HEADING NORTH
Kitchener felt a sickness and emptiness under his ribs. His comrade, one
time a murderer, again had taken direful measures. He peered in
consternation at the swarthy, round face that looked forth so genially
from its ice-encrusted hood.
“Cross--Devon!” he accused furiously. “Drowned--you’ve killed them!”
A hurt, almost tearful look clouded Oogly’s soft, seal-brown eyes.
“Noum!” he protested vehemently. “Sitting on ground along water middle.
Can’ get off now.”
“What? They’re out there, and still alive?”
“You betchum!”
By stumbling speech and vivid gesture the Esquimau tried to explain just
what had happened. In the center of the stream stood a long, narrow
island, a pointed ridge of rock, like a backbone, humped up above the
surface of the rapids. Ice cakes, broken from the tunnels upstream had
piled up on the nose of this island, forming a big jam that reached from
bank to bank.
The observant Oogly had noticed this place when they arrived at the
police shack that morning. When he saw the handcuffs snapped on his
friend’s wrists his fertile mind had immediately devised a plan to
outwit the police.
He used poor little Uttaktuak for a bait. The constables responded
humanely to his cry for help, followed at his heels across the ice to
the island. While they were poking in the crevices, listening for
wailing sounds of human distress, Oogly had crept under the head of the
hanging floe.
As an experienced timber-driver is able by a sort of sixth sense to
stick his peavy into the key-log of a log-jam, so the expert ice-man
knew which block of ice it was that held back the crowding, straining
mass behind it. Oogly simply and unerringly had found the critical wedge
upon which the backed-up tons of ice were precariously suspended. He had
chopped and pried for a minute with his spear head, and had jumped clear
as the floe suddenly toppled and split apart, to go thundering and
foaming downstream on both sides of the island.
So much he told in casual words, helped out by his lucid pantomime. That
part of the story meant nothing to Oogly. He had made his way to the
bank, leaping from one submerging ice-chunk to the next. The policemen
had not been quick enough or sure-footed enough to escape as their
shoreward bridge fell to pieces about them. Oogly gurgled with amusement
at the huge joke he had played.
“Constables have a seat on middle rock,” he said.
Kit only wanted to be certain that this was true. He did not wish to
have any drowned policemen on his conscience. Without waiting to hear
more he ran out of the door and picked his way down to the embankment of
the rapids.
In the welter of the falling snow he made out a smudgy shape that was
just a little blacker than the darkness itself. It was the island--the
tongue of rock, jutting high and dry in midstream. He heard the big
cakes of ice washing by at his feet.
He raised his head and hailed the middle of the stream. “Hello! Devon?
Cross?”
Yes, there was somebody. Voices--one of them shouted with rage. “Who the
hell did that?”
Kitchener laughed and turned away. It was all right. The constables were
unharmed, marooned in the middle of the creek. In his haste to the
rescue Cross had grabbed a blanket instead of a rope. They could huddle
up for warmth and there was no danger of their being swept away. In a
day or so a new ice-bridge was sure to form, and then they could walk
back to shore again.
Meanwhile Kit had no intention of waiting for the next freeze-up. While
he didn’t precisely approve of Oogly’s methods, he at least saw no
reason to be stupidly quixotic over fortune’s sending. The alternative
was unthinkable. It meant a long prison term, or worse, if they took him
south. The cards would all be stacked against him.
Oogly’s plan was to dash across the barrens for the Arctic Sea. The idea
was inspired. The trails would be swept away by the time the constables
got off their island. It was a ten to one shot that they would cast
southward after their quarry. And Kit would be heading due north.
Queen Maud Sea! The chance to carry out Jerry’s unfulfilled mission. He
could seek for the white man who wore a police badge under his artikis.
That business could be settled, that ghost laid one way or another.
Then, as Oogly suggested, the whale ship--around the point of Alaska,
Frisco--New York! Nobody in this country knew who he was or where he
came from. He’d be safe in New York.
Someday he could send a trusted agent to recover the sunken gold bags.
