Bert Cranston waited in a clump of exposed thicket on the hillside until
he saw two black dots, that he knew were Dan and Snowbird, leave the
Lennox home. He lay very still as they circled up the ridge, noticing
that except for the pistol that he knew Snowbird always carried, they
were unarmed. There was no particular reason why he should be interested
in that point. It was just the mountain way always to look for weapons,
and it is rather difficult to trace the mental processes behind this
impulse. Perhaps it can be laid to the fact that many mountain families
are often at feud with one another, and anything in the way of violence
may happen before the morning.
The two passed out of his sight, and after a long time he heard the
crack of Snowbird's pistol. He guessed that she had either shot at some
wild creature, or else was merely at target practice,--rather a common
proceeding for the two when they were on the hills together. Thus it is
to be seen that Cranston knew their habits fairly well. And since he had
kept a close watch upon them for several days, this was to be expected.
He had no intention of being interrupted in this work he was about to
do. He had planned it all very well. At first the intermittent
snow-storms and the thaws between had delayed him. He needed a perfect
snow crust for the long tramp over the ridge; and at last the bright
days and the icy dawns had made it. The elder Lennox was still helpless.
He had noticed that when Dan and Snowbird went out, they were usually
gone from two to four hours; and that gave him plenty of time for his
undertaking. The moment had come at last to make a thorough search of
Lennox's house for those incriminating documents that Dan had found near
the body of Landy Hildreth.
The only really dangerous part of his undertaking was his approach. If
by any chance Lennox were looking out of the window, he might be found
waiting with a rifle across his arms. It would be quite like the old
mountaineer to have his gun beside him, and to shoot it quick and
exceptionally straight, without asking questions, at any stealing figure
in the snow. Yet Cranston felt fairly sure that Lennox was still too
helpless to raise a gun to a shooting position.
He had observed that the mountaineer spent his time either on the
fireplace divan or on his own bed. Neither of these places was available
to the rear windows of the house. So, very wisely, he made his attack
from the rear.
He came stealing across the snow,--a musher of the first degree. Very
silently and swiftly he slipped off his snowshoes at the door. The door
itself was unlocked, just as he had supposed. In an instant more he was
tiptoeing, a dark, silent figure, through the corridors of the house. He
held his rifle ready in his hands.
He peered into Lennox's bedroom first. The room was unoccupied. Then the
floor of the corridor creaked beneath his step; and he knew nothing
further was to be gained by waiting. If Lennox suspected his presence,
he might be waiting with aimed rifle as he opened the door of the living
room.
He glided faster. He halted once more,--a moment at the living-room door
to see if Lennox had been disturbed. He was lying still, however, so
Cranston pushed through.
Lennox glanced up from his magazine to find that unmistakable thing, the
barrel of a rifle, pointed at his breast. Cranston was one of those
rare marksmen who shoots with both eyes open,--and that meant that he
kept his full visual powers to the last instant before the hammer fell.
"I can't raise my arms," Lennox said simply. "One of 'em won't work at
all--besides, against the doctor's orders."
Cranston stole over toward him, looking closely for weapons. He pulled
aside the woolen blanket that Lennox had drawn up over his body, and he
pushed his hand into the cushions of the couch. A few deft pats, holding
his rifle through the fork of his arm, finger coiled into the trigger
guard, assured him that Lennox was not "heeled" at all. Then he laughed
and went to work.
"I thought I told you once," Lennox began with perfect coldness, "that
the doors of my house were no longer open to you."
"You did say that," was Cranston's guttural reply. "But you see I'm here
just the same, don't you? And what are you going to do about it?"
"I probably felt that sooner or later you would come to steal--just as
you and your crowd stole the supplies from the forest station last
winter--and that probably influenced me to give the orders. I didn't
want thieves around my house, and I don't want them now. I don't want
coyotes, either."
"And I don't want any such remarks out of you, either," Cranston
answered him. "You lie still and shut up, and I suspect that sissy
boarder of yours will come back, after he's through embracing your
daughter in the snow, and find you in one piece. Otherwise not."
"If I were in one piece," Lennox answered him very quietly, "instead of
a bundle of broken bones that can't lift its arms, I'd get up off this
couch, unarmed as I am, and stamp on your lying lips."
But Cranston only laughed and tied Lennox's feet with a cord from the
window shade.
* * * * *
He went to work very systematically. First he rifled Lennox's desk in
the living room. Then he looked on all the mantels and ransacked the
cupboards and the drawers. He was taunting and calm at first. But as the
moments passed, his passion grew upon him. He no longer smiled. The
rodent features became intent; the eyes narrowed to curious, bright
slits under the dark lashes. He went to Dan's room, searched his bureau
drawer and all the pockets of the clothes hanging in his closet. He
upset his trunk and pawed among old letters in the suitcase. Then,
stealing like some creature of the wilderness, he came back to the
living room.
Lennox was not on the divan where he had left him. He lay instead on the
floor near the fireplace; and he met the passion-drawn face with entire
calmness. His motives were perfectly plain. He had just made a desperate
effort to procure Dan's rifle that hung on two sets of deer horns over
the fireplace, and was entirely exhausted from it. He had succeeded in
getting down from the couch, though wracked by agony, but had been
unable to lift himself up in reach of the gun.
