Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.
BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY AND OTHER STORIES
BY
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
CONTENTS
Back to God's Country
The Yellow-Back
The Fiddling Man
L'ange
The Case of Beauvais
The Other Man's Wife
The Strength of Men
The Match
The Honor of Her People
Bucky Severn
His First Penitent
Peter God
The Mouse
BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
When Shan Tung, the long-cued Chinaman from Vancouver, started up the
Frazer River in the old days when the Telegraph Trail and the
headwaters of the Peace were the Meccas of half the gold-hunting
population of British Columbia, he did not foresee tragedy ahead of
him. He was a clever man, was Shan Tung, a cha-sukeed, a very devil in
the collecting of gold, and far-seeing. But he could not look forty
years into the future, and when Shan Tung set off into the north, that
winter, he was in reality touching fire to the end of a fuse that was
to burn through four decades before the explosion came.
With Shan Tung went Tao, a Great Dane. The Chinaman had picked him up
somewhere on the coast and had trained him as one trains a horse. Tao
was the biggest dog ever seen about the Height of Land, the most
powerful, and at times the most terrible. Of two things Shan Tung was
enormously proud in his silent and mysterious oriental way--of Tao, the
dog, and of his long, shining cue which fell to the crook of his knees
when he let it down. It had been the longest cue in Vancouver, and
therefore it was the longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and the
dog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and
tragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the
winter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more than
an ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung
subserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfit
exhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which was
boiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened men, and was
congratulating himself that he would soon be at the camps west of the
Peace, when the thing happened. A drunken Irishman, filled with a grim
and unfortunate sense of humor, spotted Shan Tung's wonderful cue and
coveted it. Wherefore there followed a bit of excitement in which Shan
Tung passed into his empyrean home with a bullet through his heart, and
the drunken Irishman was strung up for his misdeed fifteen minutes
later. Tao, the Great Dane, was taken by the leader of the men who
pulled on the rope. Tao's new master was a "drifter," and as he
drifted, his face was always set to the north, until at last a new
humor struck him and he turned eastward to the Mackenzie. As the
seasons passed, Tao found mates along the way and left a string of his
progeny behind him, and he had new masters, one after another, until he
was grown old and his muzzle was turning gray. And never did one of
these masters turn south with him. Always it was north, north with the
white man first, north with the Cree, and then wit h the Chippewayan,
until in the end the dog born in a Vancouver kennel died in an Eskimo
igloo on the Great Bear. But the breed of the Great Dane lived on. Here
and there, as the years passed, one would find among the Eskimo
trace-dogs, a grizzled-haired, powerful-jawed giant that was alien to
the arctic stock, and in these occasional aliens ran the blood of Tao,
the Dane.
Forty years, more or less, after Shan Tung lost his life and his cue at
Copper Creek Camp, there was born on a firth of Coronation Gulf a dog
who was named Wapi, which means "the Walrus." Wapi, at full growth, was
a throwback of more than forty dog generations. He was nearly as large
as his forefather, Tao. His fangs were an inch in length, his great
jaws could crack the thigh-bone of a caribou, and from the beginning
the hands of men and the fangs of beasts were against him. Almost from
the day of his birth until this winter of his fourth year, life for
Wapi had been an unceasing fight for existence. He was maya-tisew--bad
with the badness of a devil. His reputation had gone from master to
master and from igloo to igloo; women and children were afraid of him,
and men always spoke to him with the club or the lash in their hands.
He was hated and feared, and yet because he could run down a
barren-land caribou and kill it within a mile, and would hold a big
white bear at bay until the hunters came, he was not sacrificed to this
hate and fear. A hundred whips and clubs and a hundred pairs of hands
were against him between Cape Perry and the crown of Franklin Bay--and
the fangs of twice as many dogs.
The dogs were responsible. Quick-tempered, clannish with the savage
brotherhood of the wolves, treacherous, jealous of leadership, and with
the older instincts of the dog dead within them, their merciless feud
with what they regarded as an interloper of another breed put the devil
heart in Wapi. In all the gray and desolate sweep of his world he had
no friend. The heritage of Tao, his forefather, had fallen upon him,
and he was an alien in a land of strangers. As the dogs and the men and
women and children hated him, so he hated them. He hated the sight and
smell of the round-faced, blear-eyed creatures who were his master, yet
he obeyed them, sullenly, watchfully, with his lips wrinkled warningly
over fangs which had twice torn out the life of white bears. Twenty
times he had killed other dogs. He had fought them singly, and in
pairs, and in packs. His giant body bore the scars of a hundred wounds.
He had been clubbed until a part of his body was deformed and he
traveled with a limp. He kept to himself even in the mating season. And
all this because Wapi, the Walrus, forty years removed from the Great
Dane of Vancouver, was a white man's dog.
Stirring restlessly within him, sometimes coming to him in dreams and
sometimes in a great and unfulfilled yearning, Wapi felt vaguely the
strange call of his forefathers. It was impossible for him to
understand. It was impossible for him to know what it meant. And yet he
did know that somewhere there was something for which he was seeking
and which he never found. The desire and the questing came to him most
compellingly in the long winter filled with its eternal starlight, when
the maddening yap, yap, yap of the little white foxes, the barking of
the dogs, and the Eskimo chatter oppressed him like the voices of
haunting ghosts. In these long months, filled with the horror of the
arctic night, the spirit of Tao whispered within him that somewhere
there was light and sun, that somewhere there was warmth and flowers,
and running streams, and voices he could understand, and things he
could love. And then Wapi would whine, and perhaps the whine would
bring him the blow of a club, or the lash of a whip, or an Eskimo
threat, or the menace of an Eskimo dog's snarl. Of the latter Wapi was
unafraid. With a snap of his jaws, he could break the back of any other
dog on Franklin Bay.
