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MURDER POINT
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The House of the Weeping Woman
Hodder and Stoughton, London
The Worker and Other Poems
The Macmillan Co., New York
* * * * *
MURDER POINT
A Tale of Keewatin
by
CONINGSBY WILLIAM DAWSON
[Illustration]
Hodder & Stoughton
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1910, by
George H. Doran Company
The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. John Granger of Murder Point 1
II. The Unbidden Guest 13
III. The Devil in the Klondike 25
IV. Spurling's Tale 42
V. Cities Out of Sight 53
VI. The Pursuer Arrives 74
VII. The Corporal Sets Out 86
VIII. The Last of Strangeways 100
IX. The Break-up of the Ice 112
X. A Message from the Dead 120
XI. The Love of Woman 144
XII. He Reviews His Marriage, and is Put to the Test 162
XIII. The Dead Soul Speaks Out 186
XIV. Spurling Makes a Request 210
XV. Manitous and Shades of the Departed 225
XVI. In Hiding on Huskies' Island 240
XVII. The Forbidden River 257
XVIII. The Betrayal 272
XIX. The Hand in the Doorway 283
XX. Spurling Takes Fright 297
XXI. The Murder in the Sky 305
XXII. The Blizzard 318
XXIII. The Last Chance 334
MURDER POINT
CHAPTER I
JOHN GRANGER OF MURDER POINT
John Granger, agent on the Last Chance River in the interests of
Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, independent traders in the territory of
Keewatin, sat alone in his store at Murder Point. He sat upon an
upturned box, with an empty pipe between his lips. In the middle of
the room stood an iron stove which blazed red hot; through the single
window, toward which he faced, the gold sun shone, made doubly
resplendent in its shining by the reflected light cast up by the
leagues of all-surrounding snow and ice.
Speaking to himself, as is the habit of men who have lived many months
alone in the aboriginal silence of the North, "Well, and what next?"
he asked.
He had been reviewing the uses to which he had put his thirty years of
life, and was feeling far from satisfied. That a man of breeding, who
had been given the advantages of a classical and university education,
and was in addition an English barrister, should at the age of thirty
be conducting an independent trader's store in a distant part of
northern Canada did not seem right; Granger was conscious of the
incongruity. During the past two years and a half he had obstinately
refused to examine his career, had fought against introspection, and
had striven to forget.
In this he had been wise, for Keewatin is not a good place wherein to
_remember_ and to balance the ledger of the soul; it is too remote
from human habitation, too near to God--its vastness has robbed it of
all standards, so that small misdemeanours may seem huge and
disastrous as the sin of Cain. Madness lurks in its swampy creeks and
wanders along the edges of its woodland seas, so that the border-line
between natural and supernatural is very faintly marked.
But to-day Granger had given way before the wave of emotional memories
and had permitted his mind to recapitulate all the happiness which he
had lost; and with this result, that like a child in a darkened house
he feared to advance and stood still trembling, questioning the
future, anticipating and dreading that which was next to come. It was
the second week in April; the break-up of the winter had almost begun;
the spring was striding up from the south and a cry of travel was in
the air, both hopeful and melancholy. The world would soon be growing
young again. Even in this desperate land the scars of the frost would
soon be obliterated; but to his own life, he was painfully aware, the
spring had vouchsafed no promise of return. Was it gone forever? he
asked.
At the present moment he was remembering London and St. James's Park
with its banks of daffodils and showers of white may-blossom, its
groups of laughing children at play, its parade of black-coated
horsemen, with here and there the scarlet flash of a Life-guard as he
sped trotting by, and for bass accompaniment to this music of the Joy
of Life the continual low thunder which in the Mall the prancing
hoofs of countless carriage-horses strummed.
