The “Come-back”
A radiant sky was smiling down upon the forest-clad hills.
Somewhere away to the West the sun was lolling just above the
horizon. For the moment its glory was lost behind the ranging hills
with their garments of every shade of green. There was no cloud
to be seen anywhere from the purpling distance of the snow-capped
mountains in the East, to the western splendour of the summer
sunset.
Cy Liskard was squatting over a camp fire that was built just
outside his log home on the hillside. Nearby his dogs were pursuing
some evening pastime that appealed to their savage natures. Maybe
it was play, but the snarls that were so frequently accompanied by
the fierce snapping of ivory-shod jaws suggested the narrow line
dividing it from canine warfare.
His ponies were beyond the fence of a small, roughly constructed
corral, and they stood close up to it at a point most nearly
approaching the home of the man it was their life’s burden to
serve. Their shaggy heads, still rough with the remains of a winter
coat, which neglect had left clinging to them, were thrust over the
log rail. They were clearly waiting with equine patience the long
overdue attention to which they had full right.
The man disregarded their appeal; he was in a mood to disregard any
duty that might have been his. Even the claims of his own stomach
were forgotten in the consuming depths of impotent rage that were
driving him. His expressionless eyes gazed out through the smudge
of smoke which lolled heavily upon the still, fresh mountain air.
His view was over the range of his gold workings, which lay down
below upon the wide bank of the creek. But for all, his gaze was
for the thing which held him to his mountain solitude, his thought
was left all unconcerned for it.
He had returned from Beacon only that noon. The long trail had
claimed him for days, as the condition of his fleshless ponies
testified. He had driven hard and mercilessly, for there was that
behind him which impelled him in a fashion he had never known
before. But the thing which had driven him had no relation to fear,
or, if it had, his apprehension was utterly lost in the rage that
smouldered behind his pale eyes. He had driven his ponies to their
last extremity out of an almost crazy desire for speed and movement
that he might reach the security of his home for the sole purpose
of nursing his fierce desire for swift vengeance upon Ivor McLagan.
He sat with his rough hands clasped about his knees. He remained
unmoving. There was room for nothing in the mind behind his stony
stare but the fierce longing to hurt, and the method by which it
could be achieved.
He felt himself to be beyond the reach of the men of the Aurora
Clan. He felt himself free from every threatening human danger,
lost in the heart of these distant hills. As for the threat of that
which his return to Beacon might mean, he dismissed it without
a moment’s consideration. He intended to return to Beacon just
whenever it suited him. It might entail watchfulness. It would
undoubtedly entail sufficient weapons of defence. But he never
moved without these. And in the open and in the daylight fully
prepared, he knew himself to be a match for these absurdly tricked
out bunglers who sought to impress their will upon a foolish,
credulous, awed bunch of white-livered citizens.
No. It was not against the men of the Aurora Clan that his fury was
directed. He held them in contempt for all they had forced from him
an oath under threat of hanging. He knew well enough the nearness
to disaster to which he had been brought. He knew they had meant
their threat and would have hanged him out of hand had he failed to
yield his oath. Their other doings were not unknown to him. He had
heard of Bernard’s and other outrages, but the whole thing had left
him unimpressed. When men were driven to spectre-play to achieve
their ends he felt that sufficient boldness could defeat them all
the time. So these white-shirted creatures with their cedar boughs,
and rawhide hanging ropes, were dismissed from his mind leaving him
free to contemplate that other who had brought about his undoing at
the Speedway.
Ivor McLagan! Oh, he knew the man by reputation. Furthermore, he
knew the work he was engaged upon and where that work was being
done and this was the man against whom all his rage and desire for
vengeance were directed.
Once he released his clasped hands, and, reaching out one heavily
booted foot, kicked the embers of his fire together. With the
sunset the air of the mountains was chill enough. For all the man’s
toughness, for all the thick pilot cloth of his pea-jacket, and the
thick flannel he wore underneath, the chill bit harshly and forced
him to regard the life of his fire. He flung a number of logs on to
it from his near-by stack of fuel and edged closer to the leaping
blaze. Then again his arms embraced his knees, and he yielded
himself to the schemes and plans which sprang so readily to his
mind.
The wound inside his lips was still raw where McLagan’s blow
had split open the flesh against his teeth. But he needed no
reminder. He never would need reminding. The memory of that night
was indelibly fixed upon a mind which was utterly incapable of
forgetting an injury. But such evidence as still remained only
the more surely drove his headlong desire. He meant to kill Ivor
McLagan, and the only problem that presented itself to him was the
manner he should prefer for the accomplishment of his purpose.
