all that, we've arranged it. Those were her letters I've been reading,
and she'll be at Prince Albert waiting for me on the 15th--three days
from now. We shall be a little late, and that's why I'm hustling so.
I've kept away from her for two years, but I can't do it any
longer--and she says that if I do she'll kill herself. So there you
have it. She's the sweetest, most beautiful girl in the whole
world--eyes the color of those blue flowers you have up here, brown
hair, and--but you've got to see her when we reach Prince Albert. You
won't blame me for doing all this, then!"
I had nothing to say. At my silence he turned toward me suddenly, with
that happy smile of his, and said again:
"I tell you that you won't blame me when you see her. You'll envy me,
and you'll call me a confounded fool for staying away so long. It has
been terribly hard for both of us. I'll wager that she's no sleepier
than I am to-night, just from knowing that I'm hurrying to her."
"You're pretty confident," I could not help sneering. "I don't believe
I'd wager much on such a woman. To be frank with you, Thornton, I don't
care to meet her, so I'll decline your invitation. I've a little wife
of my own, as true as steel, and I'd rather keep out of an affair like
this. You understand?"
"Perfectly," said Thornton, and there was not the slightest ill-humor
in his voice. "You--you think I am a cur?"
"If you have stolen another man's wife--yes."
"And the woman?"
"If she is betraying her husband, she is no better than you."
Thornton rose and stretched his long arms above his head.
"Isn't the moon glorious?" he cried exultantly. "She has never seen a
moon like that. She has never seen a world like this. Do you know what
we're going to do? We'll come up here and build a cabin, and--and
she'll know what a real man is at last! She deserves it. And we'll have
you up to visit us--you and your wife--two months out of each year. But
then"--he turned and laughed squarely into my face--"you probably won't
want your wife to know her."
"Probably not," I said, not without embarrassment.
"I don't blame you," he exclaimed, and before I could draw back he had
caught my hand and was shaking it hard in his own. "Let's be friends a
little longer, old man," he went on. "I know you'll change your mind
about the little girl and me when we reach Prince Albert."
I didn't go to sleep again that night; and the half-dozen days that
followed were unpleasant enough--for me, at least. In spite of my own
coolness toward him, there was absolutely no change in Thornton. Not
once did he make any further allusion to what he had told me.
As we drew near to our journey's end, his enthusiasm and good spirits
increased. He had the bow end of the canoe, and I had abundant
opportunity of watching him. It was impossible not to like him, even
after I knew his story.
We reached Prince Albert on a Sunday, after three days' travel in a
buckboard. When we drove up in front of the hotel, there was just one
person on the long veranda looking out over the Saskatchewan. It was a
woman, reading a book.
As he saw her, I heard a great breath heave up inside Thornton's chest.
The woman looked up, stared for a moment, and then dropped her book
with a welcoming cry such as I had never heard before in my life. She
sprang down the steps, and Thornton leaped from the wagon. They met
there a dozen paces from me, Thornton catching her in his arms, and the
woman clasping her arms about his neck.
I heard her sobbing, and I saw Thornton kissing her again and again,
and then the woman pulled his blond head down close to her face. It was
sickening, knowing what I did, and I began helping the driver to throw
off our dunnage.
In about two minutes I heard Thornton calling me.
I didn't turn my head. Then Thornton came to me, and as he straightened
me around by the shoulders I caught a glimpse of the woman. He was
right--she was very beautiful.
"I told you that her husband was a scoundrel and a rake," he said
gently. "Well, he was--and I was that scoundrel! I came up here for a
chance of redeeming myself, and your big, glorious North has made a man
of me. Will you come and meet my wife?"
THE STRENGTH OF MEN
There was the scent of battle in the air. The whole of Porcupine City
knew that it was coming, and every man and woman in its two hundred
population held their breath in anticipation of the struggle between
two men for a fortune--and a girl. For in some mysterious manner rumor
of the girl had got abroad, passing from lip to lip, until even the
children knew that there was some other thing than gold that would play
a part in the fight between Clarry O'Grady and Jan Larose. On the
surface it was not scheduled to be a fight with fists or guns. But in
Porcupine City there were a few who knew the "inner story"--the story
of the girl, as well as the gold, and those among them who feared the
law would have arbitrated in a different manner for the two men if it
had been in their power. But law is law, and the code was the code.
