thought of it did not appall him as it had yesterday, and the day
before. There seemed to be something in the cabin now that comforted
and soothed him, something that took away a part of the loneliness that
was driving him mad. Even as he searched about him, peering into the
dark corners and at the bare walls, a word formed on his lips, and he
half smiled. It was a woman's name--Hester. And a warmth entered into
him. The pain left his head. For the first time in weeks he felt
DIFFERENT. And slowly he began to realize what had wrought the change.
He was not alone. A message had come to him from the one who was
waiting for him miles away; something that lived, and breathed, and was
as lonely as himself. It was the little mouse.
He looked about eagerly, his eyes brightening, but the mouse was gone.
He could not hear it. There seemed nothing unusual to him in the words
he spoke aloud to himself.
"I'm going to call it after the Kid," he chuckled, "I'm goin' to call
it Little Jim. I wonder if it's a girl mouse--or a boy mouse?"
He placed a pan of snow-water on the stove and began making his simple
preparations for breakfast. For the first time in many days he felt
actually hungry. And then all at once he stopped, and a low cry that
was half joy and half wonder broke from his lips. With tensely gripped
hands and eyes that shone with a strange light he stared straight at
the blank surface of the log wall--through it--and a thousand miles
away. He remembered THAT day--years ago--the scenes of which came to
him now as though they had been but yesterday. It was afternoon, in the
glorious summer, and he had gone to Hester's home. Only the day before
Hester had promised to be his wife, and he remembered how fidgety and
uneasy and yet wondrously happy he was as he sat out on the big white
veranda, waiting for her to put on her pink muslin dress, which went go
well with the gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes. And as he sat
there, Hester's maltese pet came up the steps, bringing in its jaws a
tiny, quivering brown mouse. It was playing with the almost lifeless
little creature when Hester came through the door.
He heard again the low cry that came from her lips then. In an instant
she had snatched the tiny, limp thing from between the cat's paws, and
had faced him. He was laughing at her, but the glow in her blue eyes
sobered him. "I didn't think you--would take pleasure in that, Jim,"
she said. "It's only a mouse, but it's alive, and I can feel its poor
little heart beating!"
They had saved it, and he, a little ashamed at the smallness of the
act, had gone with Hester to the barn and made a nest for it in the
hay. But the wonderful words that he remembered were these: "Perhaps
some day a little mouse will help you, Jim!" Hester had spoken
laughingly. And her words had come true!
All the time that Falkner was preparing and eating his breakfast he
watched for the mouse, but it did not appear. Then he went to the door.
It swung outward, and it took all his weight to force it open. On one
side of the cabin the snow was drifted almost to the roof. Ahead of him
he could barely make out the dark shadow of the scrub spruce forest
beyond the little clearing he had made. He could hear the spruce-tops
wailing and twisting in the storm, and the snow and wind stung his
face, and half blinded him.
It was dark--dark with that gray and maddening gloom that yesterday
would have driven him still nearer to the merge of madness. But this
morning he laughed as he listened to the wailings in the air and stared
out into the ghostly chaos. It was not the thought of his loneliness
that come to him now, but the thought that he was safe. The Law could
not reach him now, even if it knew where he was. And before it began
its hunt for him again in the spring he would be hiking southward, to
the Girl and the Baby, and it would still be hunting for him when they
three would be making a new home for themselves in some other part of
the world. For the first time in months he was almost happy. He closed
and bolted the door, and began to WHISTLE. He was amazed at the change
in himself, and wonderingly he stared at his reflection in the cracked
bit of mirror against the wall. He grinned, and addressed himself aloud.
"You need a shave," he told himself. "You'd scare fits out of anything
alive! Now that we've got company we've got to spruce up, an' look
civilized."
It took him an hour to get rid of his heavy beard. His face looked
almost boyish again. He was inspecting himself in the mirror when he
heard a sound that turned him slowly toward the table. The little mouse
was nosing about his tin plate. For a few moments Falkner watched it,
fearing to move. Then he cautiously began to approach the table. "Hello
there, old chap," he said, trying to make his voice soft and
ingratiating. "Pretty late for breakfast, ain't you?"
At his approach the mouse humped itself into a motionless ball and
watched him. To Falkner's delight it did not run away when he reached
the table and sat down. He laughed softly.
"You ain't afraid, are you?" he asked. "We're goin' to be chums, ain't
we? Yessir, we're goin' to be chums!"
For a full minute the mouse and the man looked steadily at each other.
Then the mouse moved deliberately to a crumb of bannock and began
nibbling at its breakfast.
