THE CORPORAL SETS OUT
It would have been easy to shoot Strangeways at that time, and he must
have known it; yet, he was so much a gentleman that he accepted the
risk, and had the decency to turn his back when circumstances
compelled him to give a man the lie. Granger wondered whether courtesy
was the motive; or whether he was only testing him out of curiosity,
to see of what fresh vulgarity of deceit he was capable.
As he stood in the doorway, his gaze wandered from the broad shoulders
of Corporal Strangeways, late stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, to the
treacherous eyes of the gaunt grey beast before him which, by reason
of its unusual markings and untimely appearance, had once and forever
thrown Spurling's game away. There was something Satanic and
suggestive of evil about those green and jasper eyes, and the manner
in which they blinked out upon him from the furious yellow head. Were
they prompting him to crime, saying, "Why don't you fire? He can't
defend himself; see, his back is turned?" No, not that. He
half-believed that the brute was endowed with human intelligence, and
had betrayed his late master of set purpose--perhaps, in revenge for
the many beatings he had received on the trail from Selkirk to Murder
Point. There was a vileness in the creature's look that was degrading
and stirred up hatred--and surely, the lowest kind of enmity which
can be entertained by man is toward a unit of the dumb creation. That
he should feel so, humiliated and angered Granger. Was there not
enough of ignominy for him to endure without that? He drew his
revolver, took aim at this yellow devil--but could not fire. The beast
did not cringe and run away, zigzagging to avoid the bullets, stooping
low on its legs, as is the habit of huskies when firearms are pointed
at them; it sat there patiently blinking, a little in advance of its
four grey comrades, with a mingled expression of amusement and boredom
in its attitude, like a sleepy old bachelor uncle at a Christmas
entertainment when Clown and Harlequin commence their threadbare jests
and fooleries. He might have been yawning and saying to himself, "Hang
it all! Why do I stay? I know the confounded rubbish by heart--all
that these fellows will do and say."
Granger's hand dropped to his side; this wolf-dog looked so far from
ignorant--so much wiser than himself. Could it be that he also was
playing in the game? Was it possible that he also was intent on
helping Spurling? Well, then, he should have his chance.
For himself the season for deception was at an end; he had lied to
gain time for the fugitive, now let him see what truth could effect.
He waded through the snow to Strangeways, tapped him on the shoulder,
and was made painfully aware of the opinion held of him by the way in
which the corporal screwed his shoulder aside.
"I suppose I seem to you a pretty mean kind of a beast?"
"I suppose you do."
"I seem so to myself; but I have an excuse to make--that this man once
saved my life."
"So you're a hero in disguise?"
"No, but I couldn't go back on a man who had done that."
"I fail to see that that is a reason why you should have lied."
"I called it an excuse."
"In this case the words mean the same."
"Well, then, I had a reason: if the person whom Spurling murdered is
the person whom I . . ."
"Indeed! So you knew that much, did you?" At mention of the word
"murdered," Strangeways had swung fiercely round and confronted
Granger.
"Yes, I know that much. And if the man whom Spurling murdered is the
man whom I suspect him to be, I had intended to dispense with law and
to exact the penalty slowly, up here whence there is no escape,
myself."
"Then you'll be sorry to hear that you've lied to no purpose. The
person whom Spurling murdered was not a man, you damned scoundrel."
Strangeways turned sharply away from him, and, moving as briskly on
his snowshoes as the unpacked state of the snow would allow, commenced
methodically to go about the store in ever widening circles. He
evidently suspected that the fugitive was still in hiding there, or
had been at the time of his arrival, and had since escaped, in which
case the snow would bear traces of his flight. When he had searched
the mound in vain, he turned his attention to the river-bed where his
team of dogs was stationed. Granger, watching him from above, saw that
he had halted suddenly and was bending down. Then he heard him
calling his dogs together and saw him harnessing them quickly into his
sledge. Panic seized him lest Strangeways should drive away without
telling him the name of _this thing, which was not a man_, which
Spurling had murdered, and _whether the deed had been done in the
Klondike_. Also he was curious to see for himself what it was that he
had found in the snow down there, which made him so eager to set out.
