In the course of nearly every human life there comes an hour which
stands out above all others as long as memory lasts. Such was the
one in which Philip crouched in the dog pit, his hand at Captain's
collar, waiting for the sound of cry or shot. So long as he lived
he knew this scene could not be wiped out of his brain. As he
listened, he stared about him and the drama of it burning into his
soul. Some intuitive spirit seemed to have whispered to the dogs
that these tense moments were heavy with tragic possibilities for
them as well as the man. Out of the surrounding darkness they
stared at him without a movement or a sound, every head turned
toward him, forty pairs of eyes upon him like green and opal
fires. They, too, were waiting and listening. They knew there was
some meaning in the attitude of this man crouching at Captain's
side. Their heads were up. Their ears were alert. Philip could
hear them breathing. And he could feel that the muscles of
Captain's splendid body were tense and rigid.
Minutes passed. The owl hooted nearer; the wolf howled again,
farther away. Slowly the tremendous strain passed and Philip began
to breathe easier. He figured that Josephine and the half-breed
had reached last night's meeting-place. He had given them a margin
of at least five minutes--and nothing had happened. His knees were
cramped, and he rose to his feet, still holding Captain's chain.
The tension was broken among the beasts. They moved; whimpering
sounds came to him; eyes shifted uneasily in the gloom. Fully half
an hour had passed when there was a sudden movement among them.
The points of green and opal fire were turned from Philip, and to
his ears came the clink of chains, the movement of bodies, a
subdued and menacing rumble from a score of throats. Captain
growled. Philip stared out into the darkness and listened.
And then a voice came, quite near:
"Ho, M'sieur Philip!"
It was Jean! Philip's hand relaxed its clutch at Captain's collar,
and almost a groan of relief fell from his lips. Not until Jean's
voice came to him, quiet and unexcited, did he realize under what
a strain he had been.
"I am here," he said, moving slowly out of the pit.
On the edge of it, where the light shone down through an opening
in the spruce tops, he found Jean. Josephine was not with him.
Eagerly Philip caught the other's arm, and looked beyond him.
"Where is she?"
"Safe," replied Jean. "I left her at Adare House, and came to you.
I came quickly, for I was afraid that some one might shout in the
night, or fire a shot. Our business was done quickly to-night,
M'sieur!"
He was looking straight into Philip's eyes, a cold, steady look
that told Philip what he meant before he had spoken the words.
"Our business was done quickly!" he repeated. "And it is coming!"
"The fight?"
"Yes."
"And Josephine knows? She understands?"
"No, M'sieur. Only you and I know. Listen: To-night I kneeled down
in darkness in my room, and prayed that the soul of my Iowaka
might come to me. I felt her near, M'sieur! It is strange--you
may not believe--but some day you may understand. And we were
there together for an hour, and I pleaded for her forgiveness, for
the time had come when I must break my oath to save our Josephine.
And I could hear her speak to me, M'sieur, as plainly as you hear
that breath of wind in the tree-tops yonder. Praise the Holy
Father, I heard her! And so we are going to fight the great fight,
M'sieur."
Philip waited. After a moment Jean said, as quietly as if he were
asking the time of day:
"Do you know whom we went out to see last night--and met again to-
night?" he asked.
"I have guessed," replied Philip. His face was white and hard.
Jean nodded.
"I think you have guessed correctly, M'sieur. It was the baby's
father!"
And then, in amazement, he stared at Philip. For the other had
flung off his arm, and his eyes were blazing in the starlight.
"And you have had all this trouble, all this mystery, all this
fear because of HIM?" he demanded. His voice rang out in a harsh
laugh. "You met him last night, and again to-night, and LET HIM
GO? You, Jean Croisset? The one man in the whole world I would
give my life to meet--and YOU afraid of him? My God, if that is
all--"
Jean interrupted him, laying a firm, quiet hand on his arm.
"What would you do, M'sieur?"
"Kill him," breathed Philip. "Kill him by inches, slowly,
torturingly. And to-night, Jean. He is near. I will follow him,
and do what you have been afraid to do."
"Yes, that is it, I have been afraid to kill him," replied Jean.
Philip saw the starlight on the half-breed's face. And he knew, as
he looked, that he had called Jean Jacques Croisset the one thing
in the world that he could not be: a coward.
"I am wrong," he apologized quickly. "Jean, it is not that. I am
excited, and I take back my words. It is not fear. It is something
else. Why have you not killed him?"
"M'sieur, do you believe in an oath that you make to your God?"
"Yes. But not when it means the crushing of human souls. Then it
is a crime."
"Ah!" Jean was facing him now, his eyes aflame. "I am a Catholic,
M'sieur--one of those of the far North, who are different from the
Catholics of the south, of Montreal and Quebec. Listen! To-night I
have broken a part of my oath; I am breaking a part of it in
telling you what I am about to say. But I am not a coward, unless
it is a coward who lives too much in fear of the Great God. What
is my soul compared to that in the gentle breast of our Josephine?
I would sacrifice it to-night--give it to Wetikoo--lend it
forever to hell if I could undo what has been done. And you ask me
why I have not killed, why I have not taken the life of a beast
who is unfit to breathe God's air for an hour! Does it not occur
to you, M'sieur, that there must be a reason?"