For ten days there was only an occasional lull in the storm that came
from out of the North. Before those ten days were half over, Jim and
the mouse understood each other. The little mouse itself solved the
problem of their nearer acquaintance by running up Falkner's leg one
morning while he was at breakfast, and coolly investigating him from
the strings of his moccasin to the collar of his blue shirt. After that
it showed no fear of him, and a few days later would nestle in the
hollow of his big hand and nibble fearlessly at the bannock which
Falkner would offer it. Then Jim took to carrying it about with him in
his coat pocket. That seemed to suit the mouse immensely, and when Jim
went to bed nights, or it grew too warm for him in the cabin, he would
hang the coat over his bunk, with the mouse still in it, so that it was
not long before the little creature made up its mind to take full
possession of the pocket. It intimated as much to Falkner on the tenth
and last day of the storm, when it began very business-like operations
of building a nest of paper and rabbits' fur in the coat pocket. Jim's
heart gave a big and sudden jump of delight when he saw the work going
on.
"Bless my soul, I wonder if it's a girl mouse an' we're goin' to have
BABIES!" he gasped.
After that he did not wear the coat, through fear of disturbing the
nest. The two became more and more friendly, until finally the mouse
would sit on Jim's shoulder at meal time, and nibble at bannock. What
little trouble the mouse caused only added to Falkner's love for it.
"He's a human little cuss," he told himself one day, as he watched the
mouse busy at work caching away scraps of food, which it carried
through a crack in the sapling floor. "He's that human I've got to put
all my grab in the tin cans or we'll go short before spring!" His chief
trouble was to keep his snowshoes out of his tiny companion's reach.
The mouse had developed an unholy passion for babiche, the caribou skin
thongs used in the webs of his shoes, and one of the webs was half
eaten away before Falkner discovered what was going on. At last he was
compelled to suspend the shoes from a nail driven in one of the
roof-beams.
In the evening, when the stove glowed hot, and a cotton wick sputtered
in a pan of caribou grease on the table, Falkner's chief diversion was
to tell the mouse all about his plans, and hopes, and what had happened
in the past. He took an almost boyish pleasure in these one-sided
entertainments--and yet, after all, they were not entirely one-sided,
for the mouse would keep its bright, serious-looking little eyes on
Falkner's face; it seemed to understand, if it could not talk.
Falkner loved to tell the little fellow of the wonderful days of four
or five years ago away down in the sunny Ohio valley where he had
courted the Girl and where they lived before they moved to the farm in
Canada. He tried to impress upon Little Jim's mind what it meant for a
great big, unhandsome fellow like himself to be loved by a tender slip
of a girl whose hair was like gold and whose eyes were as blue as the
wood-violets. One evening he fumbled for a minute under his bunk and
came back to the table with a worn and finger-marked manila envelope,
from which he drew tenderly and with almost trembling care a long,
shining tress of golden hair.
"That HERS," he said proudly, placing it on the table close to the
mouse. "An' she's got so much of it you can't see her to the hips when
she takes it down; an' out in the sun it shines like--like--glory!"
The stove door crashed open, and a number of coals fell out upon the
floor. For a few minutes Falkner was busy, and when he returned to the
table he gave a gasp of astonishment. The curl and the mouse were gone!
Little Jim had almost reached its nest with its lovely burden when
Falkner captured it.
"You little cuss!" he breathed reverently. "Now I know you come from
her! I know it!"
In the weeks that followed the storm Falkner again followed his
trap-lines, and scattered poison-baits for the white foxes on the
Barren. Early in January the second great storm of that year came from
out of the North. It gave no warning, and Falkner was caught ten miles
from camp. He was making a struggle for life before he reached the
shack. He was exhausted, and half blinded. He could hardly stand on his
feet when he staggered up against his own door. He could see nothing
when he entered. He stumbled over a stool, and fell to the floor.
Before he could rise a strange weight was upon him. He made no
resistance, for the storm had driven the last ounce of strength from
his body.
"It's been a long chase, but I've got you now, Falkner," he heard a
triumphant voice say. And then came the dreaded formula, feared to the
uttermost limits of the great Northern wilderness: "I warn you! You are
my prisoner, in the name of His Majesty, the King!"
Corporal Carr, of the Royal Mounted of the Northwest, was a man without
human sympathies. He was thin faced, with a square, bony jaw, and lips
that formed a straight line. His eyes were greenish, like a cat's, and
were constantly shifting. He was a beast of prey, as much as the wolf,
the lynx, or the fox--and his prey was men. Only such a man as Carr,
alone would have braved the treacherous snows and the intense cold of
the Arctic winter to run him down. Falkner knew that, as an hour later
he looked over the roaring stove at his captor. About Carr there was
something of the unpleasant quickness, the sinuous movement, of the
little white ermine--the outlaw of the wilderness. His eyes were as
merciless. At times Falkner caught the same red glint in them. And
above his despair, the utter hopelessness of his situation, there rose
in him an intense hatred and loathing of the man.