Now it was Piccadilly in which he wandered, returning from the west
with his back toward the setting sun; the street-lamps had just been
kindled, and ahead of him, massed above the housetops, the blue-grey
clouds of evening hung. He watched the faces of the people as they
passed, some eager, some jaded, some pleasure-seeking, some smug, and
he strove to conjecture their aim in life. At the Circus he paused
awhile, breathing deep and filling out his lungs with fragrance of
violets and narcissi, which flower-girls clamoured for him to
purchase. He bought a bunch and smiled faintly, contrasting the
beautiful significance of the name of the vendor's profession with the
slatternly person to whom it was applied. Then onwards he went to
Leicester Square where the dazzling lights of music-halls flared and
quickened, and scarlet-lipped Folly smiled out upon him from street
corners, and beckoned through the dusk. In the old days it had always
been when he had attained this point in his advance that the pleasure
of London had failed, leaving him with a cramped sensation, a frenzied
desire for escape, and an overwhelming sense of the inherent
rottenness of western civilisation. It was upon such occasions that he
saw, or thought he saw, the inevitable tendency of European cities to
emasculate and corrupt the rugged nobilities of mankind. A revolt
against artificiality had followed. Immediately, there in the heart of
the world's greatest city, there had grown up about him the mirage of
the primeval forest, whose boughs are steeped in silence, borne up by
tall bare trunks, which lured him on to explore and adventure through
untried lands, where quiet grows intense and intenser at each new
step, till he should arrive at that ultimate contentment for which he
blindly sought.
He laughed at the memory, smiling bitterly at the manner in which that
former self had been beguiled. As if to give emphasis to his jest he
arose from his box, lounged over to the window, cleared its panes of
mist with his hand, and gazed out upon the landscape of his choice. It
stared back at him with immobile effrontery, with the glazed
wide-parted eyes of the prostrate prize-fighter who, in his falling,
has been stunned--eyes in which hatred is the only sign of life. He
threw back his head and guffawed at the conceit, as though it had been
conceived by a brain and given utterance to by a voice other than his
own. Then he paused, drew himself erect, and his face went white; he
had heard of solitary men in Keewatin who had commenced by laughing to
themselves, and had ended by committing murder or suicide. Yet, as he
stood in thought, he acknowledged the truth of the image; his
existence on the Last Chance River was one long and wearisome struggle
between himself and the intangible prize-fighter, whoever he might
be,--Nature, the Elemental Spirit hostile to Creation, Keewatin, the
Devil, call him what you like. Sometimes he had had the better of the
combat, in which case days of peace had followed; but for the most
part he stood at bay or crouched upon his knees, watching for his
opportunity to rise; at his strongest he had only just sufficed to
hold his invisible antagonist in check, battling for a victory which
had been already awarded. He had long despaired of winning; the only
question which now troubled him was "How long shall I be able to
fight?"
A certain story current in the district, concerning a Hudson Bay
factor, flashed through his mind. At the beginning of the frost his
fort had been stricken with smallpox; one by one his six white
companions had died and the Indians had fled in terror, leaving him
alone in the silence. In the unpeopled solitude of the long dark
winter days and nights which had followed, he had grown strangely
curious as to the welfare of his soul, and had petitioned God that it
might be disembodied so that he might gaze upon it with his living
eyes. After a week of continuous prayer, he had fastened on his
snowshoes, and gone out upon the ice to seek God's sign. He had not
travelled far before he had come to the mound where his six companions
lay buried. There against the dusky sky-line he had seen a famished
wolf standing over a scooped-out grave. So the factor had had his
sign, and had looked upon his disembodied soul with his own eyes.
When the ice broke up and the first canoe of half-breed voyageurs
swept up to the fort, they had been met by a man who crawled upon
hands and knees, and snarled like a husky or a coyote.
Granger shrugged his shoulders and shuddered. He thanked his God that
the spring was near by. Upon one thing he was determined, that
whatever happened, though he should have to die--by his own hand, he
would not grovel into Eternity upon his hands and knees as had that
factor of the Hudson Bay.
For relief from the turbulence of his thoughts he turned his attention
to the frozen quiet of the world without. Not a feature in the
landscape had changed throughout all the past five months. He had
nothing new to learn about it: he had even committed to memory where
each separate shadow would fall at each particular hour of the day.
Straight out of the west the river ran so far as eye could reach,
until it came to Murder Point. At close of day it seemed a molten
pathway which led, without a waver, from Granger's store directly to
the heart of the sun. Having arrived at the Point, the Last Chance
River swept round to the northeast, and then to the north, until in
many curves it poured its waters into the distant Hudson Bay. Its
banks, in the open season, which lasted from May to October, were low
and muddy; the country through which it flowed, known as the barren
lands, was for the most part flat and densely wooded with a stunted
growth of black spruce, jackpine, tamarack, poplar, willow, and birch.
