The shock of the discovery that Blake had escaped brought Philip half
to his knees before he thought of Celie. In an instant the girl was
awake. His arm had tightened almost fiercely about her. She caught the
gleam of his revolver, and in another moment she saw the empty space
where their prisoner had been. Swiftly Philip's eyes traveled over the
moonlit spaces about them. Blake had utterly disappeared. Then he saw
the rifle, and breathed easier. For some reason the outlaw had not
taken that, and it was a moment or two before the significance of the
fact broke upon him. Blake must have escaped just as he was making that
last tremendous fight to rouse himself. He had had no more than time to
slink away into the shadows of the night, and had not paused to hazard
a chance of securing the weapon that lay on the snow close to Celie. He
had evidently believed that Philip was only half asleep, and in the
moonlight he must have seen the gleam of the big revolver leveled over
his captor's knee.
Leaving Celie huddled in her furs, Philip rose to his feet and slowly
approached the snow hummock against which he had left his prisoner. The
girl heard the startled exclamation that fell from his lips when he saw
what had happened. Blake had not escaped alone. Running straight out
from behind the hummock was a furrow in the snow like the trail made by
an otter. He had seen such furrows before, where Eskimos had wormed
their way foot by foot within striking distance of dozing seals.
Assistance had come to Blake in that manner, and he could see where--on
their hands and knees--two men instead of one had stolen back through
the moonlight.
Celie came to his side now, gripping the rifle in her hands. Her eyes
were wide and filled with frightened inquiry as she looked from the
tell-tale trails in the snow into Philip's face. He was glad that she
could not question him in words. He slipped the Colt into its holster
and took the rifle from her hands. In the emergency which he
anticipated the rifle would be more effective. That something would
happen very soon he was positive. If one Eskimo had succeeded in
getting ahead of his comrades to Blake's relief others of Upi's tribe
must be close behind. And yet he wondered, as he thought of this, why
Blake and the Kogmollock had not killed him instead of running away.
The truth he told frankly to Celie, thankful that she could not
understand.
"It was the gun," he said. "They thought I had only closed my eyes, and
wasn't asleep. If something hadn't kept that gun leveled over my
knee--" He tried to smile, knowing that with every second the end might
come for them from out of the gray mist of moonlight and shadow that
shrouded the shore. "It was a one-man job, sneaking out like that, and
there's sure a bunch of them coming up fast to take a hand in the game.
It's up to us to hit the high spots, my dear--an' you might pray God to
give us time for a start."
If he had hoped to keep from her the full horror of their situation, he
knew, as he placed her on the sledge, that he had failed. Her eyes told
him that. Intuitively she had guessed at the heart of the thing, and
suddenly her arms reached up about his neck as he bent over her and
against his breast he heard the sobbing cry that she was trying hard to
choke back. Under the cloud of her hair her warm, parted lips lay for a
thrilling moment against his own, and then he sprang to the dogs.
They had already roused themselves and at his command began sullenly to
drag their lame and exhausted bodies into trace formation. As the
sledge began to move he sent the long lash of the driving whip curling
viciously over the backs of the pack and the pace increased. Straight
ahead of them ran the white trail of the Coppermine, and they were soon
following this with the eagerness of a team on the homeward stretch. As
Philip ran behind he made a fumbling inventory of the loose rifle
cartridges in the pocket of his coat, and under his breath prayed to
God that the day would come before the Eskimos closed in. Only one
thing did he see ahead of him now--a last tremendous fight for Celie,
and he wanted the light of dawn to give him accuracy. He had thirty
cartridges, and it was possible that he could put up a successful
running fight until they reached Armin's cabin. After that fate would
decide. He was already hatching a scheme in his brain. If he failed to
get Blake early in the fight which he anticipated he would show the
white flag, demand a parley with the outlaw under pretense of
surrendering Celie, and shoot him dead the moment they stood face to
face. With Blake out of the way there might be another way of dealing
with Upi and his Kogmollocks. It was Blake who wanted Celie. In Upi's
eyes there were other things more precious than a woman. The thought
revived in him a new thrill of hope. It recalled to him the incident of
Father Breault and the white woman nurse who, farther west, had been
held for ransom by the Nanamalutes three years ago. Not a hair of the
woman's head had been harmed in nine months of captivity. Olaf Anderson
had told him the whole story. There had been no white man there--only
the Eskimos, and with the Eskimos he believed that he could deal now if
he succeeded in killing Blake. Back at the cabin he could easily have
settled the matter, and he felt like cursing himself for his
shortsightedness.
In spite of the fact that he had missed his main chance he began now to
see more than hope in a situation that five minutes before had been one
of appalling gloom. If he could keep ahead of his enemies until
daybreak he had a ninety percent chance of getting Blake. At some spot
where he could keep the Kogmollocks at bay and scatter death among them
if they attacked he would barricade himself and Celie behind the sledge
and call out his acceptance of Blake's proposition to give up Celie as
the price of his own safety. He would demand an interview with Blake,
and it was then that his opportunity would come.