There was no alternative. It was an unusual situation, and yet
apparently simple of solution. Eighty miles north, as the canoe was
driven, young Jan Larose had one day staked out a rich "find" at the
headwaters of Pelican Creek. The same day, but later, Clarry O'Grady
had driven his stakes beside Jan's. It had been a race to the mining
recorder's office, and they had come in neck and neck. Popular
sentiment favored Larose, the slim, quiet, dark-eyed half Frenchman.
But there was the law, which had no sentiment. The recorder had sent an
agent north to investigate. If there were two sets of stakes there
could be but one verdict. Both claims would be thrown out, and then--
All knew what would happen, or thought that they knew. It would be a
magnificent race to see who could set out fresh stakes and return to
the recorder's office ahead of the other. It would be a fight of brawn
and brain, unless--and those few who knew the "inner story" spoke
softly among themselves.
An ox in strength, gigantic in build, with a face that for days had
worn a sneering smile of triumph, O'Grady was already picked as a
ten-to-one winner. He was a magnificent canoeman, no man in Porcupine
City could equal him for endurance, and for his bow paddle he had the
best Indian in the whole Reindeer Lake country. He stalked up and down
the one street of Porcupine City, treating to drinks, cracking rough
jokes, and offering wagers, while Jan Larose and his long-armed Cree
sat quietly in the shade of the recorder's office waiting for the final
moment to come.
There were a few of those who knew the "inner story" who saw something
besides resignation and despair in Jan's quiet aloofness, and in the
disconsolate droop of his head. His face turned a shade whiter when
O'Grady passed near, dropping insult and taunt, and looking sidewise at
him in a way that only HE could understand. But he made no retort,
though his dark eyes glowed with a fire that never quite died--unless
it was when, alone and unobserved, he took from his pocket a bit of
buckskin in which was a silken tress of curling brown hair. Then his
eyes shone with a light that was soft and luminous, and one seeing him
then would have known that it was not a dream of gold that filled his
heart, but of a brown-haired girl who had broken it.
On this day, the forenoon of the sixth since the agent had departed
into the north, the end of the tense period of waiting was expected.
Porcupine City had almost ceased to carry on the daily monotony of
business. A score were lounging about the recorder's office. Women
looked forth at frequent intervals through the open doors of the
"city's" cabins, or gathered in two and threes to discuss this biggest
sporting event ever known in the history of the town. Not a minute but
scores of anxious eyes were turned searchingly up the river, down which
the returning agent's canoe would first appear. With the dawn of this
day O'Grady had refused to drink. He was stripped to the waist. His
laugh was louder. Hatred as well as triumph glittered in his eyes, for
to-day Jan Larose looked him coolly and squarely in the face, and
nodded whenever he passed. It was almost noon when Jan spoke a few low
words to his watchful Indian and walked to the top of the cedar-capped
ridge that sheltered Porcupine City from the north winds.
From this ridge he could look straight into the north--the north where
he was born. Only the Cree knew that for five nights he had slept, or
sat awake, on the top of this ridge, with his face turned toward the
polar star, and his heart breaking with loneliness and grief. Up there,
far beyond where the green-topped forests and the sky seemed to meet,
he could see a little cabin nestling under the stars--and Marie. Always
his mind traveled back to the beginning of things, no matter how hard
he tried to forget--even to the old days of years and years ago when he
had toted the little Marie around on his back, and had crumpled her
brown curls, and had revealed to her one by one the marvelous mysteries
of the wilderness, with never a thought of the wonderful love that was
to come. A half frozen little outcast brought in from the deep snows
one day by Marie's father, he became first her playmate and
brother--and after that lived in a few swift years of paradise and
dreams. For Marie he had made of himself what he was. He had gone to
Montreal. He had learned to read and write, he worked for the Company,
he came to know the outside world, and at last the Government employed
him. This was a triumph. He could still see the glow of pride and love
in Marie's beautiful eyes when he came home after those two years in
the great city. The Government sent for him each autumn after that.
Deep into the wilderness he led the men who made the red and black
lined maps. It was he who blazed out the northern limit of Banksian
pine, and his name was in Government reports down in black and
white--so that Marie and all the world could read.
