When the spring came it brought Drennen with it into the North Woods. He knew that the three whom he sought, the four counting Garcia whom he had not forgotten, might have slipped down across the border and into the States. But he did not believe that they had done so. The law was looking for them there, too, and they would stay here until the law had had time to forget them a little.
Again came long, monotonous months of seeking which were to end as they had begun. He pushed further north than he had been before, taking long trails stubbornly, his muscles grown like iron as he drove them to new tasks. He skirted the Bad Water country, made his way through Ste. Marie, St. Stephen, Bois du Lac, Haut Verre, Louise la Reine, and dipped into the unknown region of Sasnokee-keewan. He caught a false rumour and turned back, threading the Forest d'Enfer, coming again through Bois du Lac and into Sasnokee-keewan late in August. Disappointment again, and again he turned toward the Nine Lakes. At Belle Fortune, the first stop, the last village he would see for many days, he met Marshall Sothern.
Sothern was standing in front of the village inn, his hand upon the lead-rope of a sturdy pack mule. The two men looked at each other intently, Drennen showing no surprise, Sothern experiencing none. It was the older man who first put out his hand.
"I've been looking for you, Dave," he said quietly. "I'm taking my vacation, the first in seven years. I've followed you from the railroad. We're going to take our trip together now."
Drennen nodded.
"I'm glad to see you, sir," he answered quietly.
"Which way are you headed now?" asked Sothern.
"It doesn't matter. I am in no hurry. I was going toward the Nine Lakes, but …"
"You think that they have gone that way?"
Again Drennen nodded; again he failed to manifest any surprise.
"I am not sure," he said. "But the only way to be sure is to go and find out."
So together father and son packed out of Belle Fortune, headed toward the Nine Lakes in the heart of the unknown land of Sasnokee-keewan. Unknown because it is a land of short summers and long, hard winters; because no man had ever found the precious metals here; because there is little game such as trappers venture into the far out places to get; because it is broken, rough, inhospitable. But, for a thousandth time, a vague rumour had come to Drennen that those whom he sought had pushed on here ahead of him and methodically he was running down each rumour.
Perhaps not a hundred men in a hundred years had come here before them. The forests, tall and black and filled with gloom, were about them everywhere. Their trail they made, and there were days when from sunrise to sunset they did not progress five miles. Their two pack animals found insecure footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty cañons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or other trail than their own.
They were silent days. Neither man asked a question of the other and neither referred to what lay deepest in his own breast. There was sympathy between them, and it grew stronger day by day, but it was a sympathy akin to that of the solitudes, none the less eloquent because it was wordless. Sothern informed Drennen once, out of the customary silence about the evening camp fire, that he was taking an indefinite vacation; that there was a man in his place with the Northwestern who was amply qualified to remain there permanently if Sothern did not come back at all.
They sought to water at Blue Lake, so little known then and now already one of the curiosities of the North and found its waters both luke warm and salty. Although the lake is less than a quarter of a mile long they were two hours in reaching the head. The mountains come down steeply on all sides, the timber stands thick, boulders are scattered everywhere, and it was already dark.
This is the first of the Nine Lakes when one approaches from the south. Less than a hundred yards further north, its surface a third of that distance above the level of Blue Lake, is Lake Wachong. It has no visible connection with Blue Lake except when, with the heavy spring thaw, there is a thin trickle of water down the boulders. Here they camped for the night.
"We would have seen a trail if they had gone ahead of us this year, Dave," Sothern remarked, referring for the first time in many days to the matter which was always in Drennen's mind.
"There's another way in," Drennen told him. "They'd have gone that way. It's north of here and easier. But we save forty or fifty miles this way."
There had been a recent discovery of gold at a little place called Ruminoff Shanty, newly named Gold River. This, lying still eighty miles to the north, was Drennen's objective point. The old rumour had come to him a shade more definite this time. In the crowd pushing northward had been three men and a woman, one of the men looked like a Mexican and the woman was young and of rare beauty. But that had not been all. A man named Kootanie George with another man wearing the uniform of the Royal Northwest Mounted had followed them. These had all gone by the beaten trail; Drennen saw that if he came before Kootanie George and Max to the four he sought he must take his chances with the short cut.
The next night they camped at the upper end of the fourth of the string of little lakes. And that evening they saw, far off to the westward, the faint hint of smoke against the early stars, the up-flying sparks, which spoke of another campfire upon the crest of the ridge.
The old man bent his penetrating gaze upon his son. Drennen's face, as usual, was impassive.