He wouldn’t touch the stuff himself. But a pension fund for the
R.C.M.P.--that was the idea. A memorial to Jerry. The Tearl memorial
fund, sent by an anonymous donor. His heart was thumping, a thrill of
excitement was in his blood, imagination ran riot. He was pulling up
stakes, taking a new deal all round. He’d be on the march soon, heading
north.
At the shack doorway Kitchener bumped into Oogly and his wife. Mayauk
was scolding about something. As Kit came up the Esquimau turned aside
to a deep snow embankment, plunged into the drift to his shoulders. Then
he came up with a squirming, fur-clad bundle in his arms. It was
Uttaktuak, making cheerful sounds and kicking her feet. Oogly must have
dropped her there before he went out to the floe. Mayauk snatched the
baby from her husband’s hands, and peace was restored.
Oogly followed Kitchener into the cabin.
“Finean’dandy!” grinned Kit, and shoved up his manacled wrists. “Can you
get these things off?”
The Esquimau found an ax and indicated that his companion was to lay his
hands on the doorsill. Kit complied dubiously. Unfortunately the key was
on the island with the constables. To use a file was apt to prove an
endless job. Kit held his right wristlet against the hammering block.
Then he set his teeth and gave the word.
Oogly swung with his full strength. The butt of the ax crashed down
squarely upon the arch of steel, cracking the brittle, highly-tempered
metal as though it were glass. The band fell apart and Kit’s wrist was
free.
He winced and looked at his hand, and then grinned up weakly at Oogly.
The astonishing Esquimau had struck off the shackle without crushing the
bone underneath, or even bruising the skin. More confidently this time
Kit offered his other wrist, and a second blow rid him of his
humiliating bonds.
He kicked the broken links aside. Diane Durand stood under the lamp,
looking on uneasily.
Kit’s jawline reasserted itself as their eyes encountered. He didn’t
propose to leave her behind to carry the tale of the sunken gold to her
uncle. If he were unable to settle the long accounting with Hell Bent,
at least he’d make sure that the man was done out of the loot.
“We’re going out by way of the Arctic Sea,” he informed the girl. “You
too.”
He had expected fierce resistance. But Diane was too clever a girl to
squander her courage and strength in a futile struggle. She was shaken
and dazed by the turn of events, and she knew she was beaten. “After all
that has happened,” she said wearily, “it doesn’t matter much where I
go, or with whom, or what happens next.”
Kit and Oogly hurried their preparations for departure. The constables
had Kit’s service revolver, but his rifle and Diane’s shotgun were on
the sledge, and the Esquimau had kept his musket and hunting spear. They
took a couple of blankets from the police store and helped themselves to
such provisions as were needed to replace their own diminished supplies.
As they must travel fast, they cut their equipment down to the last
possible ounce. And it was decided that Mayauk and Uttaktuak should
remain behind under the protection of the police. Oogly promised to send
for them when the tribes drifted south again with the coming of summer.
The three strangely-met _voyageurs_ set forth in the night and the
storm, beginning a journey that appalled the imagination. They would
bridge the creek at the first opportunity, and then strike due north
across the vast stretch of the wind-swept barrens. Some day, by
fortune’s leave, they might reach one of the isolated whaling
settlements on the ice-bound sea. For the present Kit preferred not to
let his thoughts dwell upon the uncertainties of the coming weeks.
They drove their dogs down the shadowy line of the creek, Oogly running
ahead, on the look-out for a favorable crossing place. The night was
half gone before he finally shouted and turned the team leader. Instead
of hummocks and crevices and crawling floes, he at last had come to a
naturally formed bridge that was solid enough and level enough for
crossing by sledge. He turned and haled the trotting dog-team on behind
him. And then he stopped and crouched and peered forward under his hood.
Buzz-saw, the team leader, checked himself at the Esquimau’s heels. He
threw up his head, tested the air once with his nose, and let out a
warning growl. An ugly chorus, snarling and barking, answered the
challenge from across the frozen stream; then, an instant later, men’s
voices hailing the darkness in alien gutturals.
Without a word Kit swung the “gee” pole, while Oogly turned at a
lumbering trot to break trail downstream. No need to stop for questions.
