THE BLIZZARD
Now that he was nearing God's Voice, it was necessary that he should
travel more cautiously and keep a sharp lookout ahead. At any moment
he might come in sight of a Company's trapper, either sitting beneath
the trees by his camp-fire or racing down-river between the tall
banks, following his sled. He might be recognised, and recognition
would lead to his arrest. Whatever happened afterwards, he desired his
freedom for yet a little while, so he went carefully. In the course of
the night he passed by one wigwam; but the Indian was evidently away,
for no dog rose up to herald his approach. If the squaw was there, she
did not rouse; he got by unnoticed.
Hoping against hope, he argued with himself, trying to believe that
Spurling was alive. He told himself that this had been a vision sent
to him from God to turn him aside from his crime. He had gazed upon
himself as he would have become, and his soul had revolted at the
sight.
As he ran on, swearing at his huskies, urging them forward with the
lash, he offered up to God many fervid thanks for the mercy which He
had shown him, hoping that by these means, even though the calamity
had happened, he might shame his Maker by his gratitude into putting
back the hands of time, and so restoring the murdered man to life. At
last by the constant reiteration of the thing which he desired, he
began to take it for granted that his prayer was answered. Spurling
was not dead; he was alive, and he was going to ask his forgiveness
for the evil which he had thought against him.
He put together the words which he would say to him when they met, and
the gestures he would use to make his words convincing. He repeated
them over many times that he might retain them in his memory. Then
something would happen to take his attention away, one of the dogs
would be shirking or the sled would have overturned, and, when he came
back to the words which he had planned, he would be thrown into a
frenzy, finding that they had slipped his mind.
Though he was desperately in earnest over this game at which he
played, he was aware all the while of its unreality--that it was but a
game. His sanity warned him that what he had seen had truly happened,
and that the man was dead. This was not the first occasion upon which
he had seen a mirage when the snow was down and the land was white.
There had been times before, when, at the moment of daybreak or
sunset, he had witnessed strange freaks of inverted forest and river
hovering in the sky. Once he had seen an Indian ten miles away,
attacking a wolf which had been caught by the leg in a steel trap,
belonging to another man. So distinctly had he seen his features and
dress that, at a later day, when he had brought in his winter catch of
furs to exchange, he had recognised him; and when he had offered him
the wolf-skin, had accused him of the theft. Moreover, he knew that,
whether the sight which he had witnessed was mirage or fancy, he did
not deserve the leniency for which he prayed. He had had his chance
and warning three times already: once in the Klondike; once after the
arrival of Spurling, when God wrote upon the ice; and once at the
bend, when in the company of Pere Antoine he had mistaken the body of
Strangeways for that of Spurling.
Then there was the appearance of the murderer to be accounted for, and
his motive in slaying. He had been smaller in stature than himself, as
had been the creature at the Shallows, but he had had the same
peculiarities of clothing and was very much alike. Yet he strove to
drive down all his doubts and to believe the thing which he
desired--that the phenomenon was the result of imagination, and that
Spurling was not dead.
He made small progress in his travelling, for his body was worn out by
previous hardships. Sometimes he took over two hours to go three
miles; it was long past midnight when Dead Rat Portage came in sight.
At this point the river made a large curve to the southward and
broadened out into rapids; the portage was eight hundred yards in
length and saved voyageurs six miles, crossing the neck of land by a
narrow trail and picking up the Last Chance River on the other side.
In summer time the York boats were unloaded here, and dragged across
on rollers, the freight being carried on men's backs. As he drew near,
his hope sank; the place looked so gloomy and forbidding. There were
stories told about it and of how it had won its name, which might well
make any man afraid. An old fort, established by the French at the
time when they disputed the possession of Keewatin with Prince
Rupert's Company, had once stood there; it was said that some of the
crosses which fringed the trail marked spots where its defenders lay
buried. However, it was not the memory of the past, but the knowledge
of what might now await him, which caused him to hesitate.
On the river's bank, where the portage commenced, was a cleared space,
from which a path led round the cabin and tunnelled into the forest.