Such was Wapi, the Walrus, when for two sacks of flour, some tobacco,
and a bale of cloth he became the property of Blake, the
uta-wawe-yinew, the trader in seals, whalebone--and women. On this day
Wapi's soul took its flight back through the space of forty years. For
Blake was white, which is to say that at one time or another he had
been white. His skin and his appearance did not betray how black he had
turned inside and Wapi's brute soul cried out to him, telling him how
he had waited and watched for this master he knew would come, how he
would fight for him, how he wanted to lie down and put his great head
on the white man's feet in token of his fealty. But Wapi's bloodshot
eyes and battle-scarred face failed to reveal what was in him, and
Blake--following the instructions of those who should know--ruled him
from the beginning with a club that was more brutal than the club of
the Eskimo.
For three months Wapi had been the property of Blake, and it was now
the dead of a long and sunless arctic night. Blake's cabin, built of
ship timber and veneered with blocks of ice, was built in the face of a
deep pit that sheltered it from wind and storm. To this cabin came the
Nanatalmutes from the east, and the Kogmollocks from the west,
bartering their furs and whalebone and seal-oil for the things Blake
gave in exchange, and adding women to their wares whenever Blake
announced a demand. The demand had been excellent this winter. Over in
Darnley Bay, thirty miles across the headland, was the whaler Harpoon
frozen up for the winter with a crew of thirty men, and straight out
from the face of his igloo cabin, less than a mile away, was the Flying
Moon with a crew of twenty more. It was Blake's business to wait and
watch like a hawk for such opportunities as there, and tonight--his
watch pointed to the hour of twelve, midnight--he was sitting in the
light of a sputtering seal-oil lamp adding up figures which told him
that his winter, only half gone, had already been an enormously
profitable one.
"If the Mounted Police over at Herschel only knew," he chuckled. "Uppy,
if they did, they'd have an outfit after us in twenty-four hours."
Oopi, his Eskimo right-hand man, had learned to understand English, and
he nodded, his moon-face split by a wide and enigmatic grin. In his
way, "Uppy" was as clever as Shan Tung had been in his.
And Blake added, "We've sold every fur and every pound of bone and oil,
and we've forty Upisk wives to our credit at fifty dollars apiece."
Uppy's grin became larger, and his throat was filled with an exultant
rattle. In the matter of the Upisk wives he knew that he stood ace-high.
"Never," said Blake, "has our wife-by-the-month business been so good.
If it wasn't for Captain Rydal and his love-affair, we'd take a
vacation and go hunting."
He turned, facing the Eskimo, and the yellow flame of the lamp lit up
his face. It was the face of a remarkable man. A black beard concealed
much of its cruelty and its cunning, a beard as carefully Van-dycked as
though Blake sat in a professional chair two thousand miles south, but
the beard could not hide the almost inhuman hardness of the eyes. There
was a glittering light in them as he looked at the Eskimo. "Did you see
her today, Uppy? Of course you did. My Gawd, if a woman could ever
tempt me, she could! And Rydal is going to have her. Unless I miss my
guess, there's going to be money in it for us--a lot of it. The funny
part of it is, Rydal's got to get rid of her husband. And how's he
going to do it, Uppy? Eh? Answer me that. How's he going to do it?"
In a hole he had dug for himself in the drifted snow under a huge scarp
of ice a hundred yards from the igloo cabin lay Wapi. His bed was red
with the stain of blood, and a trail of blood led from the cabin to the
place where he had hidden himself. Not many hours ago, when by God's
sun it should have been day, he had turned at last on a teasing,
snarling, back-biting little kiskanuk of a dog and had killed it. And
Blake and Uppy had beaten him until he was almost dead.
It was not of the beating that Wapi was thinking as he lay in his
wallow. He was thinking of the fur-clad figure that had come between
Blake's club and his body, of the moment when for the first time in his
life he had seen the face of a white woman. She had stopped Blake's
club. He had heard her voice. She had bent over him, and she would have
put her hand on him if his master had not dragged her back with a cry
of warning. She had gone into the cabin then, and he had dragged
himself away.
Since then a new and thrilling flame had burned in him. For a time his
senses had been dazed by his punishment, but now every instinct in him
was like a living wire. Slowly he pulled himself from his retreat and
sat down on his haunches. His gray muzzle was pointed to the sky. The
same stars were there, burning in cold, white points of flame as they
had burned week after week in the maddening monotony of the long nights
near the pole. They were like a million pitiless eyes, never blinking,
always watching, things of life and fire, and yet dead. And at those
eyes, the little white foxes yapped so incessantly that the sound of it
drove men mad. They were yapping now. They were never still. And with
their yapping came the droning, hissing monotone of the aurora, like
the song of a vast piece of mechanism in the still farther north.
Toward this Wapi turned his bruised and beaten head. Out there, just
beyond the ghostly pale of vision, was the ship. Fifty times he had
slunk out and around it, cautiously as the foxes themselves. He had
caught its smells and its sounds; he had come near enough to hear the
voices of men, and those voices were like the voice of Blake, his
master. Therefore, he had never gone nearer.
