IN THE ROYAL SCARLET
As though his doubts and difficulties were completely settled, Sergeant
Tearl moved serenely to his sledge and began dumping blankets and duffle
bags off into the snow. Kitchener scrambled to his feet.
“Hold on!” protested the younger brother. “You’re crazy!”
“You’ll have no trouble,” Jerry reassured him. “Constables Devon and
Cross are holding down the _Saut Sauvage_ trick, and they know me only
by reputation.” He turned with a deprecating laugh. “Just heckle them a
bit and they’ll never dream that you’re not the sergeant.”
“But, Jerry, the whole idea is absolutely preposterous.”
“As for knowing police business,” said the older brother smoothly, “you
could have qualified for a sergeancy when you were nine years old.” He
came back to the fire, his features changed to an unwonted gravity. “You
know I wouldn’t ask you to do this, Kit, if I could see any way out of
it.”
“And you know I wouldn’t hesitate,” returned Kitchener, “if I really
thought I could get away with it.”
“That part’s easy. Inspector Bowman isn’t apt to come up this way this
winter. You ought to get friendly enough with Cross and Devon to
persuade them to keep their mouths shut if I come back in the spring and
resume my job. If I don’t come back all you need do is to slip quietly
out of the picture, and the police can write another disappearance case
in the records of the missing.”
Kitchener looked sharply at his brother. “Where are you going?” he
demanded.
“You remember the name of the Esquimau mentioned in the WBZ message?”
Jerry asked.
“Kablunak, wasn’t it? Kablunak’s band of Ahiagmuit.”
“Do you know what Kablunak means in the Ahiagmuit lingo?”
“No.”
“White man,” said Jerry.
“Well?” said Kit, and then caught his breath as he felt a peculiar
significance in the other’s manner. “What white man?”
“I wouldn’t ordinarily pay any attention to a message like that, sent by
nobody knows whom,” said Jerry. “But it so happens that my own inquiries
have brought facts to light that practically substantiate this
information from WBZ. It came to me in a roundabout way from a Cree
Indian, who had it from a Dog Rib, who had it from a Yellow Knife, who
had it from a Bathurst Inlet Esquimau. It’s funny, but you can almost
always believe the stories that reach you by moccasin telegraph.
According to this yarn, which really is more definite than mere rumor,
there is a tribe of Ahiagmuit up on the shore of Queen Maud Sea, whose
chief man is a white.
“This man,” the sergeant added slowly and deliberatively, “is tall and
lean, they say, and he has an eagle’s nose and a snowy-white mustache,
and terrible gleaming eyes, and under his _artikis_ he wears a shining
metal shield which, from its description, is the badge of the royal
police.”
“My God!” said Kitchener’s lips, but his voice was suffocated.
“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “It may turn out to be a wild-goose chase.
But I’ve got to go.”
“But Jerry--” Kit was staring at his brother with awe-stricken eyes.
“You don’t think--you don’t believe it possible--?”
“Who can say?” Jerry’s weather-beaten face at that moment was tragic
with wistfulness. “Most frightfully unbelievable things can happen to a
man in the wilderness. It might be that this has happened.”
“Wait!” gasped Kit. “You said that a body was dragged through the brush
and dumped into the creek--”
“I said it looked as though that had been done,” said the sergeant. “But
we don’t know whose body it was.”
“You don’t mean--you think there’s a chance--?” Kit checked himself and
faced his brother in a daze.
“Dad!” said Jerry. “Sounds improbable, doesn’t it? But I know I’ll never
have a decent night’s sleep again until I go and find out.”
“It’s impossible!” Kitchener burst out. “A white man living for twelve
years with a tribe of Esquimaux! What conceivable reason could he have?
Why would he go away up there in the first place? Or if he did go, why
would he stay? Why would he hide from his family? Why never a word from
him?”