Cranston read his intention in one glance. Lennox knew it, but he simply
didn't care. He had passed the point where anything seemed to matter.
"Tell me where it is," Cranston ordered him. Again he pointed his rifle
at Lennox's wasted breast.
"Tell you where what is? My money?"
"You know what I want--and it isn't money. I mean those letters that
Failing found on the ridge. I'm through fooling, Lennox. Dan learned
that long ago, and it's time you learned it now."
"Dan learned it because he was sick. He isn't sick now. Don't presume
too much on that."
Cranston laughed with harsh scorn. "But that isn't the question. I said
I've wasted all the time I'm going to. You are an old man and helpless;
but I'm not going to let that stand in the way of getting what I came to
get. They're hidden somewhere around this house. They wouldn't be out in
the snow, because he'd want 'em where he could get them. By no means
would he carry them on his person--fearing that some day he'd meet me on
the ridge. He's a fool, but he ain't that much of a fool. I've watched,
and he's had no chance to take them into town. I'll give you--just five
seconds to tell me where they're hidden."
"And I give you," Lennox replied, "one second less than that--to go to
Hell!"
Both of them breathed hard in the quiet room. Cranston was trembling
now, shivering just a little in his arms and shoulders. "Don't get me
wrong, Lennox," he warned.
"And don't have any delusions in regard to me, either," Lennox replied.
"I've stood worse pain, from this accident, than any man can give me
while I yet live, no matter what he does. If you want to get on me and
hammer me in the approved Cranston way, I can't defend myself--but you
won't get a civil answer out of me. I'm used to pain, and I can stand
it. I'm not used to fawning to a coyote like you, and I can't stand it."
But Cranston hardly heard. An idea had flamed in his mind and cast a red
glamour over all the scene about him. It was instilling a poison in his
nerves and a madness in his blood, and it was searing him, like fire, in
his dark brain. Nothing seemed real. He suddenly bent forward, tense.
"That's all right about you," he said. "But you'd be a little more
polite if it was Snowbird--and Dan--that would have to pay."
Perhaps the color faded slightly in Lennox's face; but his voice did not
change.
"They'll see your footprints before they come in and be ready," Lennox
replied evenly. "They always come by the back way. And even with a
pistol, Snowbird's a match for you."
"Did you think that was what I meant?" Cranston scorned. "I know a way
to destroy those letters, and I'll do it--in the four seconds that I
said, unless you tell. I'm not even sure I'm goin' to give you a chance
to tell now; it's too good a scheme. There won't be any witnesses then
to yell around in the courts. What if I choose to set fire to this
house?"
"It wouldn't surprise me a great deal. It's your own trade." Lennox
shuddered once on his place on the floor.
"I wouldn't have to worry about those letters then, would I? They are
somewhere in the house, and they'd be burned to ashes. But that isn't
all that would be burned. You could maybe crawl out, but you couldn't
carry the guns, and you couldn't carry the pantry full of food. You're
nearly eighty miles up here from the nearest occupied house, with two
pair of snowshoes for the three of you and one dinky pistol. And you
can't walk at all. It would be a nice pickle, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you
have a fat chance of getting down to civilization?"
The voice no longer held steady. It trembled with passion. This was no
idle threat. The brain had already seized upon the scheme with every
intention of carrying it out. Outside the snow glittered in the
sunlight, and pine limbs bowed with their load; overhung with that
curious winter silence that, once felt, returns often in dreams. The
wilderness lay stark and bare, stripped of all delusion--not only in the
snow world outside but in the hearts of these two men, its sons.
"I have only one hope," Lennox replied. "I hope, unknown to me, that Dan
has already dispatched those letters. The arm of the law is long,
Cranston. It's easy to forget that fact up here. It will reach you in
the end."
Cranston turned through the door, into the kitchen. He was gone a long
time. Lennox heard him at work: the crinkle of paper and then a pouring
sound around the walls. Then he heard the sharp crack of a match. An
instant later the first wisp of smoke came curling, pungent with burning
oil, through the corridor.
"You crawled from your couch to reach that gun," Cranston told him when
he came in. "Let's see you crawl out now."
Lennox's answer was a curse,--the last, dread outpouring of an unbroken
will. He didn't look again at the glittering eyes. He scarcely watched
Cranston's further preparations: the oil poured on the rugs and
furnishings, the kindling placed at the base of the curtains. Cranston
was trained in this work. He was taking no chances on the fire being
extinguished. And Lennox began to crawl toward the door.
He managed to grasp the corner of the blanket on the divan as he went,
and he dragged it behind him. Pain wracked him, and smoke half-blinded
him. But he made it at last. And by the time he had crawled one hundred
feet over the snow crust, the whole structure was in flames. The red
tongues spoke with a roar.
Cranston, the fire-madness on his face, hurried to the outbuildings.
There he repeated the work. He touched a match to the hay in the barn,
and the wind flung the flame through it in an instant. The sheds and
other outbuildings were treated with oil. And seeing that his work was
done, he called once to the prone body of Lennox on the snow and mushed
away into the silences.
Lennox's answer was not a curse this time. Rather it was a prayer,
unuttered, and in his long years Lennox had not prayed often. When he
prayed at all, the words were burning fire. His prayer was that of
Samson,--that for a moment his strength might come back to him.