"My boy," said Sothern very gently, "you are sure that you have made no mistake? The girl is no better than her companions?"
"They merely kill a man for his gold," returned Drennen steadily. "She plays with a man's soul and kills it when she has done."
There were deep lines of sadness about Sothern's mouth; the eyes which forsook Drennen's face and turned to the glitter of the stars were unutterably sad.
"The sins of the father …" he muttered. Then suddenly, an electric change in the man, he flung himself to his feet, his hands thrown out toward his son.
"By God! Dave," he cried harshly; "they're not worth it! Let them go! We can turn off here where the world is good because men haven't come into it. The mountains can draw the poison out of a man's heart, Dave. There is room for the two of us, boy, for you and me on a trail of our own. Leave them for Max and Kootanie George.… Come with me. Do you hear me, Dave, boy? We don't need the world now we've … we've got each other!"
Drennen shook his head.
"I've got my work to do," he said quietly. "I think it'll be done soon now. And then … then we'll go away together, Dad. Just the two of us."
The camp fire which the two men had seen had not been that of Ygerne and her companions. Upon the afternoon of the second day Drennen and Sothern, still working northward along the chain of lakes, came to unmistakable signs of a fresh trail, made by two men, turning in from the westward. In the wet sand of a rivulet were the tracks. One was of an unusually large boot, the other of a smaller boot with a higher heel that had sunk deep.
"Kootanie George and Lieutenant Max, I think," announced Drennen. "It's a fair bet, since they're both somewhere in the neighbourhood and may well enough be travelling together. They've gone on ahead.…"
They travelled late that afternoon, Drennen setting a hard pace, seemingly forgetful of the man who followed. Drennen's eyes had grown bright as with fever; for the first time he showed a hint of excitement through the stern mask of his face. He felt strangely assured that he had come close to the end of a long trail. But that was not the thought which caused his excitement. It was the fear that perhaps Kootanie George and Max might first come up with the quarry.
Signs of fatigue showed upon Marshall Sothern an hour before they made camp. Drennen sought and failed to hide the restlessness upon him. The next morning, a full hour before the customary time for making the start for the day, Drennen had thrown the half diamond hitch which bespoke readiness. They reached Lake Nopong before noon and all day fought their way northward along its shore. Before night came they had heard a rifle shot perhaps a mile further on. A rifle shot might mean anything. No doubt it merely told of a shot at a chance deer. But Drennen's anxiety, already marked, grew greater.
Drennen left their camp fire when they had made their evening meal and climbed the little cliffs standing at the skirt of the strip of valley land east of Lake Nopong. Half an hour later he came back. Sothern, removing his pipe from his mouth, looked up expectantly.
"I think I can make out their camp fire," Drennen said, speaking slowly. "I imagine an hour would bring us up with them."
Sothern knocked out his pipe and got to his feet. Tightening the pack upon his mule's back he removed the rifle which had always ridden there and carried it in his hand. Drennen's own rifle remained on his pack; he did not seem to have noticed Sothern's act.
Two hours later, sending before them an announcement of their approach in a rattle of loose stones down a steep trail, they came up with the two men whom they had followed these last few days. They were Lieutenant Max and the big Canadian and the two were not alone. Drennen, walking a little ahead of his father, came to a dead halt, his body grown suddenly rigid. He had seen that there was a second camp fire, a tiny blaze of dry fagots not twenty steps from the first but partially screened by the undergrowth among the trees, and that the slender form of a woman bent over it. His pause was only momentary; when he came on his face gave no sign of the emotion that had been riding him nor of the old disappointment again as he saw that the woman was not Ygerne but Ernestine Dumont.
Lieutenant Max, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, stepped out to meet them. Not knowing who his guests were he moved so that the firelight was no longer just behind him, so that he was in the shadows. Kootanie George, upon his knees, holding a bit of fresh meat out over the fire upon a green, sharpened stick, turned his head but did not move his great body.
"Who is it?" demanded Max sharply. And then, before an answer had come, he saw who they were and cried out: "Why, it's David Drennen! And Mr. Sothern! Gad, I never thought to see you two here!"
He came forward and shook hands warmly, showing an especial pleasure in meeting Marshall Sothern again. The eyes of both men kindled as they gripped hands, in Sothern's a look of affection, in Max's an expression compounded of liking and respect.