Jerry laid a quieting hand on his brother’s wet coat sleeve. “I can’t
answer any of your questions, Kit. Only this much I do know: there has
been evil talk and sly, vile whispering--going the rounds.” The
sergeant’s eyes were stony and expressionless in the reflecting
firelight. “The woman was shot with a .45 bullet, which is the gun the
police carry. Her brother may have been shot and thrown into the brook.
Inspector Bill Tearl disappeared. The sledge-load of gold disappeared.
And as you know, and others have found out, Bill Tearl’s family have
received from some anonymous source every January for twelve years an
express draught for five thousand dollars.”
“Jerry!” The cry was wrenched from Kit in an agonized gasp as the full,
dreadful import of his brother’s speech flamed into his brain.
“You know you could turn gold nuggets into an express draught if you
wanted to.” The sergeant’s fingers closed tightly into the muscles of
Kitchener’s forearm, but his voice was restrained and very quiet.
“If anybody so much as hinted any of this to me, I would kill him.
They’re careful to keep their mouths shut when I’m near. But I know what
has been said. Bowman and the other officers who used to know Bill
Tearl--who knew what a clean, sweet, straight-shooting gentleman he
always was--none of them has ever listened or allowed himself to believe
anything except that a dark mystery was staged that day in the Great Owl
woods. But others have had things to say. And none of us really knows
what took place on that creek.”
Jerry dropped his brother’s arm, moved off restlessly for a few paces,
and then came back again. “You know now, Kit, why one of us has to trail
Simeon Bent and throttle the truth out of him if need be, while the
other goes to Queen Maud Sea, where the white man with the police badge
lives.”
“Yes,” said Kitchener. “Of course.” He raised his head impulsively. “But
why change jobs? You have your own assignment. Why not see it through
yourself? Bent’s going your direction. You stick with him. Let me find
Kablunak’s tribe.”
Jerry regarded the younger man affectionately. “You’re a great man, Old
Crow, but what chance would you stand on the far northern tundras? In
mid-winter. Living off the country. Did you ever stalk a caribou or run
with the dogs for a thousand miles in the seven months’ night? I’m an
arctic man, my boy, and you--” He punched Kit in the chest with his
thumb. “Our little five-mile breather almost did you in this morning.”
Kit looked sheepish and ashamed. “Try me a week from now,” he suggested.
“I’ll be two hundred miles north of here a week from now,” said Jerry,
and unfastened the tie string of his parka. He pulled off his outer
garment and started to unbutton his police tunic. “Strip!” he commanded.
Kitchener hesitated for just a second, and then with a wry grin he began
taking off his clothes. It was so foolish of him to balk at his elder
brother’s decisions. He always gave in, and Jerry was always right.
“Will you be able to make it?” he asked as he shed his stag shirt.
“Ought to.” Jerry’s coat was in the snow and he was hauling his uniform
shirt over his head. “There’s only one thing can stop me. That would be
the lack of meat. If I run across a caribou now and then I’ll come
back.”
Kit had kicked out of his trousers and stood in his undergarments--a
straight-backed, lean-shanked figure silhouetted against the curtain of
falling snow.
“I’ll give you all my police equipment,” Jerry said--“sledge, blankets,
guns--everything excepting the dogs. Those muts of yours would crumple
up like paper, out on the barrens.”
Kitchener drew on his brother’s beautifully tailored shirt, stepped into
the thick, warm trousers, and buckled the belt. With a feeling almost of
reverence he slipped his arms into the scarlet tunic. He strapped on his
side arm and stepped back to the fire. The coat was a trifle too roomy
under the sleeves, yet Kit squared his shoulders with a sprightly sense
of ease and self-confidence. Belted tight at the waist, the tunic seemed
actually to fit, and with a queer, thrilling emotion he felt somehow
that he belonged in it.
Jerry’s eyes were full of mockery, but when he spoke there was a faint
choking in his throat. He stiffened, and his hand went up in salute.
“Officer,” he said, “may you never miss your man!”