He ploughed his way down the hillside, breaking through the surface
and slipping as he ran, till he arrived out of breath at the
river-bank. Then he saw the meaning of this haste; approaching the
Point from the northward was a muffled track, partially obliterated by
the snow which had since fallen, which, on reaching Murder Point,
doubled back, returning northward whence the traveller had come. It
meant to Granger that, while he and Strangeways had been seated
together recalling old times in the store, Spurling had come back. For
what reason? No man would fight his way through a blizzard without
good purpose; he would lie down where he was till the storm had spent
itself, lest he should wander from his trail. This man had everything
to lose by turning back. Then he discovered that the snow was speckled
with dots of black, and, stooping down, discerned that they were drops
of blood. Some of the blood-marks were fresh; the tracks themselves
had been made, perhaps, within the last three hours. Spurling must
have met with an accident, and, returning to the Point for help, had
seen the stranger's dogs and sledge, and turning northwards again had
fled. So thought Granger.
Strangeways, in the meanwhile, was examining the feet of his leader.
Presently he stood erect, and asked in a low voice, "Did you do
that?"
"What?"
"Look for yourself."
Granger looked, and saw that the balls of the leader's forefeet had
been gashed several times with a knife.
"How should I have done it?" he replied. "I've been in your company
every minute since you arrived."
"Who did it, then?"
"You know as well as I."
"And what do you think of a man who could do that?"
"That he was very desperate."
"I should call him a Gadarene swine."
Strangeways stood in angry thought for a few seconds; then he jerked
up his head, and asked, "Can you lend me another team of huskies? Be
careful when you answer that you tell me the truth this time."
Granger smiled at the childishness of such threatening.
"You will gain nothing by speaking like that," he said. "Unfortunately
for you, unlike Spurling, I am not afraid of death--I should welcome
it. Yet, while I live, I am curious; therefore I will promise you help
on one condition, that you tell me who has been murdered, and where."
Strangeways lifted his eyes and surveyed Granger, asking himself, "And
is this statement also a lie?" But, when he spoke there were the
beginnings of a new respect in his voice. "So you are not afraid of
death?" he said. "Well, then, I owe you an apology for what I have
called you, for I am; I am horribly afraid. I am afraid that I shall
die before I have avenged this death."
"Tell me, who was it that was killed?" cried Granger, impatiently.
"Was it a girl? There was a girl whom I loved in the Klondike; you
don't know how you make me suffer."
"Don't I?" replied Strangeways, grimly; and then with affected
indifference, "There are a good many girls in the Klondike; the body
of this one was found washed ashore near Forty-Mile."
"What's her name?"
"That's what I'm here to find out."
"Did Spurling know that she was a woman when he shot her?"
"So you know that also--that he shot her? Whether he knew, I don't
care; the fact remains that she is dead and that he is suspected."
"Only suspected?"
"Well, . . ."
"By God!" cried Granger, bringing down his fist in Strangeways' face,
"but you shall tell me! Was her name Mordaunt, and was she his
partner, and did she wear a man's disguise?"
Strangeways turned his head and dodged aside so that the blow fell
lightly; drawing his revolver, he covered his opponent. Granger
advanced close up, until the barrel of the revolver touched his face;
then he halted and waited.
Strangeways watched him; looked into his eyes amazed; then lowered his
weapon and laughed nervously. "Oh," he said, "I remember, you are not
afraid of death."
"But I am of madness and suspense."
Strangeways did not reply at once. Perhaps a sudden understanding had
dawned on him, pity and a vision of what it meant to live through the
eternal Now at Murder Point. He may have been asking himself, "For the
lack of one small untruth, shall I thrust this man into Hell?" At any
rate, when he answered he spoke gently. "No," he said, "she wore a
woman's dress; be sure of it, your girl-friend is safe up there."
Granger looked at him steadily, wondering why he should have lied;
than he took his hand and pressed it in the English manner, "I believe
you," he said. Yet, at the back of his mind a voice was persistently
questioning, "Do I believe him? But can I believe that?"
He was interrupted in his thoughts by Strangeways saying, "It's a pity
that that poor brute should suffer; he's certain to die."
The corporal went near, levelled his revolver and shot the leader
between the eyes. The bullet did its work; the dog shivered, and
tottered, rolled over on its side, tried to rise again, then stretched
itself out wearily as if for sleep at the end of a hard day's travel.
"You can do that for a mere husky," said Granger bitterly; "but you
refuse to do it for a man."
"The husky had a harsh time of it in this world and has no other
life."