Max had finished his meal; George, his appetite in keeping with his size, was doing his last bit of cooking; Ernestine, bending over her own lonely blaze, was seeking to warm a body which the fresh evening had chilled, a body which looked thinner and withal more girlish than it had looked for many a day. The face which she turned toward the new arrivals with faint curiosity, was paler than it had been of yore; her eyes seemed larger; there were traces of suffering which she had not sought to hide.
Lieutenant Max was unmistakably glad to welcome Drennen and Sothern to camp. The atmosphere hovering about the trio upon whom father and son had come was not to be mistaken even in the half gloom. There was nothing in common between the officer and the big Canadian beyond their present community of interest in coming up with the fugitives whom the law sought through Max and revenge quested through Kootanie. And Ernestine, though with them, was distinctly not of them. She was pitifully aloof, the broad expanse of George's back turned toward her fire speaking eloquently.
"You are on a hunting trip, I take it?" offered Max as they sat down, each man having brought out and lighted his pipe. "Just pleasure of course? There's no gold in here, you know," he ended with a laugh.
Sothern turned his eyes toward Drennen and brought them back to the fire without answering. Max's eyes upon him Drennen spoke simply.
"A hunting trip, yes. Hunting the same game you are after."
Ernestine looked up quickly, her hands clenching spasmodically. George turned his meat, spat into the coals, and sought for salt.
"Mr. Drennen," said the lieutenant coldly, "it's just as well to understand each other right now. I represent the law here; the law at so early a stage as this considers no personal equation. A private quarrel must stand aside. I know what you mean; you know what I mean."
"Lieutenant," answered Drennen gravely, "the law is not yet full grown in the North Woods. Here a man steps aside for nothing. Yes, as you say, I think we understand each other."
"By God!" cried Max angrily, "I know what is in your heart, yours and George's here! It's murder; that's the name for it! And I tell you that you are going to keep your hands off! When we find these people they are my prisoners, it's my sworn duty to lead them back to a place where they can stand trial, and I am going to take them. Remember that."
Drennen, having spoken all that he could have said if he talked all night long, made no answer. Ernestine, her two hands at her breast, crouched rocking back and forth, in a sort of silent agony. George, eating swiftly and noisily, did not look up.
In an instant the old atmosphere which had hovered over the camp came back, electrically charged with distrust, constraint, aloofness. Sothern's heavy brows were drawn low, the firelight showing deep, black shadows in the furrows of his forehead. In a moment he got to his feet and went to where Ernestine sat, his hat in his hand, kind words of greeting upon his lips for a lonely woman. She grew suddenly sullen; in a moment the sullen mood melted in a burst of tears, and she was talking with him incoherently.
George and Drennen had not met to speak since that night, long ago, when they had diced and fought at Père Marquette's. Now neither gave the least sign that he had seen the other.
When one, life ended, goes down into the grave that grass may grow above him and men walk over his quiet body, are the doors of his hell swinging open that he may enter, or are they softly closing behind him? Are the fires of hell venomous tongues that bite deep to punish with their torture when it is too late? or are they flames which cleanse and chasten while there is yet time? Ernestine Dumont, like many another, had lighted the fires with her own hands, seeing and understanding what it was that she did. For close to two years she had walked through the flames of her own kindling. And now, not waiting for the tardy retribution which comes all too late, she was already passing through the burning fires; she was closer than she knew to having the iron portals clang behind her, gently and forever. After labour comes rest; after suffering, peace.
Drennen had said, "There is no law here in the North Woods that a man may not push aside." He was thinking of such law as Lieutenant Max represented. Had he looked into his own heart; could he have looked into the hearts of Marshall Sothern, Ernestine Dumont, Kootanie George, even into the heart of Lieutenant Max, he would have known that his seeming truth was an obvious lie. There is another law which reaches even into the lawless North Woods and which says, "Transgress against me and not another but yourself shall shape your punishment." Had he looked into the hearts of Ygerne Bellaire, of Sefton and Lemarc and Garcia, he would have beheld the same truth. He might have looked into the hearts of good men and bad and have found the same truth. For soon or late each man, be he walking as straight in the light as he knows how, be he crouching as low in the shadows as he may, ignites the sulphur and tinder of his own hell. The hell may be little or it may be a conflagration; it may flicker and die out or it may burn through life and lick luridly at the skies; but a man must light it and walk through it, since he is but man, and that he may be a man.
