The short November day was closing in a freezing drizzle of rain as old
Indian Tom, milk pail in hand, set out for the cowstable to do his
evening “chores.” As he turned into the stable yard he was startled to
see a horseman waiting him there, gazing round about him, a tall, lean
young man, hard of face and so dark of skin that he might have been a
blood brother but for the blue-grey eyes that looked down upon Tom as he
drew near.
“Hah!” grunted Tom. “Who come?”
“Hello, Tom! Don’t you know me?” said the young man, smiling at him.
The smile revealed him to the old Indian. Dropping his pail, Tom ran to
him with a cry.
“Kai-yai! Little chief come back! Good! good!” With both hands
upstretched he reached for the hand extended to him and almost dragged
the rider from his horse. Then followed a stream of jubilant Chippewayan
which continued unbroken while the horse was being unsaddled, rubbed
down and made comfortable for the night.
“You have everything in good order, Tom,” said Paul, returning from a
survey of the stables. “But where are the horses and cattle?”
“No more,” said Tom, spreading wide his hands. “Only cochon, heem at
house.”
“At the house?”
“Huh! Heem and his small leetle cochons at house. Come! I show heem,”
said Tom, leading the way to the woodshed attached to the kitchen, where
Paul discovered a sow and some half dozen half grown porkers, happily
and conveniently domesticated, the explanation of their proximity to the
bungalow being the desire of the Indian to save himself the annoyance of
exposure to the inclemency of the weather in their care during the
winter months.
“And where are the rest of the stock?” inquired Paul.
“Colonel Pelham, he mak de beeg sale. He’s all gone—all gone!” replied
Tom.
“And the money? But you won’t know.”
“No.”
“And the Colonel—where is he?”
“Me not know. Over de beeg water, think. He go some place,” replied Tom,
waving his hand in the direction of the universe generally.
“Oh, all right. I shall get into touch with him and he will tell me
everything,” said Paul more to himself than to Tom.
“And Sleeman, Tom?” inquired Paul.
“Sleeman? He at ranch. Ole woman she go dead. Girl she at home—good
clothes—oh!” Here, English failing him, Tom launched forth in his native
tongue into a highly coloured description of the magnificence of the
Sleeman girl. Asa, too, according to Tom, had developed into a “beeg
man,” “fat,” with plenty of money and gorgeously apparelled. Sleeman, as
far as Paul could gather, had made “much big money” through his
contracts in supplies with the railway construction gangs. He listened
with growing bitterness of spirit to Tom’s glowing accounts of the good
fortune that had come to the Sleemans, with which he contrasted the
unhappy fate that had befallen his father and his family, due to
Sleeman’s crimes. The age-long problem of the prosperity of the wicked
in a world ruled by a righteous God pressed hard upon his soul. During
those six lonely years with the Chippewayans in the North land, while he
was passing from boyhood to manhood, he had pondered long and deeply
upon that problem. True, his father had committed his sin. But he had
repented of his sin, bitterly repented, and to the utmost of his power
had made atonement. His sin had been forgiven and he himself reinstated
in the Divine favour. That was simple and right. Paul had come to
estimate at its full ethical value that sin and not according to the
standard of the savage or of the frontier people with whom he had met.
In her hasty flight from the consequences of her crime his Indian
stepmother had taken care to pack with her necessities a few books,
snatched up almost at random, among them two engineering books of his
father’s, a volume of Shakespeare and his Bible, his mother’s gift to
him. The engineering books and the Shakespeare he had practically
mastered, as far at least as the text was concerned. As for the Bible,
during those years of isolation from civilisation no day passed without
his giving an hour or more to its study. More than that, at the request
of his stepmother it became his daily practice to make the Bible a text
book for her children. For Tanna this was an hour of unmixed delight,
but for Peter the trail was heavy and progress was at the cost of much
toil and suffering.
In regard to his problem of evil and its punishment Paul had founded his
system of ethics upon the doctrine set forth in the Old Testament and in
the tragedies of the great master of the drama in the English or indeed
in any other tongue. That doctrine was simple and straightforward. The
criminal in due course received the just reward of his crime, both here
and hereafter. That was entirely as it should be.