There was a change in him now. His big pads fell noiselessly as he
slunk back to the cabin and sniffed for a scent in the snow. He found
it. It was the trail of the white woman. His blood tingled again, as it
had tingled when her face bent over him and her hand reached out, and
in his soul there rose up the ghost of Tao to whip him on. He followed
the woman's footprints slowly, stopping now and then to listen, and
each moment the spirit in him grew more insistent, and he whined up at
the stars. At last he saw the ship, a wraithlike thing in its piled-up
bed of ice, and he stopped. This was his dead-line. He had never gone
nearer. But tonight--if any one period could be called night--he went
on.
It was the hour of sleep, and there was no sound aboard. The foxes,
never tiring of their infuriating sport, were yapping at the ship. They
barked faster and louder when they caught the scent of Wapi, and as he
approached, they drifted farther away. The scent of the woman's trail
led up the wide bridge of ice, and Wapi followed this as he would have
followed a road, until he found himself all at once on the deck of the
Flying Moon. For a space he was startled. His long fangs bared
themselves at the shadows cast by the stars. Then he saw ahead of him a
narrow ribbon of yellow light. Toward this Wapi sniffed out, step by
step, the footprints of the woman. When he stopped again, his muzzle
was at the narrow crack through which came the glimmer of light.
It was the door of a deck-house veneered like an igloo with snow and
ice to protect it from cold and wind. It was, perhaps, half an inch
ajar, and through that aperture Wapi drank the warm, sweet perfume of
the woman. With it he caught also the smell of a man. But in him the
woman scent submerged all else. Overwhelmed by it, he stood trembling,
not daring to move, every inch of him thrilled by a vast and mysterious
yearning. He was no longer Wapi, the Walrus; Wapi, the Killer. Tao was
there. And it may be that the spirit of Shan Tung was there. For after
forty years the change had come, and Wapi, as he stood at the woman's
door, was just dog,--a white man's dog--again the dog of the Vancouver
kennel--the dog of a white man's world.
He thrust open the door with his nose. He slunk in, so silently that he
was not heard. The cabin was lighted. In a bed lay a white-faced,
hollow-cheeked man--awake. On a low stool at his side sat a woman. The
light of the lamp hanging from above warmed with gold fires the thick
and radiant mass of her hair. She was leaning over the sick man. One
slim, white hand was stroking his face gently, and she was speaking to
him in a voice so sweet and soft that it stirred like wonderful music
in Wapi's warped and beaten soul. And then, with a great sigh, he
flopped down, an abject slave, on the edge of her dress.
With a startled cry the woman turned. For a moment she stared at the
great beast wide-eyed, then there came slowly into her face recognition
and understanding. "Why, it's the dog Blake whipped so terribly," she
gasped. "Peter, it's--it's Wapi!" For the first time Wapi felt the
caress of a woman's hand, soft, gentle, pitying, and out of him there
came a wimpering sound that was almost a sob.
"It's the dog--he whipped," she repeated, and, then, if Wapi could have
understood, he would have noted the tense pallor of her lovely face and
the look of a great fear that was away back in the staring blue depths
of her eyes.
From his pillow Peter Keith had seen the look of fear and the paleness
of her cheeks, but he was a long way from guessing the truth. Yet he
thought he knew. For days--yes, for weeks--there had been that growing
fear in her eyes. He had seen her mighty fight to hide it from him. And
he thought he understood.
"I know it has been a terrible winter for you, dear," he had said to
her many times. "But you mustn't worry so much about me. I'll be on my
feet again--soon." He had always emphasized that. "I'll be on my feet
again soon!"
Once, in the breaking terror of her heart, she had almost told him the
truth. Afterward she had thanked God for giving her the strength to
keep it back. It was day--for they spoke in terms of day and
night--when Rydal, half drunk, had dragged her into his cabin, and she
had fought him until her hair was down about her in tangled
confusion--and she had told Peter that it was the wind. After that,
instead of evading him, she had played Rydal with her wits, while
praying to God for help. It was impossible to tell Peter. He had aged
steadily and terribly in the last two weeks. His eyes were sunken into
deep pits. His blond hair was turning gray over the temples. His cheeks
were hollowed, and there was a different sort of luster in his eyes. He
looked fifty instead of thirty-five. Her heart bled in its agony. She
loved Peter with a wonderful love.
The truth! If she told him that! She could see Peter rising up out of
his bed like a ghost. It would kill him. If he could have seen
Rydal--only an hour before--stopping her out on the deck, taking her in
his arms, and kissing her until his drunken breath and his beard
sickened her! And if he could have heard what Rydal had said! She
shuddered. And suddenly she dropped down on her knees beside Wapi and
took his great head in her arms, unafraid of him--and glad that he had
come.
Then she turned to Peter. "I'm going ashore to see Blake again--now,"
she said. "Wapi will go with me, and I won't be afraid. I insist that I
am right, so please don't object any more, Peter dear."
She bent over and kissed him, and then in spite of his protest, put on
her fur coat and hood, and stood for a moment smiling down at him. The
fear was gone out of her eyes now. It was impossible for him not to
smile at her loveliness. He had always been proud of that. He reached
up a thin hand and plucked tenderly at the shining little tendrils of
gold that crept out from under her hood.