If Ernestine Dumont's body had appeared to grow wan and slender, her soul, long stifled, had found nourishment and had expanded. Under a sympathy emanating gently from Sothern she grew calm and spoke with him as she had not known she could speak. She was not the woman she had been two years ago, and yet no miracle had been wrought. She had sinned but she had suffered. The suffering had chastened her. A rebellious spirit always, she had become softened with a meekness which was not weakness but the dawning of understanding. She had struggled, she had known fatigue after violence and the God who had made the Law had ordained that after fatigue should come rest.
There was much she did not say which Sothern, having trod his own burning path, could divine.
She had offered to David Drennen a fierce passion which he neither could nor would accept. The hot breath of it had shaken her being, seared through her breast, blinded her eyes. She had flung herself upon Kootanie George, still seeing only Drennen through the blur of her passion; she had awakened love in Kootanie George, the strong love of a strong man, and she had not so much as seen it.
She had humiliated the Canadian before men. Had she fired the shot because she loved him he would have been proud instead of ashamed. But he had known that she had fired only because she wanted to hate David Drennen.
Seeing dimly what she had lost only when it was gone from her she had sought to bring it back by throwing herself at another man. Garcia had made light love to her beautifully after the exquisite manner of his kind, and had gone away when Ygerne had gone, with laughter in his gay heart and his song upon his lips for the woman who had taken Drennen's love. George had seen, had understood and his heart had grown still harder.
But now, at last, Ernestine knew to the full what she had been offered and had thrust aside. She had come to see in Kootanie George the qualities of which a woman like her could be proud. She had come to feel a strange sort of awe that George, who was no woman's man but always a man's man, had loved her. And it had been given to her at last to know that her passion for David Drennen had been as the passion of the moth for the candle. A new love came into her heart, rising to her throat, choking her; a love that was meek and devoted, that was now as much a part of her as were her hands and feet; an emotion that was the most unselfish, the most worthy and womanly she had ever felt. She had followed Kootanie George; she had at last come up with him; and now, George's back to her, she sat at her own little fire.
"Life is hard for us, Miss Dumont." Sothern laid his hand very gently upon her shoulder and smiled into her face. "But, I think … at the end … life is good."
"I have done everything wrong," she said slowly. "I have never had anything in life worth while … but George's love. And I threw that away."
"When a man has loved once he loves always," Sothern told her quietly. "And a thing like that you can't throw away."
Presently, from deep thoughtfulness, she said hesitantly:
"I want to talk to Mr. Drennen. There is something I must say to him."
"Let it wait a day or so," Sothern answered. "He is not himself right now. And George might misunderstand."
Before sunrise the five beings whose lives were so intimately intertwined and yet who were held by constraint one from the other, took up the trail. There was but one way to go and this fact alone held them together; they must keep close to the lake shore for upon the right the mountains swept upward in a series of cliffs and into a frowning barrier. Marshall Sothern and Ernestine, walking together in the rear, spoke little as the day wore on. Max, Drennen and Kootanie George, ahead, spoke not at all. In silence, never the elbow of one touching the coat of another, the three men felt and manifested the jealous rivalry which all day fought to place each one ahead of the others. George, fleeced as Drennen had been and at a time when the Canadian's soul had listened avidly to the voice of his wrath, embittered as Drennen was by the act of a woman, was scarcely less eager to be first than Drennen himself. And Max, reading the signs, grew watchful as his own eagerness mounted.
Before night they found the trail which Drennen knew that, soon or late, he would come upon. Here, perhaps a week ago, certainly not more than ten days ago, two or three men and one woman had passed. They had had with them two or three pack animals and the trail, coming in abruptly from a cañon at the westward, was plain.
At nightfall they were at the foot of the sixth of the nine lakes, the broad trail running on straight along its marge. The fathomless, bluish water, looking in the dusk a mere rudely circular mirror which was in truth a liquid cone whose tip was hidden deep in the bowels of earth, lay in still serenity before them. On all sides the cliffs, sheer falls half a thousand, sometimes quite a thousand feet high, seemed actually to stoop their august, beetling brows forward that they might frown down upon their own unbroken reflections. There would be a pass through the mountains at the northern end of the lake, a deeply cleft gorge, maybe, but from here, with the first dimness of the new night upon everything, there seemed no way through.
Each man, the silent meal done, threw his bed where he saw fit, apart from the others. Sothern, having aided Ernestine, telling her good night and receiving a wan smile of gratitude, went back to the fire where Max was brooding. The lieutenant looked up, glad of the companionship. The two men from silence grew to talk in low voices. Max had something he wanted to say and the opportunity for saying it seemed to have come. He looked about him, saw Drennen's form and George's through the trees, saw where Ernestine was stamping out the glowing embers of her fire, and began to speak. Something else he saw and forgot, its being of no importance to his brain. It was merely the pipe which Drennen had laid upon a stone near the camp fire and had left there when he had gone away.