As he eased his sled out of the river-bed, he caught the smell of
burning, and, when he had topped the bank, he saw the glow of an
almost extinguished fire. The overhanging trees, casting their network
of shadows across the snow, prevented him from distinguishing at that
distance any object that lay beneath them. While he halted, half
inclined to wait till daybreak before proceeding further with his
investigation, he was startled by the sound of footsteps. They came
toward him very cautiously and there were many of them. He saw the
glint of eyes in the darkness, shining out and disappearing among the
crosses. He tried to count them; as far as he could make out there
were six pairs. Then he called them softly by name, and there came
toward him Spurling's four grey huskies and the two of his own team,
which had been taken.
And still he clung desperately to his hope and would not allow himself
to believe that in the shadow of the trees, a dozen yards from where
he was standing, the man whom he had set out to kill was lying
murdered. He whispered his name, not daring to speak louder. When no
answer was returned, he rallied his retreating faith by saying, "He is
sleeping. I must approach him gently. If he awakes and hears me, he
may think I am his enemy and escape me."
Leaving his dogs, he stole toward the sparks of fire. Although he
still denied the mirage, telling himself that what he had seen was
fancied, he directed his steps by that which he had witnessed in the
sky.
Drawing nearer, he made out the smouldering log; cowardice prompted
him to procrastinate, he crept round behind it. The air was heavy with
the smell of scorching leather. His eyes growing more accustomed to
the shadow, he saw the figure of a man, lying on the snow with his
arms stretched out in the shape of a cross and his moccasined feet
protruding above the glowing ashes. The last vestige of hope left him;
he knew that Spurling was dead. With certainty, his power of decision
returned; he still had a purpose to live for--to avenge this death.
Having pulled the body aside and heaped branches against the log, he
rekindled the fire. In the light which it cast he could see the
blurred trail of Spurling, where he had crawled to and from the cabin;
also he could see the tracks which the slayer's snowshoes had left as
he strode away through the forest following the portage. He stooped
and examined them. By so doing he learnt a new fact--that the man who
had done the deed was of Indian blood, for the toes of his footprints
inclined to turn inwards, and in carrying his feet forward he had kept
them closer together than does a white man; also he judged that he was
lightly built, for the snow beneath his steps was not much crushed.
So Beorn was not the culprit, nor was his phantom-self from the
Klondike. He thought of Eyelids; but Eyelids was a tall man and his
stride ought to have been longer. That which he had witnessed in the
mirage led him to believe that the act had been premeditated, and
therefore had some strong motive; either it had been done for the
reward or for the sake of theft.
He looked round for Spurling's sled and found it in the cabin; it was
still loaded--the gold had not been touched. He was puzzled. If theft
was not the object, why had the body been left? Without its production
or some part of it that was recognisable, the thousand dollars would
not be awarded. The best way to solve the mystery was to follow up the
murderer; and, if he were to do that, there was no time to lose.
Dragging the remains into the cabin, he made fast the door, that the
wolves might not destroy them; he would care for them on his homeward
journey--if he survived to come back. Harnessing the four grey huskies
into his sled, since they were the freshest, he set out across the
portage. Turning his head, as he entered the forest, he took one last
look at the deserted camp. The fire, burning brightly, with no one to
sit by it, added the final touch to the general aspect of melancholy.
Wailing through the darkness the huskies wandered; and in the
background, when the flames shot up, appeared the crosses, bending one
toward another, which marked the sleeping-places of men who, years
since, had lived and suffered, and obtained their rest.
Beneath the trees, the gloom was so heavy that he could see nothing;
but on coming out on to the banks of the river on the other side he
again picked up the murderer's trail. It led up the Last Chance in a
south-westerly direction towards God's Voice, which was only ten miles
distant. He had begun to take it for granted that the man was a Hudson
Bay employee, hurrying toward the fort to claim the reward, when the
tracks, branching off to the left, climbed out of the river and
plunged into a low-lying, thickly wooded wilderness, striking due
south.