"Besides the oath, yes!"
"And now, I will tell you of the game I played, and lost, M'sieur.
In me alone Josephine knew that she could trust, and so it was to
me that she bared her sorrow. Later word came to me that this man,
the father of the baby, was following her into the North, That was
after I had given my oath to Josephine. I thought he would come by
the other waterway, where we met you. And so we went there, alone.
I made a camp for her, and went on to meet him. My mind was made
up, M'sieur. I had determined upon the sacrifice: my soul for
hers. I was going to kill him. But I made a mistake. A friend I
had sent around by the other waterway met me, and told me that I
had missed my game. Then I returned to the camp--and you were
there. You understand this far, M'sieur?"
"Yes. Go on."
"The friend I had sent brought a letter for Josephine," resumed
Jean. "A runner on his way north gave it to him. It was from Le
M'sieur Adare, and said they were not starting north. But they did
start soon after the letter, and this same friend brought me the
news that the master had passed along the westward waterway a few
days behind the man I had planned to kill. Then we returned to
Adare House, and you came with us. And after that--the face at
the window, and the shot!"
Philip felt the half-breed's arm quiver.
"I must tell you about him or you will not understand," he went
on, and there was effort in his voice now. "The man whose face you
saw was my brother. Ah, you start! You understand now why I was
glad you failed to kill him. He was bad, all that could be bad,
M'sieur, but blood is thicker than water, and up here one does not
forget those early days when childhood knows no sin. And my
brother came up from the south as canoe-man for the man I wanted
to kill! A few hours before you saw his face at the window I met
him in the forest. He promised to leave. Then came the shot--and I
understood. The man I was going to kill had sent him to
assassinate the master of Adare. That is why I followed his trail
that night. I knew that I would find the man I wanted not far
away."
"And you found him?"
"Yes. I came upon my brother first. And I lied. I told him he had
made a mistake, and killed you, that his life was not worth the
quill from a porcupine's back if he remained in the country. I
made him believe it was another who fought him in the forest. He
fled. I am glad of that. He will never come back. Then I followed
over the trail he had made to Adare House, and far back in the
swamp I came upon them, waiting for him. I passed myself off as my
brother, and I tricked the man I was after. We went a distance
from the camp--alone--and I was choking the life from him, when
the two others that were with him came upon us. He was dying,
M'sieur! He was black in the face, and his tongue was out. Another
second--two or three at the most--and I would have brought ruin
upon every soul at Adare House. For he was dying. And if I had
killed him all would have been lost!"
"That is impossible!" gasped Philip, as the half-breed paused. "If
you had killed him--"
"All would have been lost," repeated Jean, in a strange, hard
voice. "Listen, M'sieur. The two others leaped upon me. I fought.
And then I was struck on the head, and when I came to my senses I
was in the light of the campfire, and the man I had come to kill
was over me. One of the other men was Thoreau, the Free Trader. He
had told who I was. It was useless to lie. I told the truth--that
I had come to kill him, and why. And then--in the light of that
campfire, M'sieur--he proved to me what it would have meant if I
had succeeded. Thoreau carried the paper. It was in an envelope,
addressed to the master of Adare. They tore this open, that I
might read. And in that paper, written by the man I had come to
kill, was the whole terrible story, every detail--and it made me
cold and sick. Perhaps you begin to understand, M'sieur. Perhaps
you will see more clearly when I tell you--"
"Yes, yes," urged Philip.
"--that this man, the father of the baby, is the Lang who owns
Thoreau, who owns that freebooters' hell, who owns the string of
them from here to the Athabasca, and who lives in Montreal!"
Philip could only stare at Jean, who went on, his face the colour
of gray ash in the starlight.
"I must tell you the rest. You must understand before the great
fight comes. You know--the terrible thing happened in Montreal.
And this man Lang--all the passion of hell is in his soul! He is
rich. He has power up here, for he owns Thoreau and all his
cutthroats. And he is not satisfied with the ruin he worked down
there. He has followed Josephine. He is mad with passion--with the
desire--"
"Good God, don't tell me more of that!" cried Philip. "I
understand. He has followed. And Josephine is to be the price of
his silence!"
"Yes, just that. He knows what it means up here for such a thing
to happen. His love for her is not love. It is the passion that
fills hell with its worst. He laid his plans before he came. That
letter, the paper I read, M'sieur! He meant to see Josephine at
once, and show it to her. There are two of those papers: one at
Thoreau's place and one in Thoreau's pocket. If anything happens
to Lang, one of them is to be delivered to the master of Adare by
Thoreau. If I had killed him it would have gone to Le M'sieur. It
is his safeguard. And there are two copies--to make the thing
sure. So we cannot kill him.
"Josephine listened to all this to-night, from Lang's own lips.