The river was the only highway: much of the forest which lay back from
its banks was entirely unexplored on account of its swamps and the
closeness of its underbrush. There were places within three miles of
Murder Point where a white man had never travelled, and some where not
even the Indians could penetrate. Partly for this reason the district
was rich in game: the caribou, moose, lynx, bear, wolf, beaver,--
wolverine, and all the smaller fur-bearing animals of the North
abounded there. Seventy miles to the southwestward lay the nearest
point of white habitation, where stood the Hudson Bay Company's Fort
of God's Voice. Between Murder Point and the coast, for two hundred
and fifty miles, there was no white settlement until the river's mouth
was reached, where the Company's House of the Crooked Creek had been
erected on the shores of the Bay. With his nearest neighbours, seventy
miles distant at God's Voice, Granger had no intercourse, for he was
regarded by them as an outcast inasmuch as he was an independent
trader. Once was the time when Prince Rupert's _Company of Adventurers
of England trading in the Hudson's Bay_ had held the monopoly of the
fur trade over all this territory, from the Atlantic seaboard to the
Pacific Coast; then to have been caught trapping or trading privately
had meant almost certain death to the trespasser. Now that the powers
of the Company had been curtailed, the only manner in which a Hudson
Bay factor could show his displeasure toward the interloper was by
ignoring his presence--a very real penalty in a land of loneliness,
where, at the best, men can only hope to meet once or twice a
year--and by rendering his existence as unbearable and silent as
possible in every lawful and private way. In the art of ostracising,
Robert Pilgrim, the factor at God's Voice, was a past master; during
the two and a half years that Granger had been in Keewatin he had had
direct communication with no one of the Company's white employees. On
occasions certain of its Cree Indians and half-breed trappers had come
to him stealthily, at dead of night, to see whether he would not offer
them better terms for their season's catch of furs, or to inquire
whether he would not give them liquor in exchange, the selling of
which to an Indian in Keewatin is a punishable offence. These were
usually loose characters who, being heavily in debt to the Company,
were trying to postpone payment by selling to Granger on the sly; yet,
even these men, when day had dawned, would pass him on the river
without recognition, as if he were a stick or a block of ice. However,
only by dealing with such renegades could he hope to pick up any
profit for the proprietors of his store. His every gain was a loss to
the factor, and _vice versa_; therefore by Robert Pilgrim he was not
greatly beloved.
Pilgrim was a man of conservative principles, who looked back with
longing to the days when a factor was supreme in his own domain,
holding discretionary powers over all his people's lives, who, after
the giving of a third warning to an independent trader found poaching
in his district, could dispose of him more or less barbarously
according to his choice. Now that every man, whatever his company, had
an equal right to gather furs in the Canadian North, he considered
that he and his employers were being robbed; wherefore he made it his
business to see that no friendship existed between any of his
subordinates and the man at Murder Point. Hence it happened that in
summer when the canoes and York boats, and in winter when the
dog-teams and runners from God's Voice, went up and down river by the
free-trading store of Garnier, Parwin and Wrath, no head was turned,
and no sign given that anyone was aware that a white man, yearning for
a handshake and the sound of spoken words, was regarding them with
sorrowful eyes from the wind-swept spit of land.
Two years and a half ago, on his first arrival, Granger had laughed at
the factor's petty persecution and had pretended not to mind. Since
then, as his isolation had grown on him, his temper had changed, his
pride had given way, until, in the January of the present year, he had
journeyed down to the Company's fort, and had implored them to speak
to him, if only to curse him, that his reason might be saved. The
gates of the fort had been clanged in his face, and he had been
silently threatened with a loaded rifle, till resurrected shame had
driven him away.
He had since heard that Pilgrim had said on that occasion, "I knew
that he would come and that this would happen sooner or later. I've
been waiting for it; but he's held out longer than the last one."
This remark explained to Granger how it was that, when he had arrived
in Winnipeg, having just returned from the Klondike, and had applied
to his acquaintance Wrath for employment, his request had been so
readily granted. He had marvelled at the time that he, who had had
next to no experience in Indian trading, should have met with
immediate engagement, and have been given sole charge of an outpost.