"If that's so, he's to be congratulated; but there was the more reason
why he should have been allowed to live his one life out. We wretched
men are never done with life; if I were sure that there was only one
existence and no reproaches in a future world, I could be brave to the
end. It's this repetition of mortality, which men call immortality,
that staggers my intellect, making me afraid--afraid lest there is no
death."
Strangeways shrugged his shoulders and scowled. He did not like the
subject--it caused him discomfort; there was so much left for him in
life. He planned, when he had captured Spurling and seen him safely
hanged, to buy himself out of the Mounted Police, return to England,
and there live pleasantly at his club in London and as squire on his
estate. He would marry, he told himself; and though not the girl whom
he had most desired, for he believed her to be dead, yet, like a
sensible man, some other girl, who would be his friend, and bear his
children, and make him happy. If once he could get out of Keewatin,
having performed his duty honourably, he would do all that--when
Spurling had been captured alive or dead.
Therefore he broke in on Granger roughly, inquiring, "Where are those
huskies which you are going to lend me?"
"They are Spurling's huskies which he left behind when I lent him
mine."
"How long ago was that?--If they're Spurling's, they must be pretty
well played out."
"They are. They've rested for thirty hours more or less; but I don't
think you'll manage to catch him up with them."
"Perhaps not, but I'll try; he can't be more than three hours ahead."
"Three hours with a fresh team is as good as three days."
"You forget the difference between the two men."
"No, I don't, for the one has the memory of his crime."
"It's the memory of his crime that'll wear him out, and that same
memory that'll give me strength."
"Why? What makes you hate him so? Supposing he did kill a woman, it
may have been an accident. She may even have felt grateful for the
bullet, as I should have done just now had you shot me dead. It's
horrible to kill anyone, but then the poor devil's fleeing for his
life and he's suffering a thousand times more pain than he
inflicted."
"Is he? Does he suffer the pain of the man who follows behind?
Supposing a certain man had loved that woman and had lost her, and had
planned all his life on the off-chance of meeting her again, dreaming
of her day and night, and then had suddenly learnt that she was
brutally dead by Spurling's hand on some God-forsaken Yukon River,
where the ground was hard like iron so that no grave could be dug by
the murderer, and her body froze to marble and lay exposed all winter
through the long dark days, with the bullet wound red in her forehead,
and her grey face looking up toward the frosty sky, till the spring
came and the water washed her body under and threw it up in a creek
near Forty-Mile, where a year later it was discovered mutilated and
defiled, do you think that her lover would be glad of that? Do you
think that he would pity the black-guard who could do such a
scoundrelly deed as that?"
Strangeways was speaking wildly, his voice was trembling and his face
was haggard and lined; he was crying like a child. "The man who could
do a deed like that," he shouted, menacing the stars with his clenched
hand, "the man who could do a deed like that is so corrupt that even
God would search for good in him in vain. It's the duty of every clean
man to hound him off the earth. While we allow him to live, we each
one share his taint. I'll pray God every day of my life that Spurling
may be damned throughout the ages--eternally and pitilessly damned."
When Granger could make his voice heard, "You don't mean that she was
Mordaunt?" he cried. All this talk about a woman who had been lost and
loved paralleled his own case--he took it as applied to himself.
Strangeways recovered himself with an effort, "No, no," he said
huskily. "Mordaunt, you have told me, was a man. I was only supposing
all that."
"But Mordaunt was not a man, but a woman in man's clothing."
Strangeways closed his lips tightly together, refusing to take notice,
pretending that he had not heard. Granger spoke again. "Mordaunt was
not a man," he said.
"In that case," answered Strangeways, "you know what the man suffers
who is following behind. I will tell you no more than that."
"You've told me enough and I will help you; only pledge me once more
on your sacred word that this body was found in a woman's dress."
Strangeways hesitated; then his eyes caught again the bleakness of the
land and his imagination pictured the awful loneliness of life up
there. Looking full on Granger he said, "On my most sacred word as a
brother-gentleman, the body that was found was clothed in a woman's
dress."
"Then, thank God, she was not Mordaunt!" said Granger; "but because he
knew her to be a woman at the time when he killed her, I will help you
none the less."
Having called together Spurling's huskies, they found them to be too
weak for travel, with the exception of the leader, therefore they
harnessed in the corporal's remaining four dogs, putting the
yellow-faced stranger at their head. No sooner had they turned their
backs and gone inside the store to bring out the necessary provisions,
than the four old dogs, jealous of their new leader, hurled themselves
upon him, burying their fangs in his shaggy hair, intent on tearing
him to death--an old-timer husky can stand a good deal of that. He
strained on the traces, exposing to them only his hindquarters,
running well ahead, and keeping his throat safe. Not until the two men
had clubbed them nearly senseless did they subside into sullen
quietness; and then only so long as they were watched. Once a back was
turned, the four hind dogs piled on to their leader and the fight
recommenced.
