. It was not the first time he had met fire and he understood it. He wetted a handkerchief and tied it over his own mouth. There were some who would have wondered at his swiftness, and the cool courage of him in so threatening a fight. He bound wet rags across the brave lifted mouth of Jenny, and the child cried as he did the same for him. Then he caught her in his arms and rushed the stairs, and as he ran he called aloud, "Sam, Sam!"
The smoke was pungent, acrid, suffocating, and the heat of the air already cracked the skin. Out of the smoke he saw licking tongues of flame, flame curious and avid, searching, strenuous, alive. One tongue licked at him and he smelt, among all the other odours of the fire, the smell of singed hair. He heard the crying of the child, its outraged mind working angrily. Jenny whimpered a little. Her hand was steel about him. He rushed an opaque veil of blinding smoke, interpenetrated by lightnings, and bull-headed burst in Sam's door. He heard the boy cry out. But they were saved, if it were not that Pete stood outside to kill those whom he had driven from their shelter. That might be; Quin knew it. And yet he could not go first. Sam caught his arm.
"Oh, oh, Mista Quin!" he cried, "oh, oh, velly dleadful, my much aflaid."
Sam had pluck enough, as he had more than once shown when some white young hoodlums of the town had small-ganged him. But when fire is the master many are not brave.
"Open the window," said Quin. Outside to the ground was a drop of twelve feet. But the ground was hard. Quin put Jenny down by the window and got a blanket from the boy's bed.
"Out you go first, Sam," he said.
But Sam, though not "blave" and "velly much aflaid," knew it was the right thing for the "Missus" to go first.
"Oh, no, Mista Quin, my no go first. Missus she go and litty chilo. My not too much aflaid."
He trembled like a leaf all the same.
"Get out of the window chop-chop," said Quin in a voice that Sam had only heard once before when he had dared to be insolent. He sprang to the window, and, clutching the blanket that Quin held, he slid to the ground.
"Now my catchee Missus," he said exultantly. And with the fire beneath the boards of the room, Quin had no choice. He tied a quilt round Jenny's waist and lowered her and the child till Sam could touch her. He let go, and sliding down the blanket, which he had made fast to the frame of Sam's bed, he, too, reached the ground safely. And people came running up the hill. Whether this was Pete's work or not they were safe. But their house was a torch, the flames soared above the gambrel of the roof.
Jenny sat upon a rock, clad only in her nightgown, with the quilt thrown about her shoulders. Her home was burning and all their beautiful things were destroyed. She could not cry, but her heart wept, and the child was her only comfort. She knew well enough that this was Pete's work, she felt it in her heart.
And a crowd gathered. There were many from the City: those whose work it is to put out fires, and some of the police. There was a fat saloon-keeper whom she knew by sight and the old boss of the Farmers' Home. With them were many Siwashes from Shack-Town: among them the wedger-off who had replaced Pete. She saw old Papp, the German from "California," and Chihuahua, with his beady eyes flashing, and his teeth all a-grin. With him came his klootchman, Annawillee, the one who always sang the song of the mournful one, also called Annawillee. Then there were Chinamen in wide flapping pyjamas, old Wong, the wise man, and Fan-tan and Sam Lung, and Quong. They made a circle about her and the fire, and chattered in Chinese, in Chinook, in Spanish, for now Spanish Joe, the handsome man, came up and palavered with Chihuahua. She felt their eyes upon her. She had "shem" that they should see her, for she was not Quin's wife, and his child cried upon her knees. She hid her bare feet under the nightgown. Sam stood by her. She saw Quin speak to the police, to the firemen. Any help was vain. Then Long Mac ran up the hill, as light as a wapiti on his feet. He said but a word and ran back. But it was a wise word, though too late.
"Send someone down to the Mill, Quin. If this is Pete, it won't satisfy him. I'll get a boat and go on the River."
"Do," said Quin. "I'll see this through and be with you in a minute."
But the swift minutes passed, and before they gave up all hope (though Quin never had hope) and before he could say what should be done with Jenny, someone cried out suddenly—
"The Mill, the Mill!"
As if they had been turned on their heels by some strange machinery the big crowd turned and saw a running light in the Mill. It was as if the crowd of workers danced with lamps: as if there were some Chinese Feast of Lanterns in its dark floors. Then the flickering, dancing lights coalesced and they saw flames flow out, and flow down and climb up.
"The Mill!" said Quin.
Bad enough to lose his house, his home, which now he loved, but to lose the Mill was a thousand times worse. The house was but a new thing and the Mill was old. Thousands of days he had watched the work and heard its song: not a board of it, not a rafter, not a stud or beam or scantling or shingle that wasn't his delight. It was part of himself, the thing wherewith he worked, the live muscles with which he toiled: his spirit extended to it: he ran it with his steam, with his belts, with his mind, his energy.