But Drennen, being in no mood for sleep, missed his pipe. Coming back toward the fire a little later it happened that he approached behind the two men's backs and in the thick shadows. It happened, too, that they were very deep in their own thoughts and conversation and that they did not hear him until he had caught a part of their talk. After that Drennen, grown as still as the rocks about him, listened and made no sound. He had caught the words from Max:
"…a man named Drennen; an embezzler. Not a common name, is it? I've a notion that this David Drennen is the son of that John Harper Drennen."
Drennen, listening, got nothing from this, but stood still, frowning and wondering. His eyes, upon Max's face outlined by the fire, took no note of Sothern's.
"We've got the report," went on Max thoughtfully, "that the other Drennen, John Harper Drennen, is somewhere in this country. Lord," and he laughed softly, "it would be some white feather in my cap if I could bring the old fox in, wouldn't it, Mr. Sothern? He's given the police the slip for a dozen years."
Now, Drennen, with a quick start of full understanding, looked anxiously at the old man. Sothern's face stood in clear relief against the fire. There came no change into it; he looked gravely at Max, drew a moment contemplatively at his pipe, and then in a voice grave and steady answered:
"John Harper Drennen.… I remember the name. The papers were full of it. But wasn't he reported to have died a long time ago?"
"A dodge as old as the hills," grunted Max. "And God knows it works often enough, at that. No, he isn't dead and he is somewhere in this corner of the Dominion. By Heaven!" his young voice rising with the ambition in it, "if it's in my run of luck to bring him in I'll go up for promotion in two days! And I'm going to get him!"
Sothern's smile, a little tense, seemed only the smile of age upon the vaunting ambition of youth.
"I am not the man to doubt your ability to do pretty nearly anything you set your mind and hand to, Max," he said after a little. And then, "Isn't it a little strange that after all these years interest in John Harper Drennen should awake?"
"Not so strange," replied Max. "The odd thing, perhaps, is that David Drennen, the son, and the sort of man he seems to be, should have paid off his father's obligation of forty thousand dollars just as soon as he sold the Golden Girl to you people."
Sothern, offering no remark, looked merely casually interested. Max went on.
"That's the first thing which began to stimulate dormant interest," he said. "Queer, isn't it, that the most honest and unselfish and altogether praiseworthy thing he has ever been known to do should succeed chiefly in drawing attention to his father, so long thought dead? We've had our eyes on him for pretty close to a year now. I'm up a tree to know whether he knows his father is living, even."
"That's not all of the evidence you've got that John Harper Drennen is alive, is it?" Sothern's voice asked quietly.
"Lord, no. That's not evidence at all. In fact, there isn't any evidence; there's just a tip. There came a letter to the Chief in Montreal. I got a copy of it. It said merely: 'John Harper Drennen, wanted for embezzlement in New York, is in hiding in the North Woods country. He is the father of David Drennen of MacLeod's Settlement. Watch young Drennen and you'll find the thief.'"
When Max paused, leaning toward the fire for a burning splinter of wood for his pipe, Sothern passed his hand swiftly across his eyes. As Max straightened up the old man said:
"The letter might have said more. It doesn't give you a great deal to work upon."
Max laughed.
"But it does. The letter wasn't signed, even, and was typewritten, so you'd say it wasn't worth reading twice. And yet I know right now who wrote it."
"Yes?"
"Yes." There was triumph unhidden in Max's voice, in his eyes turned full upon Sothern's. "For I've been after that man for more than seventeen months, the man who has cause to hate John Harper Drennen like poison, the man who'd like to entangle both the father and son in the mesh of the law. It's the man I'm going to get at the end of this trail, a man calling himself Sefton. And when I get him he's going to talk, he's going to identify John Harper Drennen, and I'm going to put the two of them where they'll see the sun through the bars for more years than is pleasant to look upon!"
Again there was silence and the calm smoking of pipes.
"Why do you tell me this, Max?" asked Sothern after a little.
Suddenly Max's hand shot out, resting upon Sothern's shoulder. Drennen started, his hands shutting tight, as he waited breathlessly for the words: "John Harper Drennen, you are my prisoner!" He fancied that he saw Sothern's body shaken with a little tremor. The words which he heard at last in Max's quiet voice were these:
"I tell you, Mr. Sothern, because I come pretty near the telling of everything to you. Because for six years you have been more a father to me than my own father ever was. Because everything that I am I owe to you. You set my feet in the right path, and now that I am succeeding, for by God, success is coming to me, I want you to know it! I have never talked to you of the things which I have felt most.…" For a moment he broke off; Drennen fancied his eyes glistened and that he had choked on the simple words. "You know what I mean … you don't think I'm a sentimental fool, do you?"