Now he knew the reason; he had been given his job because his
employers could get no one else to take it. From the first day of his
coming to Murder Point strange stories had reached his ears concerning
the diverse and sudden ways in which its bygone agents had departed
this life: some by committing murder against themselves; some by
committing murder against others; some, having gone mad, by wandering
off into the winter wilderness to die; others, who were reckoned sane,
by attempting to make the six hundred and eighty mile journey back to
civilisation alone across the snow and ice. These rumours he had not
credited at first, supposing them to be fictions invented by Pilgrim
for the purpose of shattering his confidence, and thus inducing him to
leave at once. The last remark of the factor, however, inasmuch as it
had been reported to him by an honest man, the Jesuit priest Pere
Antoine, had proved to him that they were not all lies. When he had
questioned Pere Antoine himself, the kindly old man had shaken his
head, refusing to answer, and had departed on his way. This had
happened shortly after the occurrence in January; since then Granger
had been less than ever happy in his mind.
Luckily for him, about this time Beorn Ericsen, the Man with the Dead
Soul, as he was named, the only white Company trapper in the district,
had quarrelled with the factor over the price which had been offered
him for a silver fox; in revenge he had betaken himself to Granger,
bringing with him his half-breed daughter, Peggy, and his son,
Eyelids. Their chance coming had saved his sanity; moreover it had
furnished him with something to think about, besides himself, namely
Peggy. His courtship of her had been short and informal, as is the way
of white men when dealing with women of a darker shade: within a week
he had taken her to himself. But Peggy had had ideas of her own upon
the nebulous question of morals, ideas which she had gained in the two
years during which she had attended a Catholic school in Winnipeg; she
had refused to be regarded as a squaw, since the blood which flowed in
her veins was fully half white, and, after staying with him for a
fortnight, had taken herself off, joining her father on a hunting
trip, giving Granger clearly to understand that she would not live
with him again until Pere Antoine should have come that way and united
them according to the rites of the Roman Church.
As he stood by the window looking out across the frost-bound land
which once, years since, in Leicester Square, he in his ignorance had
so much desired, he re-pondered these events and, "Well, and what
next?" he asked.
The touch of spring in the air, recalling him to England and the old
days, had made him realise among other things what this marriage with
a half-breed girl, supposing he consented, must entail. It would
exile him forever. No matter howsoever well he might prosper, or rich
he might become, or whatsoever stroke of good fortune might visit him,
he could never return to his English mother and English friends,
bringing with him a half-breed wife and children who had Indian blood.
If he married her, he would become what Pilgrim had named him--an
outcast. If he did not marry her, she would refuse to live with him,
and he would be left lonely as before and would probably become
insane. Since he was never likely to become either prosperous, or
rich, or fortunate, would it not be better for him to provide for his
immediate happiness, he asked, and let the future take care of itself?
Even while he asked the question another woman intruded her face: she
was slim, and fair, and delicately made, and was disguised in the male
attire of a Yukon placer-miner. She seemed to be asking him to
remember her.
He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, as if defying Fate: turning
away from the window, he reseated himself upon the upturned box by the
red-hot stove.
Pooh! he'd been a fool to give way to retrospection. He was no
exception to the general rule; most men mismanaged their careers--more
or less. Still, he was bound to confess that he had done so rather
more than less. Oh well, he would settle down to his fate. As for that
other girl in the Yukon miner's dress, who would keep intruding
herself, she also must be forgotten.
But at that point, perversely enough, he began to think about her.
What was she doing at the present time? Where was she? Did she still
remember him? Had she made her fortune up there out of their last big
strike? How had she construed his sudden and unexplained departure? He
swore softly to himself, and rising, went over to the window again.
Then he pressed closer as if to make certain of something, gazing up
the long glimmering stretch of frozen river to the west.
There was a strange man coming down; strange to those parts, at any
rate, though Granger seemed to recognise something familiar in his
stride. He was driving his dogs furiously, lashing them on with
frenzied brutality, coming on apace, turning his head ever and again
from side to side, peering across his shoulder and looking behind, as
if he feared a thing which followed him--which was out of sight.