In Keewatin the rivers are the only highways; to leave them even in
summer time, if you have no guide and are not a man born in the
district, is extremely dangerous; to do so in winter when, after every
precaution has been taken, travel remains precarious, is to court
almost certain death. For a moment Granger hesitated. He examined the
prints of the snowshoes and saw that they were very recent. The man
must have waited somewhere, and seen him coming. He must know now that
he was being followed, and could not be far ahead. "Well, it's death
whatever happens," thought Granger; "to go on to God's Voice is death;
to return to Murder Point is death. I'd just as soon die by this man's
hand, trying to avenge Spurling, as one cold morning in Winnipeg with
a rope about my neck."
The day rose late and cloudy. The sun did not show itself. The sky
weighed down upon the tree-tops, as if too heavy to support itself.
Presently large flakes of snow, the size of feathers, drifted through
the air, making a gentle rustling as they fell. Granger pressed on
more hurriedly, for he feared that, if he dropped too far behind, the
snow would cover up all traces of the man, and so he would escape him.
Sometimes he fancied that he could hear him going on ahead, for every
now and then a twig would snap. In the heat of his pursuit he took no
account of direction.
About midday he halted; of late all sounds had grown rarer and the
snow had thickened, causing even his own footprints to appear blurred
a few seconds after they had been made. Of the trail which he
followed he could see nothing himself, trusting to his huskies' sense
of smell to lead him aright.
Soon he grew strangely nervous, for he thought that he heard the
crunch of snowshoes coming up behind. He persuaded himself that it was
imagination, until his dogs, swinging round in a half-circle, began to
travel back in a direction parallel to the route they had already
traversed. He paused and listened again; behind him he could
distinctly hear the sound of something stirring. Then he knew that he
was no longer the pursuer.
His blood froze in his veins, and he began to lose confidence. He
realised that if the murderer knew the district and was moving in a
circle purposely, he was doing so in order that he might lure him to
his death. Abandoning all thought of pursuit, his sole endeavour
became to regain the river-bed. He lashed his dogs, urging them
forward to the limit of their strength; but he came to nothing that
was familiar; and, when he paused for breath, he could always hear the
snowshoes following.
Then he awoke to the knowledge that he was lost. His first sensation
was of blank bewilderment, producing in him an utter loss of memory.
He strove to quiet himself, but his will-power refused to operate. Who
he was, and why he was there, he could not remember; of two things
only was he conscious, that he was pursued by something that was evil,
and that he was lost.
A state of chaos reigned within him, which was soon succeeded by an
all-pervading terror. He must escape somehow to safety, to a place
where there were men. He longed to dash on somewhere, on and on; but
he was paralysed by his utter inability to think consecutively or to
choose out any particular direction. He began to see horrible
contorted shapes about him, and to imagine modes of death which were
still more horrible. He might die of starvation, he might die of
thirst, he might die of frost; but his worst fear was of something
which he would never see, which would steal softly up, when he was too
cold to turn his head, and strike him from behind. He circled round
and round to avoid the blow; but he felt that, as he moved, the thing
moved keeping pace with him, so that, for all his alertness, it was
always behind his back.
In a way in which he had never desired it before, he longed for human
companionship--just to look once more upon a living face. And to all
these fears and yearnings there was the undertow of an added
horror--the terror lest he should become insane. He burst into a
passion of weeping; as the tears fell they froze upon his face. The
air was thick with snow which the rising wind drifted about, driving
it into curious and fantastic shapes. Had he been more quiet, he would
have known that his only wise plan was to lie down until the blizzard
was past. It would bury him, but as a covering it would act as a
blanket to keep him warm. The blizzard seemed to him to be hemming him
in, building up about him a shifting wall through which the pursuer
could attack him unseen.
Always he was conscious of the pursuer's presence; always he could see
the picture of Spurling's uplifted face and the pleading that was in
his eyes as the assailant, with his back turned towards the onlooker,
poised the axe above his head. That he might not share that fate he
broke away into the greyness, tripping over snow ridges, falling into
drifts, and bruising his body against the trunks of trees in the
madness of his flight. His huskies added to his panic by following
him.