Sothern, his face white but his expression showing nothing, his voice grave and calm, dropped his own hand gently upon the lieutenant's shoulder.
"Max, my boy," he said simply, "I know you'll succeed. I've always known that. But, old fellow, I think you've got the hardest work of your life ahead of you. No, I don't think you are a sentimental fool. We are just in the forests together, and the solitude and the starlight up yonder and the bigness of the open night are working their wills upon us. Just remember one thing, Max," and his voice grew a shade sterner, "when the hard time comes don't let your heart-strings get mixed up with your sworn duty. If you did I'd be ashamed of you, not proud, my boy."
Drennen slipped away through the dark. He came to his bed under the trees and went on, walking swiftly. For the first time in many long months a new emotion was upon him, riding him hard. He forgot Ygerne for the moment; forgot his own wrong and his own vengeance. He looked at the stars and they seemed far away and dim; the shadows about him were like blackness intensified into tangible things.
When at last he came back to his bed the fires were out; all the others had gone to their rest. He fancied, however, that none of them slept. He pictured each one, his own father, Kootanie George, Ernestine, Lieutenant Max, lying wide awake, staring up into the stars, each one busy with his own destiny. What pitiful pictures are projected into the calm of the star-set skies from the wretched turmoil of fevered brains!
"I must come to Sefton first!"
It was Drennen's last thought that night. His first thought in the dim dawn was:
"I must come to Sefton first!"
In the thick darkness half way between midnight and the first glimmer of the new day Drennen awoke. That he must silence Sefton before Max came up with him was the thought awaking with him. He was fully conscious of his purpose before he knew what it was that had awakened him.
Quite close to him was the noise of breaking brush and snapping twigs. Evidently one of the pack animals had broken its tie-rope. He lifted himself upon his elbow, frowning into the darkness. The horse was not ten feet from him and yet it was hard to distinguish that darker blot in the darkness which bespoke the brute's body.
"What is it?"
It was the voice of Kootanie George from the big Canadian's bed some fifty feet away. It was the first time George had spoken to Drennen. Drennen answered quietly:
"One of the horses has broken his rope."
Knowing that the animal might wander back along the trail and cause no little delay in the morning, Drennen slipped on his boots and went to tie him. The horse, seeing where the man could not, drew back toward the cliffs. Drennen, led by the noise of breaking underbrush, at last was enabled to make out distinctly the looming form in a little clearing. Stooping swiftly, through a random clutch at the ground, he was lucky enough to seize the end of the broken rope.
"It's Black Ben," he thought. "Max's horse."
A sudden temptation came to him. Puzzling it over he led the horse slowly toward the grassy flat under the cliffs where the others were tethered. Suppose that he turned Max's horse loose? And Kootanie's? And that he should head them back along the trail? Not a pretty trick to play, but was now the time for nicety? It would mean delay, not for Drennen, but for Kootanie and Max … it might mean the opportunity he wanted, to come up with Sefton before the others.
He passed close to where George lay. The Canadian had again drawn up his blanket and was going back to sleep. The others were sleeping. It was too dark for them to see what he was doing. Too dark for him to more than make out the forms of the other horses when he came to the flat under the cliffs. And by that time he had made up his mind; he would take advantage of whatever came to his hand and ask no questions; he would find George's pack animal in a moment and would then lead the two of them around the camp and turn them loose.
Had he come to George's horse first he would have done so. But it chanced that the first horse across whose tether he tripped was a big black animal with the white strip from below the ears to the nostrils showing in the gloom to which Drennen's eyes were accustomed now. This was Lieutenant Max's horse, Black Ben! Then the horse he was leading …
He swung about swiftly, gathering up the slackened rope, coming close to the horse what had awakened him. It was like Black Ben, easily to be mistaken even in a better light than this … but it was not George's horse nor yet Max's.…
"A strange horse, here!" was his swift thought. "Whose?"
He ran his hands along the big brute's back. There was no saddle. About the neck only a knotted rope. His hands ran on to the dragging end of the rope. The strands were rough there, unequal, bespeaking a tether snapped. He noted now, too, that the rope was damp and a little muddy.
