KEEKO RETURNS HOME
Keeko had beaten the winter where Marcel had failed. But then Keeko's
journey had been southward towards the sun, where the forest sheltered,
and the river pursued a deep-cut course to the westward of the great
hills supporting the wind-swept plateau of Unaga.
For all these easier conditions, however, the journey was a hard beat up
against the sluggish flow of the river. It permitted no relaxation, and
only a minimum of rest. Then the portages up the rapids had been
rendered doubly laborious by reason of cargoes such as the girl and her
Indians had never been called upon to deal with before.
It should have been a happy enough journey. Was it not in the nature of
a procession of great triumph? Had not Keeko's summer labours been
crowned far beyond her dreams? Surely this was so. The ardent little
feminine scheme, worked out on a sick bed, and executed with great
strength and courage had been brought to a complete and successful
issue. Oh, yes. The shadows which had threatened Keeko's future had been
completely confounded. She knew beyond a doubt that she was independent,
as her mother desired her to be. When the moment came she knew she was
in the privileged position of being free to cut the bonds which had
hitherto held her to the man whose brutality was surely enough driving
her suffering mother to the grave.
But depression weighed the girl down. Look forward as she might, hope
would not rise at her bidding. Marcel had been snatched out of her life
like a shadowy dream, and the future offered her little enough comfort.
Then there was her mother, and all that might have happened at the post
in her long absence.
It was in such a mood that she emerged into the horseshoe loop of the
river and beheld the dark walls of the old Fort Duggan. Her pretty face
and serious eyes reflected her feelings as she piloted her boat towards
the landing in the cold, crisp air of the brief daylight. Furthermore it
was with no easing of her mood that she beheld the figure of her
step-father on the landing awaiting her approach.
Just for a moment she wondered. Just for a moment she asked herself if
he had had warning from some stray Shaunekuk of her coming. She realized
a spasm of fear that perhaps prying eyes had witnessed her caching of
the great bulk of her furs, that part which represented her own personal
fortune. But the fear passed. It could not be so. Her plans had been
laid and executed far too carefully.
So she coldly awaited the man's greeting.
It came. And its tone was unusually modulated. It was almost gentle. The
man's eyes were a reflection of his tone as he gazed down at her. The
effect was startling, and a light of wonder crept into Keeko's eyes as
she looked up into the bloated face with its beard and general air of
brutishness.
"You've cut it fine, Keeko," he said, with a swift, calculating glance
at the sky. "I was getting well-nigh scared. We'll be snowed under right
away." Then he drew a deep breath as of relief. "I'm glad you got to
home."
Keeko had her part to play and she never hesitated.
"I was held up, but--I've had a good catch," she said, without
enthusiasm. She pointed at the bale of pelts in her canoe. "They're
silver fox. There's two more bales in the other boat. Guess Lorson
Harris'll hand you a thousand dollars."
"Silver fox?" The man's eyes lit with cupidity. For a moment his
seriousness passed out of them. "Why, that's great! You haven't got
beyond grey fox and beaver ever before. It was a new territory?"
Keeko nodded. She was yearning to ask one question. One question only.
But she knew the value of her success with this creature whom she could
not yet openly defy.
"Yes. It was that held me up. I made farther down the river. Right to
its mouth. It's a great fox country. Next year----"
But Nicol was unable to restrain his impatience. He turned to Little One
Man.
"Haul 'em ashore an' open 'em out. We need to see the quality."
Little One Man looked at Keeko.
The girl nodded at once. Nicol saw the look and understood, and, for a
moment, his eyes flashed with that ungovernable temper which was part of
him. But the danger passed as swiftly as it came. Little One Man had
flung the bundle ashore as Keeko stepped from the boat, and, in another
moment, Nicol's sheath knife was ripping the thongs of rawhide which
held it.
Keeko stood looking on watching the man's hands as he ran his fingers
through the silken mass. He caressed the steely blue fur with the
appreciation of a real pelt hunter, and presently stood up with a look
in his eyes such as Keeko had never before beheld.