There were times when he ran so far ahead that he could neither see
nor hear them; but, when he halted, panting, they would emerge and lay
themselves down at his side. He hated them; they were sinister in his
eyes. Had they not brought Spurling from Winnipeg, and had not their
yellow-faced leader been the cause of Strangeways' death?
The wind, rising higher, shrieked among the branches. He wandered on,
neither knowing nor caring where he went, for he had lost all sense of
locality or time. There were intervals during which he must have
dreamed and slept, for he passed down an endless street of tall
houses, built in the English fashion, and the blinds were up and it
was nightfall. On the windows danced the light of fires, burning on
the hearths inside; and sometimes he could see the faces of children
looking out at him. He held up his blue hands at them, making signs
that they should let him in that he might warm himself; but they shook
their heads mischievously, and ran away and laughed.
After one of these experiences, more real to him than the others, he
came to himself. Surely that was the sound of music and dancing that
came to him above the cry of the storm. He waited for a lull and
listened, then followed the direction of the sound. As he drew nearer,
he caught the thud of moccasined feet beating time upon a boarded
floor, and snatches of the tune which the violin was playing.
Something loomed up out of the darkness to meet him. He held out his
hands to force it from him, and drove them against a door. Then he
knew that he had arrived at God's Voice.
He was half inclined to knock; at least they would not threaten him
and drive him away this time as they had done in the previous winter.
What was more likely to happen was that the man who opened to him,
recognising him, would seize him by the throat, drag him inside and
quickly slam the door. He would push him before him across the square
till he came to the room where the trappers were dancing, where, in
all probability, the factor was. And Robert Pilgrim when he saw him,
wagging his red beard at him, would shout, "Ha, so you heard me
whistle, and have come like a dog!"
He drew himself upright and stepped back from the gateway. No, he
could not endure that. Any death was preferable to the price that he
would have to pay for such shelter.
He worked his way along the wall till he stood beneath the window
where the fort was assembled. It was a comfort to him to hear again
the sound of voices. He listened to the fiddling and recognised it as
that of Sandy McQuean, the half-breed son of a famous Orkney man. He
had learnt his art from his father. They were all Scotch airs that he
played. He could sing, when he chose, with a Highland accent, and had
caught the knack of imbuing what he sang with an intolerable pathos.
The stamping of feet had ceased, but the violinist wandered on.
Presently a new melody began to emerge from the improvisations, and a
man's voice rose above the storm. The words he sang were _The Flowers
o' the Forest_:
"I've seen the smiling
Of fortune beguiling;
I've felt all its favours, and found its decay;
Sweet was its blessing,
Kind its caressing;
But now 'tis fled--fled far away."
Granger shifted his feet uneasily as he listened, and half-turned to
go.
As he did so, he found that someone was standing close behind him. He
did not see his face, but one glance was enough to warn him. He dodged
and ran to the river. The man was following him again. He took the
direction which was open to him, and set out down-stream, returning to
the portage.
The wind was dead against him, blinding his eyes and choking him with
snow. He bowed his head and struggled on. He made a brave effort, but
he knew that he was slowly freezing. His flesh was icy and his bones
seemed heavy, weighing him down. The blood halted, and leapt forward,
and halted in his veins and arteries, as though there were frequent
stoppages past which it had to squeeze its way; he could hear it
surging.
Gradually his physical pain grew less and, as it did so, his mind
attained an unwonted clearness. He had somewhat the same experience as
is said to come to drowning men in their last moments of
consciousness. He was able to review his life as a whole and justly,
attributing to each separate action its proper importance, and share
of praise or blame. He realised that his hiding from Robert Pilgrim on
Huskies' Island, journey to the Forbidden River, and pursuit of
Spurling, had been one long series of mistakes, each one tending to
make him appear more guilty of Strangeways' death. He owned that all
his life had been spent in avoiding his most obvious duties, and in
setting himself hard tasks in exchange, which were impossible of
accomplishment. His first duty had been towards his mother, and he had
abandoned it nominally for the sake of a childish pledge, really for
the glamour of El Dorado. His more recent duty had been to fulfil his
obligations to his half-breed wife, especially now that she was about
to bear him a child; he had forsaken her for his old dream's sake and
for the sake of a revenge which he had persuaded himself was noble.