"I wish you wouldn't, dear," he pleaded.
How pathetically white, and thin, and weak he was! She kissed him again
and turned quickly to hide the mist in her eyes. At the door she blew
him a kiss from the tip of her big fur mitten, and as she went out she
heard him say in the thin, strange voice that was so unlike the old
Peter:
"Don't be long, Dolores."
She stood silently for a few moments to make sure that no one would see
her. Then she moved swiftly to the ice bridge and out into the
star-lighted ghostliness of the night. Wapi followed close behind her,
and dropping a hand to her side she called softly to him. In an instant
Wapi's muzzle was against her mitten, and his great body quivered with
joy at her direct speech to him. She saw the response in his red eyes
and stopped to stroke him with both mittened hands, and over and over
again she spoke his name. "Wapi--Wapi--Wapi." He whined. She could feel
him under her touch as if alive with an electrical force. Her eyes
shone. In the white starlight there was a new emotion in her face. She
had found a friend, the one friend she and Peter had, and it made her
braver.
At no time had she actually been afraid--for herself. It was for Peter.
And she was not afraid now. Her cheeks flushed with exertion and her
breath came quickly as she neared Blake's cabin. Twice she had made
excuses to go ashore--just because she was curious, she had said--and
she believed that she had measured up Blake pretty well. It was a case
in which her woman's intuition had failed her miserably. She was amazed
that such a man had marooned himself voluntarily on the arctic coast.
She did not, of course, understand his business--entirely. She thought
him simply a trader. And he was unlike any man aboard ship. By his
carefully clipped beard, his calm, cold manner of speech, and the
unusual correctness with which he used his words she was convinced that
at some time or another he had been part of what she mentally thought
of as "an entirely different environment."
She was right. There was a time when London and New York would have
given much to lay their hands on the man who now called himself Blake.
Dolores, excited by the conviction that Blake would help her when he
heard her story, still did not lose her caution. Rydal had given her
another twenty-four hours, and that was all. In those twenty-four hours
she must fight out their salvation, her own and Peter's. If Blake
should fail--
Fifty paces from his cabin she stopped, slipped the big fur mitten from
her right hand and unbuttoned her coat so that she could quickly and
easily reach an inside pocket in which was Peter's revolver. She smiled
just a bit grimly, as her fingers touched the cold steel. It was to be
her last resort. And she was thinking in that flash of the days "back
home" when she was counted the best revolver shot at the Piping Rock.
She could beat Peter, and Peter was good. Her fingers twined a bit
fondly about the pearl-handled thing in her pocket. The last
resort--and from the first it had given her courage to keep the truth
from Peter!
She knocked at the heavy door of the igloo cabin. Blake was still up,
and when he opened it, he stared at her in wide-eyed amazement. Wapi
hung outside when Dolores entered, and the door closed. "I know you
think it strange for me to come at this hour," she apologized, "but in
this terrible gloom I've lost all count of hours. They have no
significance for me any more. And I wanted to see you--alone."
She emphasized the word. And as she spoke, she loosened her coat and
threw back her hood, so that the glow of the lamp lit up the ruffled
mass of gold the hood had covered. She sat down without waiting for an
invitation, and Blake sat down opposite her with a narrow table between
them. Her face was flushed with cold and wind as she looked at him. Her
eyes were blue with the blue of a steady flame, and they met his own
squarely. She was not nervous. Nor was she afraid.
"Perhaps you can guess--why I have come?" she asked.
He was appraising her almost startling beauty with the lamp glow
flooding down on her. For a moment he hesitated; then he nodded,
looking at her steadily. "Yes, I think I know," he said quietly. "It's
Captain Rydal. In fact, I'm quite positive. It's an unusual situation,
you know. Have I guessed correctly?"
She nodded, drawing in her breath quickly and leaning a little toward
him, wondering how much he knew and how he had come by it.
"A very unusual situation," he repeated. "There's nothing in the world
that makes beasts out of men--most men--more quickly than an arctic
night, Mrs. Keith. And they're all beasts out there--now--all except
your husband, and he is contented because he possesses the one white
woman aboard ship. It's putting it brutally plain, but it's the truth,
isn't it? For the time being they're beasts, every man of the twenty,
and you--pardon me!--are very beautiful. Rydal wants you, and the fact
that your husband is dying--"
"He is not dying," she interrupted him fiercely. "He shall not die! If
he did--"
"Do you love him?" There was no insult in Blake's quiet voice. He asked
the question as if much depended on the answer, as if he must assure
himself of that fact.
"Love him--my Peter? Yes!"
She leaned forward eagerly, gripping her hands in front of him on the
table. She spoke swiftly, as if she must convince him before he asked
her another question. Blake's eyes did not change. They had not changed
for an instant. They were hard, and cold, and searching, unwarmed by
her beauty, by the luster of her shining hair, by the touch of her
breath as it came to him over the table.
"I have gone everywhere with him--everywhere," she began. "Peter writes
books, you know, and we have gone into all sorts of places. We love
it--both of us--this adventuring. We have been all through the country
down there," she swept a hand to the south, "on dog sledges, in canoes,
with snowshoes, and pack-trains. Then we hit on the idea of coming
north on a whaler. You know, of course, Captain Rydal planned to return
this autumn. The crew was rough, but we expected that. We expected to
put up with a lot. But even before the ice shut us in, before this
terrible night came, Rydal insulted me. I didn't dare tell Peter. I
thought I could handle Rydal, that I could keep him in his place, and I
knew that if I told Peter, he would kill the beast. And then the
ice--and this night--" She choked.