But ahead of him were the leaden hours of the gray night! Out of that
ghostly mist of pale moonlight through which the dogs were traveling
like sinuous shadows Upi and his tribe could close in on him silently
and swiftly, unseen until they were within striking distance. In that
event all would be lost. He urged the dogs on, calling them by the
names which he had heard Blake use, and occasionally he sent the long
lash of his whip curling over their backs. The surface of the
Coppermine was smooth and hard. Now and then they came to stretches of
glare ice and at these intervals Philip rode behind Celie, staring back
into the white mystery of the night out of which they had come. It was
so still that the click, dick, click of the dogs' claws sounded like
the swift beat of tiny castanets on the ice. He could hear the panting
breath of the beasts. The whalebone runners of the sledge creaked with
the shrill protest of steel traveling over frozen snow. Beyond these
sounds there were no others, with, the exception of his own breath and
the beating of his own heart. Mile after mile of the Coppermine dropped
behind them. The last tree and the last fringe of bushes disappeared,
and to the east, the north, and the west there was no break in the vast
emptiness of the great Arctic plain. Ever afterward the memory of that
night seemed like a grotesque and horrible dream to him. Looking back,
he could remember how the moon sank out of the sky and utter darkness
closed them in and how through that darkness he urged on the tired
dogs, tugging with them at the lead-trace, and stopping now and then in
his own exhaustion to put his arms about Celie and repeat over and over
again that everything was all right.
After an eternity the dawn came. What there was to be of day followed
swiftly, like the Arctic night. The shadows faded away, the shores
loomed up and the illimitable sweep of the plain lifted itself into
vision as if from out of a great sea of receding fog. In the quarter
hour's phenomenon between the last of darkness and wide day Philip
stood straining his eyes southward over the white path of the
Coppermine. It was Celie, huddled close at his side, who turned her
eyes first from the trail their enemies would follow. She faced the
north, and the cry that came from her lips brought Philip about like a
shot. His first sensation was one of amazement that they had not yet
passed beyond the last line of timber. Not more than a third of a mile
distant the river ran into a dark strip of forest that reached in from
the western plain like a great finger. Then he saw what Celie had seen.
Close up against the timber a spiral of smoke was rising into the air.
He made out in another moment the form of a cabin, and the look in
Celie's staring face told him the rest. She was sobbing breathless
words which he could not understand, but he knew that they had won
their race, and that it was Armin's place. And Armin was not dead. He
was alive, as Blake had said--and it was about breakfast time. He had
held up under the tremendous strain of the night until now--and now he
was filled with an uncontrollable desire to laugh. The curious thing
about it was that in spite of this desire no sound came from his
throat. He continued to stare until Celie turned to him and swayed into
his arms. In the moment of their triumph her strength was utterly gone.
And then the thing happened which brought the life back into him again
with a shock. From far up the black finger of timber where it bellied
over the horizon of the plain there floated down to them a chorus of
sound. It was a human sound--the yapping, wolfish cry of an Eskimo
horde closing in on man or beast. They had heard that same cry close on
the heels of the fight in the clearing. Now it was made by many voices
instead of two or three. It was accompanied almost instantly by the
clear, sharp report of a rifle, and a moment later the single shot was
followed by a scattering fusillade. After that there was silence.
Quickly Philip bundled Celie on the sledge and drove the dogs ahead,
his eyes on a wide opening in the timber three or four hundred yards
above the river. Five minutes later the sledge drew up in front of the
cabin. In that time they heard no further outcry or sound of gunfire,
and from the cabin itself there came no sign of life, unless the smoke
meant life. Scarcely had the sledge stopped before Celie was on her
feet and running to the door. It was locked, and she beat against it
excitedly with her little fists, calling a strange name. Standing close
behind her, Philip heard a shuffling movement beyond the log walls, the
scraping of a bar, and a man's voice so deep that it had in it the
booming note of a drum. To it Celie replied with almost a shriek. The
door swung inward, and Philip saw a man's arms open and Celie run into
them. He was an old man. His hair and beard were white. This much
Philip observed before he turned with a sudden, thrill toward the open
in the forest. Only he had heard the cry that had come from that
direction, and now, looking back, he saw a figure running swiftly over
the plain toward the cabin. Instantly he knew that it was a white man.
With his revolver in his hand he advanced to meet him and in a brief
space they stood face to face.
The stranger was a giant of a man. His long, reddish hair fell to his
shoulders. He was bare-headed, and panting as if hard run, and his face
was streaming with blood. His eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets
as he stared at Philip. And Philip, almost dropping his revolver in his
amazement, gasped incredulously:
"My God, is it you--Olaf Anderson!"