THE MURDER IN THE SKY
However lightly he travels and however hard the snow may have packed,
a man who has only two huskies and is handicapped by a body just
recovered from sickness does not make much speed in winter travelling.
Through the long hours of the dreary November night Granger, with
hard, set face, had pushed on up the Last Chance River, towards God's
Voice, following in Spurling's tracks. It was the gold that he
desired. And if he recaptured it, what then? He was not capable of
carrying it out to Winnipeg by himself. He knew that his pursuit was
madness; he had nothing to gain by it but revenge. He was hardly
likely to gain even that, for the man in front of him had three dogs
to his one, fuller rations, and a start of several hours; he could
only hope to overtake him by the happening of some accident.
Yet he knew that he would overtake him, for he felt, beyond reach of
argument, that Spurling was fated to die by his hand. Both of them had
striven to avoid it; once he himself had fled that he might not commit
the crime, and Spurling was now trying to escape that it might not
come about. No matter what they did, it must happen. Though God should
"advance a terrible right arm," and pluck them apart, and fling them
to the opposite extremes of the world, they would surely travel and
travel, perhaps involuntarily, till they came again together. It would
have been far better if he had not been interfered with at the
Shallows and had been permitted to accomplish his enmity there--so,
more than three years of futile suffering might have been spared and
Mordaunt would be still alive.
He was hardly conscious of any anger; his was the unreasoned
relentless instinct of the pursuing hound. He was savage justice and
the law of self-preservation personified. He was the will of destiny
decreeing that Spurling should not reach El Dorado alive.
The dogs struggled on uncomplainingly; this was their first trip of
the season and they were still comparatively fresh, though the man was
tired. To the eastward the crescent of a faint old moon hung low in
the sky. As Granger ran, he turned his head and, watching it, was
thankful to see that at last the tardy dawn had begun to spread. Over
the withered stretch of woodland to his right the Aurora swept between
the stars, like an extinguishing angel, who caused them to flicker
and, as he beat his wings about them, one by one to go out.
It was a morning of bitter coldness. As the breath left his nostrils,
he could almost see it congeal and fall to the ground, a filmy sheet
of ice. The heads of the huskies were clouded with smoke, so that they
seemed to be on fire as they panted forward dragging on the traces.
The tracks, which he was following, now branched off to the left, and,
mounting the river-bank, entered into a little hollow at the edge of
the forest. Here, about the base of a tree, the snow had been recently
trampled and a fire smouldered. It was Spurling's first camp.
Granger, having unharnessed and fed his huskies, taking his axe from
his girdle, cut down a sapling fir and roused the dying embers to a
blaze. The flames shot up, and, climbing the bark of the tree,
crackled among the branches overhead. Unpacking his tallow he melted
it in a cup. Before it was all drunk, the surface was frozen solid.
Then, lest his muscles should stiffen, he set out again.
The air was full of minute particles of snow, like frozen dew, which
caused the whole atmosphere, as far as eye could reach, to sparkle in
the sunshine. The sky was greenish grey and without a cloud. The
stillness of the world was magical; in the miles of landscape which
were visible, nothing stirred. The snapping of a twig sounded like the
crashing ruin of a forest giant. The gliding of the sled across the
snow, and the padding footsteps of the huskies, thundered down the
tunnel of the river through the pines like the galloping of heavy
artillery over gravel. When, at rare intervals, the river cracked,
perhaps four or five miles away, it reverberated through the
tree-tops, causing their burden of snow to tremble and glisten, like
the report of neighbouring cannon. Every whisper was exaggerated to a
shout, so that the ears were deafened and longed for quiet--quiet
which, unlike silence, consisted of a multitude of small sounds
singing, almost inaudibly, together.
Shortly after noon the light faded, and the blinding whiteness was
converted into iron grey. Over to the westward the sun was hidden, and
the horizon became threatening with a leaden bank of cloud. The
temperature sank lower and the twilight was obliterated; night rushed
down.
The dogs were now thoroughly worn out; only by continual lashing
could he keep them to their work. The roughness of the ice had mangled
their feet; they marked out the trail which they traversed with
crimson dots of blood. He had hoped to reach Spurling's next
camping-place before making another halt; but his rate of travelling
had grown slower, and already the advantage of Spurling's four
additional huskies was beginning to tell. At last his dogs lay down in
their traces and refused to budge. He knew that he could force them to
go no further.
