The Riddle ofThree-Way CreekCHAPTER ILoyalty
The Riddle ofThree-Way Creek
THE trail fell away to the heart of a valley, which nursed in its bosom a watercourse that was frozen solid to its bed. The hummocks of the foothills rose up in every direction. Many of the hills were sheer slopes of tawny, sun-scorched grass that had lost the last of its summer hue. Some were barren crags; others, again, were covered with woodland bluffs of spruce, and pine, and the generous poplar, whose dead foliage lay thick upon the ground, stripped from parent boughs by the wintry breath of the late season.
It was a grim enough prospect. No snow had as yet fallen, but the air was cold and crisp; the grey sky was heavily charged with snow-clouds; and the stark arms of deciduous trees were sharply outlined against the skyline.
Two horsemen were moving down the frozen trail. They were riding at that distance-devouring lope which is native to the Canadian broncho. Both were clad in sheepskin coats and fur caps. And through the fog of steam that rose from the bodies of the sweating horses, on the head of one of them the yellow flash of a mounted policeman’s cap badge stood out strikingly. Corporal Andrew McFardell was escorting a prisoner to his headquarters at Calford, which lay some fifty odd miles to the south.
The policeman was in a hurry. Ten miles farther on lay Rock Point, a small farming settlement, which was to afford him a camping-ground for the night. There was little more than an hour of daylight left, and the banking snow-clouds left him anxious. It was a bad region in which to get snowbound.
McFardell was taking a chance. He had abandoned the old fur trail which was the highway from Greenwood to Calford for a short cut through the wilderness of the foothills. He knew every inch of the territory through which he was riding, but he also knew the peril of a blinding snowstorm in that confusion of hills.
They reached the depths of the valley in silence. They urged their horses to greater efforts along the level bank of the frozen stream. Then, as they faced the ascent beyond, the animals were permitted to drop back to a walk. McFardell transferred the leading-rein of his prisoner’s horse to the horn of his saddle and began to fill his pipe.
His companion observed him with eyes that smiled good-humouredly, in spite of the frigid bite of the steel shackles set fast upon his wrists. Then, as his custodian struck a match and lit his pipe, he turned his gaze alertly to the frowning sky.
“Here she comes.”
The prisoner spoke without a shadow of apprehension. It was the voice and accent of an educated man. His smiling eyes were regarding the lolling snowflakes with which the air had suddenly filled.
“We’ll get it plenty in a while,” he went on a moment later, with a pleasant, deep-throated chuckle. “You reckon it’s ten miles this way to Rock Point? It’s going to shorten our trail by five and more?” He shook his head. “Well, if this storm is going to be the thing it looks, why, I guess it might just as well be fifty miles to Rock Point. We shan’t make it this night—through these hills.”
The policeman was regarding the skyline. He, too, shook his head, but in denial.
“You think that?” he said sharply, with a quick, scornful flash of his jet-black eyes. “You’re wrong. Guess this is my territory. There’s not a hill, or bush, or creek to it I don’t know better than my prayers. There’s a top stretch up there of a mile and a half,” he went on, indicating the hill they were ascending. “Then we drop right down to Clearwater River, and pass by Joe Lark’s horse ranch. After that we pick up the old fur trail again, which you couldn’t lose in the worst blizzard that ever blew. I’m not worried a thing.”
The prisoner laughed.
“It’s good not to get worried when you’re in the hills, with the snow falling and night getting around. She’s coming thicker, so there’s no need for argument,” he added drily. “You police boys are bright on the trail. I’ve mostly had five years of Alaska, where they know a deal about snow. I claim fifty-fifty with you on that subject.”
The man’s laugh was good to hear. It was a laugh of reckless indifference, of a heart devoid of fear.
Andy McFardell made no reply. He stared straight out into the falling snow. He was a good-looking, black-haired, black-eyed man of about twenty-eight years. But his good looks had nothing of the frank openness and smiling good-nature of his prisoner. The two men were in sharp contrast. The whole cast of Andy McFardell’s face had something of the narrow sleekness of a fox, with a mouth hidden under a carefully trimmed black moustache that was heavy-lipped and ugly. It was a face to inspire confidence in the work that was his. But the best tribute his associates in the Police cared to pay him was an unanimous opinion that he was surely marked out for promotion.
