That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his
power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and
that he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and
death, there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift
moments following Sokwenna’s rifle-shots from the attic window.
Through the window of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old
warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan
thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening
mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard
them singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of
chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their patter against the log
walls was like the hollow drumming of knuckles against the side of a
ripe watermelon. There was something fascinating and almost gentle
about that last sound. It did not seem that the horror of death was
riding with it, and Alan lost all sense of fear as he stared in the
direction from which the firing came, trying to make out shadows at
which to shoot. Here and there he saw dim, white streaks, and at these
he fired as fast as he could throw cartridges into the chamber and pull
the trigger. Then he crouched down with the empty gun. It was Mary
Standish who held out a freshly loaded weapon to him. Her face was
waxen in its deathly pallor. Her eyes, staring at him so strangely,
never for an instant leaving his face, were lustrous with the agony of
fear that flamed in their depths. She was not afraid for herself. It
was for _him_. His name was on her lips, a whisper unspoken, a
breathless prayer, and in that instant a bullet sped through the
opening in front of which he had stood a moment before, a hissing,
writhing serpent of death that struck something behind them in its
venomous wrath. With a cry she flung up her arms about his bent head.
“My God, they will kill you if you stand there!” she moaned. “Give me
up to them, Alan. If you love me—give me up!”
A sudden spurt of white dust shot out into the dim candle-glow, and
then another, so near Nawadlook that his blood went cold. Bullets were
finding their way through the moss and earth chinking between the logs
of the cabin. His arms closed in a fierce embrace about the girl’s slim
body, and before she could realize what was happening, he leaped to the
trap with her and almost flung her into its protection. Then he forced
Nawadlook down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun
and the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
its command.
“If you don’t stay there, I’ll open the door and go outside to fight!
Do you understand? _Stay there!_”
His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.
In that upper gloom Sokwenna’s gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly
and said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with
the gun which she had loaded for him.
The scream had scarcely gone from Keok’s lips when Alan was at the top
of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
Mary Standish.
From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
They were no longer white men, but savages.
He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was
sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the
illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until
they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the
bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was
Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the
earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two,
three, four—and two out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought
flashed upon him that it was good shooting under the circumstances.
He sprang back for another gun, and it was Mary who was waiting for
him, head and shoulders out of the cellar-pit, the rifle in her hands.
She was sobbing as she looked straight at him, yet without moisture or
tears in her eyes.
“Keep down!” he warned. “Keep down below the floor!”
He guessed what was coming. He had shown his enemies that life still
existed in the cabin, life with death in its hands, and now—from the
shelter of the other cabins, from the darkness, from beyond the light
of his flaming home, the rifle fire continued to grow until it filled
the night with a horrible din. He flung himself face-down upon the
floor, so that the lower log of the building protected him. No living
thing could have stood up against what was happening in these moments.
Bullets tore through the windows and between the moss-chinked logs,
crashing against metal and glass and tinware; one of the candles
sputtered and went out, and in this hell Alan heard a cry and saw Mary
Standish coming out of the cellar-pit toward him. He had flung himself
down quickly, and she thought he was hit! He shrieked at her, and his
heart froze with horror as he saw a heavy tress of her hair drop to the
floor as she stood there in that frightful moment, white and glorious
in the face of the gun-fire. Before she could move another step, he was
at her side, and with her in his arms leaped into the pit.
A bullet sang over them. He crushed her so close that for a breath or
two life seemed to leave her body.
A sudden draught of cool air struck his face. He missed Nawadlook. In
the deeper gloom farther under the floor he heard her moving, and saw a
faint square of light. She was creeping back. Her hands touched his
arm.
“We can get away—there!” she cried in a low voice. “I have opened the
little door. We can crawl through it and into the ravine.”
Her words and the square of light were an inspiration. He had not
dreamed that Graham would turn the cabin into a death-hole, and
Nawadlook’s words filled him with a sudden thrilling hope. The rifle
fire was dying away again as he gave voice to his plan in sharp, swift
words. He would hold the cabin. As long as he was there Graham and his
men would not dare to rush it. At least they would hesitate a
considerable time before doing that. And meanwhile the girls could
steal down into the ravine. There was no one on that side to intercept
them, and both Keok and Nawadlook were well acquainted with the trails
into the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in
the cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.
