The Riddle of
Three-Way Creek
Ridgwell Cullum
The Riddle
of
Three-Way Creek
by
Ridgwell Cullum
_Author of “The Saint of the Speedway”_
McClelland and Stewart
Publishers : : Toronto
Copyright, 1925,
By George H. Doran Company
[Illustration]
The Riddle of Three-Way Creek
--Q--
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I Loyalty 9
II The Marton Homestead 18
III A Real Samaritan 26
IV A Stroke of Fate 32
V The Sentence 38
VI The Gateway of Hope 48
VII In New York 59
VIII Two Years Later 66
IX Suspicion 73
X The “Throw-Out” 82
XI Lightning Operates his Plan 97
XII Dan Quinlan 105
XIII Silver-Thatch 112
XIV The Heart of the Hills 124
XV Brother and Sister 136
XVI Two Women 142
XVII A Golden Moment 159
XVIII The Spy 169
XIX The Moment 177
XX The Home-Coming 190
XXI Out of the Past 197
XXII The Awakening 206
XXIII Blanche Learns the Truth 212
XXIV At Haying Time 220
XXV The Beginning of the Harvest 228
XXVI The Climax 238
XXVII Blanche’s News 245
XXVIII By the Wayside 250
XXIX Lightning’s Despair 259
XXX Lightning Passes the Barrier 263
XXXI Lightning Becomes a Friend 272
XXXII Lightning Borrows a Horse 280
XXXIII Night in the Valley 289
XXXIV A Burdened Heart 297
XXXV Molly Comes Back 304
XXXVI Nemesis 311
XXXVII By the Light of the Aurora 318
XXXVIII Lightning’s Triumph 328
The Riddle of
Three-Way Creek
The Riddle of Three-Way Creek
CHAPTER I
Loyalty
The trail fell away to the heart of a valley, which nursed in its bosom
a watercourse that was frozen solid to its bed. The hummocks of the
foothills rose up in every direction. Many of the hills were sheer
slopes of tawny, sun-scorched grass that had lost the last of its
summer hue. Some were barren crags; others, again, were covered with
woodland bluffs of spruce, and pine, and the generous poplar, whose
dead foliage lay thick upon the ground, stripped from parent boughs by
the wintry breath of the late season.
It was a grim enough prospect. No snow had as yet fallen, but the air
was cold and crisp; the grey sky was heavily charged with snow-clouds;
and the stark arms of deciduous trees were sharply outlined against the
skyline.
Two horsemen were moving down the frozen trail. They were riding at
that distance-devouring lope which is native to the Canadian broncho.
Both were clad in sheepskin coats and fur caps. And through the fog of
steam that rose from the bodies of the sweating horses, on the head of
one of them the yellow flash of a mounted policeman’s cap badge stood
out strikingly. Corporal Andrew McFardell was escorting a prisoner to
his headquarters at Calford, which lay some fifty odd miles to the
south.
The policeman was in a hurry. Ten miles farther on lay Rock Point, a
small farming settlement, which was to afford him a camping-ground for
the night. There was little more than an hour of daylight left, and the
banking snow-clouds left him anxious. It was a bad region in which to
get snowbound.
McFardell was taking a chance. He had abandoned the old fur trail which
was the highway from Greenwood to Calford for a short cut through
the wilderness of the foothills. He knew every inch of the territory
through which he was riding, but he also knew the peril of a blinding
snowstorm in that confusion of hills.
They reached the depths of the valley in silence. They urged their
horses to greater efforts along the level bank of the frozen stream.
Then, as they faced the ascent beyond, the animals were permitted to
drop back to a walk. McFardell transferred the leading-rein of his
prisoner’s horse to the horn of his saddle and began to fill his pipe.
His companion observed him with eyes that smiled good-humouredly,
in spite of the frigid bite of the steel shackles set fast upon his
wrists. Then, as his custodian struck a match and lit his pipe, he
turned his gaze alertly to the frowning sky.
“Here she comes.”
The prisoner spoke without a shadow of apprehension. It was the voice
and accent of an educated man. His smiling eyes were regarding the
lolling snowflakes with which the air had suddenly filled.
“We’ll get it plenty in a while,” he went on a moment later, with a
pleasant, deep-throated chuckle. “You reckon it’s ten miles this way to
Rock Point? It’s going to shorten our trail by five and more?” He shook
his head. “Well, if this storm is going to be the thing it looks, why,
I guess it might just as well be fifty miles to Rock Point. We shan’t
make it this night--through these hills.”
The policeman was regarding the skyline. He, too, shook his head, but
in denial.
“You think that?” he said sharply, with a quick, scornful flash of his
jet-black eyes. “You’re wrong. Guess this is my territory. There’s not
a hill, or bush, or creek to it I don’t know better than my prayers.
There’s a top stretch up there of a mile and a half,” he went on,
indicating the hill they were ascending. “Then we drop right down to
Clearwater River, and pass by Joe Lark’s horse ranch. After that we
pick up the old fur trail again, which you couldn’t lose in the worst
blizzard that ever blew. I’m not worried a thing.”
