For a few minutes after the wolf-man and his hunters had gone from the
corral Philip did not move from the window. He almost forgot that the
girl was standing behind him. At no time since Pierre Breault had
revealed the golden snare had the situation been more of an enigma to
him than now. Was Bram Johnson actually mad--or was he playing a
colossal sham? The question had unleashed itself in his brain with a
suddenness that had startled him. Out of the past a voice came to him
distinctly, and it said, "A madman never forgets!" It was the voice of
a great alienist, a good friend of his, with whom he had discussed the
sanity of a man whose crime had shocked the country. He knew that the
words were true. Once possessed by an idea the madman will not forget
it. It becomes an obsession with him--a part of his existence. In his
warped brain a suspicion never dies. A fear will smolder everlastingly.
A hatred lives steadily on.
If Bram Johnson was mad would he play the game as he was playing it
now! He had almost killed Philip for possession of the food, that the
girl might have the last crumb of it. Now, without a sign of the
madman's caution, he had left it all within his reach again. A dozen
times the flaming suspicion in his eyes had been replaced by a calm and
stupid indifference. Was the suspicion real and the stupidity a clever
dissimulation? And if dissimulation--why?
He was positive now that Bram had not harmed the girl in the way he had
dreaded. Physical desire had played no part in the wolf-man's
possession of her. Celie had made him understand that;--and yet in
Bram's eyes he had caught a look now and then that was like the dumb
worship of a beast. Only once had that look been anything
different--and that was when Celie had given him a tress of her hair.
Even the suspicion roused in him then was gone now, for if passion and
desire were smoldering in the wolf-man's breast he would not have
brought a possible rival to the cabin, nor would he have left them
alone together.
His mind worked swiftly as he stared unseeing out into the corral. He
would no longer play the part of a pawn. Thus far Bram had held the
whip hand. Now he would take it from him no matter what mysterious
protestation the girl might make! The wolf-man had given him a dozen
opportunities to deliver the blow that would make him a prisoner. He
would not miss the next.
He faced Celie with the gleam of this determination in his eyes. She
had been watching him intently and he believed that she had guessed a
part of his thoughts. His first business was to take advantage of
Brain's absence to search the cabin. He tried to make Celie understand
what his intentions were as he began.
"You may have done this yourself," he told her. "No doubt you have.
There probably isn't a corner you haven't looked into. But I have a
hunch I may find something you missed--something interesting."
She followed him closely. He began at each wall and went over it
carefully, looking for possible hiding places. Then he examined the
floor for a loose sapling. At the end of half an hour his discoveries
amounted to nothing. He gave an exclamation of satisfaction when under
an old blanket in a dusty corner he found a Colt army revolver. But it
was empty, and he found no cartridges. At last there was nothing left
to search but the wolf-man's bunk. At the bottom of this he found what
gave him his first real thrill--three of the silken snares made from
Celie Armin's hair.
"We won't touch them," he said after a moment, replacing the bear skin
that had covered them. "It's good etiquette up here not to disturb
another man's cache and that's Bram's. I can't imagine any one but a
madman doing that. And yet--"
He looked suddenly at Celie.
"Do you suppose he was afraid of YOU?" he asked her. "Is that why he
doesn't leave even the butcher-knife in this shack? Was he afraid you
might shoot him in his sleep if he left the temptation in your way?"
A commotion among the wolves drew him to the window. Two of the beasts
were fighting. While his back was turned Celie entered her room and
returned a moment or two later with a handful of loose bits of paper.
The pack held Philip's attention. He wondered what chance he would have
in an encounter with the beasts which Bram had left behind as a guard.
Even if he killed Bram or made him a prisoner he would still have that
horde of murderous brutes to deal with. If he could in some way induce
the wolf-man to bring his rifle into the cabin the matter would be
easy. With Bram out of the way he could shoot the wolves one by one
from the window. Without a weapon their situation would be hopeless.
The pack--with the exception of one huge, gaunt beast directly under
the window--had swung around the end of the cabin out of his vision.
The remaining wolf in spite of the excitement of battle was gnawing
hungrily at a bone. Philip could hear the savage grind of its powerful
jaws, and all at once the thought of how they might work out their
salvation flashed upon him. They could starve the wolves! It would take
a week, perhaps ten days, but with Bram out of the way and the pack
helplessly imprisoned within the corral it could be done. His first
impulse now was to impress on Celie the necessity of taking physical
action against Bram.
The sound of his own name turned him from the window with a sudden
thrill.
If the last few minutes had inspired an eagerness for action in his own
mind he saw at a glance that something equally exciting had possessed
Celie Armin. Spread out on the table were the bits of paper she had
brought from her room, and, pointing to them, she again called him by
name. That she was laboring under a new and unusual emotion impressed
him immediately. He could see that she was fighting to restrain an
impulse to pour out in words what would have been meaningless to him,
and that she was telling him the bits of paper were to take the place
of voice. For one swift moment as he advanced to the table the papers
meant less to him than the fact that she had twice spoken his name. Her
soft lips seemed to whisper it again as she pointed, and the look in
her eyes and the poise of her body recalled to him vividly the picture
of her as he had first seen her in the cabin. He looked at the bits of
paper. There were fifteen or twenty pieces, and on each was sketched a
picture.