His manner changed, and he curtly motioned his brother to sit down
again. He squatted cross-legged and, with a stick in his hand, he began
tracing a network of lines on the snow-covered ground.
“We’ll say that this is our present position,” and made a cross. “Strike
northeast three days’ march across the ridges, and you’ll run into the
Vermilion River. A swift stream, bowlders and rapids. Way back in the
spruce hills. Follow it down past the mouths of one, two, three, four,
five tributary creeks. The sixth will be Great Owl Run. It comes in from
the northeast between two steep, granite banks. There’ll be a tall, pine
lobstick on the opposite shore that you can’t miss. Travel up this creek
about seven miles, and you’ll reach the scene of the old tragedy. Twenty
miles farther on is the police barracks at _Saut Sauvage_. Devon and
Cross will probably be there. You go in and tell ’em the sergeant has
arrived. You got it straight?”
He got up again and beckoned Kit to help him unpack the sledges. They
exchanged almost all of their luggage, and reloaded and fastened down
the lashings. They traded sledges, but each kept his own dog traces. Kit
was driving tandem. Jerry used the fan hitch, which gave the huskies
greater freedom on the open arctic prairies, and which was more easily
slipped if a polar bear attempted to pounce upon the animals.
The older brother chuckled as he caught sight of the old, red, Hudson’s
Bay blankets. “Shades of the ancient mariner,” he exclaimed--“I’m darned
if you didn’t bring granddad’s last testaments with you. I’ll sleep with
a ghost to-night.”
He looked around to make sure that nothing was forgotten, and then faced
Kit with a troubled scowl. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” For the
first time he seemed to have misgivings.
“I’ll be all right.”
“I mean, take care of yourself.”
“I hope you take your own advice,” returned Kitchener.
“Don’t stay long enough to go snow-blind,” said Jerry. “I don’t mean the
eyes, but the soul.”
Kit looked up alertly, on guard against one of his brother’s
flippancies. But this time he found no sign of laughter in the
hard-lined face.
“Down in your country,” Jerry resumed, “they call dope, ‘snow.’ Up here
the snow is the dope. They get you the same way. There’s something about
the dazzling white country that worms into you and creeps around you and
enslaves your heart and your brain like an insidious drug. We northern
men are all of us a little cuckoo. You can come up here for a year and
go back and forget. You can stay two years and still keep the will-power
to break away. Three years, and you’re lost.
“I call it going snow-blind.” The policeman’s voice was quiet and
impersonal, but the corners of his mouth were drawn in jaded furrows and
in that moment his depth of feeling was betrayed by his haggard, haunted
eyes. “This frozen world becomes a part of you, and you a part of it. It
blinds you to all save its own harsh, wild enchantments. You want to go
out, but you can’t stay out. You love it and hate it. You can’t be happy
anywhere else, and you can’t be happy here.”
He ended with a shortened breath and looked away, as though in
embarrassment. “Finish your business here, Kit, and get out fast. One of
us is enough.”
Abruptly he changed the subject. “Take your time with Bent. After last
night’s stroll he won’t travel far to-day. A man softened by prison.
Cross the back lots as I told you and you’ll strike his trail again
somewhere along the Vermilion River. After that stick close. He’ll be
watching for you. Look out! But don’t let him unearth that sledge
without your being on hand to jump him. Got it all straight?”
“Perfectly,” Kit reassured him.
“You’d better get some sleep then. If you and your dogs cork off for a
few hours now you’ll travel farther and faster in the end.”
“When do you leave?” asked Kit.
Jerry had gone back to his sledge and he was stooping with his back
turned. He did not look around. “When you’re ready to go,” he mumbled.
Kitchener unrolled the blankets of the service issue which, in the
future, were to be his own. As he passed the sledges on his way to pick
a sleeping place in the lee of the rocks, Jerry stood up and without
warning clamped his brawny right arm around his brother’s head.
“It was good to see you once more, old pioneer,” he said in a thick,
gruff voice.