"How many?" he demanded.
"Sixty."
Nicol blew a faint whistle of astonished delight.
"You said a thousand dollars," he exclaimed. "Lorson Harris'll need to
pay more than sixteen dollars for those pelts. We'll need twenty. Say,
gal, you've done well. You surely have."
Keeko desired none of his praise. One thought only was in her mind. Up
to that moment she had been playing the game she knew to be necessary.
Now she reckoned she could safely abandon tactics in favour of her own
desire.
"How's--mother?" she demanded.
Nicol stood up. His movement was a little precipitate. Nevertheless a
moment passed before he withdrew his gaze from the treasure he coveted.
When he finally did so it was not to look in the girl's direction. He
was gazing out at the forest backing the fort.
Keeko became impatient. She was alarmed, too.
"How is she?" she cried urgently.
Nicol shook his head. He turned to the waiting Indians.
"We'll have them up at the store, and fix 'em ready for transport," he
ordered. Then he sought to take the girl's arm while his hard eyes
assumed a regret that utterly ill-suited them. "Come along up to the
fort while I tell you."
But Keeko avoided him. Panic had seized her.
"No," she cried, in a tone she rarely permitted herself. "Tell me
here--right now. Is--is she dead?"
She would take no denial. There was something in her clear, fearless
eyes finely compelling. The man nodded.
"Dead?"
The girl spoke in a low, heart-broken whisper. She had forgotten the
man. Dead! Her mother was dead. That poor suffering creature who had
clung so long to life in her frantic desire to safeguard her child.
Dead! And she would never know the success of the plans she had laboured
so ardently to work out.
Stunning as was the blow Keeko promptly reacted.
"When did she die?" she demanded, in a tone that no longer needed
disguise.
"I'd say a month after you quit."
"And where--where's she buried?"
The man nodded in the direction of the woods at the back of the fort.
"Back there," he said. Then his manner became urgent. "Say, once we saw
the end was coming ther' wasn't a thing left undone to make her easy.
Lu-cana'll tell you that. We sat with her the whole time, and did all we
knew. And we buried her deep down wher' the wolves couldn't reach her,
and I set up a cross I fixed myself, and cut her name deep on it so
it'll take years to lose."
Keeko recognized a sort of defence in the man's words and in his manner.
It seemed to be his paramount purpose. She saw in him not a sign of real
sorrow, real regret. Contempt and bitterness rose and robbed her of all
discretion.
"When you saw the end coming!" she replied scornfully.
But Nicol ignored the tone.
"Yes," he said deliberately. "She didn't go short of a thing we could
do--Lu-cana and me. We did our best-I don't guess you could have done a
thing more. Will you come along up, an'--I'll show you."
"No!"
The reply was fierce. Keeko was at the extremity of restraint. She could
no longer endure the man's presence. She could no longer listen to him.
"There's the pelts," she cried, pointing. "See to them. That's your
work." Then she looked him squarely in the eyes. "The other is for
me--alone."
Nicol submitted. He had no alternative. And Keeko hurried away up to the
fort.
* * * * *
There was unutterable grief in Keeko's attitude. At her feet lay the
low, long mound which marked her mother's grave. Beyond, at the head of
it, was a rough wooden cross, hewn from stout logs of spruce. And deeply
cut on the cross-bar was her mother's name prefixed by words of
endearment. Just behind the girl stood the heavily blanketed figure of
Lu-cana, whose eyes were shadowed by a grief which her lips lacked the
power to express.
All about them reigned the living silence of the forest with its threat
of hidden dangers. It was a silence where the breaking of a twig, the
rustle of the soft, rotting vegetation, inches deep upon the ground,
might indicate the prowling approach of famished wolf or scavenging
coyote, the stealing of wildcat or even of the deadly puma.
The minutes passed as the two women stood voicelessly at the grave side.
