Two hours later Jack rode into the Sapi village for the second time,
and flung himself off his tired and dripping mount. The horse stood
with hanging head, and feet planted wide apart, fighting for breath.
This time Jack's arrival created little visible sensation. The people
were otherwise and terribly preoccupied. A strange silence prevailed,
extending even to the children and the dogs. Many of the people were
gathered around the entrance to Etzeeah's lodge. They merely turned
their heads with a scowl, and the men drew on the walled look they
affect in the presence of whites. In the faces of the women and
children awe and terror were painted.
"Ascota, where is he?" Jack demanded.
Hands were silently pointed up the valley.
"How long?"
"Half an hour," one said.
Outside the square Jack saw two more dead weary horses still wet from
their punishing ride.
"Where is Etzeeah?" he asked.
There was no answer. All the heads turned as one toward the tepee.
Jack threw back the blind that hangs over the entrance, and, stooping,
entered. He was prepared for what he saw. The body of the old man
sprawled on its back beside the fire. All around the tepee squatted
his wives and his sons in attitudes of sullen mourning. Etzoogah, the
best-beloved, eyed the body askance with scared eyes, and chewed the
tassel of his red sash. Etzeeah was not a comely sight. Death was in
his face, but none of the majesty of death. His grimy, wrinkled skin
was livid and blackened. The marks on his scrawny throat showed how he
had met his end.
Stooping, Jack picked up his hand, and let it fall. It was
significantly cold and stiff. He decently composed the dead man's
limbs, and signed to one of the women to cover the body with her shawl.
Rising, he looked grimly around the circle. "This is murder!" he said.
None showed in any way that they heard.
"Who will ride with me to catch the murderer?" he demanded.
None moved. The faces of the women showed a start of terror.
Jack went outside again, and looked over the silent crowd. Seeing
Charlbogin, one of the deserters, among them, he went to him.
"Did Ascota speak?" he demanded.
The sulky boy could not resist the command. "Ascota throw Etzeeah on
the ground, so!" he said with a striking gesture. "He say: 'This is a
man who betrayed me! Bury him!'"
A shudder passed through the crowd. Children wailed and whimpered.
"Then what?" asked Jack.
"He take a gun and a blanket, and moose meat from the fire; he catch a
horse and ride west."
"And you let him go!" exclaimed Jack.
"Ascota is not a man like us," the young man muttered. "He does what
he likes."
"More woman's talk!" cried Jack. "Are there any men among you? Come
with me, and I'll show you stronger magic than Ascota's."
Some of the men affected to smile contemptuously as at an idle boaster.
None moved to follow him. The obstinacy of their terror faced Jack
like a wall, and he saw the futility of trying to move it.
He cursed them roundly. "I'll go alone then," he cried. "Bring me the
best horse there is. I'll pay."
They shrugged as much as to say: "Let him, as long as he pays." One
went to get the horse. In five minutes Jack was pounding the trail
again.
Beyond the village the valley narrowed, and the roar of the plunging
stream rose from the bottom of it. The bordering hills rapidly became
steeper and higher. The trail did not follow the course of the river,
but found an easier route along the face of the hills a hundred feet or
so above. The sides of the hills had been burned over, here, and the
forest was only a wilderness of naked, charred sticks. Many of these
had fallen in the trail, making slow going for the horse. Occasionally
the little river paused for a while in its headlong descent to wander
back and forth through a green meadow. The trail came down to cross
these easy places, and it was only here that Jack could extend his
horse.
The plain tracks of Jean Paul's horse led him on. Jack could read that
the breed was riding recklessly and distancing him steadily mile by
mile, but he would not on that account risk his own horse's legs
through the down timber. "I'll get him," he said to himself coolly,
with the terrible singleness of purpose of which he was capable. In
such a mood he was no longer a man, but an engine.
Jack had come across the mountains from Fort Erskine by this trail, and
he knew it well. It was evidently for Fort Erskine, where he was not
well known, that Jean Paul was making. Ahead, through the forest of
bare sticks that hemmed him in, Jack could see the gateway to the
mountains, the magnificent limestone pile of Mount Darwin on the right.
He had worked around the base of Darwin, and all this was familiar
ground.
It was about noon when Jack and his horse, rounding a spur of the hill,
were brought up all standing by the sight of a dark body lying in the
trail ahead. Dismounting, and tying his trembling animal to a tree,
Jack went forward to investigate. It was a horse, Jean Paul's horse,
with a broken foreleg, and abandoned to its fate. Jack's heart beat
high with hope; the end of this thing was in sight now. The poor brute
raised agonized eyes to him. Jack could not put a bullet through its
head without betraying his whereabouts, but he mercifully cut its
throat.