Blake's eyes, gimleting to her soul, were shot with a sudden fire as
he, too, leaned a little over the table. But his voice was unemotional
as rock. It merely stated a fact. "That's why Captain Rydal allowed
himself to be frozen in," he said. "He had plenty of time to get into
the open channels, Mrs. Keith. But he wanted you. And to get you he
knew he would have to lay over. And if he laid over, he knew that he
would get you, for many things may happen in an arctic night. It shows
the depth of the man's feelings, doesn't it? He is sacrificing a great
deal to possess you, losing a great deal of time, and money, and all
that. And when your husband dies--"
Her clenched little fist struck the table. "He won't die, I tell you!
Why do you say that?"
"Because--Rydal says he is going to die."
"Rydal--lies. Peter had a fall, and it hurt his spine so that his legs
are paralyzed. But I know what it is. If he could get away from that
ship and could have a doctor, he would be well again in two or three
months."
"But Rydal says he is going to die."
There was no mistaking the significance of Blake's words this time. Her
eyes filled with sudden horror. Then they flashed with the blue fire
again. "So--he has told you? Well, he told me the same thing today. He
didn't intend to, of course. But he was half mad, and he had been
drinking. He has given me twenty-four hours."
"In which to--surrender?"
There was no need to reply.
For the first time Blake smiled. There was something in that smile that
made her flesh creep. "Twenty-four hours is a short time," he said,
"and in this matter, Mrs. Keith, I think that you will find Captain
Rydal a man of his word. No need to ask you why you don't appeal to the
crew! Useless! But you have hope that I can help you? Is that it?"
Her heart throbbed. "That is why I have come to you, Mr. Blake. You
told me today that Fort Confidence is only a hundred and fifty miles
away and that a Northwest Mounted Police garrison is there this
winter--with a doctor. Will you help me?"
"A hundred and fifty miles, in this country, at this time of the year,
is a long distance, Mrs. Keith," reflected Blake, looking into her eyes
with a steadiness that at any other time would have been embarrassing.
"It means the McFarlane, the Lacs Delesse, and the Arctic Barren. For a
hundred miles there isn't a stick of timber. If a storm came--no man or
dog could live. It is different from the coast. Here there is shelter
everywhere." He spoke slowly, and he was thinking swiftly. "It would
take five days at thirty miles a day. And the chances are that your
husband would not stand it. One hundred and twenty hours at fifty
degrees below zero, and no fire until the fourth day. He would die."
"It would be better--for if we stay--" she stopped, unclenching her
hands slowly.
"What?" he asked.
"I shall kill Captain Rydal," she declared. "It is the only thing I can
do. Will you force me to do that, or will you help me? You have sledges
and many dogs, and we will pay. And I have judged you to be--a man."
He rose from the table, and for a moment his face was turned from her.
"You probably do not understand my position, Mrs. Keith," he said,
pacing slowly back and forth and chuckling inwardly at the shock he was
about to give her. "You see, my livelihood depends on such men as
Captain Rydal. I have already done a big business with him in bone,
oil, pelts--and Eskimo women."
Without looking at her he heard the horrified intake of her breath. It
gave him a pleasing sort of thrill, and he turned, smiling, to look
into her dead-white face. Her eyes had changed. There was no longer
hope or entreaty in them. They were simply pools of blue flame. And
she, too, rose to her feet.
"Then--I can expect--no help--from you."
"I didn't say that, Mrs. Keith. It shocks you to know that I am
responsible. But up here, you must understand the code of ethics is a
great deal different from yours. We figure that what I have done for
Rydal and his crew keeps sane men from going mad during the long months
of darkness. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to help you--and
Peter. I think I shall. But you must give me a little time in which to
consider the matter--say an hour or so. I understand that whatever is
to be done must be done quickly. If I make up my mind to take you to
Fort Confidence, we shall start within two or three hours. I shall
bring you word aboard ship. So you might return and prepare yourself
and Peter for a probable emergency."
She went out dumbly into the night, Blake seeing her to the door and
closing it after her. He was courteous in his icy way but did not offer
to escort her back to the ship. She was glad. Her heart was choking her
with hope and fear. She had measured him differently this time. And she
was afraid. She had caught a glimpse that had taken her beyond the man,
to the monster. It made her shudder. And yet what did it matter, if
Blake helped them?
She had forgotten Wapi. Now she found him again close at her side, and
she dropped a hand to his big head as she hurried back through the
pallid gloom. She spoke to him, crying out with sobbing breath what she
had not dared to reveal to Blake. For Wapi the long night had ceased to
be a hell of ghastly emptiness, and to her voice and the touch of her
hand he responded with a whine that was the whine of a white man's dog.
They had traveled two-thirds of the distance to the ship when he
stopped in his tracks and sniffed the wind that was coming from shore.
A second time he did this, and a third, and the third time Dolores
turned with him and faced the direction from which they had come. A low
growl rose in Wapi's throat, a snarl of menace with a note of warning
in it.
"What is it, Wapi?" whispered Dolores. She heard his long fangs click,
and under her hand she felt his body grow tense. "What is it?" she
repeated.