"You won't go far with them," said Granger. He did not notice the look
of reawakened suspicion which flickered in Strangeways' eyes. "You
won't go far with them; the moment you camp and that yellow-faced
beast gets his chance, he'll chew your four dogs to pieces. That's
what he's there for, it's my belief--he's playing Spurling's game.
He'll take you fifty or a hundred miles from Murder Point, and there
leave you stranded."
"What would you advise?" This was spoken in a quiet voice.
"I would advise you to wait here till the summer has come, and then to
proceed by water."
"But on snow I can follow his trail, whereas travel by water leaves no
traces."
"What does that matter? Instead of following him, let him return to
you, as he did to-night. You've driven him up a blind alley on this
Last Chance River; he can only go to the blank wall of the Bay, and
then come back."
"He can reach the House of the Crooked Creek."
"And if he does, what of that? He'll be touching the blank wall then.
They won't want him. The first question that they'll ask him will be,
'And what have you come here for?' If he can't give a satisfactory
account of himself, they'll place him under arrest. When you get news
of that, you can go up there and fetch him."
"And if he doesn't get so far as that?"
"You can set out by canoe and drive him back, and back, till you come
to the Bay, and he can go no further."
"He might hide, and I might pass him on the way--what then?"
"In that case he'd double back and come past Murder Point, trying to
get out."
"In the meanwhile I should be a hundred, two hundred miles to the
northwards, travelling towards the Bay on my fool's errand, and who
would be here to capture him?"
"Why, I should."
"Precisely."
Granger started; the way in which that last word had been spoken had
made Strangeways' meaning manifest. He blushed like a girl at the
shame of it. "Surely you don't still distrust me? You don't think me
such a sneak that, having got you out of the way, I'd let him slip by
and out?"
"It looks like it."
"But, man, don't you realise that our interests are the same?"
"Since when?"
"Since you told me of a woman who was done to death on a Yukon river,
and lay unburied all winter till the thaw came, and her body was
washed down to a creek near Forty-Mile, where it lay through the
summer naked, gazed upon, uncovered, and defiled."
"I fancy you knew all that when you helped Spurling to escape."
"Yes, but I didn't know that it was a woman, and I didn't know her
name."
"And you don't know her name now."
"I do; it was Jervis Mordaunt who wore a man's disguise."
"I told you that she wore a woman's dress."
"I know. I know."
"Then do you mean to tell me that I lied?"
"Perhaps, but not to accuse you. You said it out of kindness, and that
was partly true which you said. You meant that the body was naked when
it was found."
"If you dare to speak of her like that again, I'll choke you, and run
the risk of getting hanged myself. The land has debased you, as the
Yukon debased your friend. I can read you; you're still half-minded to
play his game, and that's why you want to turn me back."
"Yes, I want to turn you back. Spurling's a hard-pressed man and he's
dangerous. You can judge of what he is capable by what has just
happened. He's cunning and, in his way, he's brave; he wouldn't
scruple to take your life. Your best policy is to wait--either here or
at God's Voice, as you think best. The ice will soon be unsafe to
travel; already a mile from here, where the river flows rapidly round
from the south-west, the part on the inside bend is rotten. I had to
guide Spurling round that. At first, before I saw you and knew who you
were, I was tempted not to warn you, to let you take your own chance
and go on by yourself, and, perhaps, get drowned; but now, after I
have seen you and after what you have told me, I can't do that."
"So you were tempted to let me drown myself, and now you are
repentant?"
Granger bowed his head.
"Then I tell you that if the ice were as rotten as your soul or
Spurling's, I would still follow him, though I had to follow him to
Hell. If I've got to die, I'll die game--and you shan't turn me back."
Granger ran out after him, calling him to stay, offering to guide him
round the danger spot in his trail. But suspicion and untruthfulness
had done their work. Only once did he turn his head, when at the crack
of the whip the yellow-faced leader leapt forward in his traces. Then
he answered him and cried, "He killed the woman I loved, and he shall
pay the price though I follow him to Hell."
So far as is known, these were the last words which Strangeways ever
said.