VANISHING FOOTPRINTS
Kitchener recognized the snowshoe tracks with a shock of surprise. A
spear is not a white man’s weapon, and he had supposed of course that
one of the disgruntled Yellow Knives had thrown it. It hadn’t occurred
to him that his attacker might be Hell Bent.
For the first time Kit was brought to a full appreciation of his own
danger. This Bent was a subtle and crafty man. He had outwitted the wily
Jerry, and he had just missed his present attack by inches. It was an
artful scheme. He must have been hanging on the outskirts of the
clearing when Kit drove off the Indians. When Kit and Oogly left the
cabin he probably trailed along close at their heels. He had obtained a
native fishing spear somewhere, and he used it instead of a rifle. If he
had spiked his victim to the tree the police would have hunted for a
Yellow Knife, never suspecting that the killer might be a white man. Kit
had escaped this time only by the merest good luck.
He realized that if he hoped to go on living he would have to move in
the future with the utmost caution. Death might be lurking in ambush
almost anywhere in the dark wilderness, at any moment.
The man had faded away into the gloom, but he could not escape from the
betraying line of snowshoe tracks. Kit did not dare to use his lamp
again, but by feeling the snow with his bare fingers it was easy enough
to follow the departing prints. Patiently he groped his way along the
trail, which curved out of the denser forest through clumps of
snow-sheeted alders and willows, and ended finally at the top of the
steep creek embankment.
The moon cast a cold, sickly radiance along the wooded shore opposite,
but on this side a deep shadow hid the ice-bound stream. Bent must have
dropped over the edge of the sheer embankment, but whether he had
followed the ledges upstream or downstream, or was hiding below at the
bottom of the slope, Kit had no means of knowing. This might be a trap.
As he hesitated he saw something rise up on the bank to blot out the
face of the low-riding moon. A short, stumpy figure silhouetted boldly
against the sky--Kit’s reflex towards his gun checked as he scrutinized
the apparition. Nobody but Oogly could be shaped like that.
Watching, he saw the figure suddenly start up in an erect posture. Two
hands grasping a spear flung themselves above the man’s head, and for
twenty seconds he stood thus, stark and motionless, like the statue of
some mythological figure posed in a battle scene. His glance was fixed
rigidly on something in the brook course below him. Kit’s lips were
gripped in his teeth. He expected any instant to see the spear go. But
for some reason it never left the warrior’s hands.
Slowly the tense figure relaxed, the upraised arms dropped and lowered
the weapon. Oogly turned his head and saw Kit. He looked hard for a
moment, and then tucked the spear under his arm and sauntered back along
the embankment to meet his companion.
“Did’n’ kill um,” he announced as Kit moved towards him.
“What?”
Oogly’s wrinkled smile was visible in the moonlight. “Man he come along
down by me,” he explained. “No goin’ murderum anybody.” He inflated his
chest on which proudly glinted the tin “murder medal.” “Let um going on
past along the water.”
Kit regarded the Esquimau quizzically for a space, and then he returned
Oogly’s grin. Evidently Bent had passed up the creek within spearing
range of the Esquimau hunter, who for just that moment was tempted to
let fly. Then he remembered his promise and restrained himself. He
hadn’t wanted to lose his badge. So Hell Bent was still a living menace
instead of a dead man with a spear in his ribs.
On the night of Jerry’s killing Kit would have shot Bent down at sight.
But that hour of madness had passed. He wanted his man alive. Later he
might exact the full measure for his brother’s death, but first he
wanted the truth about that bloody day years ago. Bent probably was the
only one left who could tell the story. If Kit got his hands on the man
he would have it out of him. He’d wring him out like a sponge.
“You’ve done well,” he told Oogly. “No more murders.”
The Esquimau swelled visibly. He had been a good boy.
“Did he see you?” asked Kit.
Oogly shook his head and pointed upstream. Bent had hurried on his way
without knowing how closely death had brushed him by.
The old cabin stood on the creek bank up that direction. The white man
and the Esquimau went forward, hugging the line of alders. Not far ahead
they struck a place along the embankment where the new snow had been
disturbed. Man tracks ascending from the creek bottom. Waffle-webs had
climbed out.
The trail turned through the creek brakes directly towards the clearing.
They followed as carefully as cats in a burr patch. Across the clearing,
among the stumps, straight to the cabin--the waffle-meshes had left
their ominous marks before the closed door. The frozen moon gave just
enough light to see by. Kit’s breathing had grown painfully sharp. It
looked as though he had his man if he were able to take him.
It was dark inside, quiet. Kit spoke to Oogly. “Knock. Tell ’em you want
to see Mayauk.” His voice was just audible.