The party across the way had to be Yellow Knives--a hunting band, no
doubt, coming back from the barrens.
The Esquimau’s enemies, of course, had long since familiarized
themselves with the peculiarities of his only pair of snowshoes; also
Kit’s. They’d pick up the trail as soon as they crossed the creek and
identify the tracks. Then they’d come on like wolves running a caribou
herd.
Oogly’s eyes had learned to see in the great Midnights, and he led the
way now, picking the best ground unerringly, cruising as fast as an
ordinary woodsman cares to travel in the full sunlight. He would know
that his one slender chance was to stretch out his trail so far ahead of
the Indians that the friendly snowstorm would have time to bury it.
The huskies caught the infection of alarm. Danger for men means danger
for dogs. They jumped after Oogly, half-galloping, with the lightly
laden sledge singing over the downy new snow. And in the rear, whooping
yells broke out in a significant babel to reëcho down the hidden valley
of the creek.
The Yellow-Knife village was pitched on the south bank of the stream,
about midway between _Saut Sauvage_ and Great Owl Run. In the darkness
the fugitives failed to make out the huddle of skin teepees and shanties
until they suddenly found themselves in the midst of the sleeping
encampment.
It was too late to detour. Two score of grave-like mounds in the snow
exploded suddenly like bombs as buried huskies sprang to life and
action. Bounding, yapping forms circled in from all directions, trying
to get at Buzz-saw and his team-mates, raising a din that must arouse
every comatose Indian for two miles around.
Kit closed up on the flanks of his team and beat off the charging beasts
with a clubbed rifle barrel. For just a moment Oogly slackened pace. His
snaky dog-whip licked out, right and left and behind him, popping like
fire-crackers. The savage outcry changed suddenly to anguished yelping.
Again the Esquimau plunged into his stride and went through the main
street of the Yellow Knives, with Buzz-saw a jump behind him, and Kit
and Diane racing for the “gee” pole.
In a moment they were out of the village, hugging the line of willows as
they fled down the banks of the creek.
Bedlam had broken loose in their rear. Women shrieking, men yelling to
one another and bedamning their frenzied dogs, rifles wantonly firing at
nothing: the town had gone mad. It wouldn’t take the bucks long to find
out who their passing visitors were, and then to hitch sledges and take
the trail. Instead of a single hunting party, the fugitives in a few
minutes would have half a village in pursuit.
Many weeks of snow-tramping had hardened both Kit and Diane for the
physical ordeal they must face to-night. Oogly had trained with sledges
on the wide Arctic tundras since the days of babyhood. In a long race he
could outlast the best of the dogs. Any of the three probably was as
trail-fit as the average starveling Yellow Knife. If the dogs only stood
up for the night in the traces there was a chance of their wearing their
way through.
Kit had kept a watchful eye on Diane, but apparently at this moment she
had no desire to leave him. There was a blood-chilling savagery in the
sounds behind them. For the present she had as much incentive to run as
Oogly and Kit.
The events of the remaining night went by like the spinning of hazy
dreams. Shadows fleeting along half-seen trails; snow and darkness and
cold; the straining snap of harness thongs, the humming of sledge
runners and the steady crunching of snowshoes, the _pat, pat, pat_ of
furry feet digging along: they gained the Great Owl cabin clearing, and
Kit shouted to Oogly to turn.
Away to the left swung the dogs, with their forerunner a stride ahead,
among the stumps and headlong into the blackness of the “haunted”
forest. The sounds of pursuit had dwindled to silence. But out of
hearing did not necessarily mean out of striking range. There were teams
and men running the plainly marked trail. The fleeing dogs knew it, and
Kit and Oogly and Diane never lost the occult feeling of being pushed
hard by danger behind them.
The owls were away from home, out foraging over the frozen prairies far
to the north. It was deathly quiet under the trees. Oogly was familiar
with every inch of the ground here, and he cut through the owl woods,
dodging low, avoiding the great trunks by some uncanny method of
perception. They struck the creek again several miles farther down, near
the point where Kit and Diane had first come into this country from the
south. Here they found an ice-bridge crossing. They worked over to the
north bank, groped their way through the stunted, wind-torn thickets on
the opposite shore, and turned their faces at last towards the Arctic
Sea.