And she pleaded with him, M'sieur. She called upon him to think of
the little child, letting him believe that it was still alive; and
he laughed at her. And then, almost as I was ready to plunge my
knife into his heart, she threw up her head like an angel and told
him to do his worst--that she refused to pay the price. I never
saw her stronger than in that moment, M'sieur--in that moment when
there was no hope! I would have killed him then for the paper he
had, but the other is at Thoreau's. He has gone back there. He
says that unless he receives word of Josephine's surrender within
a week--the crash will come, the paper will be given to the master
of Adare. And now, M'sieur Philip, what do you have to say?"
"That there never was a game lost until it was played to the end,"
replied Philip, and he drew nearer to look straight and steadily
into the half-breed's eyes. "Go on, Jean. There is something more
which you have not told me. And that is the biggest thing of all.
Go on!"
For a space there was a startled look in Jean's eyes. Then he
shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"Of course there is more," he said. "You have known that, M'sieur.
There is one thing which you will never know--that which Josephine
said you would not guess if you lived a thousand years. You must
forget that there is more than I have told you, for it will do you
no good to remember."
Expectancy died out of Philip's eyes.
"And yet I believe that what you are holding back from me is the
key to everything."
"I have told you enough, M'sieur--enough to make you see why we
must fight."
"But not how."
"That will come soon," replied Jean, a little troubled.
The men were silent. Behind them they heard the restless movement
of the dogs. Out of the gloom came a wailing whine. Again Philip
looked at Jean.
"Do you know, your story seems weak in places, Jean," he said. "I
believe every word you have said. And yet, when you come to think
of it all, the situation doesn't seem to be so terribly alarming
to me after all. Why, for instance, do you fear those letters--
this scoundrel Lang's confession? Kill him. Let the letter come to
Adare. Cannot Josephine swear that she is innocent? Can she not
have a story of her own showing how foully Lang tried to blackmail
her into a crime? Would not Adare believe her word before that of
a freebooter? And am I not here to swear--that the child--was
mine?"
There was almost a pitying look in the half-breed's eyes.
"M'sieur, what if in that letter were named people and places: the
hospital itself, the doctors, the record of birth? What if it
contained all those many things by which the master of Adare might
trail back easily to the truth? With those things in the letter
would he not investigate? And then--" He made a despairing
gesture.
"I see," said Philip. Then he added, quickly "But could we not
keep the papers from Adare, Jean? Could we not watch for the
messenger?"
"They are not fools, M'sieur. Such a thing would be easy--if they
sent a messenger with the papers. But they have guarded against
that. Le M'sieur is to be invited to Thoreau's. The letter will be
given to him there."
Philip began pacing back and forth, his head bowed in thought, his
hands deep in his pockets.
"They have planned it well--like very devils!" he exclaimed. "And
yet--even now I see a flaw. Is Lang's threat merely a threat?
Would he, after all, actually have the letter given to Adare? If
these letters are his trump cards, why did he try to have him
killed? Would not Adare's death rob him of his greatest power?"
"In a way, M'sieur. And yet with Le M'sieur gone, both Josephine
and Miriam would be still more hopelessly in his clutches. For I
know that he had planned to kill me after the master. My brother
had not guessed that. And then the women would be alone. Holy
Heaven, I cannot see the end of crime that might come of that!
Even though they escaped him to go back to civilization, they
would be still more in his power there."
Philip's face was upturned to the stars. He laughed, but there was
no mirth in the laugh. And then he faced Jean again, and his eyes
were filled with the merciless gleam that came into those of the
wolf-beasts back in the pit.
"It is the big fight then, Jean. But, before that, just one
question more. All of this trouble might have been saved if
Josephine had married Lang. Why didn't she?"
For an instant every muscle in Jean's body became as taut as a
bowstring. He hunched a little forward, as if about to leap upon
the other, and strike him down. And then, all at once, he relaxed.
His hands unclenched. And he answered calmly:
"That is the one story that will never be told, M'sieur. Come!
They will wonder about us at Adare House. Let us return."
Philip fell in behind him. Not until they were close to the door
of the house did Jean speak again.
"You are with me, M'sieur--to the death, if it must be?"
"Yes, to the death," replied Philip.
"Then let no sleep come to your eyes so long as Josephine is
awake," went on Jean quickly. "I am going to leave Adare House to-
night, M'sieur, with team and sledge. The master must believe I
have gone over to see my sick friend on the Pipestone. I am going
there--and farther!" His voice became a low, tense whisper. "You
understand, M'sieur? We are preparing."
The two clasped hands.
"I will return late to-morrow, or to-morrow night," resumed Jean.
"It may even be the next day. But I shall travel fast--without
rest. And during that time you are on guard. In my room you will
find an extra rifle and cartridges. Carry it when you go about.
And spend as much of your time as you can with the master of
Adare. Watch Josephine. I will not see her again to-night. Warn
her for me. She must not go alone in the forests--not even to the
dog pit."
"I understand," said Philip.
They entered the house. Twenty minutes later, from the window of
his room, Philip saw a dark figure walking swiftly back toward the
forest. Still later he heard the distant wail of a husky coming
from the direction of the pit, and he knew that the first gun in
the big fight had been fired--that Jean Jacques Croisset was off
on his thrilling mission into the depths of the forests. What that
mission was he had not asked him. But he had guessed. And his
blood ran warm with a strange excitement.