"He's come down the trail from the north. We are close to Sefton's camp."
From the north because there was no place which Drennen remembered having passed during the end of the day where a horse could muddy a dragging rope. The lake shore was sand and gravel. And, before he had gone to bed that night, he had seen a straggling stream which a little further on ran across the morrow's trail, making shallow ponds in the grass, the banks oozy mud.
Tying the strange horse swiftly, Drennen went back to his bed. He found his rifle and cartridge belt, filled his pockets hit or miss from his food pack, and, making no noise, returned to the flat. Again leading the strange horse he pushed on, up trail, toward the muddy brook.
Too dark to see more than the lowering mass of trees, the blackness of the ground looking a bottomless pit under foot, the wall of cliffs standing up against the stars. But slowly he could find his way to the creek, across, and along the lake shore.
Again and again he stumbled against a boulder or tree trunk or clump of bushes. He cursed his eyes for fools, drew back and around the obstacle and pushed on. He would make little speed this way, but there might arise the situation in which every moment would be golden.
After a little an inspiration came to him and he acted upon it swiftly. He let the rope out through his fingers and holding it at the broken end drove the horse on ahead of him, calculating upon the fact that it could see even if he could not, and having been over the trail once would travel it again in the darkness.
So Drennen made his way northward. Now he was making better time, perhaps a couple of miles an hour. By dawn he would be several miles ahead of the others, and then he could travel more rapidly.
But, before the dawn came, he must stop. He had come under the cliffs which stood tall and bleakly forbidding at the upper end of the lake. The horse came to a dead standstill. If there were a way up here, a trail through the cliffs, the animal seemed to have no knowledge of it and Drennen's blind groping could not discover it.
It was only through the mastery of a strong will, long seasoned and drilled, that Drennen could force himself at last to sit down and wait the coming of the light. His soul was in turmoil. His mind was filled with broken fancies, tortured visions. In him the simplicity of a normal existence had been phantastically twisted into complication. Before him were Sefton and Lemarc and Garcia … and Ygerne Bellaire. Behind him were George and Ernestine with their warped lives, Sothern and Max with their souls upon the verge of convulsion. Max, young and straightforward, his sky clear to the star of his duty, was sleeping in ignorance, while if he but knew he would be torn a thousand ways. And it seemed to Drennen that the restless thing in each of these lives, behind him and in front of him, raised its hissing head to dart venom into his own breast, to make for unrest and doubt there.
At last the objects about him were slowly restored to their own individual forms from the void of the night. The trees separated, the expanse of the lake grew grey and liquid, the cliffs showed their ancient battle scars. And the trodden earth held fresh and plain the trail he sought.
Leading the horse again, he climbed up from the level of the lake toward the cliff tops. The trail, hazardous enough at all times, looking now and then impossible, wound and twisted among the boulders, snaked its way into a narrow gorge, mounted along a bit of bench land clinging like a shelf to the mountain side, and in an hour's time brought him to the top.
Now the day was full upon him. Behind and below lay the lake he had just quitted. He could make out a plume of smoke where the impatience of Max and George would be bestirring Itself. Ahead and below lay Red Deer Lake, a thousand dizzy feet down, seeming impossible of achievement from where Drennen stood. He pushed a stone over the rocks with his boot. He saw it leap outward and drop, plummet wise, saw the white spray of the lake leap upward as the stone plunged into the water.
Drennen had turned the horse loose. From the hog's-back upon which he stood he could look down into a little valley lying to the eastward and could make out in it two more pack animals, tethered. He headed this one down the trail and then turned his eyes back toward Red Deer Lake and, across it, to the cliffs beyond. For there he had seen a second plume of smoke.
It seemed to him then that a man must have wings to reach that other line of cliffs, on the far side of the lake, from which the smoke was climbing upward. Everywhere the sheer precipices marched up to the rim of the blue laughter of the water below him, so that one might believe that neither man nor four-footed denizen of the forestland could come here to drink; that only the birds, dropping with folded wings, could visit its shore. But others had been here before him; and surely it was their smoke which curled upward from the far cliffs. If they had found a way to go on on foot, leaving their horses here, then he could find it. And he must find it quickly … before Max and George.
First he noted the location of the smoke toward which he sought to go, so that he would not miss it. Nature aided him, making the spot distinctive. Everywhere the cliffs were barren, just rock and more rock, a jumble of great boulders strewn along sheer precipices, everywhere save alone in this one spot. But there was a scant table land, and from it a small grove of pines rose high in the blue of the brightening sky, their gnarled limbs still and sturdy. It was above this single noteworthy clump of ancient boled trees to be seen upon these inhospitable heights that the thin bluish smoke arose.