That which was passing in their minds was their own. Both, in their
different fashions, had loved the woman laid so deep in the ground at
their feet. And both knew, and perfectly understood, the life she had
endured at the hands of the man who had set up the monument to her
memory.
After a long time Keeko stirred. She drew a deep breath. It was the sign
of passing from thought to activity. She turned to the woman behind her.
"How did she die, Lu-cana?" she asked, in a low voice.
Lu-cana drew near. She spoke in a tone as if in fear of being
overheard. And as she spoke she looked this way and that.
"She weep--weep all time when you go," she said brokenly. "She big with
much fear. Oh, yes. She scare all to death. So. Days come--she live. She
not eat. Oh, no. Days come many. An' all time she weep inside. She not
speak. No. Her eye--it all time look around. Oh, much fear. Then one day
she not wake. She die all up."
"And he?"
"Oh, him come all time. Him sit and mak' talk to her. I not know. Only
him talk. Him go--she weep. Him go--she watch all scare. So it come she
die all up."
Keeko pointed at the cross at the head of the grave.
"He set that up? Yes?"
"Him mak' him totem."
Keeko stood staring at the cross for some moments. Then she moved over
to it and grasped it. It stirred in its setting. Then she left it, and
returned to Lu-cana.
"He dared to set that up," she cried bitterly. "'In loving memory.'" She
read the words before the name of her mother. "He dared to set
up--that?"
Her eyes shone with a fierce light as she turned and looked into the
squaw's face.
"Yes. Him set 'em up."
Lu-cana failed to understand that which lay at the back of Keeko's eyes.
She could not read the words on the totem. She did not know their
meaning when she heard them. All she knew was that the white man had
done this thing.
Keeko pointed at it.
"Guess I'll make a new--totem," she said, in a tone that was only cold
and hard. "And we'll set it up. You and me, Lu-cana. And that one--that
one," she repeated with bitter emphasis, "we'll break it, we'll smash
it, and we'll burn it in the cook stove till there's nothing left."
* * * * *
Keeko remained for two months at the fort. And the length of her stay
was the result of careful calculation, and the necessity which her final
break from association with her step-father demanded. Then, too, there
was the season to consider. Before she set out on her journey to Seal
Bay the fierce winter of Unaga must have completely closed down. No
storm or cold had terror for her. All she required was the
case-hardening of the world, which would leave an iron surface upon
which the dog trains could travel.
During those two months the force of Keeko's character developed with
giant strides. She was alone, utterly alone. Her whole life depended
upon her own powers to carry out the plans which had seemed almost
simple while her mother was still alive. Now everything had suddenly
changed. Inevitably, had there been a shadow of weakness in the girl it
must have found her out, and tripped her into some pitfall, floundering.
But there was no such weakness.
From the first moment the enormous change wrought by her mother's death
left her keenly understanding. Until the final break, her step-father
must be humoured, conciliated. The thought was humiliating, but
necessity urged. And she accepted the inevitable with simple courage.
Well enough was she aware of the danger in which she stood, and further
the danger in which her required course placed her.
Had she known all that lay in the man's ruthless heart, had she been
present at her mother's bedside, and listened to those talks which
Lu-cana had told her of, had she had less youth and courage and a
deeper understanding of the realities of life, it is likely that panic
would have sent her fleeing headlong from a presence that filled her
with nothing but loathing. But she had been spared all this knowledge,
and Nicol saw to it that nothing should startle her, nothing should
excite her distrust until, in the fulness of time, his purposes had
fully ripened.
As it was he accepted the position which Keeko had created. He played
his part as she played hers. And right up to the very last moment before
the girl's departure for Seal Bay nothing was permitted to disturb the
harmony between them.
The man gave her farewell and received the girl's calm response. He
watched her Indians break out the two sleds on the bitterly frosted
trail. He heard her sharp tones echoing through the still air as she
gave the order to "mush." And all the while he stood smiling, while his
eyes followed every movement of the girl's graceful, fur-clad body with
the insensate lust of an animal.