A thrill, a suspicion, shot into her heart as they went on. A fourth
time Wapi faced the shore and growled before they reached the ship.
Like shadows they went up over the ice bridge. Dolores did not enter
the cabin but drew Wapi behind it so they could not be seen. Ten
minutes, fifteen, and suddenly she caught her breath and fell down on
her knees beside Wapi, putting her arms about his gaunt shoulders. "Be
quiet," she whispered. "Be quiet."
Up out of the night came a dark and grotesque shadow. It paused below
the bridge, then it came on silently and passed almost without sound
toward the captain's quarters. It was Blake. Dolores' heart was choking
her. Her arms clutched Wapi, whispering for him to be quiet, to be
quiet. Blake disappeared, and she rose to her feet. She had come of
fighting stock. Peter was proud of that. "You slim wonderful little
thing!" he had said to her more than once. "You've a heart in that
pretty body of yours like the general's!" The general was her father,
and a fighter. She thought of Peter's words now, and the fighting blood
leaped through her veins. It was for Peter more than herself that she
was going to fight now.
She made Wapi understand that he must remain where he was. Then she
followed after Blake, followed until her ears were close to the door
behind which she could already hear Blake and Rydal talking.
Ten minutes later she returned to Wapi. Under her hood her face was as
white as the whitest star in the sky. She stood for many minutes close
to the dog, gathering her courage, marshaling her strength, preparing
herself to face Peter. He must not suspect until the last moment. She
thanked God that Wapi had caught the taint of Blake in the air, and she
was conscious of offering a prayer that God might help her and Peter.
Peter gave a cry of pleasure when the door opened and Dolores entered.
He saw Wapi crowding in, and laughed. "Pals already! I guess I needn't
have been afraid for you. What a giant of a dog!"
The instant she appeared, Dolores forced upon herself an appearance of
joyous excitement. She flung off her coat and ran to Peter, hugging his
head against her as she told him swiftly what they were going to do.
Fort Confidence was only one hundred and fifty miles away, and a
garrison of police and a doctor were there. Five days on a sledge! That
was all. And she had persuaded Blake, the trader, to help them. They
would start now, as soon as she got him ready and Blake came. She must
hurry. And she was wildly and gloriously happy, she told him. In a
little while they would be at least on the outer edge of this horrible
night, and he would be in a doctor's hands.
She was holding Peter's head so that he could not see her face, and by
the time she jumped up and he did see it, there was nothing in it to
betray the truth or the fact that she was acting a lie. First she began
to dress Peter for the trail. Every instant gave her more courage. This
helpless, sunken-cheeked man with the hair graying over his temples was
Peter, her Peter, the Peter who had watched over her, and sheltered
her, and fought for her ever since she had known him, and now had come
her chance to fight for him. The thought filled her with a wonderful
exultation. It flushed her cheeks, and put a glory into her eyes, and
made her voice tremble. How wonderful it was to love a man as she loved
Peter! It was impossible for her to see the contrast they made--Peter
with his scrubby beard, his sunken cheeks, his emaciation, and she with
her radiant, golden beauty. She was ablaze with the desire to fight.
And how proud of her Peter would be when it was all over!
She finished dressing him and began putting things in their big dunnage
sack. Her lips tightened as she made this preparation. Finally she came
to a box of revolver cartridges and emptied them into one of the
pockets of her under-jacket. Wapi flattened out near the door, watched
every movement she made.
When the dunnage sack was filled, she returned to Peter. "Won't it be a
joke on Captain Rydal!" she exulted. "You see, we aren't gong to let
him know anything about it." She appeared not to observe Peter's
surprise. "You know how I hate him, Peter dear," she went on. "He is a
beast. But Mr. Blake has done a great deal of trading with him, and he
doesn't want Captain Rydal to know the part he is taking in getting us
away. Not that Rydal would miss us, you know! I don't think he cares
very much whether you live or die, Peter, and that's why I hate him.
But we must humor Mr. Blake. He doesn't want him to know."
"Odd," mused Peter. "It's sort of--sneaking away."
His eyes had in them a searching question which Dolores tried not to
see and which she was glad he did not put into words. If she could only
fool him another hour--just one more hour.
It was less than that--half an hour after she had finished the dunnage
sack--when they heard footsteps crunching outside and then a knock at
the door. Wapi answered with a snarl, and when Dolores opened the door
and Blake entered, his eyes fell first of all on the dog.
"Attached himself, eh?" he greeted, turning his quiet, unemotional
smile on Peter. "First white woman he has ever seen, and I guess the
case is hopeless. Mrs. Keith may have him."
He turned to her. "Are you ready?"
She nodded and pointed to the dunnage sack. Then she put on her fur
coat and hood and helped Peter sit up on the edge of the bed while
Blake opened the door again and made a low signal. Instantly Uppy and
another Eskimo came in. Blake led with the sack, and the two Eskimos
carried Peter. Dolores followed last, with the fingers of one little
hand gripped about the revolver in her pocket. Wapi hugged so close to
her that she could feel his body.
On the ice was a sledge without dogs. Peter was bundled on this, and
the Eskimos pulled him. Blake was still in the lead. Twenty minutes
after leaving the ship they pulled up beside his cabin.