Kitchener waited motionless, feeling a lump come into his throat and
almost choke him. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he
was abashed by his own sentimental longings, and he stood tonguetied,
and said nothing.
“Remember the last time we changed clothes?” asked Jerry--“the day I
induced you to put the kitten’s collar on the little black and white
striped animal, which the scientists call _mephitis mephitica_, and the
Indians call _Sikak_ the skunk? And Dad made me wear your clothes and
sleep out in the woods.”
Jerry laughed gently. “Go to sleep, Cocky-bird. It’ll all come out right
in the end.”
“See you later, Jerry,” said Kit. He stumbled off behind the rocks,
rolled up in his blankets in the gray, snowy dawn, and within three
minutes was soundly slumbering.
The snowfall had almost ceased when Kit awakened. It was a dull, sodden
day, windless and utterly quiet. The clouds were hanging low over the
forest, black and ominous, overcasting the wilderness with a strange,
uncanny twilight. For a minute or two after his eyes were open Kitchener
lay in warmth and drowsy comfort. But all at once it occurred to him
that there was something foreboding in the complete absence of sound.
His body went taut in the middle of his langorous stretching, and he
threw off the blanket and sat up. The campfire was still smoldering, and
somebody was bending over it.
“Hello, Jerry--” he said, and then stopped short. The figure in the
smoke had turned, and he saw that it was not a man. He scrambled to his
feet, rubbing his eyes, staring in astonishment. The fire-tender was a
woman--Diane Durand.
“Good morning,” said the girl coolly. She emerged from the suffocating
haze of the fire, which she evidently did not understand how to manage,
coughing and shaking her head as though to rid herself of the smoke.
In the daylight he noticed that her touseled hair was not the flaming
red the fire reflections had imparted last night, but verged into softer
tints of bronze. The eyes which regarded him steadily were deep and
luminous and flecked with a golden brightness. There was something
impudent and unflattering in the way she looked at him.
He regained his breath and faced her suspiciously. “What are you doing
here?” he demanded.
“It’s not my fault,” she returned. “I came back because I had to. Blame
your friend’s high-handed interfering. By the time I had reached my
uncle’s camp he was gone.”
“Gone where?” exclaimed Kit.
“On northward. Without dogs I can’t hope to overtake him. You’re going
up that direction, aren’t you, sergeant?”
Unwittingly Kitchener’s shoulders straightened. It gave him a queer,
uplifting sensation to have her think that he was an officer of the
Royal Canadian Police.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m going north.”
“Then you’ll have to take me with you,” she announced calmly. “When we
catch my uncle you can get rid of me.”
Kit looked around uneasily. “Where’s my--my friend?” he asked.
“He’s gone,” said the girl.
“What?”
She fumbled in the pocket of her mackinaw and brought out a folded slip
of paper, which she handed to Kitchener. “Here’s a note he left for you.
I picked it up and read it.”
With a sense of impending evil he opened the sheet and found a few lines
of pencil-script in Jerry’s careless scrawl. He read:
Dear Kit:
Don’t forget there are a million of ’em as pretty as this
Diane. I saw a funny look in your eye this morning. I’m just
warning you, that’s all. Don’t let her make a sap out of you
and I have no fear about anything else. So long, old crow.
The things I like least about life are its repetitions. You
get your hair cut or mow your lawn or paint a house or cook
breakfast or shave or wash a shirt or kiss a girl, and it’s
all to be done over again to-morrow or next week or a year
from now. The only thing I know that stays done is to have
your teeth pulled. Cheerio, Cocky-bird. Always exit on a laugh.
Jerry.
With eyes grown suddenly misty Kitchener turned and gazed around the
glade of evergreens. On the opposite hillslope he found the trail left
by sledge runners and trotting dogs’ feet and a pair of big, slashing
snowshoes. The tracks ran straight north and apparently were several
hours old. Jerry was well on his way towards the dreadful darkness of
Queen Maud Sea.