Falkner's hands were then securely tied behind him.
"I'd put the irons on you," Carr had explained a hard, emotionless
voice, "only I lost them somewhere back there."
Beyond that he had not said a dozen words. He had built up the fire,
thawed himself out, and helped himself to food. Now, for the first
time, he loosened up a bit.
"I've had a devil of a chase," he said bitterly, a cold glitter in his
eyes as he looked at Falkner. "I've been after you three months, and
now that I've got you this accursed storm is going to hold me up! And I
left my dogs and outfit a mile back in the scrub."
"Better go after 'em," replied Falkner. "If you don't there won't be
any dogs an' outfit by morning."
Corporal Carr rose to his feet and went to the window. In a moment he
turned.
"I'll do that," he said. "Stretch yourself out on the bunk. I'll have
to lace you down pretty tight to keep you from playing a trick on me."
There was something so merciless and brutal in his eyes and voice that
Falkner felt like leaping upon him, even with his hands tied behind his
back.
He was glad, however, that Carr had decided to go. He was, filled with
an overwhelming desire to be rid of him, if only for an hour.
He went to the bunk and lay down. Corporal Carr approached, pulling a
roll of babiche cord from his pocket.
"If you don't mind you might tie my hands in front instead of behind,"
suggested Falkner. "It's goin' to be mighty unpleasant to have 'em
under me, if I've got to lay here for an hour or two."
"Not on your life I won't tie 'em in front!" snapped Carr, his little
eyes glittering. And then he gave a cackling laugh, and his eyes were
as green as a cat's. "An' it won't be half so unpleasant as having
something 'round your NECK!" he joked.
"I wish I was free," breathed Falkner, his chest heaving. "I wish we
could fight, man t' man. I'd be willing to hang then, just to have the
chance to break your neck. You ain't a man of the Law. You're a devil."
Carr laughed the sort of laugh that sends a chill up one's back, and
drew the caribou-skin cord tight about Falkner's ankles.
"Can't blame me for being a little careful," he said in his revolting
way. "By your hanging I become a Sergeant. That's my reward for running
you down."
He lighted the lamp and filled the stove before he left the cabin. From
the door he looked back at Falkner, and his face was not like a man's,
but like that of some terrible death-spirit, ghostly, and thin, and
exultant in the dim glow of the lamp. As he opened the door the roar of
the blizzard and a gust of snow filled the cabin. Then it closed, and a
groaning curse fell from Falkner's lips. He strained fiercely at the
thongs that bound him, but after the first few minutes he lay still
breathing hard, knowing that every effort he made only tightened the
caribou-skin cord that bound him.
On his back, he listened to the storm. It was filled with the same
strange cries and moaning sound that had almost driven him to madness,
and now they sent through him a shivering chill that he had not felt
before, even in the darkest and most hopeless hours of his loneliness
and despair. A breath that was almost a sob broke from his lips as a
vision of the Girl and the Kid came to shut out from his ears the
moaning tumult of the wind. A few hours before he had been filled with
hope--almost happiness, and now he was lost. From such a man as Carr
there was no hope for mercy, or of escape. Flat on his back, he closed
his eyes, and tried to think--to scheme something that might happen in
his favor, to foresee an opportunity that might give him one last
chance. And then, suddenly, he heard a sound. It traveled over the
blanket that formed a pillow for his head. A cool, soft little nose
touched his ear, and then tiny feet ran swiftly over his shoulder, and
halted on his breast. He opened his eyes, and stared.
"You little cuss!" he breathed. A hundred times he had spoken those
words, and each time they were of increasing wonder and adoration. "You
little cuss!" he whispered again, and he chuckled aloud.
The mouse was humped on his breast in that curious little ball that it
made of itself, and was eyeing him, Jim thought, in a questioning sort
of way, "What's the matter with you?" it seemed to ask. "Where are your
hands?"
And Jim answered:
"They've got me, old man. Now what the dickens are we going to do?"
The mouse began investigating. It examined his shoulder, the end of his
chin, and ran along his arm, as far as it could go.
"Now what do you think of that!" Falkner exclaimed softly. "The little
cuss is wondering where my hands are!" Gently he rolled over on his
side.
"There they are," he said, "hitched tighter 'n bark to a tree!"
He wiggled his fingers, and in a moment he felt the mouse. The little
creature ran across the opened palm of his hand to his wrist, and then
every muscle in Falkner's body grew tense, and one of the strangest
cries that ever fell from human lips came from his. The mouse had found
once more the dried hide-flesh of which the snowshoe webs were made. It
had found babiche. And it had begun TO GNAW!