He proceeded warily. He was covered from above by the very steepness
of the hill and the impenetrable barriers of the fallen timber. The
prints of Jean Paul's moccasins led him ahead. The trail dropped
steeply to a little stream that he knew well; it drained the easterly
slope of Mount Darwin. It marked the edge of the burned-over tract,
and on the other side the trail plunged into virgin forest again.
Jack went forward as cautiously as an Indian, taking advantage of every
scrap of cover. At the brook he lost Jean Paul's tracks. It was clear
the breed had waded either up or down. Jack was pretty sure he would
not be far away, for the redskin of Jean Paul's type has no love for
long journeys afoot. But it promised to be a somewhat extended stalk
and his horse was no use to him. He therefore went back, cached his
saddle, and turned the beast out hobbled, trusting that it would find
its way back to the last river-meadow they had passed. Blanket and
grub Jack strapped on his back, and his gun he carried under his arm.
He spent an hour searching up and down the shores of the creek for
tracks, without success. Neither was there any evidence of Jean Paul's
having returned to the trail farther along. If Jack was well skilled
in reading tracks, the breed was adept in hiding them. Jack's only
recourse was to climb. There is a little eminence abutting on the base
of Mount Darwin and on the top of it a knoll of naked rock that
overlooks the valley for miles up and down. Knowing the natives'
deep-rooted aversion to drinking cold water, Jack guessed that Jean
Paul would have to build a fire, and from this point of vantage a fire,
however small, would almost surely betray his whereabouts.
Taking his bearings, he made a beeline up the steep slope through the
heavy, old timber that reached up from the valley, and through a dense
light growth of poplar above. This part of the mountain offered no
special difficulties in climbing, and in half an hour he threw himself
down on the flat top of the knoll, with the valley spread before him.
Mount Darwin reaches a long promontory down the valley it has given its
name to. The promontory consists of seven little peaks in a row, each
one rising over the head of the one in front, and the seventh is the
actual summit of the mountain. It was on number one of these little
summits that Jack now lay, looking down the valley up which he had
ridden that morning. A mile or so away was a patch of green with a
black dot upon it, that he guessed was his horse.
Off to his left, hidden in the forest, the creek came tumbling down
from the snows above; on his right hand the river washed the rocky base
of the monarch. The easiest way to the summit is right on up over the
succeeding peaks; indeed on this side there is a mountain goat trail
direct to the top. Darwin can also be climbed, but not so easily, by
ascending the creek for a couple of miles, thence up a steep slide to a
long hogback that leads back to the sixth peak. On the river side the
rocky cliffs tower six thousand feet into the air, sheer and
unscalable. Such was the theatre of the pursuit of Jean Paul Ascota.
In all the wide space opened to Jack's eye there was not a sign of
life, except the black pin-point that he supposed was his horse, and a
pair of eagles, sailing and screaming high above the forest. Nowhere
in the brilliantly clear air was there the least sign of smoke. He ate
some of his bread and meat while he watched, and smoked his pipe. He
marked a place around to the right below where the trail passed over a
rocky spur. On the other side it was open to him through the down
timber; so that Jean Paul could not pass either way on the trail
without his seeing him.
It was hard on the engine of retribution to be obliged to sit and wait.
When his pipe went out he moved restlessly up and down his little
plateau or shelf of rock. Behind him, the forest grew close and high,
hiding the rest of the mountain. He never knew quite how it happened,
but at one end of the rock, near the place where he had come up, he
suddenly found himself staring at the perfect print of a moccasined
foot in a patch of moss! His breast swelled with satisfaction at the
sight; at the same time he frowned with chagrin to think of the
valuable time he had wasted sitting within twenty feet of Jean Paul's
trail.
Jean Paul's path up through the thickly springing poplar saplings was
not more than two yards from Jack's own. Such are the caprices of the
Goddess of Chance! He had crossed the rock, and continued on up the
mountain by the mountain goat trail, which first became visible here.
Evidently believing that he had shaken off pursuit, and that no one
would dream of looking for him on the mountain, he was no longer taking
any care to cover his tracks.
Jack hastened after, as keen and determined as a high-bred hound whom
nothing short of a cataclysm could divert from his purpose. The rough
track followed the top of a stony ridge, which dropped steeply to the
river on one side, and sloped more gradually into a forested hollow on
the other. A thick growth of pines afforded him perfect cover. Like
all animal paths, the trail wound like a tangled string among the
trees. The growth ended abruptly on the edge of a shallow rocky cut
athwart the ridge. On the other side of the cut rose the steep face of
the second little peak in the series.