To Drennen, frowning across the gulf separating him and his quarry, there seemed but one conceivable reason why a human being should have sought to win a way to that rocky aerie. From its nature it was all but unscalable; from its position it commanded in limitless, sweeping view all possible paths of approach. Did Sefton's party seek a hiding place where defence even against great numbers would be a simple matter, this nest upon the cliff tops was the ideal spot.
Thus Drennen answered the riddle. But there were other riddles which he could not answer and which he gave over. Why had the horses been left where they would be found so readily? Why that careless beacon smoke where no man could fail to see it?
Max would see it and he would be hurrying, swifter than Drennen had come because now it was daylight. With the need of haste crying in his ears Drennen experienced the slipping by of slow hours with nothing accomplished. Back and forth along the edge of the cliffs he searched eagerly, like some great, gaunt questing hound, baffled by a cold track. Sefton and those with him had come here, had found the way down, had gained the far side two miles away across the lake. They had gone before, so he knew that he could come after. But he grew feverish over the delay, thinking as much of Max behind as of Sefton in front.
Again and again he thought that he had found the way down only to be driven back and up when he had made a few perilous feet downward along the beetling fall of rock. He sought tracks and found nothing; there was nothing but hard rock here which kept no impress less than that of the tread of the passing centuries. He even went down into the little valley where the horses were, hoping that through some deep cleft chasm the trail led circuitously to the lake shore. But he came back, again baffled, again hurrying with the certainty upon him that Max, too, was hurrying.
The sun was three hours high when Drennen found what he sought. With the keen joy at the discovery there came deep wonder. It was the approach to the lake; but the wonder arose from the unexpected nature of the path itself. He had passed further and further north along the cliffs until a couple of miles lay between him and the spot where this latest quest had begun. And he came now to a cleft in the rocks. On each hand the cliffs fell apart so that at the top the chasm measured perhaps ten or twelve feet. The chasm narrowed fifty feet below until it formed a great V. Below that Drennen could not see until he had made his precarious way down into the cut. And when he had come to what had appeared from above to be the closed angle of the V he found the rest of the way open to him. And the wonder arose from the obvious fact that there were many rude steps not nature-made but man-made. There were hand-holds scooped out here and there in the rock; foot-holds chiselled rudely; and all bore the mark of no little age. Grass grew scantily in the cracks; a young cedar, hardy, with crooked roots like the claws of a monster, stood in one of the deeper scooped hollows; the debris fallen into the man-made steps had accumulated through the generations. In one of these places, when he had gone downward a hundred feet, he came to a little space of soft soil which held the trampled impress of boots.
Now, his rifle slung to his back, his fingers gripping at cracks and seams and little knobs of stone, he made what speed he could. The way he followed led along a long, horizontal fissure for a space, then dipped dangerously near the perpendicular, then slanted off so that the danger was less, greater speed possible. He did not look down to the lake, fearing the dizziness which might lay hold of him and whip him from the face of the cliffs like a fly caught in a rush of wind.
The thought entered his mind, "Ygerne Bellaire had gone on here before him!" He pictured her confident bearing as she climbed down, her capable hands clinging to the rocks, her fearless eyes as she looked down at the blue glint of the lake a thousand feet below, the red curve of her lips as she smiled her contempt of the danger. Be she what she might, Ygerne Bellaire was not the coward he had once thought all women.
He grew angry with himself for harbouring a thought into which a tinge of admiration for her entered. He was coming up with her soon; he sneered at himself and at her and crept on downward.
Again and again the way looked impossible; again and again he found the scooped-out handhold which carried him on. And yet it was another two hours before he had dropped the last ten feet to the narrow, pebbly shore of Red Deer Lake.
Now there would be no more lost time, no hesitation in finding the path he must follow. For here, at the marge, were the tracks of those who had gone before. And there was but one way these could lead. For upon the left hand the cliffs came down to the water and there was no path; upon the right there was a six-foot strip of uneven beach.
The sudden sound of a voice shouting dropped down to him. Jerking his head up he made out the form of Lieutenant Max at the top of this devil's stairway down which he had just come. Drennen laughed shortly and turned northward along the lake shore. He had lost time but he would lose no more. He still had two hours the best of it; it would take Max fully that long to make the descent.
"When he comes up with me," was Drennen's quick thought, "my work will have been done!"