Using the sled as a shovel, he dug out a hollow, throwing up a
circular mount to protect him from the wind, should it arise.
Searching along the river-bank, he collected wood for a fire,
sufficient to last him till morning. He set up his sled on end, like a
tombstone, for a head rest, and lay himself down with his feet toward
the blaze. The dogs gathered round him shivering, lying one on either
side, striving to share the warmth of his body. He beat them off at
first, but they always crept back; so at last, becoming languidly
sorry for them, he let them stop there.
He was terribly tired; his bones felt like bars of red-hot iron
scorching their way through his flesh. The hardness of the ice beneath
the snow surface had racked his body in every joint. Every now and
then he would get up and throw some wood on the fire, and lie down
again, pulling his blanket over his head, folding his arms tightly
across his chest, and gathering his knees up close to his body to
conserve whatever heat he had. Though his body slept, never for a
second did his brain lose consciousness of the cold and of the sense
of travel. Always he seemed to be pressing on, doggedly, wearily, with
the forest rushing past him on either hand. Spurling was in sight;
sometimes he would halt, and jeeringly beckon to him. When he had come
within speaking distance of him, he would start off again, leaving a
narrow track of gold behind, for one of the sacks had burst.
Gradually the most fatal feeling that any man can experience in
northland travel stole upon him--_he felt that he did not care_. If
the fire went out, what matter? He would not get up to relight it. If
Spurling were standing at his side, he would not disturb himself to
look at him. If Mordaunt were to come to him, well, he might perhaps
turn round to look at her.
He began to dream of her as he had seen her in the locket. They were
both back in the old homeland. He was talking with her in an English
garden and a thrush was singing overhead. How long it was since he had
listened to the song of any bird! Why, he had almost forgotten that
there was such an ecstasy in the world. So exalted was he, that he
paid more attention to the thrush's song than to the words which
Mordaunt said. Then she grew angry and shook him; but he sat there
motionless, looking up into the branches of the tree, away from her,
watching the sun through the greenness of the leaves, and the
quivering throat of the bird. She rose up and left him in indignation;
then darkness fell. He tried to follow her, but had no power to move
himself. He tried to cry out, but his tongue was joined to the roof of
his mouth. Making a great effort, he came to himself.
When he pushed up his arms to throw off his covering, they seemed to
be lifting a weight of surpassing heaviness. He sat upright and tried
to open his eyes; he was blind--he could see nothing. He groped to
feel his eyeballs with his hands; but his fingers were frozen--they
could feel nothing. He rose to his feet in panic and stood there
swaying, as though he had been set upon a dizzy pedestal which had
grown to be part of himself, so that he could not move, but could only
bend.
"I must keep quiet," he told himself; "I must keep quiet. If I get
frightened, I shall wander away to my death."
When he tried to step forward his feet clapped together like solid
blocks of ice. Very distantly, it seemed to him, he could make out a
little glow of red and feel a breath of warmness. Going down on his
hands and knees, he crawled towards it. It was coming to meet him;
they had met. He lay down beside the redness and his panic left him.
Then he became conscious that it was hurting him and he commenced to
hate it. In struggling to get away from it, he found that he could
move more freely. Sensation had come into his hands; raising them he
felt his eyes. His great terror was not of death, but that he should
be forever sightless. He ran his fingers across his eyes and found
that they were covered with flesh--that his eyelids were frozen
together. With his two hands he forced them apart, and gazed about
him. Wherever he looked there was endless space with nothing to deter
him, stretching away on every side. The moon, in her last quarter, was
barely visible--a mere shadow of silver in the sky; so indistinct was
his vision, that it seemed to him as though he were looking at the
image of the firmament reflected in water, rather than at the stars
themselves. Yet, in the certain renewal of his sight, there came to
him a gladness which he had not known for many a day.