The prosperity and happy fortune of Sleeman and his family, in contrast
to the tragic death of his father and his family, constituted an
insoluble problem for Paul. Had the Indian woman’s knife found its
intended vital spot and had Sleeman in consequence “gone to his own
place,” as was the case both in the Old Testament and in Shakespeare,
the demands of righteous government would have been met. But his father
slept on the hillside, done to death practically by Sleeman; his Indian
wife, balked of her just vengeance, lay in her far North land grave,
leaving her children homeless among strangers; while, prosperous and
happy, Sleeman and his family still lived, untouched by the vengeance of
man or God. Here upon the scene of this tragedy and in the atmosphere in
which it had been consummated, the pain of the insoluble problem became
almost unbearably acute. Paul thrust it from him in the meantime and
turned to matters more immediately pressing.
Indian Tom had evidently been making his abode in the kitchen, which
reproduced in its condition of general disorder and dirt the Indian mode
of housekeeping. From the kitchen Paul passed into the living room, and
went through the rest of the house, followed by Tom, whose face
exhibited every sign of anxiety. Paul was amazed and delighted at what
he saw. The rooms were in a condition of perfect order and cleanliness.
“Why, Tom, this is wonderful! You are a splendid housekeeper.” He ran
his hand over the face of the piano. “Not a speck of dust anywhere! Did
you have a housecleaning today?”
“Huh!” grunted Tom, in a state of high delight. “Every day! Every day!
Clean! clean! sweep! sweep! Every day! Every day! Colonel’s Pelham’s
woman she say clean him up every day. Look!” He caught down a shot gun
from the wall and threw open the breach. Paul looked through the
barrels. They glistened like silver.
“Good! Fine! Father himself never had it better. You have kept
everything in the very best shape.”
“De beeg chief, he good man to Tom,” said the Indian in a husky voice,
his face set in an unmistakable mould of grief.
The emotion manifested by the stoical and simple-hearted savage released
the flood of grief and loneliness that, without his knowledge, had been
gathering within Paul’s heart ever since he had turned in at the Pine
Croft drive. He threw himself into a chair, put his face in his hands,
while great sobs shook his body. On the floor beside him the Indian sat,
silent, his face rigid, immovable, as if cut in stone, his eyes
unseeing, staring straight into space. Thus they sat, master and man,
separated far as the poles asunder by race, breeding and convention, but
finding a meeting point in the great and profound emotions of love and
sorrow, in which all men, red, black, brown and white, are one.
After supper Tom took Paul to a special store-room where were piled up
the family boxes and trunks, each labelled as to its contents in the
Colonel’s neat hand-writing: “House linen,” “Silver,” “Books,” “Private
papers,” etc. From a cupboard in the kitchen Tom took a ring of keys and
indicated without the slightest hesitation the key for each trunk and
box. Indian Tom had been faithful to the trust imposed by the Colonel’s
“woman,” for the sake of the old chief who had saved his life many years
ago.
“We will open this one, Tom,” said Paul, pointing to the box labelled
“Private papers,” “and then you can go to bed. I shall be busy for a
couple of hours.”
But the grey dawn was coming over the mountains before Paul had gone
through the papers found in the box. The work was greatly facilitated by
the exactitude with which his father had tabulated and classified his
papers. The early letters from his wife before marriage, letters from
her during his absences from home, business documents, correspondence
with old friends of art school days, all were in their proper bundles,
rubber banded, dated and annotated in the neat lettering characteristic
of draughtsmen trained in the offices of the homeland. Nothing in the
way of private papers of date later than that of his wife’s death had
been preserved. It was as if his life in things of the heart and soul
had been buried in that grave which held all that was dearest in life to
him.
The private letters Paul left untouched. Some day he might be able to
slip off those bands and peruse the words that would be like windows
into the inmost shrine of his mother’s heart. But not today. He had a
business on hand for which he would need a cool head and a cool heart,
and a business for which he must prepare himself by an exhaustive study
of his father’s affairs. His knowledge of business matters was that of a
child. Business methods, business terminology, business principles, were
to him as English to a Chippewayan. The matter to which he addressed
himself was to discover the extent of his father’s indebtedness to
Sleeman. But after hours spent in figuring and comparing statements of
various dates he found himself compelled to acknowledge that he had come
to no assured opinion on the matter in hand.
