"Sure?" he asked.
"Positive," said I.
He bent toward me and said in a small voice, "Keep your eye on me now.
I ain't goin' to ask you another time, for I think when I speak they
stop a-whispering; but I'll jest twitch up my thumb like this--see?--fer
a signal to you when I hear 'em."
He sat hushed again; and then suddenly his eyes started and he raised
his thumb, turning a face to me that glittered pale like lead.
"Now?" he gasped.
"Nothing," I said: "not a sound."
"Ah, but I spoke there," he said. "I ought n't to have spoken; that
scared 'em; and they quit the whispering when they hear me."
He sat again quiet, his head on the side, listening, and I watching his
hand, thinking it best to humour him and to try to convince him out of
this lunacy.
But my blood ran chill as I sat, and his jaw fell suddenly in horror for
a voice quavering and ghastly cried out from somewhere near by, "Mike
Canlan! Mike Canlan! I see you, Mike Canlan!"
And a horrible burst of laughter that seemed to come from no earthly
throat broke the silence, died away, and a long gust of wind whispered
past us on the hill-crest.
It had been evident to me that though Canlan bade me hearken for the
whispering voices that he himself did not actually believe in their
existence. He had still sufficient sense left to know that the
whispering was in his own fancy, the outcome of drink and of--I need not
say his conscience, but--the knowledge that he had perpetrated some
fearsome deeds in his day, deeds that it were better not to hear spoken
in the sunlight or whispered in the dusk.
But this cry, out of the growing night, real and weird, so far from
restoring equanimity to his mind appeared to unhinge his mental
faculties wholly. His eyeballs started in their sockets; and there came
the cry again:
"Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I 'm on your trail, Mike Canlan!"
As for myself, I had no superstitious fears after the first cry, though
I must confess that at the first demented cry my heart stood still in a
brief, savage terror. But I speedily told myself that none but a mortal
voice cried then; though truly the voice was like no mortal voice I had
ever heard.
It was otherwise with Canlan. Fear, abject fear, held him now and he
turned his head all rigid like an automaton and, in a voice that sounded
as though his tongue filled his mouth so that he could hardly speak, he
mumbled: "It's him. It's Death!"
Aye, it was death; but not as Canlan imagined.
There was silence now, on the bleak, black hill, and though I had
mastered the terror that gripped me on hearing the voice, the silence
that followed was a thing more terrible, not to be borne without action.
Then suddenly the voice broke out afresh quite close and Canlan turned
his head stiffly again and I also looked up whence the voice came--and
there was the face of Larry Donoghue looking down on us from the rib of
rocky hill under whose shelter we sat. There was a trickle of blood, or
a scar--it was doubtful which--from his temple down his long, spare jaw
to the corner of the loose mouth; the eyes stared down on us like the
eyes of a dead man, blank and wide.
He stretched out his arms and gripped in the declivity of the hill with
his fingers, crooked like talons, and pulled himself forward; but at
that tug he lost his balance, lying on his belly as he was, and came
down the slope, sliding on his face, the kerchief still about his head
as I had seen him when I thought he had breathed his last.
In Canlan's mind there was no question but that this was Larry
Donoghue's wraith. He tried to cry out and could not, gave one gulping
gasp in his throat, and when Donoghue slid down the bank, as I have
described, Canlan leapt to his feet and ran for it--ran without any
intelligence, straight before him.
I have told you that the next rib of rock broke off sheer and went down
in a declivity. Thither Canlan's terror took him; and the last I saw of
him was his legs straddled in the run, out in mid-air, as though to take
another stride; and then down he went. But it was to Donoghue I turned
and strove to raise him. For one fleeting moment he seemed to know me;
our eyes met and then the light of recognition passed out of his and he
sank back. It was a dead man I held in my arms, and though I had never
greatly cared for him, that last glance of his eye was so full of
yearning, so pathetic, so helpless that I felt a lump in my throat and a
thickness at my heart and as I laid him back again I burst into a flood
of tears that shook my whole frame.
A strange, gusty sound in my ear and the feeling of a hot vapour on my
neck brought me suddenly round in, if not fear, something akin to it.
But I think absolute fear was pretty well a thing I should never know
again after these occurrences.
It was Canlan's horse standing over me snuffing me; and when I raised my
head he gave a quiet whinny and muzzled his white nose to me. Perhaps
in his mute heart the horse knew that these sounds of mine bespoke
suffering, and truly these pack-horses draw very close to men, in the
hills.