When he turned toward the fire, he perceived the cause of his mishap:
he had overslept himself and it was nearly out. By the way in which it
was scattered abroad and the smouldering of the fur which was about
his throat and arms, he guessed that in his blindness and instinctive
desire for warmth, he had thrown himself upon its ashes. Having
gathered what remained of it together, he flung on more fuel and set
to work to chafe his extremities, restoring circulation. He was too
chilled to think of attempting sleep again that night: so, when his
limbs were sufficiently thawed out, he renewed his journey.
The atmosphere was wonderfully clear, but there was in the air a sense
of evil and foreboding. Even the dogs seemed to be aware of it, for as
they ran, turning their heads from side to side to see which way the
whip was coming that they might dodge it, there was a look of
foreknowledge and terror in their eyes which warned Granger.
As the dawn was spreading, he was startled by a long-drawn sigh, which
travelled from horizon to horizon and died out. The dogs heard it, and
sitting down abruptly in their tracks nearly overturned the sled.
Gazing away to the northward, he saw a shadowy cloud arise, whirl and
drift languidly over the tree-tops and fall back again out of sight.
He lashed at the huskies, and with difficulty set them going. But the
sled drew heavily, as though it were being dragged through sand, for
the snow was gritty as the seashore: so intense was the cold that all
slipperiness had gone out of it. He fastened a line to the load and
went on ahead, breaking the trail and hauling with all his strength.
Before long the sigh was heard again; but this time it came nearer,
and columns of white smoke rose up and danced in the river-bed. Then
he knew that he was in for a _poudre_ day--the day which of all others
the winter voyageur holds in most dread. While such weather lasts,
even the hardiest traveller will refuse to leave his fire; for he
knows that before long every land-mark will be blotted out, that his
very dogs will refuse to obey him, and that to-morrow, when the wind
has dropped and the snow has settled, the chances are that the sun
will find him with a quiet face turned upward to the sky, immobile and
statuesque as if carved from Parian marble.
Leaving Spurling's trail, he ascended the bank and worked along by the
forest's edge, that so he might gain shelter. With every fresh puff of
breath from the north, the coiling snakes of snow grew larger,
writhing across the tree-tops and pouring tumultuously into the
river-bed, where they rioted and fought till the day grew dark and it
was difficult to see the next step. Respiration became painful, but
Granger was determined not to halt, for this was one of the accidents
which would help him to come up with Spurling. Feeling his way from
tree to tree, he struggled on. His head became dizzy with the effort.
His body, for all its coldness, broke out into a chilly sweat. He was
invaded by a terrible inertia, so that he was half-minded to lie down
and go to sleep; but the thought that Spurling had halted somewhere,
perhaps only twenty miles ahead, and was losing time, drew him on.
Presently his dogs sat down again, lifting their voices above the
storm in a dismal wailing.
He cut their traces and went forward, dragging the sled himself. They
followed him a few paces behind, slinking through the darkness with
their heads down and their tails between their legs. They reminded him
of the timber-wolf on the Forbidden River; there were times when,
catching a partial glimpse of them, he could have sworn that they had
been joined by a third.
By midday the wind died down, the atmosphere began to clear and the
snow to settle. Returning to the river he sought in vain for
Spurling's tracks; either he had passed him in the blackness or they
had been obliterated. He would know the truth in the next six hours
for, if he were still ahead, he would come to his abandoned camp.
Towards sunset he halted and lit a fire; he intended to travel through
the night and was in need of rest. He had fed his huskies and was
stooping above the flames, cooking himself some bacon, when he raised
his eyes to the west. For a minute he crouched, gazing with the
fascination of horror at what he saw taking place apparently not more
than fifty yards away, but with such clearness that it might not have
been more than ten paces. Where ten seconds before there had been
nothing in view but the straight length of river and the snow-capped
forest, dripping with icicles, there was now, hanging above the trees
face-downwards, anchored to the sky by crimson threads, the inverted
image of a portage, leading up from the right-hand bank of a river,
hedged in on either side with a row of crosses which marked graves of
bygone voyageurs. Midway in the path was a little cabin, which had
been set up for the shelter of bestormed travellers by employees of
the Hudson Bay. Granger recognised the place; it was Dead Rat Portage,
and must be at least fifteen miles from where he was now standing and
ten from God's Voice.
Out of the cabin, on his hands and knees, crawled a man. He was
evidently badly frost-bitten, for he tried to drag himself upright by
the door-post, but failed miserably, falling forward along the ground.