Robbed of all suspicion Keeko went forth with a heart high with hope.
Away out lay her cache of priceless furs to be picked up within the next
few hours. All the great plan which she and her mother had so carefully
prepared looked to be reaching fulfilment. She had only to sell her furs
and return and pay over her step-father's due. It would be springtime
then.
All her mind and heart turned to Marcel. Yes. He would be there. Far
away up the river where the old grey skull of the moose was watching for
her coming. And then--and then--But imagination carried her no further.
She was left longing only for that moment to come.
Nicol remained only long enough to see the runners of the hindmost sled
vanish in a flurry of powdered snow round the limits of a woodland
bluff. Then he turned back to the dark old fort, and the mask under
which he had so carefully concealed himself fell away. Straightway he
returned to his store to flood his senses with the raw spirit which
alone made his degenerate life tolerable.
* * * * *
Winter was howling about the old fort. Drifts were piled feet deep
against every obstruction that stood in the way of the driving snow. The
fort was closed up. Every habitation was made fast against the onslaught
of the elements Life was unstirring.
Far out in the woods bayed the fierce, famished timber wolf. The lighter
but more doleful howl of coyote seemed to reply from every point of the
compass. And amidst the rack of savage chorus came the harsh human voice
that had little the better of the animal world in the pleasing quality
of its note.
A train of three dogs hauling a light sled broke from the shadows of the
forest. A single human figure on snow-shoes laboured along beside it. It
was a figure entirely unrecognizable, except that it was human.
There was no pause, no uncertainty. The train came on and halted at a
word of command at the doorway of the fort. In a moment the human figure
was beating with its fur-mitted fists upon the door that had weathered
the ages of storm.
The door was flung wide from within, and the blear eyes of Nicol peered
out into the night-light. In a moment an exclamation of recognition
broke from him.
"Alroy!" he cried. "'Tough' Alroy!" Then something of gladness at the
prospect of companionship lit his eyes with a happier light. "Say, come
right in," he invited, almost boisterously. "I'll send along some neches
to see to your darn train."
Tough needed no second invitation. He smelt warmth, rest, and there was
the promise in his mind of a good "souse." For the time he had had
enough of Unaga. He had had enough of his employer, Lorson Harris. He
had had enough of snow and ice, and the merciless cold of the twilit
trail. God! but he was glad to leave it all behind him for the warmth of
Nicol's store, and the raw spirit he knew was to be found there in
generous quantities.
Half an hour later, divested of his furs, clad only in rough buckskin
and pea-jacket, with feet encased in thick reindeer moccasins, Tough sat
over the trader's stove with a pannikin of evil smelling rye whisky in
his hand.
"Guess I've driven through hell an' damnation to git your darn report,"
he said, his wicked eyes beaming across the stove at his host on the far
side of it.
"Lorson's blasted orders?"
"You mean blasted Lorson's orders!"
"Amen--or any other old chorus--to that," returned Nicol, with a gleam
of brooding hate in his dark eyes. "Say, that swine has got all us
fellers by the back o' the neck, and he twists us this way and that as
he darn pleases, till we're well-nigh crazy. I'd give half a life to cut
it--to make a break that would quit me of it all. But----"
"You're scared," Tough laughed, as he gulped at his spirit. "Guess we
all are." Then he added as an after-thought: "I wonder. I don't know I
would if--I dared. He's tough. He'd beat a dead man to pieces if he felt
that way. He's plumb to the neck in work that 'ud shame a black, but he
pays good for the doin' of it. And he reckons to pay you mighty well, if
you put this thing through right. Best hand me your news. He don't want
it wrote out."
Nicol leant back in his chair, and thrust his feet on the rail of the
stove.
"No, he don't fancy a thing wrote out," he said. "And anyway I'm writin'
out nothing for Lorson Harris. He's got one piece of my paper, and I
guess that's mostly why I'm here."