He heard a low catch in Celie's breath as he bent over them, and his
own pulse quickened. A glance was sufficient to show him that with the
pictures Celie was trying to tell him what he wanted to know. They told
her own story--who she was, why she was at Bram Johnson's cabin, and
how she had come. This, at least, was the first thought that impressed
him. He observed then that the bits of paper were soiled and worn as
though they had been handled a great deal. He made no effort to
restrain the exclamation that followed this discovery.
"You drew these pictures for Bram," he scanning them more carefully.
"That settles one thing. Bram doesn't know much more about you than, I
do. Ships, and dogs, and men--and fighting--a lot of fighting--and--"
His eyes stopped at one of the pictures and his heart gave a sudden
excited thump. He picked up the bit of paper which had evidently been
part of a small sack. Slowly he turned to the girl and met her eyes.
She was trembling in her eagerness for him to understand.
"That is YOU," he said, tapping the central figure in the sketch, and
nodding at her. "You--with your hair down, and fighting a bunch of men
who look as though they were about to beat your brains out with clubs!
Now--what in God's name does it mean? And here's a ship up in the
corner. That evidently came first. You landed from that ship, didn't
you? From the ship--the ship--the ship--"
"Skunnert!" she cried softly, touching the ship with her finger.
"Skunnert--Sibirien!"
"Schooner-Siberia," translated Philip. "It sounds mightily like that,
Celie. Look here--" He opened his pocket atlas again at the map of the
world. "Where did you start from, and where did you come ashore? If we
can get at the beginning of the thing--"
She had bent her head over the crook of his arm, so that in her eager
scrutiny of the map his lips for a moment or two touched the velvety
softness of her hair. Again he felt the exquisite thrill of her touch,
the throb of her body against him, the desire to take her in his arms
and hold her there. And then she drew back a little, and her finger was
once more tracing out its story on the map. The ship had started from
the mouth of the Lena River, in Siberia, and had followed the coast to
the blue space that marked the ocean above Alaska. And there the little
finger paused, and with a hopeless gesture Celie intimated that was all
she knew. From somewhere out of that blue patch the ship had touched
the American shore. One after another she took up from the table the
pieces of paper that carried on the picture-story from that point. It
was, of course, a broken and disjointed story. But as it progressed
every drop of blood in Philip's body was stirred by the thrill and
mystery of it. Celie Armin had traveled from Denmark through Russia to
the Lena River in Siberia, and from there a ship had brought her to the
coast of North America. There had been a lot of fighting, the
significance of which he could only guess at; and now, at the end, the
girl drew for Philip another sketch in which a giant and a horde of
beasts appeared. It was a picture of Bram and his wolves, and at last
Philip understood why she did not want him to harm the wolf-man. Bram
had saved her from the fate which the pictures only partly portrayed
for him. He had brought her far south to his hidden stronghold, and for
some reason which the pictures failed to disclose was keeping her a
prisoner there.
Beyond these things Celie Armin was still a mystery.
Why had she gone to Siberia? What had brought her to the barren Arctic
coast of America? Who were the mysterious enemies from whom Bram the
madman had saved her? And who--who--
He looked again at one of the pictures which he had partly crumpled in
his hand. On it were sketched two people. One was a figure with her
hair streaming down--Celie herself. The other was a man. The girl had
pictured herself close in the embrace of this man's arms. Her own arms
encircled the man's neck. From the picture Philip had looked at Celie,
and the look he had seen in her eyes and face filled his heart with a
leaden chill. It was more than hope that had flared up in his breast
since he had entered Bram Johnson's cabin. And now that hope went
suddenly out, and with its extinguishment he was oppressed by a deep
and gloomy foreboding.
He went slowly to the window and looked out.
The next moment Celie was startled by the sudden sharp cry that burst
from his lips. Swiftly she ran to his side. He had dropped the paper.
His hands were gripping the edge of the sill, and he was staring like
one who could not believe his own eyes.
"Good God--look! Look at that!"
They had heard no sound outside the cabin during the last few minutes.
Yet under their eyes, stretched out in the soiled and trampled snow,
lay the wolf that a short time before had been gnawing a bone. The
animal was stark dead. Not a muscle of its body moved. Its lips were
drawn back, its jaws agape, and under the head was a growing smear of
blood. It was not these things--not the fact but the INSTRUMENT of
death that held Philip's eyes. The huge wolf had been completely
transfixed by a spear.
Instantly Philip recognized it--the long, slender, javelin-like narwhal
harpoon used by only one people in the world, the murderous little
black-visaged Kogmollocks of Coronation Gulf and Wollaston Land.
He sprang suddenly back from the window, dragging Celie with him.