Mary was silent. Her capacity for silence was greater perhaps than
Jack's.
"Tell me about finding him," Jack said.
"We started out as soon as you left," she said, carefully schooling her
voice. "It was clear Jean Paul would take him among the hills to lose
him, so we struck up the coulee at once. Too many days had passed for
us to find their tracks, and it had rained. But I was sure we would
find him in the valley. The hills were too steep; besides, even a
madman stays by the water. We looked all day without finding anything
until near dark. Then we came on some tracks in the mud by the stream.
We camped right there the first night. There were many coyotes on the
hills, both sides, and I thought he must be near and they
were--waiting." She shuddered.
"In the morning we found him," she went on in a low voice. "Just below
here. He had fallen down beside the water. His face was in the mud,
but the mosquitoes had not left him. So I knew he was not dead. Davy
and I carried him up here where it was dry. I fed him a little bread
soaked in water. Davy went back for the other horses and the dunnage,
and to leave a sign for you. That was yesterday. This morning Davy
went to the cache."
"Oh, Mary! what a woman you are!" Jack murmured out of the deeps of his
heart.
She rose with an abrupt movement, and went to look at the sick man.
She came back presently with a pale, composed face, and quietly set to
work mixing dough for their evening meal. There was a long and
sufficiently painful silence.
"It's a funny situation, isn't it?" said Jack at last, with a bitter
note of laughter.
"Better not talk about it," she murmured. "Let us just wait and see."
Being forbidden to talk about it, the desire to do so became
overmastering. "Suppose he doesn't say anything," he began.
"It won't make any difference to your friends," she said. "They know
you're not a thief."
"It's a queer business this having a good name and not having one,"
Jack went on, plucking blades of grass. "As if anybody cared who took
the money."
Mary offered no comment.
"I'd lose my claims," Jack went on. "I couldn't go out to file them.
But the governor would never put the police on to me, now. He'd be too
jolly glad to get rid of me."
Mary refused to raise her eyes from the dough.
Jack thought she hadn't understood what he was driving at. "You see it
would let me out there," he went on. "This would be my country for
ever and ever, and the people up here my only friends."
There was another silence. He looked at her hungrily. The hard young
face was soft enough now.
"Mary," he murmured hoarsely at last; "I don't give a damn if he never
speaks."
The dough-pan was dropped at last. She lifted a tortured face.
"Don't," she murmured low and swiftly. "Don't you see what it means?
Don't you see how you're hurting me? You mustn't wish it. Maybe our
thoughts are influencing his sick brain this minute. He must speak!
He must tell the truth and clear you. Nothing else matters. You must
be able to go wherever you choose. You must be able to look any man in
the face. I couldn't bear anything else."
Jack scowled, very much hurt--and a little ashamed perhaps. "I didn't
think you were so anxious to send me outside," he muttered.
She threw him the look of pity and despair that women have for the men
they love who will not understand them, and, springing up, went to look
at her patient again.
By and by Davy arrived. His greeting to Jack supplied the warmth that
Mary's had lacked. Jack hugged the boy with a sidelong look at his
sister. Afterward Jack briefly and baldly told his story by the fire.
Our hero had no talent for description.
"I slept until dark, and then just crawled around the edge of the slide
below the ridge, and climbed up the back of the rock."
Davy's and Mary's eyes were big. "Climbed up the back of the summit at
night?" murmured Mary.
"Sure," said Jack. "I took it slow and easy. As soon as I got light
enough I dropped on him from behind. That was one surprised redskin!"
"Then what happened?" demanded Davy, breathlessly.
Jack frowned. "He jumped off," he said shortly.
"Jumped?" they cried. "Was he killed?" asked Davy.
"Quite," said Jack grimly. "And some to spare." That was all they
could get out of him.
They ate their supper, and the sun went down. Mary, leaving the boys
smoking by the fire, took up her vigil within the door of the little
A-tent. Davy chattered about the prairie chicken that had flown across
the trail, about the squirrels that had broken into the cache, about
the moose he had seen swimming the river. Jack with an unquiet breast
sat listening for a sign from Mary.