A red leather-bound note book contained a record of receipts and
expenditures, but the record could not be made, by any arithmetical
process of which Paul was master, to square with the papers in the
trunk. Certain things appeared to be clear, however. There was a
mortgage on the ranch for fifteen thousand dollars, of the proceeds of
which ten thousand had been paid to the bank in Vancouver. To this entry
was attached the note, “This squares the bank, and Sleeman too, outside
of the mortgage, thank Heaven! Would to God I could square other
accounts as well. Those, alas! I must commit to the mercy of Almighty
God and to the love of those I love dearer than life itself.” Long Paul
pondered this note, but without clear understanding. A list of entries
of sums of money, following the mysterious letters, “I.O.U.,” with dates
and Gaspard’s signature, was found on one page and on the opposite page
a list of sales of Holsteins and Percherons, but the sums did not
correspond, nor did the entries marked I.O.U. correspond to a neatly
labelled bundle of slips of paper, duly dated and signed, similarly
marked with the letters I.O.U. and figures representing certain sums of
money. Finally Paul threw up the struggle and resolved that he would get
the truth from Sleeman himself. He had little knowledge and less
experience of business matters, but he had an instinctive knowledge of
men. Indeed he knew himself to be possessed of a strange power of
reading the hearts of men. No man had ever been able to lie successfully
to him.
Filled as he was with a settled and deadly rage toward Sleeman, he knew
that though he could kill him with his bare hands and though some such
vengeance was the man’s due for the killing of his father, yet from such
an act of vengeance he was prevented by the conscience within him and by
his solemn word to both his father and his Indian stepmother. No, he
must not and would not execute vengeance upon his enemy. Upon that he
was resolved. But he was equally resolved that he would find a method by
which he would extract the truth from Sleeman’s soul. With this resolve
arrived at, he fell into sleep as the dawn was breaking, from which he
was roused by Indian Tom only when the forenoon was half gone.
He found that his mind had carried over from the previous night the
bitter hate toward Sleeman which had been with him during his six years’
absence from home, and in an intensified degree. Before setting out on
his visit to Sleeman he walked up the hill at the back of the house, to
the little enclosed piece of ground where were the graves of his father
and mother. The poplars and birches about were bare and gaunt, but the
balsams and spruce clustered in a kindly way near the little plot, and
overhead the tall pines waved their feathery tops and sighed softly in
the wind. To Paul the place was as a temple of God, but as he looked
upon his father’s grave and remembered how it was that he came to be
lying there, into his heart there came a prayer that justice should be
done on him who had wrought this evil, and with the prayer a solemn vow
that the execution of that act of justice should not be by his hand. For
to him it came clear and certain that this matter lay in other hands
than his and that he should hold himself in readiness to act only as he
should be clearly guided. That he would be guided was to him a settled
conviction that left him with mind undisturbed and will resolved to
follow the path that should be made clear to him. In this mind he set
forth on his journey.
He took the old mountain trail to the Sleeman ranch. Every turn in the
trail was familiar to him, every turn associated with some incident in
his boyhood days. But he was in no mood to linger. Swiftly he rode and
came to the door of Sleeman’s new house, which stood on a site a little
removed from that which had been fired by his father’s Indian wife. The
door of the living room was open and standing within was Sleeman,
lighting his pipe. Without knocking Paul entered the room and walking
slowly toward Sleeman spoke in tones that cut like cold steel, “I am
Paul Gaspard. I have business with you.”
At his words Sleeman’s face turned a sickly, greenish yellow, the pipe
slipped from his fingers and fell clattering to the floor. He backed
away toward the door of an inner room, opened it and with a swift leap
was behind it, locked.
“Open that door,” commanded Paul. A moment he waited, then drove his
heel at the lock just below the door knob. With a crash the door flew
open. Within the room Sleeman was standing, a gun in his hand, hanging
loose by his side.
“Keep back,” he shouted hoarsely.
“Put—that—gun—down—quick!” came from Paul in sharp, staccato tones.
