A GHOSTLY VOYAGEUR
The arm in its rough, icy sleeve clutched Kit tightly, and in that
breath-taking moment he neither moved nor recovered the voice to speak.
It was as though time had swept backwards to rediscover the heart of an
eager, small boy, whose bigger, rougher brother sometimes stalked up
behind him with laughter to clench his head like this. The pain of his
ruffled ears had always seemed to him a very trifling price to pay for
the ecstasy of being noticed by the redoubtable Jerry. Even to-night
Kitchener was conscious only of a sudden, blinding happiness in feeling
himself caught in that harshly affectionate grip, in knowing that his
brother had found him.
“I saw your funny old face this morning,” said the man behind him. “You
stopped on a hillside and goggled your eyes my direction. And then I
knew it was you, Cocky-bird.”
Kit broke the muscular hold and squirmed around. He saw a tall,
deep-chested figure in duffles and furs, and wearing the royal insignia
of the northern police.
“Jerry!” he gasped.
The other man grinned at him, displaying teeth as white as the snow that
clung to his hood.
Jerry had matured since Kit last saw him, and seemingly had grown in
stature and taken on several more inches of girth. The eyes that
twinkled in the half-light were older with knowledge and experience.
Even in smiling the mouth held something of the ruthless inflexibility
of a wolf-trap. He looked harder and more competent than ever before,
and also, Kit fancied, with a touch of misgiving, much more self-willed
and reckless and devil-may-care.
“Are you Sergeant Buck Tearl?” Kit asked.
“None other. Almost demoted now and then, but still Sergeant Tearl. What
are you doing here, Oakheart?”
“I intercepted a radio message for you from WBZ. It was about some
Esquimaux and the dead not dying. I’ve got it written down for you. I
was sure this Buck party would be you.”
Jerry laughed quietly. “The same old Cocky-bird! Would hike three
thousand miles through a freeze-up of hell--if you take the notion--just
to tell me you got WBZ on your radio. That would be little Kit--always.
Too bad, after all your trouble, but I got the message too. I carry a
small, portable set on my sledge, and I picked it out of the air the
same night you did, about a month ago.”
“Then you must know--” Kit regarded him sharply. “What does it mean?
Who’s Diane?”
Jerry shook his head. “I’ll tell you about that later when we have a
little more time--all that I know, at least. It’s a strange story, and
may bring on things still stranger before we’re through. Just now we
have more immediate things to think about. How do you happen to be
consorting with this egg I saw you with to-day?”
“Jim What’s-his-name? I ran into him at Port-o’-Prayer, and he offered
to guide me part way to _Saut Sauvage_, where they said you had gone.”
“That’s all you know about him?”
“No,” said Kit, “that isn’t all I know about him.” He stole a glance
around the thickets and dropped his speech to a whisper. “He’s got Dad’s
old ivory-butted gun.”
“All right.”
Sergeant Tearl accepted the fact with a nod that might have seemed
almost indifferent. “He’s the mug I thought he was. I’ve been hovering
on him for several days, and of course he knows that I came in through
Port-o’-Prayer, just as you knew. He thought he saw me yesterday noon,
when I was watching from the opposite hill. He did, but it’s a good
thing for all of us that he changed his mind and decided he didn’t. It’s
too soon to kill him.”
Kit stared at his brother, chilled not so much by the remark as the
matter-of-fact tone of its utterance. “Who is he?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what name he’s going by now. His real name is Simeon Bent,
but the guards down at the prison in Ottawa called him ‘Hell’ Bent. You
can draw your own conclusions. He just finished an eleven-year stretch,
and they let him out a few weeks ago.”
Kitchener studied the dim vistas of the snowy landscape. “He told me his
name was Jim. But perhaps I misunderstood. He may have said ‘Sim.’
Where’s he gone now?”
“Just took a saunter down through the forest to find me. People are so
ready to accept the belief that it is easiest to murder a policeman when
he is in bed asleep. You’re supposed to sleep soundest in the small
hours of the morning.”
“You don’t mean--” Kit gasped.
“Why not?” observed Jerry placidly. “He knows I’m around here somewhere.
He has a pretty little job afoot, but he can’t go ahead until the field
is clear. He’s got to get me out of the way. I was sure he’d strike back
to-night to intersect my sledge tracks. He won’t find the trail until
he’s five miles up country. I detoured widely and came in here from the
east instead of the south.
“Caught a little sleep about a hundred yards from here.” The sergeant
pushed back his sleeve to observe the luminous dial of the watch
strapped around his big-boned wrist. “One-thirty now. It’ll be three
before Sim makes the circuit. That gives us time for a family reunion.
How’s little Jane?”
“She’s a grown woman, Jerry. Pretty and sweet and stubborn as a mule.”
“Little Jane!” ruminated the sergeant, with the faintest break in his
voice. “She’s the best of our tribe. Give her a kiss from the outcast,
if you ever see her again. I’m not at all sure that you will.” Jerry
measured his brother’s straight-standing figure with a critical eye.
“I’ve got to use you, Mr. Stoutenberg, now that I’ve got you. Sorry!”
Jerry reached forward a mittened hand and his iron fingers clamped down
for a moment on the other’s shoulder. “Did you make the varsity squad,
Cocky-bird?” he asked, as he prodded his brother’s wiry muscles.
“No,” said Kit regretfully. “Not enough weight for my height. The best I
could do was the cross-country team and captain of the pistol team.”