One day he came back--and he found Clarry O'Grady at the Cummins'
cabin. He had been there for a month with a broken leg. Perhaps it was
the dangerous knowledge of the power of her beauty--the woman's
instinct in her to tease with her prettiness, that led to Marie's
flirtation with O'Grady. But Jan could not understand, and she played
with fire--the fire of two hearts instead of one. The world went to
pieces under Jan after that. There came the day when, in fair fight, he
choked the taunting sneer from O'Grady's face back in the woods. He
fought like a tiger, a mad demon. No one ever knew of that fight. And
with the demon still raging in his breast he faced the girl. He could
never quite remember what he had said. But it was terrible--and came
straight from his soul. Then he went out, leaving Marie standing there
white and silent. He did not go back. He had sworn never to do that,
and during the weeks that followed it spread about that Marie Cummins
had turned down Jan Larose, and that Clarry O'Grady was now the lucky
man. It was one of the unexplained tricks of fate that had brought them
together, and had set their discovery stakes side by side on Pelican
Creek.
To-day, in spite of his smiling coolness, Jan's heart rankled with a
bitterness that seemed to be concentrated of all the dregs that had
ever entered into his life. It poisoned him, heart and soul. He was not
a coward. He was not afraid of O'Grady.
And yet he knew that fate had already played the cards against him. He
would lose. He was almost confident of that, even while he nerved
himself to fight. There was the drop of savage superstition in him, and
he told himself that something would happen to beat him out. O'Grady
had gone into the home that was almost his own and had robbed him of
Marie. In that fight in the forest he should have killed him. That
would have been justice, as he knew it. But he had relented, half for
Marie's sake, and half because he hated to take a human life, even
though it were O'Grady's. But this time there would be no relenting. He
had come alone to the top of the ridge to settle the last doubts with
himself. Whoever won out, there would be a fight. It would be a
magnificent fight, like that which his grandfather had fought and won
for the honor of a woman years and years ago. He was even glad that
O'Grady was trying to rob him of what he had searched for and found.
There would be twice the justice in killing him now. And it would be
done fairly, as his grandfather had done it.
Suddenly there came a piercing shout from the direction of the river,
followed by a wild call for him through Jackpine's moose-horn. He
answered the Cree's signal with a yell and tore down through the bush.
When he reached the foot of the ridge at the edge of the clearing he
saw the men, women and children of Porcupine City running to the river.
In front of the recorder's office stood Jackpine, bellowing through his
horn. O'Grady and his Indian were already shoving their canoe out into
the stream, and even as he looked there came a break in the line of
excited spectators, and through it hurried the agent toward the
recorder's cabin.
Side by side, Jan and his Indian ran to their canoe. Jackpine was
stripped to the waist, like O'Grady and his Chippewayan. Jan threw off
only his caribou-skin coat. His dark woolen shirt was sleeveless, and
his long slim arms, as hard as ribbed steel, were free. Half the crowd
followed him. He smiled, and waved his hand, the dark pupils of his
eyes shining big and black. Their canoe shot out until it was within a
dozen yards of the other, and those ashore saw him laugh into O'Grady's
sullen, set face. He was cool. Between smiling lips his white teeth
gleamed, and the women stared with brighter eyes and flushed cheeks,
wondering how Marie Cummins could have given up this man for the giant
hulk and drink-reddened face of his rival. Those among the men who had
wagered heavily against him felt a misgiving. There was something in
Jan's smile that was more than coolness, and it was not bravado. Even
as he smiled ashore, and spoke in low Cree to Jackpine, he felt at the
belt that he had hidden under the caribou-skin coat. There were two
sheaths there, and two knives, exactly alike. It was thus that his
grandfather had set forth one summer day to avenge a wrong, nearly
seventy years before.
The agent had entered the cabin, and now he reappeared, wiping his
sweating face with a big red handkerchief. The recorder followed. He
paused at the edge of the stream and made a megaphone of his hands.
"Gentlemen," he cried raucously, "both claims have been thrown out!"