“You keep out of this room,” said Sleeman, in a blustering voice that
shook for all his bravado.
A movement swifter than the eye could follow, the snap of a gun, and
Sleeman’s gun was flung against the wall, his fingers dripping blood.
“A mistake, Sleeman. Didn’t intend to hurt you,” said Paul quietly. “I
should have warned you I am a trick hand with the gun. I tell you now.
Don’t try anything on me. There are five shots left in this gun. I can
shoot five fingers off you before you could draw. I should love to do
it. Do you know, Sleeman,” here Paul’s voice dropped a note, “I find it
hard not to kill you. I stood by my father’s grave this morning. You
killed him. Don’t speak, you dog! Only God Almighty is keeping me from
killing you now. Listen carefully. Do what I ask you and for God’s sake
if you want to live beyond this hour, do it quick!”
Paralysed with fear, the wretched man sank into a chair and sat there,
voiceless, staring at Paul, his breath choking him.
“You need a drink,” said Paul after looking at him disgustedly for a few
moments. “Get it, and quick.”
Quickly, gladly, Sleeman went to a cupboard, poured himself a stiff
glass of Scotch and drank it off.
“Now, Sleeman, I want from you a statement of how my father stood with
you in money matters.”
An amazed relief expressed itself in Sleeman’s blotched countenance.
“Yes, yes, certainly. Quite simple,” he said, striving to speak calmly.
“Get your papers,” ordered Paul sharply.
Sleeman went to a safe, brought out a tin box and selected some papers.
“There’s the mortgage,” he said. “That’s about all.”
Paul glanced at the document. He knew very little about such matters.
“This is for fifteen thousand dollars. Did you pay him the full amount?”
asked Paul, recalling an entry in his father’s red book.
“Yes—ah—the full proceeds of the mortgage,” said Sleeman.
“Sleeman, don’t try to deceive me. I know when a man is lying. Did you
give my father fifteen thousand dollars in money?” Paul’s voice carried
to Sleeman the fear of death.
“Not exactly. That is—he owed me something—we had other deals, you
understand.”
“No, I understand nothing but that you are trying to deceive me.” His
eyes, like points of steel, were boring into Sleeman’s. He leaned far
over the table. “Sleeman,” he entreated, “don’t make me hurt you. I
would love to, but unless it is necessary I must not. Listen! If it
should become necessary I will, and gladly. I should like to hear you
groan—as—as—oh, Sleeman!—as I heard my father groan the day you killed
him.”
“I didn’t kill——”
Paul’s open hand flashed to Sleeman’s face. “Liar!” he snarled, half
rising from his chair.
“Stop! stop!” cried Sleeman, utterly cowed and unmanned. “I’ll tell you
straight. I have the papers here. Don’t—do—anything!”
“Oh, you poor cur!” cried Paul. “If you were only a man I should know
what to do with you.” He was bitterly, horribly balked. He could not
bring himself to punish this abject creature. The truth was Sleeman was
by no means the man he was six years ago. He had been heavily
dissipating, and his face showed his physical and moral degeneration.
“Get through with this,” said Paul angrily. “Put your papers on the
table.”
Sleeman hastened to obey.
“Make a list of them.”
“Why? What do you——”
“Make a list of them!” snapped Paul.
The list was made out, Paul supervising and hastening the operation.
“You are sure these are all the papers relating to my father?” said
Paul, again boring him with steely eyes.
“Certain,” said Sleeman. “They are all there.”
Paul took the list, read it carefully, wrote a few words under it,
signed the paper and handed it back. “I shall take these for a few
weeks,” he said quietly, making a sheaf of the papers and snapping a
rubber band about them. “I shall return them to you in good order.”
“You have no right! You can’t——” began Sleeman, sputtering in his wrath.
Paul rose, put the bundle in his inner pocket. “Why can’t I?” he said.
“Do you see any reason? I don’t.” So saying he turned about and left
Sleeman standing with his mouth open and in a fury, if the colour of his
face gave any indication. At the door he turned and came back to
Sleeman.
“You have a new house. Your old house was burned. You know by whom.”