His prisoner was a larger man in every sense. Hisfurs only left visible a strong face, and the light of philosophical good-humour that looked out of his eyes. And this for all he was on his way to Calford to serve five years’ hard labour in the penitentiary.
As they reached the top of the hill, Andy McFardell turned to his companion again.
“You know I can’t get a boy like you, anyway,” he said, in a tone of frank impatience. “What in hell! Five years’ hard pan up in Alaska. Five years’ sweating blood to collect a bunch of dust that’s to hand you all the things you’ve ever dreamed about. Five years of a climate that’s calculated to freeze the vitals of a brass image. Then you pull out. And the first thing you do is to pitch everything to the devil by hitting up against the law. You’ve done worse than five years’ penitentiary up there in Alaska, and collected a big fortune; and now you’ve got five years’ real penitentiary ahead of you while your gold rots. Why? For the fool notion of helping a boy who didn’t need your help. Say, there’s times I reckon human nature’s the darnedest fool thing God A’mighty ever created.”
“Is it?”
Jim Pryse’s reply came with perfect good-temper. He was one of those blessed creatures who can always contrive to find a smile lurking in the worst tragedy with which they are beset.
“Take a hunch man,” he went on amiably. “The only fool thing God ever created is the white-livered coyote that wants to snivel its way through life, instead of getting a grip on the throat of things. I knew just the thing I was doing. You see, that boy was my brother, and the best feller I know. The skunk he’d killed was the feller who’d robbed him of a wife, and done the unholiest thing any low-down bum can do by any woman, married or single. Well, I was with him, just as though my two hands had choked the life out of that skunk instead of his. WasI going to risk seeing that boy the centre of a hanging bee? Not on your life. I held you boys off while that kid feller got away. And I held you good. And I’d have shot to kill rather than you should have laid hands on him. He’s got clear away. And, for all the law doesn’t reckon to let up once it camps on a feller’s trail, you’ll never get him. The gold you reckon is going to rot will see to that. That boy was no murderer. His act was sheer justice. I didn’t butt in. No, boy, it was better than that.”
“Man, you’re plumb crazy!” McFardell urged his horse on under his impatience. “No, no. Life’s a pretty tough proposition, anyway. And it’s only a crazy man sets out to make it tougher, whether it’s for a brother or anybody else. I s’pose there’s folks would call that sort of junk ‘loyalty.’ I guess they need to get a fresh focus. ‘Duty’ I know. Duty’s the thing demanded of us boys in my calling. That’s all right. It’s always within the law, and if you carry on, and keep an eye well skinned, it’s going to help you to the sort of things we all worry for. But the other stuff is a crazy notion, that’s as liable as not to get you hanged. I tell you you were dead wrong. You were butting in like some fool kid. That boy would never have hanged if he could have proved his case. It was the Unwritten Law, and he’d have got clear away with it. And you—you wouldn’t be riding these darned hills in a snowstorm.”
The policeman’s view only had the effect of deepening his prisoner’s smile. And the blue eyes watched the officer tolerantly as he brushed the snow from about his fur collar.
“Maybe he’d have got away with it,” Pryse said quietly, emulating his companion, wiping the snow from about his eyes with his mitted and shackled hands. “I don’t know, and I’m not worried. He’s away now, and I’m feeling good about it. Five years in penitentiary is goingto hand me an elegant spell for quiet reflection, and maybe I’ll be able to locate where our viewpoints are wrong. Just now it seems to me that duty’s a sort of human-made notion that mainly has self for its principal calculation. Loyalty, as you choose to call it, seems to me to be something we can’t help. Maybe it’s built in us, the same as the things that set us crazy for the dame that seems good to us. I’m not yearning to worry it out, anyway. The thing I know is, Eddie boy is clear beyond the reach of any Mounted Police Patrol, and, that being so, I feel as good as a skipping lamb in springtime. Alaska handed me a deal better than a million dollars, and, if necessary, the whole of that bunch of dust will go to say you boys are nothing to give that boy a headache. I——Hold up, you!”
Jim Pryse’s final exclamation was flung at his floundering broncho. For one moment the creature seemed to be about to crash headlong. Then the lead-rein securing it to the horn of the policeman’s saddle snapped and released it, and, under the tremendous effort of its rider’s shackled hands, it recovered itself.