The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and
that Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did
her lips move in the effort.
“Go—for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine,” he insisted,
holding her away from him. “Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will be no
hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than death. They
will be like—like two beautiful lambs thrown among
wolves—broken—destroyed—”
Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.
“And _you!_” whispered Mary.
“I must remain here. It is the only way.”
Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said
no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom
was her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no
whisper, no farewell caress came with it.
“Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
mountains,” were his last words.
He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
them.
He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His
cabin was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at
the windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a
movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so
swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became
sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch
of fire whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.
Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it
stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from
Sokwenna’s cabin. He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and
watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement. The man was Rossland. In
spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress
the grim smile that came to his lips. Rossland was a man of illogical
resource, he meditated. Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously
through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could
not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and
sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head. That
he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant
possess Alan. A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer
if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a
righteous end. Only Rossland’s nerve, and what he might have to say,
held back the vengeance within reach of Alan’s hand.
He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was
within a hundred feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed
upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no
other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly
illumined the windows of Sokwenna’s place. Was it conceivable that
Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a
parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He
shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and
his men were more than capable of such a crime.
Rossland’s voice rose above the crackle and roar of the burning cabin.
“Alan Holt! Are you there?”
“Yes, I am here,” shouted Alan, “and I have a line on your heart,
Rossland, and my finger is on the trigger. What do you want?”
There was a moment of silence, as if the thought of what he was facing
had at last stricken Rossland dumb. Then he said: “We are giving you a
last chance, Holt. For God’s sake, don’t be a fool! The offer I made
you today is still good. If you don’t accept it—the law must take its
course.”
“_The law!_” Alan’s voice was a savage cry.
“Yes, the law. The law is with us. We have the proper authority to
recover a stolen wife, a captive, a prisoner held in restraint with
felonious intent. But we don’t want to press the law unless we are
forced to do so. You and the old Eskimo have killed three of our men
and wounded two others. That means the hangman, if we take you alive.
But we are willing to forget that if you will accept the offer I made
you today. What do you say?”
Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous
assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And
when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments,
believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender.
Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to
old Sokwenna. He lay huddled at the window, and the chill of death was
creeping over him. But the voices roused him. They were not strange
voices, but voices which came up out of a past of many years ago,
calling upon him, urging him, persisting in his ears with cries of
vengeance and of triumph, the call of familiar names, a moaning of
women, a sobbing of children. Shadowy hands helped him, and a last time
he raised himself to the window, and his eyes were filled with the
glare of the burning cabin. He struggled to lift his rifle, and behind
him he heard the exultation of his people as he rested it over the sill
and with gasping breath leveled it at something which moved between him
and the blazing light of that wonderful sun which was the burning
cabin. And then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger,
and Sokwenna’s last shot sped on its mission.
At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment
Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped,
and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound,
and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
The appalling swiftness and ease with which Rossland had passed from
life into death shocked every nerve in Alan’s body. Horror for a brief
space stupefied him, and he continued to stare at the dark and
motionless blot, forgetful of his own danger, while a grim and terrible
silence followed the shot. And then what seemed to be a single cry
broke that silence, though it was made up of many men’s voices. Deadly
and thrilling, it was a message that set Alan into action. Rossland had
been killed under a flag of truce, and even the men under Graham had
something like respect for that symbol. He could expect no
mercy—nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands,
and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his
breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead.
Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in
another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo.
“Come below!” he commanded. “We must be ready to leave through the
cellar-pit.”
His hand touched Sokwenna’s face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness,
and then grew still over the old warrior’s heart. There was no tremor
or beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead.
The guns of Graham’s men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed
into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder. He could hear bullets
tearing through the chinks and windows as he turned quickly to the
shelter of the pit.
He was amazed to find that Mary Standish had returned and was waiting
for him there.