“Yes, I know. The——”
Paul with one stride was close to him. “Stop!” he said, gripping him by
the arm. “You are speaking of my father’s wife. You fool! Don’t you know
you are trifling with death?”
“My arm!” cried Sleeman. “You are breaking my arm.” Paul flung his arm
from him.
“She burned your house after you had attempted to outrage her,” he said.
The cold fury in his eyes struck Sleeman’s thumping heart with a new
terror. This young man stood to him for the very vengeance of God.
Indeed he could not understand why it was that he had not been killed an
hour ago for a crime for which western men show no mercy.
For some moments Paul stool regarding him with steady eyes, as if
deliberating the man’s fate.
“You know you should not be alive, Sleeman,” he said in a voice low,
tense, terrifying. “I wonder if God means me to kill you?”
“No! No! For God’s sake, Paul! I am a sick man! Don’t touch me! I was
wrong. I was wrong. I don’t blame her. I—I——” He was shaking in all his
body. He looked indeed a sick man.
A sudden thought came to Paul.
“Go and write down what you have said, and sign it! Go quick!” he
commanded.
“Yes! yes! What?”
Paul dictated a confession of his crime, and an exoneration of his
stepmother from guilt, which the shaking man signed with trembling,
eager fingers. He was very near the limit of his endurance, and was
anxious only that he should get through this interview alive and
scathless.
Putting the confession into his pocket with the other papers Paul turned
once more to Sleeman.
“What was your old house worth?”
“Oh—not much—not much. I don’t know. I——”
“Listen to me,” said Paul. “Colonel Pelham will act for me as
arbitrator. Appoint your man. I will pay what they decide to be right.”
Sleeman gazed at him in open mouthed astonishment.
“Pay me!” he gasped. “No! no! Oh, Paul, I don’t want pay for that—I——”
“Do what I tell you,” said Paul, and passing out of the house he mounted
his horse and was about to depart when into the yard cantered a lady,
tall, finely developed, sitting her horse superbly and with a somewhat
masculinely dashing style. With a slight bow Paul was passing her when
she drew up her horse sharply, swung him round and reaching out her
hand, cried:
“Why, glory be! If it ain’t Paul! The years can’t change those eyes. How
are you, Paul? It is good to see you again. And so tall and handsome!
Get off your horse and come in. Didn’t you come to see me? Or was it
Dad?”
Her frank, breezy, kindly manner did much to take the chill out of
Paul’s voice.
“I have just had a little business with your father, Adelina,” he said.
“But,” he added, taking her hand, remembering that he had no quarrel
with her, “I am glad I saw you before I left.”
“But you will come in. Do come. I want awfully to have a talk with you.
When did you come home? And how long are you going—I mean—oh, shucks! I
want an hour’s talk at the very least.” She paused abruptly, studying
his face. Then she turned to her father, who had come to the door. What
she saw in his face apparently changed her mind. “I will ride with you a
bit, Paul,” she said quietly.
Gladly would Paul have declined her offer, but he could find no
convenient excuse, so in silence they rode together toward the Pine
Croft Ranch, Paul wondering how much she knew of the whole tragedy of
his father’s death and she trying to compose the tumult in her heart
which the sight of Paul had awakened. Paul was determined that he would
wait her pleasure and her revealing. Suddenly and apropos of nothing,
Adelina burst forth into a vivid account of her life’s happenings during
the past six years; two years in a Toronto school, a winter in Vancouver
with an aunt, the rest of the time poking round this valley, which
however had considerably wakened up from its dreamy monotony of their
early years—new settlers had come in, surveyors’ parties were everywhere
about, a railway was to be put through the Crow’s Nest Pass, times were
good, everybody who had anything to sell was making money. Her dad, or
rather Asa, A. Warren Sleeman, Esq., now, if you please! was into town
sites and railway contracts and that sort of thing, and making slathers
of money. Oh, everything was booming. And by the time her history had
been related she had herself firmly and fully in hand. “And now for your
story, Paul,” she cried, turning her dancing eyes on him.
In three sentences Paul told her. Five years and a half he had lived
with his stepmother’s people in the far north. His stepmother had died
on the way out, leaving her children at a Mission School. He had herded
cattle near Edmonton for the last six months and was on his way to
Vancouver now, to learn to be an engineer. That was all. Somehow
Adelina’s face shone as with a light of glad relief. Paul had come back
to her as free of heart as he had gone.