The whole catastrophe was wrought on the instant. At one moment both horses were loping leisurely over the virgin carpet of snow, with ears pricked alertly as they peered out into the grey twilight of the storm. The next the policeman’s horse had gone down like a stone, and its rider lay inert, still, a huddled fur-coated heap upon the hard-frozen ground. It was the old story of thawing snow balling in the creature’s hoofs.
The twilight was deepening. It was no longer merely the sombre grey of the snowstorm. It was the gradual passing of the last of the day. The surrounding world was almost blotted out. Here and there were faint outlines,barely perceptible, to mark some woodland bluff in the immediate vicinity; but beyond that there was nothing—nothing but a grey, impenetrable pall of falling snow lolling silently upon the breathless air.
The horses were standing apart. They had no concern for the thing that had happened. They had turned away from the drift of the storm, and stood gently rubbing their frost-rimed muzzles against each other’s sweating sides.
A few yards away Jim Pryse stood with shackled hands, gazing down at the prone figure of the man who had been conveying him to the penitentiary at Calford. There was no sign of life in the fallen man. He lay unmoving, just where he had been hurled from the saddle, and the flakes of falling snow were rapidly obscuring the black outline of his fur-clad body.
For some time the convict’s scrutiny continued. Then, of a sudden, he dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the man’s body. His movements were clumsy by reason of the shackles that held his wrists, but he persisted in his task slowly and deliberately. After a while he stood up. And his hands were grasping the cartridge belt and side-arms he had removed from about the policeman’s body. With much difficulty he bestowed the revolver in the pocket of his fur coat and proceeded to remove the cartridges from the belt. These he stowed away in another pocket. Then he dropped the belt and holster in the snow.
Again he bent over the fallen man. This time it was for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of the latter’s injuries.
But he need not have concerned himself. Corporal McFardell raised his head and looked up at him.
Quick as a flash the convict was on his feet and standing clear.
“It was a bad fall boy,” he said, and for all thetwilight hid his expression there was a smile behind his words. “Guess it knocked you out. Maybe it found your head softer than the trail. There’s nothing broken?”
McFardell gazed about him a little dazedly in the failing light. Then his limbs moved. He drew up his legs and straightened them out. Then he sought to raise himself on his elbow. It was his reply to the other’s question.
Jim Pryse nodded quickly.
“That’s all right, boy. You aren’t hurt, and I’m glad. Your head’ll clear in a while, and you’ll be able to get back into the saddle and make Rock Point. But don’t do it now. Don’t move a hand or foot. You see, your gun’s in my hands,” he went on, producing the policeman’s loaded revolver, “and for they’re all shackled tight I can still pull a trigger and see straight over the sight. Maybe you’ve a key to these bracelets. But I’m not going to worry you for it. It might cause argument and a clinch, and, though I’ve your gun, I’m ready to admit you’d have the best of it in the circumstances—in a clinch. No. Just lie there, if you aren’t a fool, while I climb into my saddle. And you’ll lie there just as long as I’m within gun-range. For, sure as God, if you don’t I’ll shoot you like a dog. Do you get it? I’m getting away. Providence has handed me a chance I’m grabbing with both hands. It’s a tough chance all right, but I haven’t a grouch. Now, lie quite still till I quit.”
He backed away to the waiting horses. He paused beside his own animal, and his eyes were steadily observing the policeman who lay watching him. Then, quite suddenly, the discomfited officer was treated to an exhibition of horsemanship he was wholly unprepared for. The convict raised his fettered hands to the horn of his saddle, and, in an instant, vaulted on to his horse’s back without touching a stirrup. The threatening gun, supported in both the man’s hands still, held the prone figure covered.
Jim Pryse chuckled gleefully.
“You’ve got sense, boy,” he cried, as the other made no movement. “You certainly have. You know your duty, sure—when the drop is on you. Well, so long. I can’t wait. Now, get up quick and grab your horse. He won’t stand when mine moves off, and I haven’t a wish to leave you out here in the snow.”
He moved away, and McFardell leapt to his feet and ran to his horse. The threatening gun held him covered.
He stood for a moment holding his horse, while the outline of the moving horseman became more and more indistinct in the twilight of the storm. Then suddenly his voice sounded harshly in the dead silence of the world about him.
“You fool! Do you think you can get away? Not on your life! Take your dog’s chance! Take it! But you’ll serve those five years—and more—if the coyotes don’t feed your carcase when the storm’s through with you.”