There was hope now that their pursuers had been shaken off, or at least
held up for a while in front of the Great Owl woods. No Yellow Knife
would venture into that unhallowed pit of darkness, unless the lust of
the chase had keyed him up to a fine, high point of frenzy. Then he
might go anywhere, dare anything. In any event the savages might circle
the forest and strike the trail where it crossed farther downstream. But
this would mean a clear gain for the fugitives of an hour or two or
three.
Unfortunately the wind had whipped around into the southwest some time
in the night, and the promise of heavy snow had failed. It had grown
colder and calmer, and the great, soft flakes had turned to a misty
sleet. Oogly, the weather-wise, had announced that they might see blue
sky in the morning.
There was nothing to do but to keep going, to make all the distance they
could while the dogs stood up. It is astonishing how much reserve
vitality the ordinary human being holds on tap if the emergency call is
great enough. Earlier in the night--hours and hours ago, it seemed to
them now--the three fugitives had known the torture of overtaxed hearts
and lungs, an unquenchable thirst, the dry taste of blood. Then they had
caught their “second wind.” A pleasant numbness seemed to drug their
physical sensibilities. Legs and bodies moved automatically, without
effort. Breathing became easier. Indeed it seemed almost unnecessary to
breathe. It was as though they had been running and could keep on
running always.
Daylight caught them far out on the frozen prairies. As a mariner loses
his landfall in the night, so they had lost sight of the peopled world.
A dead-level sea of snow and ice surrounded them. There was not a tree
nor shrub, not a speck of color within range of straining eyes. The
clouds had blown clear, and the early gray of the sky changed gradually
to the flawlessness of hard, blued-steel. The sun came up, and the white
monotony of the barrens became an aching, dazzling glare.
Diane was drooping again, staggering now and then as she tried to hold
the killing pace. Oogly’s face looked as drawn and bloodless as smoked
moosemeat. Kit was beginning to suspect that in time he might reach the
end of his “second wind.” The breathing of the dogs sounded like the
rattle of broken skid-chains. They stopped by mutual consent, because
nobody could go much farther.
Behind them the horizon line was a scintillating glaze. Landmarks all
had vanished. The Great Owl forest had been left so far in the rear that
not even a smudge of color showed against the field of snow. There were
no specks or dots anywhere to betray the existence of beasts or men.
At the left the Vermilion River pursued its endless course northward,
held between treeless snow banks so low that the dykes of the waterway,
even at a short distance, could not be distinguished from the rest of
the flat, sweeping landscape.
The travelers camped on the river ice, because at least there was some
slight protection behind the low embankments.
Kit unpacked their alcohol stove and started coffee boiling. “Ready for
breakfast?” he asked Diane.
“No, thanks. Not hungry. Sleep. I want to go to sleep.”
He unstrapped a fur bag and spread it in the lee of an ice hummock. The
girl stayed awake only long enough to pull off her boots. Then she
crawled into the warm pocket, and ten seconds later was asleep, with the
sun beaming into her face.
Kit and Oogly dined on chunks of cold pemmican, washed down with
scalding swigs of coffee. Then the Esquimau stumbled off behind the
parked sledge, rolled up in his robes and started snoring. The dogs had
dropped in their tracks the instant after they were fed. Kit alone
stayed awake.
He turned, squinting, to gaze back over the glistening reaches of the
open tundra. No sign as yet of pursuit. But his own trail, the ruthless
thread of fatality, linked him with the horizon. At any moment he might
see little, evil shapes moving in the shimmer of the sun.
Sighing, he picked up a blanket and tucked his rifle beneath his arm. He
seemed to have been elected unanimously to the post of responsibility.
Oogly was dead to the world, with his head wrapped in a robe. Diane lay
on her side, a glinting, silky wing of hair tumbled over her eye, her
mouth relaxed in a faint, unwitting smile.
For just a moment Kit’s gaunt features were robbed of their guarded
sternness. His glance hovered wistfully as he half leaned over her, and
then, with an inexorable shrug, he turned on his heel and trudged back
to the southward.