The prisoner laughed.
“It’s good not to get worried when you’re in the hills, with the snow
falling and night getting around. She’s coming thicker, so there’s no
need for argument,” he added drily. “You police boys are bright on the
trail. I’ve mostly had five years of Alaska, where they know a deal
about snow. I claim fifty-fifty with you on that subject.”
The man’s laugh was good to hear. It was a laugh of reckless
indifference, of a heart devoid of fear.
Andy McFardell made no reply. He stared straight out into the falling
snow. He was a good-looking, black-haired, black-eyed man of about
twenty-eight years. But his good looks had nothing of the frank
openness and smiling good-nature of his prisoner. The two men were in
sharp contrast. The whole cast of Andy McFardell’s face had something
of the narrow sleekness of a fox, with a mouth hidden under a carefully
trimmed black moustache that was heavy-lipped and ugly. It was a face
to inspire confidence in the work that was his. But the best tribute
his associates in the Police cared to pay him was an unanimous opinion
that he was surely marked out for promotion.
His prisoner was a larger man in every sense. His furs only left
visible a strong face, and the light of philosophical good-humour that
looked out of his eyes. And this for all he was on his way to Calford
to serve five years’ hard labour in the penitentiary.
As they reached the top of the hill, Andy McFardell turned to his
companion again.
“You know I can’t get a boy like you, anyway,” he said, in a tone of
frank impatience. “What in hell! Five years’ hard pan up in Alaska.
Five years’ sweating blood to collect a bunch of dust that’s to hand
you all the things you’ve ever dreamed about. Five years of a climate
that’s calculated to freeze the vitals of a brass image. Then you pull
out. And the first thing you do is to pitch everything to the devil
by hitting up against the law. You’ve done worse than five years’
penitentiary up there in Alaska, and collected a big fortune; and now
you’ve got five years’ real penitentiary ahead of you while your gold
rots. Why? For the fool notion of helping a boy who didn’t need your
help. Say, there’s times I reckon human nature’s the darnedest fool
thing God A’mighty ever created.”
“Is it?”
Jim Pryse’s reply came with perfect good-temper. He was one of those
blessed creatures who can always contrive to find a smile lurking in
the worst tragedy with which they are beset.
“Take a hunch man,” he went on amiably. “The only fool thing God ever
created is the white-livered coyote that wants to snivel its way
through life, instead of getting a grip on the throat of things. I knew
just the thing I was doing. You see, that boy was my brother, and the
best feller I know. The skunk he’d killed was the feller who’d robbed
him of a wife, and done the unholiest thing any low-down bum can do by
any woman, married or single. Well, I was with him, just as though my
two hands had choked the life out of that skunk instead of his. Was I
going to risk seeing that boy the centre of a hanging bee? Not on your
life. I held you boys off while that kid feller got away. And I held
you good. And I’d have shot to kill rather than you should have laid
hands on him. He’s got clear away. And, for all the law doesn’t reckon
to let up once it camps on a feller’s trail, you’ll never get him.
The gold you reckon is going to rot will see to that. That boy was no
murderer. His act was sheer justice. I didn’t butt in. No, boy, it was
better than that.”
“Man, you’re plumb crazy!” McFardell urged his horse on under his
impatience. “No, no. Life’s a pretty tough proposition, anyway. And
it’s only a crazy man sets out to make it tougher, whether it’s for a
brother or anybody else. I s’pose there’s folks would call that sort of
junk ‘loyalty.’ I guess they need to get a fresh focus. ‘Duty’ I know.
Duty’s the thing demanded of us boys in my calling. That’s all right.
It’s always within the law, and if you carry on, and keep an eye well
skinned, it’s going to help you to the sort of things we all worry for.
But the other stuff is a crazy notion, that’s as liable as not to get
you hanged. I tell you you were dead wrong. You were butting in like
some fool kid. That boy would never have hanged if he could have proved
his case. It was the Unwritten Law, and he’d have got clear away with
it. And you--you wouldn’t be riding these darned hills in a snowstorm.”
The policeman’s view only had the effect of deepening his prisoner’s
smile. And the blue eyes watched the officer tolerantly as he brushed
the snow from about his fur collar.
“Maybe he’d have got away with it,” Pryse said quietly, emulating his
companion, wiping the snow from about his eyes with his mitted and
shackled hands. “I don’t know, and I’m not worried. He’s away now,
and I’m feeling good about it. Five years in penitentiary is going
to hand me an elegant spell for quiet reflection, and maybe I’ll be
able to locate where our viewpoints are wrong. Just now it seems to me
that duty’s a sort of human-made notion that mainly has self for its
principal calculation. Loyalty, as you choose to call it, seems to me
to be something we can’t help. Maybe it’s built in us, the same as the
things that set us crazy for the dame that seems good to us. I’m not
yearning to worry it out, anyway. The thing I know is, Eddie boy is
clear beyond the reach of any Mounted Police Patrol, and, that being
so, I feel as good as a skipping lamb in springtime. Alaska handed me
a deal better than a million dollars, and, if necessary, the whole of
that bunch of dust will go to say you boys are nothing to give that boy
a headache. I----Hold up, you!”