“Vancouver? Oh, bully!” she cried. “I know lots of people in Vancouver.
Do you know anyone? No! Then I’ll give you introductions to some swell
people. They are Asa’s friends.”
“I shan’t have time for many friends. I must work,” said Paul.
“Oh, shucks!” cried Adelina. “Every fellow needs friends to get on.”
Paul set a grim mouth. “I shall get on,” he said.
Adelina’s eyes showed their admiration, but her words scorned him for
his independence.
“Get every friend you can and use him all you can, that’s my theory. Why
shouldn’t I? I’m ready to help my friends,” said this worldly wise young
lady. “By the way, have you heard anything of the Pelhams? Of Peg?”
“No,” said Paul, looking away across the valley. “They are in England, I
hear.”
“Yes, have been for a year. Before that Peg was in school in England for
years and years. She is awfully pretty, no end of a swell, and engaged
to be married.”
In spite of all his self-control Paul’s hands tightened on his reins so
that his horse came to a full stop.
“Go on, you brute,” he said, angry at himself. “Young a bit for that,
isn’t she?” he said in a voice which he strove to make casual.
“Young? Dear boy, don’t you know that she is just two years younger than
you or I? She is a finished young lady.”
Paul turned this over in his mind as an astounding bit of information.
Peg as a young lady, as one whom a man might desire to marry, was
something not only amazing but quite disturbing.
“Is she—are the Pelhams coming back home soon?” he inquired, his mind
occupied with the picture of a little girl standing in the moonlight,
looking up at him and whispering, “I won’t ever forget, Paul.”
“This winter they come back, I think. At least, if Peg doesn’t get
married,” said Adelina, her shrewd eyes searching his face and reading
it like an open book.
Paul caught the look, resented it, and closed the open book. But he
would talk no more of the Pelhams or of their plans. He listened
instead, or appeared to listen, to Adelina’s chatter about Vancouver and
the possibilities of a gay life in that young and ambitious city, till
they came to the Pine Croft drive.
“You are not listening to me a bit, Paul,” she said, with a pout. “You
are thinking of Peg I know,” with a gay laugh, “but you might as well
put her out of your mind.”
“Yes,” said Paul gravely, “I might as well put her out of my mind, and
every other girl, as far as that is concerned.” He pulled up his horse
sharply and swinging his arm to include in its sweep the Pine Croft
Ranch, he said with a touch of bitterness in his tone, “I have to make
twenty thousand dollars to buy back all that, before I think of anything
else.”
“Buy back? From whom, Paul?”
“From—why, don’t you know?—from your father, Adelina.”
A gleam came into Adelina’s eyes.
“No, I did not know, Paul. I don’t know anything about your affairs. But
why that first?”
But Paul would not discuss the matter. Adelina was quick enough to see
that he was keen to be alone. She longed to express sympathy, she longed
more to offer aid, but, remembering the look upon her father’s face as
he stood at the door a few minutes ago, determined to say nothing.
“Good-bye just now, Paul,” she said, offering her hand. “When do you
go?”
“I hardly know,” replied Paul, taking her hand in his, his mind quite
evidently far away. Her warm firm grip recalled him. “Good-bye,
Adelina,” he said. “Thank you—for—for coming with me.” What he really
meant was for the sympathy expressed in her warm hand grip.
“You know, Paul,” said the girl, with a sudden shyness, “I am awfully
sorry for you, for everything—you know.”
“Yes, I know, Adelina,” he said, a strange feeling of desolation falling
upon him. “Again, thank you. Good-bye.” Again he took her hand.
Adelina let her eyes rest steadily upon his for a moment or two,
withdrew her hand and, wheeling her horse, set off down the road at a
gallop, while Paul rode thoughtfully up the drive, realising for the
first time in his life how utterly alone he was in the world. As he drew
near the bungalow he straightened himself in the saddle.
“Well, she is gone,” he said. “And anyway I have my work to do. And God
helping me I will do it.” But he was not thinking of the girl who was
galloping down the road.