In the minutes that followed Falkner scarcely breathed. He could feel
the mouse when it worked. Above the stifled beating of his heart he
could hear its tiny jaws. In those moments he knew that his last hope
of life hung in the balance. Five, ten minutes passed, and not until
then did he strain at the thongs that bound his wrists. Was that the
bed that had snapped? Or was it the breaking of one of the babiche
cords? He strained harder. The thongs were loosening; his wrists were
freer; with a cry that sent the mouse scurrying to the floor he doubled
himself half erect, and fought like a madman. Five minutes later and he
was free.
He staggered to his feet, and looked at his wrists. They were torn and
bleeding. His second thought was of Corporal Carr--and a weapon. The
man-hunter had taken the precaution to empty the chambers of Falkner's
revolver and rifle and throw his cartridges out in the snow. But his
skinning-knife was still in its sheath and belt, and he buckled it
about his waist. He had no thought of killing Carr, though he hated the
man almost to the point of murder. But his lips set in a grim smile as
he thought of what he WOULD do.
He knew that when Carr returned he would not enter at once into the
cabin. He was the sort of man who would never take an unnecessary
chance. He would go first to the little window--and look in. Falkner
turned the lamp-wick lower, and placed the lamp on the table directly
between the window and the bunk. Then he rolled his blankets into
something like a human form, and went to the window to see the effect.
The bunk was in deep shadow. From the window Corporal Carr could not
see beyond the lamp. Then Falkner waited, out of range of the window,
and close to the door.
It was not long before he heard something above the wailing of the
storm. It was the whine of a dog, and he knew that a moment later the
Corporal's ghostly face was peering in at the window. Then there came
the sudden, swift opening of the door, and Carr sprang in like a cat,
his hand on the butt of his revolver, still obeying that first
governing law of his merciless life--caution, Falkner was so near that
he could reach out and touch Carr, and in an instant he was at his
enemy's throat. Not a cry fell from Carr's lips. There was death in the
terrible grip of Falkner's hands, and like one whose neck had been
broken Carr sank to the floor. Falkner's grip tightened, and he did not
loosen it until Carr was black in the face and his jaw fell open. Then
Falkner bound him hand and foot with the babiche thongs, and dragged
him to the bunk.
Through the open door one of the sledge-dogs had thrust his head and
shoulders. It was a Barracks team, accustomed to warmth and shelter,
and Falkner had no difficulty in getting the leader and his three mates
inside. To make friends with them he fed them chunks of raw caribou
meat, and when Carr opened his eyes he was busy packing. He laughed
joyously when he saw that the man-hunter had regained consciousness,
and was staring at him with evident malice.
"Hello, Carr," he greeted affably. "Feeling better? Tables sort of
turned, ain't they?"
Carr made no answer. His white lips were set like thin bands of steel.
"I'm getting ready to leave you," Falkner explained, as he rolled up a
blanket and shoved it into his rubber pack-pouch. "And you're going to
stay here--until spring. Do you get onto that? You've GOT to stay. I'm
going to leave you marooned, so to speak. You couldn't travel a hundred
yards out there without snowshoes, and I'm goin' to take your
snowshoes. And I'm goin' to take your guns, and burn your pack, your
coat, mittens, cap, an' moccasins. Catch on? I'm not goin' to kill you,
and I'm going to leave you enough grub to last until spring, but you
won't dare risk yourself out in the cold and snow. If you do, you'll
freeze off your tootsies, and make your lungs sick. Don't you feel sort
of pleasant--you--you--devil!"
Six hours later Falkner stood outside the cabin. The dogs were in their
traces, and the sledge was packed. The storm had blown itself out, and
a warmer temperature had followed in the path of the blizzard. He wore
his coat now, and gently he felt of the bulging pocket, and laughed
joyously as he faced the South.
"It's goin' to be a long hike, you little cuss," he said softly. "It's
goin' to be a darned long hike. But we'll make it. Yessir, we'll make
it. And won't they be s'prised when we fall in on 'em, six months ahead
of time?"
He examined the pocket carefully, making sure that he had buttoned down
the flap.
"I wouldn't want to lose you," he chuckled. "Next to her, an' the kid,
I wouldn't want to lose you!"
Then, slowly, a strange smile passed over his face, and he gazed
questioningly for a moment at the pocket which he held in his hand.
"You nervy little cuss!" he grinned. "I wonder if you're a girl mouse,
an' if we're goin' to have a fam'ly on the way home! An'--an'--what the
dickens do you feed baby mice?"
He lowered the pocket, and with a sharp command to the waiting dogs
turned his face into the South.
THE END