Jack paused within the shelter of the trees to reconnoitre. The great
slope of rock opposite, with its wide, bare ditch, made a well-nigh
perfect natural fortification. He watched the top of it lynx-eyed, and
presently he was rewarded by the sight of a wisp of smoke floating over
the edge. Jack drew a long breath and grimly smiled. So that was
where he was!
He had chosen admirably. The growing timber ended at the spot where
Jack was, but up above there was enough down timber to keep the breed
in fire until the judgment day, if he wished to stay, and his fire
would be invisible from any point in the valley. For water, all the
ledges and hollows on the northerly side were heaped with snow; for
food there were mountain goats and ptarmigan; for defence he had only
to roll a stone down on the head of any one who tried to climb to his
aerie.
While Jack watched, carefully concealed, Jean Paul suddenly showed
himself boldly on the edge of the cliff. The distance was about three
hundred yards, a possible shot, but at a difficult angle. Jack held
his hand. It was all important not to put the half-breed on his guard
just yet. Jean Paul carelessly surveyed the approaches to his
position, and went back out of sight.
Any attack from in front was out of the question. Only one thing
suggested itself to Jack: to climb the mountain by the other possible
route, and come down on Jean Paul from above. As soon as it occurred
to him he started to retrace his steps, without giving a thought to the
enormous physical exertion involved. This way was beset with
difficulties; the bed of the creek was heaped with the tangled trunks
brought down by the freshets. But Jack set his teeth doggedly, and
attacking these obstacles, put them behind him one after another.
The sun was three hours lower before he stood at the edge of the timber
line on the other great spur of the mountain. He hesitated here.
Above him extended a smooth, steep slide of earth and stones at least
two thousand feet across, and without so much as a bush or a boulder
for cover. At the top of this slide was the hogback that led back to
the sixth peak. If Jean Paul was watchful he could scarcely fail to
see Jack mounting the naked slope. True, nearly half a mile separated
them, but a moving black spot, however small, would arrest his
attention if he saw it. He would not mistake it for an animal, for the
only animal on the upper slopes is the snowy mountain goat.
However, Jack had to chance it. His principal fear was that Jean Paul,
seeing him, might climb down from his rock and gain a long start of him
to the valley. But he reassured himself with the thought that the
Indian could not guess but that there were others waiting below. It
would require a stout heart to climb down that rock in the face of
possible fire from the trees.
Jack started his climb. Occasionally he could see Jean Paul moving
around on his distant rock. Sometimes he thought the black spot seemed
to stand and watch him, but this was his fancy. However, when he was
halfway up, he saw him without doubt begin to climb the face of the
third peak, and Jack knew that he had been discovered. Jean Paul was
going up instead of down. "I'll get him now," Jack told himself.
Thus began a strange and desperate race for the summit of the mountain.
Until near the end it was anybody's race; Jean Paul was the nearer, but
he had the steeper way to go; he was also the fresher of the two, but
Jack was insensible of fatigue. The Indian kept himself out of sight
for the most part, but occasionally the configuration of the rocks
obliged him to show himself, and Jack marked his progress keenly.
Meanwhile his own climb was nearly breaking his heart. He found that
it was only a heart after all, and not a steam-chest. One cannot run
up a mountain with impunity.
Jean Paul mounted the fourth peak about the same time that Jack reached
the hogback, and threw himself down to ease his tortured breast for a
moment. Jack had now to turn at right angles, and every step brought
them nearer to each other. Jack had cover behind the summit of the
ridge all the way to the foot of the last climb. It was impossible for
either to guess the outcome. Jean Paul was still the nearer, but Jack
was making better time. He ran along the slope on a level line and
gained a hundred yards.
When he looked over the top again he was encouraged to see that Jean
Paul was labouring hard. He had often to throw himself down in full
sight to give his heart a chance. Meanwhile they were coming very
close. They were already within gunshot when the peak they were both
striving for intervened between them. The breed was aiming for one
side, Jack for the other. Jack wondered, should their heads rise over
the top simultaneously, which would have the strength to lift his gun.
Toward the base of the peak of rock the ridge became steep and broken.
Excruciating pains attacked Jack's legs, and his sinews failed him. He
dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled on. He had almost reached
the little peak, when suddenly a dark face looked down on him from over
the top, and he had just time to drop behind a jutting shoulder of rock
to escape the bullet that whistled overhead. The race had gone to Jean
Paul.