Suddenly she came out of the tent, dropping the flaps behind her.
"Jack!" she whispered breathlessly.
He sprang to her.
Her clenched hands were pressed hard to her breast. "He's awake," she
murmured.
"Is he--sane?"
"I--I don't know," she said a little wildly. "He looked at me so
strangely. Oh, Jack!"
He took her trembling hand in his firm one. There was no selfish
passion in him now. "Steady, Mary," he said deeply. "We've done the
best we could. Whatever will happen, will happen. Better go away for
a little."
She gave his hand a little squeeze, and shook her head. "I'm all
right," she murmured. "I must know."
Jack threw back the flaps, and, stooping, entered. "Hello, there!" he
said quietly.
The sick man turned his head. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and a
feverish colour suffused his face; his lips were swollen.
"Macgreegor," he whispered. He passed a hand across his eyes. "It is
Macgreegor, isn't it?"
Something melted in Jack's breast at the sound of the old boyish
nickname. "Sure thing," he said, kneeling beside him.
Garrod reached out his hand, and Jack took it. "Thank God, you're
here," he murmured in the soft, hurried accents of the fever patient.
"I'm going, Macgreegor. I've made a rotten mess of it, haven't I?
I'll be glad to go if I can square myself with you first. Where are
we? It doesn't matter. Can anybody take down what I want to say?"
Mary's eyes were big with tears. She produced the pencil Jack had
given her, but it appeared there was not a scrap of blank paper in the
outfit, not a scrap of paper except the little Testament with its ugly
stains. Davy handed it to her. On the fly leaves, with their damp,
red borders, Mary prepared to write as Garrod dictated.
"Lift me up a little, Macgreegor," Garrod said. "I can breathe easier.
Your arm under my shoulders. That's good. It's like the day at Ste.
Anne's when I fell out of the tree. We were seventeen then. You were
always holding me up one way and another, Macgreegor. You never knew
what you were to me. It was quite different from your feeling for me.
I can say it now, anyway. I was a bit cracked about you."
"You'll wear yourself out talking," said Jack with gruff tenderness.
"It won't take me long," Garrod said. "I'll have time."
He expressed no further curiosity as to where he was, or how Jack had
come there. He referred to no recent happening. His attention was
fixed on the all-concealing gray curtain ahead, through which he must
presently pass, and he hurried to get what must be said, said in time.
There was something uncanny in the perfect clearness of his thoughts,
after what had passed.
"You wonder how I could do as I did if I felt like that toward you," he
went on. "Well, sometimes I hated you too. I was jealous of you, you
were so much cooler and stronger than I, so much more of a man. I
don't suppose you understand. We're not supposed to be like that. I
guess I was born with a queer streak."
On the other side of Garrod sat Mary, ready with the pencil and the
book. Davy, large-eyed and solemn, filled the doorway.
"I, Francis Garrod, being about to die, do desire to make my peace with
God if I may, and with my friend Malcolm Piers, whom I have deeply
wronged. It was I who took the money from the Bank of Canada that he
was accused of stealing. None but I knew before-hand that he was going
away, nor his reasons for going. The morning after he went the sight
of the money in the vaults tempted me. He had influential friends and
relatives, and I knew there would be no scandal. I took the money in
old bills that could not be traced. I have not known a minute's peace
since then. It drove me mad by degrees, and it is the cause of my
death.
"Should any doubt be cast on this confession, it is easy to verify it.
Within a month of the theft I opened accounts in the following banks
and branches of banks in Montreal." A list of the banks followed. "In
each I deposited a small sum. The total will be about forty-five
hundred dollars. The rest I kept by me. Furthermore, among the papers
in my desk will be found a letter from Malcolm Piers dated from
Winnipeg a few days after his disappearance. The post-mark is intact.