There were two teams ready for the trail, one of six dogs, and another
of five, each watched over by an Eskimo. The visor of Dolores' hood
kept Blake from seeing how sharply she took in the situation. Under it
her eyes were ablaze. Her bare hand gripped her revolver, and if Peter
could have heard the beating of her heart, he would have gasped. But
she was cool, for all that. Swiftly and accurately she appraised
Blake's preparations. She observed that in the six-dog team, in spite
of its numerical superiority, the animals were more powerful than those
in the five-dog team. The Eskimos placed Peter on the six-dog sledge,
and Dolores helped to wrap him up warmly in the bearskins. Their
dunnage sack was tied on at Peter's feet. Not until then did she seem
to notice the five-dog sledge. She smiled at Blake. "We must be sure
that in our excitement we haven't forgotten something," she said, going
over what was on the sledge. "This is a tent, and here are plenty of
warm bearskins--and--and--" She looked up at Blake, who was watching
her silently. "If there is no timber for so long, Mr. Blake, shouldn't
we have a big bundle of kindling? And surely we should have meat for
the dogs!"
Blake stared at her and then turned sharply on Uppy with a rattle of
Eskimo. Uppy and one of the companions made their exit instantly and in
great haste.
"The fools!" he apologized. "One has to watch them like children, Mrs.
Keith. Pardon me while I help them."
She waited until he followed Uppy into the cabin. Then, with the
remaining Eskimo staring at her in wonderment, she carried an extra
bearskin, the small tent, and a narwhal grub-sack to Peter's sledge. It
was another five minutes before Blake and the two Eskimos reappeared
with a bag of fish and a big bundle of ship-timber kindlings. Dolores
stood with a mittened hand on Peter's shoulder, and bending down, she
whispered:
"Peter, if you love me, don't mind what I'm going to say now. Don't
move, for everything is going to be all right, and if you should try to
get up or roll off the sledge, it would be so much harder for me. I
haven't even told you why we're going to Port Confidence. Now you'll
know!"
She straightened up to face Blake. She had chosen her position, and
Blake was standing clear and unshadowed in the starlight half a dozen
paces from her. She had thrust her hood back a little, inspired by her
feminine instinct to let him see her contempt for him.
"You beast!"
The words hissed hot and furious from her lips, and in that same
instant Blake found himself staring straight into the unquivering
muzzle of her revolver.
"You beast!" she repeated. "I ought to kill you. I ought to shoot you
down where you stand, for you are a cur and a coward. I know what you
have planned. I followed you when you went to Rydal's cabin a little
while ago, and I heard everything that passed between you. Listen,
Peter, and I'll tell you what these brutes were going to do with us.
You were to go with the six-dog team and I with the five, and out on
the barrens we were to become separated, you to go on and be killed
when you we're a proper distance away, and I to be brought back--to
Rydal. Do you understand, Peter dear? Isn't it splendid that we should
have forced on us like this such wonderful material for a story!"
She was gloriously unafraid now. A paean of triumph rang in her voice,
triumph, contempt, and utter fearlessness. Her mittened hand pressed on
Peter's shoulder, and before the weapon in her other hand Blake stood
as if turned into stone.
"You don't know," she said, speaking to him directly, "how near I am to
killing you. I think I shall shoot unless you have the meat and
kindlings put on Peter's sledge immediately and give Uppy
instructions--in English--to drive us to Fort Confidence. Peter and I
will both go with the six-dog sledge. Give the instructions quickly,
Mr. Blake!"
Blake, recovering from the shock she had given him, flashed back at her
his cool and cynical smile. In spite of being caught in an unpleasant
lie, he admired this golden-haired, blue-eyed slip of a woman for the
colossal bluff she was playing. "Personally, I'm sorry," he said, "but
I couldn't help it. Rydal--"
"I am sure, unless you give the instructions quickly, that I shall
shoot," she interrupted him. Her voice was so quiet that Peter was
amazed. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Keith. But--"
A flash of fire blinded him, and with the flash Blake staggered back
with a cry of pain and stood swaying unsteadily in the starlight,
clutching with one hand at an arm which hung limp and useless at his
side.
"That time, I broke your arm," said Dolores, with scarcely more
excitement than if she had made a bull's-eye on the Piping Rock range.
"If I fire again, I am quite positive that I shall kill you!"
The Eskimos had not moved. They were like three lifeless, staring
gargoyles. For another second or two Blake stood clutching at his arm.
Then he said,
"Uppy, put the dog meat and the kindlings on the big sledge--and drive
like hell for Fort Confidence!" And then, before she could stop him, he
followed up his words swiftly and furiously in Eskimo.
"Stop!"
She almost shrieked the one word of warning, and with it a second shot
burned its way through the flesh of Blake's shoulder and he went down.
The revolver turned on Uppy, and instantly he was electrified into
life. Thirty seconds later, at the head of the team, he was leading the
way out into the chaotic gloom of the night. Hovering over Peter,
riding with her hand on the gee-bar of the sledge, Dolores looked back
to see Blake staggering to his feet. He shouted after them, and what he
said was in Uppy's tongue. And this time she could not stop him.
She had forgotten Wapi. But as the night swallowed them up, she still
looked back, and through the gloom she saw a shadow coming swiftly. In
a few moments Wapi was running at the tail of the sledge. Then she
leaned over Peter and encircled his shoulders with her furry arms.
"We're off!" she cried, a breaking note of gladness in her voice.
"We're off! And, Peter dear, wasn't it perfectly thrilling!"