Jack lay debating his next move. Meanwhile it was grateful to rest,
and to feel the strength steal back. His case was not yet hopeless, he
decided. The rounded cone of rock that Jean Paul held was easily
accessible from any point of the arc visible to Jack, and from the
speed with which the breed had gained the summit, he guessed that it
must be even easier from the other side. With darkness to aid him he
ought to be able to surprise his enemy. The sun was setting now. At
close quarters Jack's revolver would give him an advantage.
But this same train of reasoning must have passed through the breed's
mind, for later, upon peeping around his rock, Jack saw that Jean Paul
had retreated from his peak, and was running off to the right across
the flat battlement that connected it with the slightly higher cone
that was the true summit of Mount Darwin. He had started to scramble
up the face of the rock. Springing up, Jack fired at him, but it was
too far, and there was cover behind the jutting ledges. Jean Paul
gained the top in safety.
Jack promptly seized the position he had abandoned. Rising cautiously
over the side farthest from Jean Paul, he built himself, stone upon
stone, a little parapet upon the summit, behind which he could lie and
watch his enemy through the interstices. Presently he saw that Jean
Paul was following suit, covering himself behind his wall while he
raised it. A shot or two was exchanged, but without effect, and as if
by mutual consent they left off. Their lead was too precious to be
splashed on the rocks.
So they watched, each holding alone, as it were, a heaven-piercing
tower of the same castle, with the battlement between. It was a dizzy
perch. The whole world was spread beneath them, a world of confused
gray, and brown mountain peaks like vast stalagmites pointing fingers
toward heaven. It was like a nightmare sea suddenly petrified with its
waves upheaved. In the whole vast wilderness there was no suggestion
of mankind or of life. Up there the thin, cold air sharpened the
senses; one seemed to become aware of the great roll of our planet to
the east, and instinctively clung to the rock to keep from being flung
off into space.
About two hundred yards separated the white man and the breed. Jean
Paul's position was some fifty feet higher than Jack's, and Jack had
therefore to build the higher parapet. Nevertheless Jack's heart beat
strong; he had him trapped now. At the same time it was a
well-defended trap, and there he might sit watching him until
starvation took a hand in the fight. Jack had only full rations for
one day more; he suspected Jean Paul might be better provided. A red
man starves slower than a white. Each could reach plenty of snow to
quench his thirst, but there was nothing to burn up there. Jack looked
through his peepholes, and considered how he might bring matters to an
issue.
On his right in the corner between the hogback and the final peak there
was a bowl a thousand feet deep or more, with a little lake in the
bottom of a colour between sapphire and emerald. The sides of the bowl
were steep slopes of rubble. Jack could not see all this from where he
lay, but he had marked it on the way up. After dark he thought it
might be possible to crawl around the rim of the bowl to the base of
Jean Paul's tower of rock, and scale it from that side. This he could
see, and he scanned it hard. It was a staggering climb--say, two
hundred feet of precipitous limestone. But it was scarred and ridged
and cracked by centuries of weather; and it was not absolutely
perpendicular. It might be done.
Having made up his mind, he coolly rolled up in his blanket to sleep
behind his parapet until dark. Small chance of Jean Paul's venturing
across the battlement.
When he awoke it was as dark as it would get. He fortified himself
with bread and meat washed down by snow-water. He left his gun rolled
in the blanket--the revolver would serve better--and he propped his hat
an a stone so that the crown would peep above his little wall. If it
should become light before he reached him, it might serve to occupy
Jean Paul's attention for a little. If he succeeded in knocking it off
its stone, so much the better.
The passage around the rim of the bowl offered no special difficulty,
except the danger of starting a miniature avalanche down the slope, and
putting the breed on his guard. He took it a foot at a time. In an
hour he drew himself up the first steps of his rocky tower, with the
stars looking over his shoulder. Stars, too, seemed to be glancing up
at him out of the depths of the black gulf. He would not let himself
look down. With the faculty he had, he closed his brain to any thought
of failing or of falling. "I'm going to get him! I'm going to get
him!" it beat out like a piston, to the exclusion of everything else.
Darkness aided him in this, that it prevented the awful hazard from
forcing itself on him through his eyes.
His hands had to serve him for eyes, groping, feeling for the ledges
and cracks like the antennae of an insect. He gave himself plenty of
time; he did not wish to arrive at the top until there was light enough
to make sure of his man. He had it figured out in his odd, practical
way: three hours, a hundred and eighty minutes; a foot and a half a
minute was ample. He could afford to rest and to steady himself on
every wide enough ledge.
The face of the rock unrolled itself like a map under the eyes of his
hands, and he remembered each foothold as he put it behind him. When
he came, as he did more than once, to a smooth, blind face of rock that
barred further progress, he patiently let himself down again, and hit
off at another angle. His aim was to work himself gradually around to
the back of Jean Paul's tower of rock, and fall on him squarely from
the rear.