But though the horse brought me back in a way to manliness and calm it
was a miserable night that I spent there. I sat up and with my chin in
my hands remained gazing vacantly eastwards until the morning broke in
my eyes. And behind me stood the horse thus till morning, ever and
again touching my shoulder with his wet nose, his warm breath puffing on
my cheek.
I was thankful, indeed, more than I can tell you, for that
companionship. And now and then I put up my hand and when I did so the
beast's head would come gently down for me to clap his nose, and doing
so I felt myself not altogether alone and friendless on that hill of
terror and of death.
*CHAPTER XX*
_*Compensation*_
From where I sat on the frontage of that hill, the black, treeless
mountain behind me, the hurly-burly of the scattered, out-cropping hills
and tree-filled basins below me, as the sun came up in my face, my gaze
was attracted to a bush upon the incline.
This bush stood apart from the others on the hill, like an advance
scout; and as the sunlight streamed over the mountains I saw the
branches of it agitated and a bird flew out, a bird about the size of a
blackbird. I do not know its name, but it gave one of the strangest
cries you ever heard--like this:
"Bob White! Bob White! Bobby White!"
And away it flew with a rising and falling motion and down into the cup
below, from where its cry came up again.
It is difficult for me to tell you exactly what that bird meant to me
then. My heart that was like a stone seemed cloven asunder on hearing
that bird's liquid cry. That there was something eerie in the sound of
it, so like human speech, did in nowise affect me. To terror, to the
weird, to the unknown I now was heedless. But at that bird's cry my
heart seemed just to break in sunder and I wept again, a weeping that
relieved me much, so that when it was over I felt less miserable and
heartsore. And I prayed a brief prayer as I had never prayed before,
and was wondrously lightened after that; and turning to the horse, as
men will do when alone, I spoke to it, caressing its nose and pulling
its pricked ears. And then it occurred to me that if Donoghue had
survived his wound, Apache Kid might still be alive. It had been for
Apache, indeed, that I had entertained greater hope.
"Shall we go down to the valley and see if my friend still lives?" I
said, speaking to the horse; and just then the beast flung his head up
from me and his eyeballs started.
I looked in the direction of his fear--and there was Apache Kid and no
other, climbing up from the direction of the bush whence the bird had
flown away.
I rushed down the rise upon him with outspread arms, and at our meeting
embraced him in my relief and joy, and dragged him up to my fire, and
had all my story of my doings of the night, the day, and the night told
him, and of Donoghue and of Canlan--a rattling volley of talk, he
listening quietly all the while, and smiling a little every time I broke
in upon my tale with: "You do not blame me, Apache?"
And then I asked him, all my own selfish heart being outpoured, how it
was that I found him here alive.
"As for your accusations," he said, "dismiss them from your mind. In
all you have told me I think you acted with great presence of mind and
forethought. As for my escape from death, and Larry's, it must have been
due entirely to the condition of that reptile's nerves, as you describe
him to me."
He had been standing with his back to where Donoghue lay, and now in the
light that took all that black hillside at a bound, I saw a sight that I
shall never forget. For there, where should have been the dead man's
face, was nought but a skull, and perched upon the breast of the man and
licking its chops, showing its front teeth, was one of the great
mountain rats.
Apache Kid followed the gaze of my eyes, looked at me again with that
knitting of the brows, as in anger almost, or contempt.
"Brace up!" he said sharply.
"Brace up!" I cried. "Is it you who tell me to brace up, you who
brought me into this hideous place, you who are to blame for all this!
I was a lad when you asked me to accompany you that day at Baker
City--it feels like years ago. Now, now," and I heard my voice
breaking, "now I am like a man whose life is blighted."
When I began my tirade he looked astonished at first, and then I thought
it was a sneer that came upon his lips, but finally there was nothing
but kindliness visible.
"I was only trying the rough method of pulling you together," he said,
"and it seems it has succeeded. Man, man, you have to thank me. Come,"
and taking me by the arm and I unresisting, he led me to the cabin.
It was curious how then I felt my legs weak under me, and all the hill
was spinning round me in a growing darkness. I felt my head sinking and
heard my voice moan: "Oh! Apache, I am dying. This night has killed
me!" and I repeated the words in a kind of moan, thinking myself foolish
in a vague way, too, I remember, and wondering what Apache Kid would
think of me. And then the darkness suddenly closed on me, a darkness in
which I felt Apache Kid's hands groping at my armpits, lifting me up,
and then I seemed to fall away through utter blackness.