In every sentence of this letter there is proof that the writer had no
theft on his conscience when he wrote it, and no money. So help me
God!"
Garrod signed the page with a sufficiently firm hand, and Davy and Mary
wrote their names beneath for witnesses. Jack gave Mary the grim
little volume to keep for him, and she and Davy went away.
"That's done," murmured Garrod with a sigh. His fictitious strength
seemed to ebb with the sigh. He slipped down on Jack's arm a little.
"Don't leave me, Macgreegor," he murmured. "It's all right with us
now, isn't it?"
"Sure, I won't leave you," said Jack.
The voice came in a whisper now with many breaks and pauses. "The
lights of Ste. Catherine's street, Macgreegor, on a Saturday night, and
the crowds, and the stairs up to the gallery of the old Queen's, how
they echoed under our feet! We saw the 'Three Musketeers!' ... 'Member
the rink in the winter? And the old Park Slide? ... And Ste. Anne's,
with the sun shining on the river? There's another pair of kids
winning the tandem paddles now, eh? ... How good it is to have you
here, old fel'! 'Member the first day I came to work at the bank! You
blacked Husky Nickerson's eyes because he blotted my ledger. We nearly
all got fired, but you saved us with your pull. Husky, too! How I
admired you, with your crooked eyebrow, and your curly hair, and your
straight back!
"Well, it's all over for me, old fel' ... and nothing to show! I'll be
twenty-six next month.... Life's a sad thing ... and empty! ... I
wish--I wish I had done differently. It's good to feel your arm,
Macgreegor! ... What time is it, old fel'? Pretty near closing-time?
..."
Three days later Jack, Mary, and Davy rode into Fort Cheever in the
evening. On the fourth horse was lashed a significant looking bundle
neatly wrapped in canvas, the canvas of the other dead man's tent. A
heartfelt welcome awaited them. David Cranston showed no anger at his
children. He only looked from Mary to Jack and back again with a kind
of wistful, inquiring scowl.
During the interval of their absence the steamboat had arrived, and
after waiting twenty-four hours, had returned down river only that
morning, taking Sir Bryson and his party. Since nothing could be
guessed of the probable return of Jack, the captain had not felt
justified in waiting. Jack guessed, furthermore, that Sir Bryson had
not exerted his authority to delay the steamer. The
lieutenant-governor had had his fill of the North. The steamboat had
brought up Sergeant Plaskett of the mounted police, and a trooper from
the Crossing.
Garrod was buried at dusk on the hillside behind the fort. Sergeant
Plaskett read the burial service. Afterward Jack told his story, and
at daybreak the policemen started west to interview the Sapi Indians.
Before noon they had returned with Ahcunazie, the eldest son of
Etzeeah, and the members of his immediate family. He was on his way in
to make peace with the authorities, as Jack had advised.
David Cranston learned something more from Mary, and something from
Jack. The situation was too much for the honest trader. He shook his
head dejectedly, and had nothing to offer. Measles broke out again
among the Indians at Swan Lake--at least Mary said it had. At any
rate, she rode away with Angus, Davy's next younger brother, the
following day, and Jack did not see her again.
Cranston had a letter for Jack. Thus it ran, the paper blistered with
tears, and the headlong words tumbling over each other:
MY OWN JACK: You _are_ mine, aren't you? I am nearly crazy. I don't
know where you are or what has happened, and they're taking me away!
How could you go without saying a word to me? How can you be so hard?
As soon as you get this, come to me! Come to me wherever you are, or
whatever has happened! I'll bring father around! Only come! I can't
live unless you come! When I think of your failing me, I am ready to
do anything! I have no one but you. They all look at me coldly. I am
disgraced. Only you can save me. I love you! I love you! I love
you! ...
And so on for many pages. Older heads can afford to smile, but to the
inexperienced Jack it was terrible.
The police hearing was concluded two days later. At evening that day
Jack, declining a lift down the river in Plaskett's canoe, pushed off
alone on the same little raft that had brought him to Fort Cheever a
month before.