"What do you want?"
Again came the twisted smile. "Mebbe-so we eat de suppaire firs'. I
got som' feesh. We buil' de fire an' cook 'um."
The meal was eaten in silence, and during its progress Wentworth in a
measure recovered his nerve.
"You haven't told me yet what you want," he suggested when they had
lighted their pipes and thrown on an armful of greens for a smudge.
Between the narrowed lids the black eyes seemed to smoulder as they
fixed upon the face of the white man. "I wan' you heart," he said,
casually. "Red in my han's I wan' it, an' squeeze de blood out, an'
watch it splash on de rocks. Mebbe-so I'm eat a piece dat heart, an'
feed de res' to my dog."
Wentworth's pipe dropped to the gravel and lay there. He uttered no
sound. The wind had died down and save for the droning hum of a
billion mosquitoes the silence was absolute. A thin column of smoke
streamed from the bowl of the neglected pipe. In profound fascination
Wentworth watched it flow smoothly upward. An imperceptible air
current set the column swaying and wavering, and a light puff of breeze
dispersed it in a swirl of heavy yellow smoke from the smudge. Dully,
impersonally, he sensed that the half-breed had just told him that he
would squeeze the red blood from his heart and watch it splash upon the
rocks. His eyes rested upon the rocks rimmed up by the ice above the
gravelly beach. The blood would splash there, and there, and those
other rocks would be spattered with tiny drops of it--his blood, the
blood from his own heart which Alex Thumb would squeeze dry, as one
would wring water from a sponge. He wondered that he felt no sense of
fear. He believed that Alex Thumb would do that, yet it was a matter
that seemed not of any importance. He raised his eyes and encountered
the malevolent glare of the breed. The black eyes seemed to glow with
an inner lustre, like the smoulder of banked fires.
With a start he seemed to have returned from some far place. The words
of Corporal Downey flittered through his brain: "You'll be servin' with
the devils in hell if you don't quit makin' enemies of men like Alex
Thumb." And there was Alex Thumb regarding him through narrowed
smouldering eyes across the little fire. Alex Thumb would kill him!
Would kill _him_--Ross Wentworth! The whole thing was preposterous.
If the man had really meant to kill him he would have done it before
this. He wouldn't dare; there were the Mounted. Other words of Downey
came to him, "If he does kill you, I'll get him." So there was a
possibility that the man would kill him. Why not? Who would ever
know? They would think he disappeared with Orcutt's money--would even
institute a world-wide search from him--but not in the bush. Thought
of the money nerved him to speak.
"How much will you take to get into your canoe and paddle back the way
you came?" he asked.
The breed laughed. "Wen I'm keel you I'm got you money, anyway. But
I'm ain' wan' so mooch de money. I'm wan' you heart." A dangerous
glitter supplanted the smouldering glow of the black eyes. "Me--I'm
stay ten year in de prison, for 'cause I'm keel my own fadder, an' dat
dam' good t'ing. For why I'm keel heem? 'Cause he whip me wit' de
dog-whip. In de prison de guards whip me mor' as wan t'ousan' tam. In
de night w'en I ain' can sleep 'cause my back hurt so bad from de whip,
I'm lay in de dark an' keel dem all. Every wan I ha' keel wan hondre
tam dere in de dark w'en I lay an' t'ink 'bout it. An' I know how I'm
goin' do dat. Den you hit me wit de whip on de trail. All right. I'm
ain' kin keel de guards. I keel you here in de bush; I shoot you in de
head, an' I'm cut de heart out before he quit jumpin'."
Wentworth moistened his lips with his tongue. "Downey will take you
in, if you do. And they'll hang you--choke you to death with a rope."
"No. Downey ain' kin fin'. I'm bur' you in de bush--all but de heart.
I'm keep de heart all tam."
"Good God, man, you couldn't kill me like that--in cold blood!" Beyond
the fire the half-breed laughed, a dry evil laugh that held nothing of
mirth. With a scream of terror Wentworth leaped to his feet and
crashed into the bush.
Beside the fire Alex Thumb laughed--and spread his blankets for the
night.
Four hours later the breed wriggled from his blanket and lighted the
fire. While the water heated for his tea, he carried the two canoes
back into the scrub and cached them, together with the two packs. He
swallowed his breakfast and picking up his rifle walked slowly into the
bush, his eyes on the ground. A mile away the lips twisted into their
sardonic grin as he noted where the fleeing man had floundered through
a muskeg, the flattened grass telling of his frequent falls. In a
balsam thicket he lifted a scrap of cloth from a protruding limb, and
again he smiled. Where Wentworth forded a waist-deep stream he had
lain down to rest on the sand of the opposite bank. The trail started
toward the south. By midforenoon Thumb noted with a grin that he was
traveling due east.
At noon he overtook Wentworth, mired to the middle in a marl bed,
supporting himself on a half sunken spruce.
Laying aside his rifle, the breed cut a pole with his belt ax and after
some difficulty succeeded in dragging the engineer to solid ground.
Wentworth was muttering and mumbling about a Russian sable coat, and
Thumb had to support him as he bound him to a spruce tree.
On the edge of the lake Corporal Downey picked up the trail. He
located the cached canoes, and returning to the fire, he reached down
and picked Wentworth's pipe from the gravel. "It's Thumb, all right,"
he said, as he stood holding the pipe. "I know his canoe. They were
both here at the same time. I don't savvy that, because Wentworth left
first. Thumb's trail is only three hours old. Maybe--if I hurry----"
From far to the southeastward came the sound of a shot. Downey
straightened, and for the space of minutes stood tense as a pointer.
The sound was not repeated--and swiftly the officer of the Mounted sped
through the bush.