Reviewing these facts, he promised himself that, if ever he were given
again the power of choice, he would return to Murder Point and live
for her. Another matter became clear in his mind; that, when
Spurling's body was discovered, if the man who had done the deed did
not own up, he would be accused of the murder--and it _would_ be
murder, for it would be thought that he had killed him not in the
cause of justice, but out of private spite. Morally he knew that he
was the culprit and deserved to be hanged, for he had only avoided
being guilty through the accident of having been forestalled in his
crime.
He stumbled and fell full length in a drift. He did not try to rise.
He had no fear of dying; his only desire was to get warm now. He
pressed nearer to the snow and closed his eyes, and gradually lost
consciousness.
He was awakened by someone rubbing his face vigorously. He resented
the interference; he wanted the rest. Once he opened his eyes, and was
blinded by a roaring fire. As the warmth spread through him and his
circulation returned, his body became very painful, as though it were
being pierced by millions of red-hot needles. The agony of it brought
him to himself.
A man was bending over him, whose face he could not see, for the hood
was fastened before it, leaving only his eyes visible. By his dress he
knew that he was his pursuer and Spurling's slayer. Again he was
impressed with the fancy, not so much by his proportions which were
smaller, but by his clothing, that he was very like himself. Languidly
he awaited an opportunity to get another glimpse of his eyes; somehow
they were familiar, he knew them. Then, because the man, murderer
though he was, was saving his life, he turned away his head. He would
not see anything which, in a weaker moment, might tempt him to give
information in order that he might save himself.
The man, seeing that he was recovered and safe to be left, without a
word of explanation glided off into the darkness.
Granger sat up and looked after him; he was puzzled by the memory of
those eyes. He ran through all the list of his acquaintance, and could
not place them. The blizzard had now subsided, and the stars shone
overhead. He must have lain unconscious for some time before being
found. All around him, and as far as eye could reach, the snow lay in
short choppy waves, which took on the appearance of motion by reason
of the shadows. As he watched, something lifted up its head above a
ridge, and he saw that it was one of the huskies. Either his team had
followed him, or the man had brought them with him. Rising to his
feet, on the other side of the fire he saw his sled. He felt hungry,
and going towards it was about to get out some provisions, when he
found that that was unnecessary; in the ashes a can of black tea was
brewing and some bacon had been left, also a bundle of wood sufficient
to last him till morning. He spent the remainder of the night there,
and at daybreak continued his journey to the portage.
When he reached the cabin and pushed open the door, he found that it
was occupied. An Indian, of the Sucker tribe, whom he had previously
met, was sitting there. Looking round he saw that Spurling's body was
in the same place and untouched, but that the load upon the sled had
been rifled.
When he had offered him some tobacco, the Indian, jerking his head in
the direction of the body, asked, "You kill him?"
Granger signed denial. The Indian looked doubtful. Then he said,
pointing to the old tracks in the cabin which his snowshoes had left,
"All the same, those your tracks."
Granger was in no mood for arguing, so he nodded assent. The Indian
was silent for a while. Presently he rose to his feet and harnessed in
his team. As he passed out of the door, he said, "You bad man. All the
same, you kill him."
Granger followed him out and saw him crossing the portage towards
God's Voice. He scraped a hole in the snow and buried Spurling.
On turning his attention to the sled, he saw that the Indian had taken
everything except the gold. He poured out the dust and nuggets above
Spurling's grave; it was the thing which he had loved most in life, as
some men love goodness and flowers. To both Spurling and himself it
was worthless now; but it was the only offering which he had.
Leaving the mound sparkling white and yellow in the sunshine, he
struck the trail down the Last Chance River, returning to Murder
Point.