When I came again from that darkness, I stretched out my hands and
looked around.
I had been dreaming, I suppose, or delirious and fevered, for I thought
myself at home in the old country, imagined myself waking in the dark
Hours; but only for a moment did that fancy obtain with me. All too soon
I knew that I was lying in the Lost Cabin, but by the smell of the
"fir-feathers" on which I lay, I knew that they were freshly gathered,
and from the bottom of my heart I thanked Apache Kid for his
forethought. For to have wakened in one of these bunks would, I
believe, have made me more fevered than I was already. It was night, or
coming morning again. The hatch was off the roof, and through that hole
a grey smoke mounted from a fire upon the earthen floor. The door was
fastened up again.
At my turning, Apache Kid came to me out of the shadows and bent over
me; but his face frightened me, for with the fever I had then on me it
seemed a monstrous size, filling the whole room. I had sense enough to
know from this that I was ill, and looking into that face which I knew
my fever formed so hideously, I said:
"Oh, Apache Kid! It would be better to die and have done with it."
"Nonsense, man," he said. "Nonsense, man. There are so many things that
you have to live for:" and he held up his left hand, the fingers seeming
swollen to the size of puddings, and began counting upon them. "You
have a lot of duties to perform to mankind before you can shuffle off.
Shall I count some of them for you?" And he put his right forefinger to
the thumb of his left hand and turned to me as though to begin; but he
thought better of it, and then said he:
"I know you have a lot to do before you can shuffle off. But if you
would perform these duties, you must calm yourself as best you can."
"How long have I lain here?" I asked suddenly.
"Just since morning," said he. "A mere nothing, man. After another
sleep you will be better, and then we----" he paused then.
"We will do what?" I said.
"We will get out of here and away home," he said, and took my hand just
as a woman might have done, and wiped my brow and kept smoothing my hair
till I slept again.
From this I woke to a sound of drumming, as of thousands of pattering
feet.
It was the rain on the roof. Rain trickled from it in many places,
running down in pools upon the floor. The smoke hole was again covered,
the fire out, but the door was open, and through it I had a glimpse of
the hills, streaming with rain and mist.
Apache Kid sat on one of the rough stools by the door, looking outward,
and I called him.
He came quick and eager at my cry.
"Better?" he said. "Aha! That's what the rain does. And here 's the
man that was going to die!" he rallied me. "Here, have a sip of this.
It is n't sweet, but it will help you. I 've been rummaging."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Just a little nip of cognac. They had that left, poor devils. It's a
wonder Canlan----" he continued, and then stopped; doubtless I squirmed
at the name.
I took over the draught, and he sat down on the fir-boughs and talked as
gaily as ever man talked. All the substance of his talk I have
forgotten, only I remember how he heartened me. It was my determination
to fight the fever and sickness, that we had nothing in the way of
medicines to cure, that he was trying to awaken. And I must say he
managed it well.
With surprise I found myself sitting up and smoking a cigarette while he
sat back nursing a knee, laughing on me and saying:
"Smoking a cigarette! A sick man! Sitting up--and inhaling, too--and
blowing through the nose--a sick man--why, the thing's absurd!"
I looked and listened and smiled in return on him, and some thought came
to me of what manner of man this was who ministered so kindly to me, and
also of how near death's door he himself had been.
"How are you?" I asked. "Where was it you said you had been wounded? I
fear I was so sick and queer that I have forgotten everything but seeing
you again."
"I?" he said. "Oh, I have just pulled myself together by sheer
will-power. I have a hole in my side, filled up with resin. But that's
a mere nothing. It 'll hold till we get back to civilisation again, or
else be healed by then. Thank goodness for our late friend's shaky
hand." And at these words it struck me, thinking, I suppose, how
narrowly Apache had missed death, that Canlan might be alive despite his
fall.
Apache read the thought before I spoke. He nodded his head
reassuringly, and said:
"We are safe from him. He will trouble us no more. I have seen, to
make sure."
"I think I should be ashamed of myself," said I, "for giving in like
this."
"Nonsense," said he. "You were sick enough last night, but you are all
right now. Could you eat a thin, crisp pancake?--I won't say flapjack.
A thin, crisp pancake?"
I thought I could, and found that he had a few ready against such a
return to my normal. As I ate, he meditated. I could see that, though
he spoke gaily enough, there was something on his mind. He looked at me
several times, and then at last: "Do you think you could stand bad
news?" he asked.