For two or three miles he walked the down trail. Then he picked a
defensible spot behind the river bank, where he spread his blanket and
stretched out on his stomach to watch over the line of northbound
footprints.
If his enemies came out on the barrens the trail would lead them past
the ambush point. He could take them on the flank, and by surprise. They
wouldn’t get him for a long while. He was loaded down with cartridges,
and he was covered on three sides. Oogly and Diane would hear the shots.
They’d have time to run for it again. Kit was confident that he could
hold the Yellow Knives long enough to give his companions a safe start.
Better one than three.
All of that morning Kit lay on his blanket, keeping vigil.
The sun had come up in the southeast, and it was from that direction
that his pursuers must come. He lay on his diaphragm and stared into the
sun.
An endless morning. He had nothing to do but to gaze across the flat
wastes and try to keep his eyelids open. It was a wearying, painful
prospect, snow and ice stretching everywhere, shadowless, colorless, a
vast mirror reflecting the sunlight.
A merciless sun. A silvery, frigid incandescence pouring balefully upon
the world. The snow remained as hard as crystal, and flashed and
sparkled like the dancing of flame.
An appalling silence. Even the wind is without noise when there is
nothing to interfere with its blowing. The tick of Kit’s wrist watch,
the thud of his pulse, were mighty sounds in ears attuned to an absolute
vacancy. He could hear the friction of his toes when he wiggled them for
warmth in his ribbed-wool socks.
A forlorn panorama. Sometimes he saw with an astonishing clarity,
seemingly for miles and miles, but there was nothing to look at. The
boundaries of earth and sky were so much alike that he could not tell
surely where one left off and the other began.
The waves of cold on the snow-fields sometimes waver visibly like heat
waves on the desert. In the flickering daylight he later began to see
things. Men and dogs and sledges and shifting herds of musk-ox moved
distantly before his widening gaze; then a black, bumping object, like a
locomotive laboring over a rough road-bed. By that time he knew
something was wrong. He studied his finger tip for a minute to bring his
pupils back in focus, and when his glance ranged the far tundras again
there was nothing whatever in sight.
If the Yellow Knives were coming he wished they’d come.
The queer mirages formed and faded for a while, and then a dullness
stole over his vision. When he took off his mitten again to concentrate
on his forefinger, the finger somehow looked bigger than it should and a
trifle vague in outline. The heatless sun, strangely, felt as though it
were beginning to burn his eyeballs. The muscles of his eyelids started
to twitch, and he could not hold them still. And he began to notice a
pin-prick of pain in the nerves behind the bridge of his nose.
For relief he allowed his eyes to close against the glaring sunlight.
And he went to sleep, to awaken suddenly in a sweat of terror. He had
dozed off. He had failed his companions, when he was supposed to be on
watch. Nothing had happened. The silence was as intense as ever, and
there were no shadows beneath the coldly blazing sun. That was nothing
to his credit. He had slept.
He looked at his watch, and had no idea of the time of day. The watch
dial and the hands and numerals fluttered in a kaleidoscope of changing
colors. He gazed across the tundra and the colors swam off ahead of him
into the horizon.
His eyes felt as though something had blown into them. Sticks or
cinders. He rubbed them with the back of his hand, and then stopped
because of the smarting. If the Yellow Knives were coming, please let
them come while he still could see them.
In the meantime he could not endure the agony of the snowlight and the
sunlight. He let his eyes close again--for just a second. His chin was
propped on his forearm and his face stared insensibly across the white
barrens. And the second lengthened into minutes and the minutes into
hours.
What aroused him he did not know. The movement behind him was so
stealthy that a man in his full waking senses might not have noticed,
nor had reason to look around. But Kit sprang to his feet as suddenly as
though an alarm clock had banged off by his head.
A towering, muffled shape stood over him. Twilight and cold--the sharp,
calm, bitter cold of the arctic evening. His eyes were all wrong. It was
as though he were trying to look through fuzz. There really was
something, though--an erect figure on two feet--a face and a body and a
rigid arm, and a pistol muzzle pointing at his head.