"And your summer trip?"
Tough recalled his host to the business in hand. He did it amiably,
almost pleasantly, but such things were entirely upon the surface. Tough
Alroy was Lorson's most trusted agent.
Nicol shook his head.
"Guess I didn't do all I figured to," he said. "You see, my fool woman
took on and died. It cut the season short. But I located ther's a fort
way out more than three hundred miles north-east of this lousy hole.
Yes, it's more than three hundred miles north-east. Might be even four
hundred. And there are folks running it. White folks. Three of my
Shaunekuk boys got it dead pat. They ran into an outfit of queer sort of
Eskimo pelt hunters. They were hunting the territory away north, up
along this darn river. And they came from that post to the north-east.
They said they were part of an outfit run by a feller named Brand. He
was one of the white men running that post. They said these folk traded
with Seal Bay. It was a big piece of luck. You see, the Shaunekuk never
go into Unaga proper. They're scared to death of it. They make the
forests along this river, that's all. Well, this outfit of queer Eskimo
haven't ever been seen along this territory before. So you see I might
have saved myself one hell of a rush trip that only took me to a place
where I got a sight of a mighty tough looking hill, all smoke and fire.
The three neches were out on their own and had their yarn waiting on me
when I got back. That's my yarn, and all there is to it. Guess it's what
Lorson Harris needs--until we make that fort, itself, for him."
Tough nodded. His wicked black eyes were serious, and, in their
seriousness, were never more wicked.
"It'll do," he said. "Sure, it'll do. Guess it's a rough map of the
trail we're chasing. But it's only the beginning. See, and listen close.
Lorson Harris don't care a curse for the trade you make here with these
fool neches. You ain't here for that, whatever you happen to think.
You're here to make that trail. You're here to make that fort. And when
you've made it, it's up to you to get possession of it. See? Lorson
Harris means to bring that post right into his grip. There's a reason. A
hell of a reason. It's so big he's ready to dope out a hundred thousand
dollars to the man who can blot out the fellers trading there, and grab
their trade. He reckons you're the man to do it. Well?"
Tough was leaning forward. His manner was deadly earnest and intended to
impress. His keen black eyes stared hard into the bloated features of
the man beyond the stove. He waited, watchful, alert.
"A hundred thousand dollars!"
Nicol's astonishment was without feigning. Suddenly he bestirred
himself. He felt there must be some trick in it all.
"Would I need to--remain buried alive there?" he demanded.
Tough shook his head.
"Get possession of that place, that trade. Out those folks running the
trade, and Lorson'll hand you one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and
you'll be quit of the North if it suits you that way. You'll be quit of
Lorson Harris, too. Well?"
"Gee!" Nicol passed a moist palm across his forehead.
"It's a swell proposition!"
"It's a hell of a proposition!"
"Well? You need to say right now. I don't need to remind you of Lorson
Harris."
"God curse Lorson Harris!"
"Just so."
Tough was unrelenting in his pressure upon his victim. Lorson Harris
chose his agents well.
Suddenly Nicol flung out his hands in a furious gesture.
"God's hell light on him! Yes," he cried, with eyes aflame, and his
ungovernable temper surging. "I'll put his filthy work through. But when
I've done it he'll need to hand me that hundred thousand dollars in cash
right here before he learns a darn thing of the place he's yearning to
grab. Get me? He reckons that he's got the drop on me. Well, maybe he
has. But he don't get my tongue wagging till I get the cash pappy. Savee
that, and savee it good!"
"But you'll do it?"
"That's what I've been shouting at you."
"Good. Now listen, and I'll pass you the rest of Lorson's message."
Tough emptied his pannikin to the dregs, and, leaning back in his chair,
beamed across at the man he knew to be at the mercy of Lorson Harris.
There was no feeling, no sympathy in him. He cared not one jot for
anyone in the world but himself, and his standing with the man who paid
for his services.