I
Between Conniston, of His Majesty's Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and
Keith, the outlaw, there was a striking physical and facial
resemblance. Both had observed it, of course. It gave them a sort of
confidence in each other. Between them it hovered in a subtle and
unanalyzed presence that was constantly suggesting to Conniston a line
of action that would have made him a traitor to his oath of duty. For
nearly a month he had crushed down the whispered temptings of this
thing between them. He represented the law. He was the law. For
twenty-seven months he had followed Keith, and always there had been in
his mind that parting injunction of the splendid service of which he
was a part--"Don't come back until you get your man, dead or alive."
Otherwise--
A racking cough split in upon his thoughts. He sat up on the edge of
the cot, and at the gasping cry of pain that came with the red stain of
blood on his lips Keith went to him and with a strong arm supported his
shoulders. He said nothing, and after a moment Conniston wiped the
stain away and laughed softly, even before the shadow of pain had faded
from his eyes. One of his hands rested on a wrist that still bore the
ring-mark of a handcuff. The sight of it brought him back to grim
reality. After all, fate was playing whimsically as well as tragically
with their destinies.
"Thanks, old top," he said. "Thanks."
His fingers closed over the manacle-marked wrist.
Over their heads the arctic storm was crashing in a mighty fury, as if
striving to beat down the little cabin that had dared to rear itself in
the dun-gray emptiness at the top of the world, eight hundred miles
from civilization. There were curious waitings, strange screeching
sounds, and heart-breaking meanings in its strife, and when at last its
passion died away and there followed a strange quiet, the two men could
feel the frozen earth under their feet shiver with the rumbling
reverberations of the crashing and breaking fields of ice out in
Hudson's Bay. With it came a dull and steady roar, like the incessant
rumble of a far battle, broken now and then--when an ice mountain split
asunder--with a report like that of a sixteen-inch gun. Down through
the Roes Welcome into Hudson's Bay countless billions of tons of ice
were rending their way like Hunnish armies in the break-up.
"You'd better lie down," suggested Keith.
Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his feet and went to a table on
which a seal-oil lamp was burning. He swayed a little as he walked. He
sat down, and Keith seated himself opposite him. Between them lay a
worn deck of cards. As Conniston fumbled them in his fingers, he looked
straight across at Keith and grinned.
"It's queer, devilish queer," he said.
"Don't you think so, Keith?" He was an Englishman, and his blue eyes
shone with a grim, cold humor. "And funny," he added.
"Queer, but not funny," partly agreed Keith.
"Yes, it is funny," maintained Conniston. "Just twenty-seven months
ago, lacking three days, I was sent out to get you, Keith. I was told
to bring you in dead or alive--and at the end of the twenty-sixth month
I got you, alive. And as a sporting proposition you deserve a hundred
years of life instead of the noose, Keith, for you led me a chase that
took me through seven different kinds of hell before I landed you. I
froze, and I starved, and I drowned. I haven't seen a white woman's
face in eighteen months. It was terrible. But I beat you at last.
That's the jolly good part of it, Keith--I beat you and GOT you, and
there's the proof of it on your wrists this minute. I won. Do you
concede that? You must be fair, old top, because this is the last big
game I'll ever play." There was a break, a yearning that was almost
plaintive, in his voice.
Keith nodded. "You won," he said.
"You won so square that when the frost got your lung--"
"You didn't take advantage of me," interrupted Conniston. "That's the
funny part of it, Keith. That's where the humor comes in. I had you all
tied up and scheduled for the hangman when--bing!--along comes a cold
snap that bites a corner of my lung, and the tables are turned. And
instead of doing to me as I was going to do to you, instead of killing
me or making your getaway while I was helpless--Keith--old pal--YOU'VE
TRIED TO NURSE ME BACK TO LIFE! Isn't that funny? Could anything be
funnier?"
He reached a hand across the table and gripped Keith's. And then, for a
few moments, he bowed his head while his body was convulsed by another
racking cough. Keith sensed the pain of it in the convulsive clutching
of Conniston's fingers about his own. When Conniston raised his face,
the red stain was on his lips again.
"You see, I've got it figured out to the day," he went on, wiping away
the stain with a cloth already dyed red. "This is Thursday. I won't see
another Sunday. It'll come Friday night or some time Saturday. I've
seen this frosted lung business a dozen times. Understand? I've got two
sure days ahead of me, possibly a third. Then you'll have to dig a hole
and bury me. After that you will no longer be held by the word of honor
you gave me when I slipped off your manacles. And I'm asking you--WHAT
ARE YOU GOING TO DO?"
In Keith's face were written deeply the lines of suffering and of
tragedy. Yesterday they had compared ages.
He was thirty-eight, only a little younger than the man who had run him
down and who in the hour of his achievement was dying. They had not put
the fact plainly before. It had been a matter of some little
embarrassment for Keith, who at another time had found it easier to
kill a man than to tell this man that he was going to die. Now that
Conniston had measured his own span definitely and with most amazing
coolness, a load was lifted from Keith's shoulders. Over the table they
looked into each other's eyes, and this time it was Keith's fingers
that tightened about Conniston's. They looked like brothers in the
sickly glow of the seal-oil lamp.
"What are you going to do?" repeated Conniston.
Keith's face aged even as the dying Englishman stared at him. "I
suppose--I'll go back," he said heavily.
"You mean to Coronation Gulf? You'll return to that stinking mess of
Eskimo igloos? If you do, you'll go mad!"
"I expect to," said Keith. "But it's the only thing left. You know
that. You of all men must know how they've hunted me. If I went south--"
It was Conniston's turn to nod his head, slowly and thoughtfully. "Yes,
of course," he agreed. "They're hunting you hard, and you're giving 'em
a bully chase. But they'll get you, even up there. And I'm--sorry."
Their hands unclasped. Conniston filled his pipe and lighted it. Keith
noticed that he held the lighted taper without a tremor. The nerve of
the man was magnificent.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I--like you. Do you know, Keith, I wish
we'd been born brothers and you hadn't killed a man. That night I
slipped the ring-dogs on you I felt almost like a devil. I wouldn't say
it if it wasn't for this bally lung. But what's the use of keeping it
back now? It doesn't seem fair to keep a man up in that place for three
years, running from hole to hole like a rat, and then take him down for
a hanging. I know it isn't fair in your case. I feel it. I don't mean
to be inquisitive, old chap, but I'm not believing Departmental 'facts'
any more. I'd make a topping good wager you're not the sort they make
you out. And so I'd like to know--just why--you killed Judge Kirkstone?"
Keith's two fists knotted in the center of the table. Conniston saw his
blue eyes darken for an instant with a savage fire. In that moment
there came a strange silence over the cabin, and in that silence the
incessant and maddening yapping of the little white foxes rose shrilly
over the distant booming and rumbling of the ice.