He became aware of the approach of dawn through a slight change of
colour in the rock on which his eyes were stubbornly fixed. He could
not tell how far he had yet to climb, but he had confidence in his
calculations. Only once was his nerve shaken. A ptarmigan suddenly
flew out from a cranny above his head with a soft whirring of wings.
He wavered for a second, and the sweat sprung out all over his body.
But he gripped the rock hard, and grimly forced the rising tide of
hysteria down. "Twenty feet more and I'll have him!" he told himself.
At last, above his head, the face of the rock receded under his
exploring hand, and he knew he had come to the top. This was the
difficult moment, for how was he to know upon drawing himself over the
edge that he would not find himself looking into the grinning face of
his enemy. A little push back would be enough! He paused for a while,
listening. Suddenly his heart was gladdened by the sound of a shot.
Jean Paul had fallen into his trap, and was popping at the hat. Jack
called on all the forces of his body, and with a great effort drew
himself silently over the rounded edge of the rock.
Jean Paul was ten yards away, and a few feet above him. His back was
turned. He was exposing himself boldly over the top of his parapet,
wondering perhaps why his shots had drawn no reply. Against the vast
expanse of sky the silhouette still had the neat and ministerial
outline; the Testament still peeped out of the side pocket. Jack
sprang over the rock. Jean Paul turned, and Jack had an impression of
blank eyes, fixed as by a blinding flash at night. Jack's rush bore
him down before he could raise his arms; the gun exploded in the air.
Jack wrenched it out of the man's hands and sent it spinning over the
edge. They never heard it fall.
Drawing his revolver, Jack got up from the breed. Jean Paul lay
motionless. Jack watched him warily. It was dimly borne in on him
that after all he had been through his difficulties were only now
beginning. He had got his man and so kept his vow to himself; but,
richly as he deserved death, he couldn't shoot him disarmed. What was
he to do with him then?
"Get up," he said harshly, "and over the wall with you."
Jean Paul raised himself to a sitting position. He had not yet fully
recovered from the shock of surprise. He stared at Jack with a kind of
stupid wonder. "In a minute," he muttered.
Jack was willing enough to take the breathing-space himself. Both men
were near the point of physical exhaustion. After the excitement of
the chase the actual capture was tame.
"Well, 'ere we are," said Jean Paul with an odd start of laughter.
"W'at you goin' to do?"
"I've told you," said Jack. "I'll take you to the fort or bury you on
the way. I keep my word."
There was a silence between them. They were motionless on their little
platform of rock, remote in the great spaces of the upper air. Jean
Paul looked straight ahead of him with his hard, flat black eyes, in
which there lurked something inhuman and inexplicable, and he idly
plucked bits of moss from between the stones. What thoughts were
passing through his head only God who made the redskins knows. When he
turned his eyes again to Jack, it was with the old vain, childish,
sidelong look.
"You t'ink you one brave man, huh, to climb up the rock las' night?"
"Never mind that," said Jack coolly. "You don't know yet what white
men can do."
Jean Paul sprang up with an extraordinary display of passion. "White
men!" he cried, flinging up his arms. "You are not the only men! I am
a man as much as you! I am half white and I hate the whites! My
fathers were white as well as yours. They beget us and they spit on
us. Is it my fault that my blood is mixed? Am I your brother? No,
your dog that you kick! Very well. I will do something no pure white
man ever did. You go back and tell them!"
On the side of the river, the rock they were on ran up and ended in a
row of jagged points like the jaw of a steel trap, overhanging a well
nigh bottomless void. With his last words Jean Paul ran out on one of
these points of rock, and stood there, with arms flung up, like a diver
before he makes his cast.
Jack's heart contracted in his breast. "Come back!" he gasped.
"Come and get me, white man!" cried Jean Paul over his shoulder.
Exaltation was in his face.
[Illustration: "Come and get me, white man!" cried Jean Paul, over his
shoulder]
Jack put up his revolver and, crouching, made to seize the man's legs.
Jean Paul, with a strange, loud cry, stepped off, and was no more. No
sound of any fall came up. Jack had not the stomach to look over.
Four hours later he found the thing below. He had no tools to dig a
grave, and he heaped a cairn of stones over it. On the face of a great
boulder that overlooked the cairn he scratched an epitaph with the
point of his knife:
JEAN PAUL ASCOTA
Killed by leaping from the summit
of Mount Darwin
August -- 19--
A bad man and a brave one.
Then Jack lay down and slept around the clock.