A wild yell came from O'Grady. In a single flash four paddles struck
the water, and the two canoes shot bow and bow up the stream toward the
lake above the bend. The crowd ran even with them until the low swamp
at the lake's edge stopped them. In that distance neither had gained a
yard advantage. But there was a curious change of sentiment among those
who returned to Porcupine City. That night betting was no longer two
and three to one on O'Grady. It was even money.
For the last thing that the men of Porcupine City had seen was that
cold, quiet smile of Jan Larose, the gleam of his teeth, the something
in his eyes that is more to be feared among men than bluster and brute
strength. They laid it to confidence. None guessed that this race held
for Jan no thought of the gold at the end. None guessed that he was
following out the working of a code as old as the name of his race in
the north.
As the canoes entered the lake the smile left Jan's face. His lips
tightened until they were almost a straight line. His eyes grew darker,
his breath came more quickly. For a little while O'Grady's canoe drew
steadily ahead of them, and when Jackpine's strokes went deeper and
more powerful Jan spoke to him in Cree, and guided the canoe so that it
cut straight as an arrow in O'Grady's wake. There was an advantage in
that. It was small, but Jan counted on the cumulative results of good
generalship.
His eyes never for an instant left O'Grady's huge, naked back. Between
his knees lay his .303 rifle. He had figured on the fraction of time it
would take him to drop his paddle, pick up the gun, and fire. This was
his second point in generalship--getting the drop on O'Grady.
Once or twice in the first half hour O'Grady glanced back over his
shoulder, and it was Jan who now laughed tauntingly at the other. There
was something in that laugh that sent a chill through O'Grady. It was
as hard as steel, a sort of madman's laugh.
It was seven miles to the first portage, and there were nine in the
eighty-mile stretch. O'Grady and his Chippewayan were a hundred yards
ahead when the prow of their canoe touched shore. They were a hundred
and fifty ahead when both canoes were once more in the water on the
other side of the portage, and O'Grady sent back a hoarse shout of
triumph. Jan hunched himself a little lower. He spoke to Jackpine--and
the race began. Swifter and swifter the canoes cut through the water.
From five miles an hour to six, from six to six and a
half--seven--seven and a quarter, and then the strain told. A paddle
snapped in O'Grady's hands with a sound like a pistol shot. A dozen
seconds were lost while he snatched up a new paddle and caught the
Chippewayan's stroke, and Jan swung close into their wake again. At the
end of the fifteenth mile, where the second portage began, O'Grady was
two hundred yards in the lead. He gained another twenty on the portage
and with a breath that was coming now in sobbing swiftness Jan put
every ounce of strength behind the thrust of his paddle. Slowly they
gained. Foot by foot, yard by yard, until for a third time they cut
into O'Grady's wake. A dull pain crept into Jan's back. He felt it
slowly creeping into his shoulders and to his arms. He looked at
Jackpine and saw that he was swinging his body more and more with the
motion of his arms. And then he saw that the terrific pace set by
O'Grady was beginning to tell on the occupants of the canoe ahead. The
speed grew less and less, until it was no more than seventy yards. In
spite of the pains that were eating at his strength like swimmer's
cramp, Jan could not restrain a low cry of exultation. O'Grady had
planned to beat him out in that first twenty-mile spurt. And he had
failed! His heart leaped with new hope even while his strokes were
growing weaker.
Ahead of them, at the far end of the lake, there loomed up the black
spruce timber which marked the beginning of the third portage, thirty
miles from Porcupine City. Jan knew that he would win there--that he
would gain an eighth of a mile in the half-mile carry. He knew of a
shorter cut than that of the regular trail. He had cleared it himself,
for he had spent a whole winter on that portage trapping lynx.
Marie lived only twelve miles beyond. More than once Marie had gone
with him over the old trap line. She had helped him to plan the little
log cabin he had built for himself on the edge of the big swamp, hidden
away from all but themselves. It was she who had put the red paper
curtains over the windows, and who, one day, had written on the corner
of one of them: "My beloved Jan." He forgot O'Grady as he thought of
Marie and those old days of happiness and hope. It was Jackpine who
recalled him at last to what was happening. In amazement he saw that
O'Grady and his Chippewayan had ceased paddling. They passed a dozen
yards abreast of them. O'Grady's great arms and shoulders were
glistening with perspiration. His face was purplish. In his eyes and on
his lips was the old taunting sneer. He was panting like a wind-broken
animal. As Jan passed he uttered no word.