Jim Pryse’s final exclamation was flung at his floundering broncho. For
one moment the creature seemed to be about to crash headlong. Then the
lead-rein securing it to the horn of the policeman’s saddle snapped and
released it, and, under the tremendous effort of its rider’s shackled
hands, it recovered itself.
The whole catastrophe was wrought on the instant. At one moment both
horses were loping leisurely over the virgin carpet of snow, with ears
pricked alertly as they peered out into the grey twilight of the storm.
The next the policeman’s horse had gone down like a stone, and its
rider lay inert, still, a huddled fur-coated heap upon the hard-frozen
ground. It was the old story of thawing snow balling in the creature’s
hoofs.
* * * * *
The twilight was deepening. It was no longer merely the sombre grey
of the snowstorm. It was the gradual passing of the last of the day.
The surrounding world was almost blotted out. Here and there were
faint outlines, barely perceptible, to mark some woodland bluff in
the immediate vicinity; but beyond that there was nothing--nothing but
a grey, impenetrable pall of falling snow lolling silently upon the
breathless air.
The horses were standing apart. They had no concern for the thing that
had happened. They had turned away from the drift of the storm, and
stood gently rubbing their frost-rimed muzzles against each other’s
sweating sides.
A few yards away Jim Pryse stood with shackled hands, gazing down
at the prone figure of the man who had been conveying him to the
penitentiary at Calford. There was no sign of life in the fallen man.
He lay unmoving, just where he had been hurled from the saddle, and the
flakes of falling snow were rapidly obscuring the black outline of his
fur-clad body.
For some time the convict’s scrutiny continued. Then, of a sudden,
he dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the man’s body. His
movements were clumsy by reason of the shackles that held his wrists,
but he persisted in his task slowly and deliberately. After a while he
stood up. And his hands were grasping the cartridge belt and side-arms
he had removed from about the policeman’s body. With much difficulty he
bestowed the revolver in the pocket of his fur coat and proceeded to
remove the cartridges from the belt. These he stowed away in another
pocket. Then he dropped the belt and holster in the snow.
Again he bent over the fallen man. This time it was for the purpose of
ascertaining the extent of the latter’s injuries.
But he need not have concerned himself. Corporal McFardell raised his
head and looked up at him.
Quick as a flash the convict was on his feet and standing clear.
“It was a bad fall boy,” he said, and for all the twilight hid his
expression there was a smile behind his words. “Guess it knocked you
out. Maybe it found your head softer than the trail. There’s nothing
broken?”
McFardell gazed about him a little dazedly in the failing light. Then
his limbs moved. He drew up his legs and straightened them out. Then he
sought to raise himself on his elbow. It was his reply to the other’s
question.
Jim Pryse nodded quickly.
“That’s all right, boy. You aren’t hurt, and I’m glad. Your head’ll
clear in a while, and you’ll be able to get back into the saddle and
make Rock Point. But don’t do it now. Don’t move a hand or foot. You
see, your gun’s in my hands,” he went on, producing the policeman’s
loaded revolver, “and for they’re all shackled tight I can still pull
a trigger and see straight over the sight. Maybe you’ve a key to these
bracelets. But I’m not going to worry you for it. It might cause
argument and a clinch, and, though I’ve your gun, I’m ready to admit
you’d have the best of it in the circumstances--in a clinch. No. Just
lie there, if you aren’t a fool, while I climb into my saddle. And
you’ll lie there just as long as I’m within gun-range. For, sure as
God, if you don’t I’ll shoot you like a dog. Do you get it? I’m getting
away. Providence has handed me a chance I’m grabbing with both hands.
It’s a tough chance all right, but I haven’t a grouch. Now, lie quite
still till I quit.”
He backed away to the waiting horses. He paused beside his own animal,
and his eyes were steadily observing the policeman who lay watching
him. Then, quite suddenly, the discomfited officer was treated to an
exhibition of horsemanship he was wholly unprepared for. The convict
raised his fettered hands to the horn of his saddle, and, in an
instant, vaulted on to his horse’s back without touching a stirrup.
The threatening gun, supported in both the man’s hands still, held the
prone figure covered.
Jim Pryse chuckled gleefully.
“You’ve got sense, boy,” he cried, as the other made no movement. “You
certainly have. You know your duty, sure--when the drop is on you.
Well, so long. I can’t wait. Now, get up quick and grab your horse. He
won’t stand when mine moves off, and I haven’t a wish to leave you out
here in the snow.”
He moved away, and McFardell leapt to his feet and ran to his horse.
The threatening gun held him covered.
He stood for a moment holding his horse, while the outline of the
moving horseman became more and more indistinct in the twilight of the
storm. Then suddenly his voice sounded harshly in the dead silence of
the world about him.
“You fool! Do you think you can get away? Not on your life! Take your
dog’s chance! Take it! But you’ll serve those five years--and more--if
the coyotes don’t feed your carcase when the storm’s through with you.”