Oh, yes. He would kill McLagan. He would have killed him at
the Speedway, or some time that night, but for the men who
had smothered him in their numbers. Well, he was beyond their
interference now. He was out in the open. There was only the open
between him and McLagan, a vast, rugged back country, where there
was no human agency to interfere between him and his vengeance.
Yes, out there they were far hidden from the rest of the world with
only the hills to fling back the death-cry he would wring from
his----
He broke off from his lusting thought. A broad beam of the dying
sun’s light drove its way through the loose arms of a woodland
bluff. It lit the ground on which he sat, and enveloped his hunched
body. He turned with all the alertness he might have displayed in
the presence of an enemy, and his expressionless eyes looked into
the blaze of light. For a moment the illusion was complete. Low
down on the horizon the sun was sinking to its final rest, and
as it passed from view it looked like a world of consuming fire
devouring the woods which lay in the path of its amazing light.
It was only for an instant that his narrowed eyes confronted the
intolerable burden of its fierce light. Then he sprang to his feet
and moved away, and his going was something almost precipitate,
headlong. In a moment he had vanished within the doorway of his
primitive home.
* * * * *
The moon was at the full of its glory. The night was no less
cloudless than had been the close of day. The sky was ablaze with
stars, but from the heart of the hills no aurora was visible.
Down on the creek below Cy Liskard’s home the world seemed severely
limited. On either hand, before and behind, the hills rose sharply
in every direction. It was overpowering, overwhelming. The sky
above was transformed into a narrow canopy, with the silver of the
moon shining directly down upon the bosom of the little creek. The
region was brilliantly lit by its ghostly light. Every detail of it
was sharply outlined, and it flung the ghostly shadows of the trees
in every direction. Then the waters of the creek, still flowing
with something of their Spring freedom, were transformed into a
perfect ribbon of silver.
Midnight was gone and the small hours were slowly growing. The
valley was full of the strange night sounds of a creature world
whose day it was. Cries came echoing down through the forest which
clothed the hillsides, and the voices of water life kept up an
incessant chorus. It was a world of Nature’s unutterable peace--and
something else.
There was movement about the banks of the creek. There was movement
amongst the gear of the gold-seeker. So, too, was it on the broad
hillside about the cabin where Cy Liskard had abandoned himself to
the blankets which nightly claimed him. It was the silent, ghostly
movement of white-robed figures. They stood out in sharp relief
under the brilliant light of the moon. They came and passed on.
They paused. They crouched, searching. They moved without haste,
or apparent fear of disturbance. And their long white gowns and
high-peaked head pieces transformed them from living humanity into
the spirits of the night.
The thing that was in progress was plain enough to read. The
white-clad figures were searching the valley of the gold workings
for information of the “strike” which the sleeping man had made.
Their movement made it impossible to estimate their numbers with
any accuracy, for the forest, reaching down to the water’s edge
in many places, hid up much of it. Possibly there were a dozen.
Possibly less. But, whatever the number, the search was utterly
exhaustive. The corral, the log hut on the hillside were not
left unexplored, and the presence of the man’s dogs only made it
something curious that no canine voice had been raised in protest.
There was not a sound to disturb the night or to give alarm to the
sleeping man. The dogs lay huddled on the ground as though in the
deepest slumber and the man slept on profoundly while the figures
moved about the interior of his quarters.
It was all curious. But there was doubtless an answer to it. These
men had travelled far and hard under the strictest orders to return
with a full report of the gold strike made by Cy Liskard. Their
report depended on a complete and uninterrupted investigation.
There were many means of accomplishing this. It would have been
simple enough to deal with the man himself. In their numbers they
could have taken him in his blankets. But perhaps they had no
desire that he should be aware of their visitation. In that case
there were other measures. Similar measures such as had doubtless
silenced the dogs. A whiff of some pungent narcotic and the sleep
of these creatures, human as well as canine, would be infallibly
prolonged.
The search went on to its conclusion. It was prolonged and
completely thorough. And when the movements of the Aurora men
ceased and their ghostly figures no longer haunted the valley, the
moon had passed from her throne in the heavens and the star-light
was already beginning to fade out. Then came darkness, utter and
complete. It was the darkness preceding dawn. And the valley of the
Lias River was given up wholly to the haunting sounds of the night.