An eighth of a mile ahead was the point where the regular portage
began, but Jan swung around this into a shallow inlet from which his
own secret trail was cut. Not until he was ashore did he look back.
O'Grady and his Indian were paddling in a leisurely manner toward the
head of the point. For a moment it looked as though they had given up
the race, and Jan's heart leaped exultantly. O'Grady saw him and waved
his hand. Then he jumped out to his knees in the water and the
Chippewayan followed him. He shouted to Jan, and pointed down at the
canoe. The next instant, with a powerful shove, he sent the empty
birchbark speeding far out into the open water.
Jan caught his breath. He heard Jackpine's cry of amazement behind him.
Then he saw the two men start on a swift run over the portage trail,
and with a fierce, terrible cry he sprang toward his rifle, which he
had leaned against a tree.
In that moment he would have fired, but O'Grady and the Indian had
disappeared into the timber. He understood--O'Grady had tricked him, as
he had tricked him in other ways. He had a second canoe waiting for him
at the end of the portage, and perhaps others farther on. It was
unfair. He could still hear O'Grady's taunting laughter as it had rung
out in Porcupine City, and the mystery of it was solved. His blood grew
hot--so hot that his eyes burned, and his breath seemed to parch his
lips. In that short space in which he stood paralyzed and unable to act
his brain blazed like a volcano. Who--was helping O'Grady by having a
canoe ready for him at the other side of the portage? He knew that no
man had gone North from Porcupine City during those tense days of
waiting. The code which all understood had prohibited that. Who, then,
could it be?--who but Marie herself! In some way O'Grady had got word
to her, and it was the Cummins' canoe that was waiting for him!
With a strange cry Jan lifted the bow of the canoe to his shoulder and
led Jackpine in a run. His strength had returned. He did not feel the
whiplike sting of boughs that struck him across the face. He scarcely
looked at the little cabin of logs when they passed it. Deep down in
his heart he called upon the Virgin to curse those two--Marie Cummins
and Clarry O'Grady, the man and the girl who had cheated him out of
love, out of home, out of everything he had possessed, and who were
beating him now through perfidy and trickery.
His face and his hands were scratched and bleeding when they came to
the narrow waterway, half lake and half river, which let into the Blind
Loon. Another minute and they were racing again through the water. From
the mouth of the channel he saw O'Grady and the Chippewayan a quarter
of a mile ahead. Five miles beyond them was the fourth portage. It was
hidden now by a thick pall of smoke rising slowly into the clear sky.
Neither Jan nor the Indian had caught the pungent odors of burning
forests in the air, and they knew that it was a fresh fire. Never in
the years that Jan could remember had that portage been afire, and he
wondered if this was another trick of O'Grady's. The fire spread
rapidly as they advanced. It burst forth in a dozen places along the
shore of the lake, sending up huge volumes of black smoke riven by
lurid tongues of flame. O'Grady and his canoe became less and less
distinct. Finally they disappeared entirely in the lowering clouds of
the conflagration. Jan's eyes searched the water as they approached
shore, and at last he saw what he had expected to find--O'Grady's empty
canoe drifting slowly away from the beach. O'Grady and the Chippewayan
were gone.
Over that half-mile portage Jan staggered with his eyes half closed and
his breath coming in gasps. The smoke blinded him, and at times the
heat of the fire scorched his face. In several places it had crossed
the trail, and the hot embers burned through their moccasins. Once
Jackpine uttered a cry of pain. But Jan's lips were set. Then, above
the roar of the flames sweeping down upon the right of them, he caught
the low thunder of Dead Man's Whirlpool and the cataract that had made
the portage necessary. From the heated earth their feet came to a
narrow ledge of rock, worn smooth by the furred and moccasined tread of
centuries, with the chasm on one side of them and a wall of rock on the
other. Along the crest of that wall, a hundred feet above them, the
fire swept in a tornado of flame and smoke. A tree crashed behind them,
a dozen seconds too late. Then the trail widened and sloped down into
the dip that ended the portage. For an instant Jan paused to get his
bearing, and behind him Jackpine shouted a warning.