As he lay there, he turned toward Granger a face which was
expressionless as if it had been covered with a mask of waxen leprosy;
it was frozen solid, as were his feet and hands. Granger knew, more by
the clothes than the ghastly features, that the man was Spurling.
He seemed now to have given up hope of standing erect, and began to
move painfully on all fours across the snow to where a log of rotten
wood was lying. Having reached it, he tried to raise it, but there was
not the strength in his hands. He tried to fasten his teeth upon it,
to drag it back with him; but his jaws seemed paralysed. Then he crept
back to the cabin.
Soon he came out again, and, having reached the log, commenced to
light it with a match. At first it refused to ignite, but when he had
pushed some broken twigs under it, it burst into flame. He bent over
it hungrily, drawing so near that Granger expected to see his clothing
catch fire.
Then, as he watched, he saw a second figure. It was that of a man,
dressed precisely as he himself was dressed, and his back was turned
towards him so that he could not discern his face; he carried in his
hand an axe. He moved stealthily on snowshoes, dodging from tree to
tree, lest he should be discovered by the crouching man. His intention
was so evidently evil, that Granger cried out a warning to save
Spurling. Murder, when watched in this way, was so brutal that, though
he himself had planned to do the deed, his whole moral nature
revolted against it now. He cried again, but his warning was not
heard. He wished that the man with the axe would turn his head, that
he might see his face.
A horrible, grotesque suspicion was growing up within him; he fancied
that he knew the man--that he had seen him before in the Klondike,
_that he was himself_. Spurling, quite unaware of his danger, was
holding out his hands to the flames; it was not until the man was
close behind him that be heard his footsteps and turned his head. His
face was frozen; the frost had bound him hand and foot, making him
defenceless, so that he could hardly stir; the only means of appeal he
had was the expression in his eyes.
Granger thought that he saw that expression--the cornered soul
gesticulating, shrieking for mercy from the living eyes in the
half-dead face. When the murderer raised his axe, he saw the soul's
pitiful cowardice and how it shrank. The axe came crashing down. There
was no need to strike twice; he fell limply backward, throwing his
arms out wide--and there was an end of El Dorado and of all his dreams
of avarice.
The murderer, as if suddenly afraid of his own handiwork, without
turning his head, hurried on across the portage through the forest,
and was quickly lost to sight.
Scenting the blood, the four gray huskies, one by one, came out from
the cabin, where they seemed to have been asleep, and the others
followed them. They came slowly over to where their tyrant was lying,
and sniffed his body. They did it cautiously, for as yet they had not
lost their fear of him; he might awake and belabour them for
disturbing his last long rest.
In falling his legs had shot from under him into the fire, scattering
the embers, so he lay full length, with the red gash in his forehead,
his arms spread out like a cross, and his face, in the inverted image,
turned earthwards, gazing down on Granger and the Last Chance River
with startled, unseeing eyes.
The mirage began to fade and float cloudwards, drifting up-river above
the tree-tops higher and higher, till it vanished in the west.
Of all that he had witnessed Granger had heard no sound--there lay the
chief terror of it. Like the handwriting on the wall in Babylon, it
had taken place in silence. The crime which he had so often
contemplated, and planned, had been transacted before his eyes; the
person who had done the deed had kept his back turned toward him, but
in his attire was strangely like himself--and instead of being
gratified he was filled with loathing and hatred for the slayer.
In the person of another he had seen the vileness which he had been
seeking for himself, and was horrified. He knew that, had he had his
chance, he might have taken Spurling's life in just some such way as
that--he had imagined how he would do it many times. And now that it
was accomplished, he was sick with pity for the murdered man.
To one thing he had instantly made up his mind, that, if this should
prove to be more than a fancy of delirium--the miraged portrayal of a
villainy which had actually occurred--he would track the assassin as
he had tracked Spurling, till the last ounce of his strength failed
him, that Spurling might be avenged. Perhaps, in the avenging he hoped
to clear himself in his own sight of his imagined share in the crime.
He felt as though the deed had been the result of his own projected
hatred, and that he himself was the real murderer. When he remembered
the appearance of the man whom he now followed, it seemed like going
in pursuit of his own self.