* * * * *
Cy Liskard was ashore at a landing on the river he had made his
own. His stout canoe was lying moored to the overhanging trunk of
a tree, and it swung away at the end of its rawhide to the easy
stream. A roll of blankets lay in the bottom of it while his camp
outfit was littered upon the gravelly foreshore about his feet. It
was noon or thereabouts, and the day was overcast and threatening.
But down here on the river was the pleasant warmth of a summer day.
He was gazing out downstream, and his view was of a great expanse
of flowing water moving heavily on towards the sea. There were many
miles between him and the coast yet. The journey would run into
something approaching one hundred and more, which it would take
days to travel. But it was not the distance he had yet to go that
preoccupied him. It was not the scene set out before him with its
amazing hills and dense forests growing down to the water’s edge.
He was literally and perhaps spiritually at the parting of the ways.
Directly ahead of him a hill reared its lofty crest. It stood
up an indestructible barrier to the rushing waters hurtling on
towards the distant ocean. It had faced the fierce onslaught of the
stream throughout the ages. It had yielded nothing but the loose
soil about its rocky base. And so the waters which refused denial
to their progress had turned sharply away in face of its heroic
resistance.
Somewhere to the north of that hill he knew that another river
flowed over an almost parallel course. It was a smaller river which
owed its source to the same world of hills as that which bred
the flood of the Lias. But it was not for its proximity he was
concerned. It was not for its relation to his own. It was because,
somewhere further down its course, Ivor McLagan’s oil camp was
pitched. And Ivor McLagan was the man who had hurt and thwarted him.
Somehow the night had at first wrought a change in the almost
insane mood in which Cy Liskard had sought his blankets. He had
awakened heavily, with a feeling of unusual depression. He had
awakened without any yearning for immediate action against the man
who had hurt him. He had found himself contemplating his future
outlook without enthusiasm or deep interest, and it was not until
he had broken his fast, and perfunctorily executed the simple
chores he was accustomed to perform, that his evil spirit returned
to its full dominion.
But even then he had been incapable of rising to the pitch of
desire which had stirred him the night before. Perhaps it was the
balance of sanity reasserting itself. Perhaps it was the result of
that long, deep sleep which had robbed him of the night vision of
the movements of the men of the Aurora Clan. Whatever it was, he
decided definitely that his vengeance upon Ivor McLagan could wait.
There was all the summer for that, and meanwhile, there was urgent
work lying ahead of him in another direction. Perhaps a year more
of these solitudes and his work would be finished. Yes, in that
time he would have completed everything. And the while, McLagan
would have forgotten and lulled himself into a sense of security.
Then, at his leisure----
So he had gone about his simple preparations. He prepared his
boat down on the river. He loaded it with his camp outfit and
provisioned it. Then he turned his ponies loose to fend for
themselves on such mountain feed as they could find in his absence.
And his trail dogs he treated in similar fashion. These creatures
were subsidiary. His boat was the thing he knew and understood.
But this more temperate mood had been in the early morning. Since
then there had been hours of labour on his journey downstream.
And the work of it had lightened the dullness of his earlier
inspiration. By high noon he had been completely flung back upon
his desire for the life of the man he had encountered in Beacon.
So he stood before the great bend of the river where the angry
waters beat impotently against the foot of the mountain and raced
away to the south in search of the outlet they refused to be
denied. And all his passion for revenge was burning deep behind his
soulless eyes.
Why should he wait? Why should he deny himself? There was all
summer for the rest as well as for that other. Why not reverse the
thing? The rest could wait, far more easily wait than the vengeance
he desired. It would be better so. For just so long as Ivor McLagan
lived, he, Liskard, would never know peace of mind. What was it? At
the most a ten or twelve mile portage to the north of that hill. He
had made it before when he had looked to discover for what purpose
his neighbours were around. Yes. And the Alsek was an easy river.
He could pass down it at his leisure until he came to the oil
camp. He could cache his boat while he searched the place for the
man whose life he desired. Then, if he were not there but down at
the river mouth where he had built his crazy home on the cliffs,
he could pass on down beyond the camp in the night and stalk his
quarry.
It would be easy--so easy. There would be no need to take chances.
His rifle could do the job at his leisure. The man’s home was
perched up for long-range shots. He could remain under cover----
Yes, the rest could wait. It must wait. His desire was
overwhelming, irresistible. He would eat at once and pass over to
the landing he knew of at the foot of the mountain. The water was
turbulent enough there. There were rapids of no mean proportions
to be negotiated. But they were nothing to him--nothing this river
could show him could match his watercraft.
He moved back from the water’s edge. His decision was final. So he
prepared a fire for his noon meal.