“You always were an ugly shot with a gun,” remarked Jerry. “And there
may be times when that’ll get an alumnus farther than a Phi Beta Kappa
key.”
“Jerry,” demanded the younger brother abruptly, “why did you run out on
us the way you did? I know you got yourself into a mess, and all of
that, but there was no reason why you couldn’t have written. It was
rotten never to send any word to Jane and me.”
“Maybe,” agreed the other. “But I’d thought it all out and I never was
going to. It was fairer not.” He laughed heavily and ended with a sigh.
“That man I smashed--I’ve almost forgotten who he was and what it was
about. There was a girl mixed up in it somewhere--as unimportant as
that. I went off my chump, and might easily have killed the poor devil.”
“He recovered, though,” Kit said. “You could go back and square it up
and be yourself again. There’s no need of burying yourself alive for
life.”
“I am myself,” Jerry returned somberly, “and there’s a beastly streak in
me. What happened once can happen again. I’m not going to risk another
chance of disgracing you and Jane, or keeping you in a nervous stew over
my running amok again. I’m better off forgotten.”
“That’s fool talk,” the younger brother protested.
“If I turn violent any time now,” grinned Jerry, “I’m acting in the name
of the law. This is the right job for me.”
Kitchener regarded him curiously. “Do you like it?”
“It’s my job,” the sergeant reiterated briefly, and changed the subject.
“Hitch your dogs,” he ordered. “You’re coming with me.”
It was characteristic that Kit should accept unquestioningly his older
brother’s decisions. He roused the sleeping huskies from their nests
under the snow, pitched them a fish apiece, and then hustled them into
the sledge traces.
Jerry looked on without offering to help. “You’ll find as you go along
that you remember things you thought you never knew,” he remarked as the
younger brother smartly swung his leader into line. “You and I cut our
milk teeth on the butt of a dog whip, and took our first bath in a snow
drift. I’m glad you’re here, Crow-eye.”
“What about Sim?” asked Kit as he packed up his bed.
“Let him find you gone. He’ll see I’ve been here and that we’ve gone off
together. Let him think what he pleases. I’m going to pass him along
later to the captain of the varsity pistol team.” Jerry finished with an
ironic laugh. “Ready?”
As he approached the neighboring hillside a half dozen animated bundles
sprang yapping from the drift to claw and leap at Jerry for a moment,
and then to round in a wolf-like pack upon the strange huskies. The
sergeant booted his own beasts back into their traces, and within ten
seconds had quelled the riot. Then he gave the command and the team
launched forward into the night.
Kit had thought that his companion of the first day’s march was a
snow-traveler, but he was to learn what it really means to cruise. His
dogs were forced to stretch their gaunt bodies to the utmost to hold the
pace of the police malemutes and the lusty sergeant who broke trail for
them.
Years pass and seasons change and men grow older. Times there had been
when a short-legged, anxious-faced little chap used to tag after his
elder brother, taking two steps for one, stumbling and breathless, yet
keeping up somehow. To-night it seemed to Kit as though a ghostly young
familiar were running with him, sharing his distress as the miles
lengthened and his wind gave out and his aching legs grew heavier, but
pushing onward, nevertheless, hanging on in spite of everything, not
once losing sight of the big hurrying shape ahead of him.
An hour or so on the shadowy side of daybreak Jerry at last decided
mercifully that they had come far enough. He halted his team in the
darkness of a wooded ravine at the head of a tiny, ice-bound brook. Then
with a crooked grin he turned to look back as his brother kicked out of
his snowshoes and sank down upon the ground.
“Same old Kit!” he said. “Cheerio! You’ll toughen up.”
He disappeared in the thicket with an ax, and for a few minutes the
morning stillness was broken by a cheerful ringing of steel. Presently
he returned with an armful of white birch billets and started a brisk
fire.
“You and I must have an understanding before we split directions,” he
remarked. “I’ve got my job to do, and you’ll have yours. We’ll breakfast
first. Meanwhile, let’s see what Diane has on her mind.”
“Diane?” echoed Kit, staring blankly.
“See if she’s asleep, will you?” Jerry nodded casually towards the
sledge. “Maybe she’d like something to eat.”
“To eat--? Diane?” Kit regarded his brother slantwise, as though he were
in momentary doubt of the other’s sobriety, or sanity. The policeman was
absorbed in measuring coffee from a muslin bag into a tin pot, and he
did not look up.
Kitchener stood up and paused uncertainly. “What are you talking about?”
he demanded.
“Here’s the key,” said Jerry. He fished in his pocket and handed his
brother a tiny, metal object that glinted in the firelight.
Young Tearl held the key between his fingers, looking at it vacuously.
“What am I to do with this?”
“Let her come to breakfast, if she wants any,” said Jerry, and turned
his back again.
Kit stood irresolute for a moment, and then, with a bewildered glance at
the policeman, he moved over towards the sledge. He halted to gaze in
sagging-jawed wonderment.
Jerry’s sledge was bedded deep with duffle and blankets and soft, warm
furs. In the cozy nest thus formed he made out the contours of a slight
figure, and saw the oval of a feminine face and a pair of dark, living
eyes glowering up at him.
As he stood awkward and unreasoningly embarrassed, a pettish, slightly
husky voice spoke sharply from the smothering furs. “Unfasten these!”
The robes were lifted and thrown back, and two hands stretched
themselves towards Kit. He was aghast to discover that the woman’s
wrists were held together by the steel links of handcuffs.