A few minutes later she called upon Uppy to stop the team. Then she
faced him, close to Peter, with the revolver in her hand.
"Uppy," she demanded, speaking slowly and distinctly, "what was it
Blake said to you?"
For a moment Uppy made as if to feign stupidity. The revolver covered a
spot half-way between his narrow-slit eyes.
"I shall shoot--"
Uppy gave a choking gasp. "He said--no take trail For' Con'dence--go
wrong--he come soon get you."
"Yes, he said just that." She picked her words even more slowly. "Uppy,
listen to me. If you let them come up with us--unless you get us to
Fort Confidence--I will kill you. Do you understand?"
She poked her revolver a foot nearer, and Uppy nodded emphatically. She
smiled. It was almost funny to see Uppy's understanding liven up at the
point of the gun, and she felt a thrill that tingled to her
finger-tips. The little devils of adventure were wide-awake in her,
and, smiling at Uppy, she told him to hold up the end of his driving
whip. He obeyed. The revolver flashed, and a muffled yell came from him
as he felt the shock of the bullet as it struck fairly against the butt
of his whip. In the same instant there came a snarling deep-throated
growl from Wapi. From the sledge Peter gave a cry of warning. Uppy
shrank back, and Dolores cried out sharply and put herself swiftly
between Wapi and the Eskimo. The huge dog, ready to spring, slunk back
to the end of the sledge at the command of her voice. She patted his
big head before she got on the sledge behind Peter.
There was no indecision in the manner of Uppy's going now. He struck
out swift and straight for the pale constellation of stars that hung
over Fort Confidence. It was splendid traveling. The surface of the
arctic plain was frozen solid. What little wind there was came from
behind them, and the dogs were big and fresh. Uppy ran briskly,
snapping the lash of his whip and la-looing to the dogs in the manner
of the Eskimo driver. Dolores did not wait for Peter's demand for a
further explanation of their running away and her remarkable words to
Blake. She told him. She omitted, for the sake of Peter's peace of
mind, the physical insults she had suffered at Captain Rydal's hands.
She did not tell him that Rydal had forced her into his arms a few
hours before and kissed her. What she did reveal made Peter's arms and
shoulders grow tense and he groaned in his helplessness.
"If you'd only told me!" he protested. Dolores laughed triumphantly,
with her arm about his shoulder. "I knew my dear old Peter too well for
that," she exulted. "If I had told you, what a pretty mess we'd be in
now, Peter! You would have insisted on calling Captain Rydal into our
cabin and shooting him from the bed--and then where would we have been?
Don't you think I'm handling it pretty well, Peter dear?"
Peter's reply was smothered against her hooded cheek.
He began to question her more directly now, and with his ability to
grasp at the significance of things he pointed out quickly the
tremendous hazard of their position. There were many more dogs and
other sledges at Blake's place, and it was utterly inconceivable that
Blake and Captain Rydal would permit them to reach Fort Confidence
without making every effort in their power to stop them. Once they
succeeded in placing certain facts in the hands of the Mounted Police,
both Rydal and Blake would be done for. He impressed this uncomfortable
truth on Dolores and suggested that if she could have smuggled a rifle
along in the dunnage sack it would have helped matters considerably.
For Rydal and Blake would not hesitate at shooting. For them it must be
either capture or kill--death for him, anyway, for he was the one
factor not wanted in the equation. He summed up their chances and their
danger calmly and pointedly, as he always looked at troubling things.
And Dolores felt her heart sinking within her. After all, she had not
handled the situation any too well. She almost wished she had killed
Rydal herself and called it self-defense. At least she had been
criminally negligent in not smuggling along a rifle.
"But we'll beat them out," she argued hopefully. "We've got a splendid
team, Peter, and I'll take off my coat and run behind the sledge as
much as I can. Uppy won't dare play a trick on us now, for he knows
that if I should miss him, Wapi would tear the life out of him at a
word from me. We'll win out, Peter dear. See if we don't!"
Peter hugged his thoughts to himself. He did not tell her that Blake
and Rydal would pursue with a ten- or twelve-dog team, and that there
was almost no chance at all of a straight get-away. Instead, he pulled
her head down and kissed her.
To Wapi there had come at last a response to the great yearning that
was in him. Instinct, summer and winter, had drawn him south, had
turned him always in that direction, filled with the uneasiness of the
mysterious something that was calling to him through the years of forty
generations of his kind. And now he was going south. He sensed the fact
that this journey would not end at the edge of the Arctic plain and
that he was not to hunt caribou or bear. His mental formulae
necessitated no process of reasoning. They were simple and to the point
His world had suddenly divided itself into two parts; one contained the
woman, and the other his old masters and slavery. And the woman stood
against these masters. They were her enemies as well as his own.
Experience had taught him the power and the significance of firearms,
just as it had made him understand the uses for which spears, and
harpoons, and whips were made. He had seen the woman shoot Blake, and
he had seen her ready to shoot at Uppy. Therefore he understood that
they were enemies and that all associated with them were enemies. At a
word from her he was ready to spring ahead and tear the life out of the
Eskimo driver and even out of the dogs that were pulling the sledge. It
did not take him long to comprehend that the man on the sledge was a
part of the woman.
He hung well back, twenty or thirty paces behind the sledge, and unless
Peter or the woman called to him, or the sledge stopped for some
reason, he seldom came nearer.
It took only a word from Dolores to bring him to her side.