The obedient Oogly thumped with his fur-mittened fist.
At first nobody answered, and then a voice in high-pitched alarm. “Who’s
there?”
“Nobody, just Oogly. Coming see Mayauk please.”
“You, Oogly?” It was Diane Durand. She sounded somehow relieved. “It’s a
funny time to want to see Mayauk. Wait a minute.” A soft footstep came
to the entrance and the door was unwarily opened. “Come in if you must.”
Kit had flatted himself against the log wall. For that moment he was
unseen. Diane showed herself for an instant in the moonlight, her
slimness hidden under the dragging folds of a huge, crimson Hudson’s Bay
blanket. “Come in, Oogly.”
Her voice sounded very sleepy. Kit saw her face in the softening
moonlight, the eloquent dark eyes, the shadow of the drooping eyelashes.
Queer that her beauty should affect him in those seconds with a pang of
sadness. The seigniors of France who won this country had such women for
their wives--the Durantayes, the Demonvilles, the Frontenacs--lovely,
dauntless, gently bred women who went where their men went. What it must
have meant to come home out of the night and the storm to find love and
loyalty and sweetness waiting in the doorway! Diane might have been fit
to be a pioneer’s wife. It was a pity. She might have been so fine.
The girl drew her crimson robe closer at her throat. It was Grandfather
Tearl’s old four pointer. She was sensible not to have scruples.
To-night was bitterly cold, and she had no other blanket. Yet Kit could
not help wondering if it had been laundered since the other night. He
thought of Jerry and Bill Tearl and Hell Bent and his heart was
hardened.
Diane admitted Oogly, and then she disappeared after him, neglecting to
bar the door. Kit pushed the door softly and slipped into the room. He
heard voices talking by the still-smoldering fireplace--Diane and Oogly,
and then Mayauk’s drowsy greeting. Somebody threw a pine log on the
fire, and almost at once the bright, resinous flame blazed up.
Nobody had seen Kit come in. He shoved the door shut with his foot and
edged along the wall. The firelight danced around three figures, the
Esquimau man and wife, and Diane. But he saw nobody else.
Kitchener’s quick glance went around the room. There were no angles or
ingle nooks where any one could hide. Only the bunk, and he knew the
baby was sleeping there. He blotted himself in the shadow as he stole
along the wall, ready at any instant for anything to happen.
The bunk was barely visible in the darkness. Kit approached
breathlessly. Hell Bent was contemptible enough to ambush himself in bed
with a baby and fight from behind an infant body. Kit reached the bunk
and groped back into the gloom. He found only a wee shape under the fur
robe. Cautiously he felt into the upper section, and then along the
floor underneath. Nobody was there.
He stood up, realizing that he had made another false move. Bent was not
in the cabin. He must have eluded his tracker by the same trick he had
employed at the Yellow Knife encampment, switching snowshoes and mixing
up his trail with a confusion of other prints. He had come only as far
as the outer doorway, where the Indians had trampled the snow, and now
he probably had followed them off into the woods, carrying the
waffle-mesh raquettes on his back.
Unluckily Kit had disturbed the baby and the little thing began to
whimper in the darkness. Diane turned and saw the shape by the bunk. She
advanced a pace and stared.
“You!” she exclaimed. “How’d you get here?”
“Came in with Oogly. Didn’t you see me?” From previous experience Kit
knew how useless it would be to question her. Bent may have spoken to
her, or he may have hurried on without her knowing. It didn’t matter.
“What do you want?” Diane demanded.
Kitchener coolly circled the room and came back to the door. “Oogly
forgot his toothbrush,” he told her without a smile. “Found it, Oogly?
Well, let’s get on.”
The Esquimau lingered only to bid a second good-by to the baby, and then
he followed Kit out of the cabin.
There was no use trying to unravel Bent’s trail. He had taken off his
identifying snowshoes, and the tracks he left now would be
indistinguishable from the dozen other sets of tracks that turned away
from the cabin. Kit had begun to suspect that the man had reached some
sort of understanding with the local Yellow Knives. If not he would be
clever enough to win them over. They naturally would have only the
bitterest feelings towards the policeman who had refused to give up
Oogly to them. This was their own country. They knew the secret paths
and byways of the wilderness, and they would have eyes and ears
everywhere. With a shrewd and unscrupulous white man to stir them up
their capacity for devilment had no limit.
Kit and Oogly went back to the Great Owl woods and re-built their night
fire. Then they lugged their robes a hundred yards deeper into the
timber, bedded-down under an uprooted hemlock, and slept fireless and
shivering through the night.