the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter
came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride,
however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she
must go into town and secure work. Not that she minded the labour
nor the trips through the vicious weather! The anguish was leaving
Duncan through those monotonous days before he should be up and
around. Those dreary winter days! What might they not do to
him--alone.
Five thousand dollars! Like many others in the valley that night she
pictured with fluttering heart what it would mean to possess such a
sum of money; but not once in her pitiful flight of fancy did she
disregard the task which must be performed to gain that wealth.
It meant traveling upward in the great snowbound reaches of Vermont
mountain-country and tracking down a murderer who had killed a
second time to gain his freedom and would stop at nothing again.
And yet--_five thousand dollars_!
How much will a person do, how far will a normal human being travel,
to earn five thousand dollars--if the need is sufficiently
provocative?
As Cora McBride sat there in the homely little farmhouse kitchen and
thought of the debts still existent, contracted to save the already
stricken lives of two little lads forgotten now by all but herself
and Duncan and God, of the chances of losing their home if Duncan
could work no more and pay up the balance of their mortgage, of the
days when Duncan must lie in the south bedroom alone and count the
figures on the wallpaper--as she sat there and contemplated these
things, into Cora McBride's heart crept determination.
At first it was only a faint challenge to her courage. As the
minutes passed, however, her imagination ran riot, with five
thousand dollars to help them in their predicament. The challenge
grew. Multitudes of women down all the years had attempted wilder
ventures for those who were dear to them. Legion in number had been
those who set their hands and hearts to greater tasks, made more
improbable sacrifices, taken greater chances. Multitudes of them, too,
had won--on little else than the courage of ignorance and the
strength of desperation.
She had no fear of the great outdoors, for she had lived close to
the mountains from childhood and much of her old physical resiliency
and youthful daredeviltry remained. And the need was terrible; no
one anywhere in the valley, not even her own people, knew how
terrible.
Cora McBride, alone by her table in the kitchen, that night made her
decision.
She took the kitchen lamp and went upstairs. Lifting the top of a
leather trunk, she found her husband's revolver. With it was a belt
and holster, the former filled with cartridges. In the storeroom
over the back kitchen she unhooked Duncan's mackinaw and found her
own toboggan-cap. From a corner behind some fishing-rods she
salvaged a pair of summer-dried snowshoes; they had facilitated many
a previous hike in the winter woods with her man of a thousand
adventures. She searched until she found the old army-haversack
Duncan used as a game-bag. Its shoulder-straps were broken but a
length of rope sufficed to bind it about her shoulders, after she
had filled it with provisions.
With this equipment she returned below-stairs. She drew on heavy
woollen stockings and buckled on arctics. She entered the cold
pantry and packed the knapsack with what supplies she could find at
the hour. She did not forget a drinking-cup, a hunting-knife or
matches. In her blouse she slipped a household flash-lamp.
Dressed finally for the adventure, from the kitchen she called
softly to her husband. He did not answer. She was overwhelmed by a
desire to go into the south bedroom and kiss him, so much might
happen before she saw him again. But she restrained herself. She
must not waken him.
She blew out the kerosene lamp, gave a last glance about
her familiar kitchen and went out through the shed door, closing it
softly behind her.
It was one of those close, quiet nights when the bark of a distant
dog or whinny of a horse sounds very near at hand. The snow was
falling feathery.
An hour later found her far to the eastward, following an old side
road that led up to the Harrison lumber-job. She had meantime paid
Dave Sheldon, a neighbour's boy, encountered by his gate, to stay
with Duncan during her absence which she explained with a white lie.
But her conscience did not bother. Her conscience might be called
upon to smother much more before the adventure was ended.
Off in the depths of the snowing night she strode along, a weird
figure against the eerie whiteness that illumined the winter world.
She felt a strange wild thrill in the infinite out-of-doors. The
woodsman's blood of her father was having its little hour.
And she knew the woods. Intuitively she felt that if Ruggam was on
Haystack Mountain making his way toward Lost Nation, he would strike
for the shacks of the Green Mountain Club or the deserted
logging-camps along the trail, secreting himself in them during his
pauses for rest, for he had no food, and provisions were often left
in these structures by hunters and mountain hikers. Her plan was
simple. She would investigate each group of buildings. She had the
advantage of starting on the northwest side of Haystack. She would
be working toward Ruggam, while the rest of the posses were trailing
him.
Mile after mile she covered. She decided it must be midnight when
she reached the ghostly buildings of the Harrison tract, lying white
and silent under the thickening snow. It was useless to search these
cabins; they were too near civilization. Besides, if Ruggam had left
the freight at Norwall on the eastern side of Haystack at noon, he
had thirty miles to travel before reaching the territory from which
she was starting. So she skirted the abandoned quiet of the clearing,
laid the snowshoes properly down before her and bound the thongs
securely about her ankles.
She had plenty of time to think of Ruggam as she padded along. He
had no snowshoes to aid him, unless he had managed to secure a pair
by burglary, which was improbable. So it was not difficult to
calculate about where she should begin watching for him. She
believed he would keep just off the main trail to avoid detection,
yet take its general direction in order to secure shelter and
possible food from the mountain buildings. When she reached the
country in which she might hope to encounter him, she would zigzag
across that main trail in order to pick up his foot-tracks if he had
passed her undetected. In that event she would turn and follow. She
knew that the snow was falling too heavily to continue in such
volume indefinitely; it would stop as suddenly as it had started.
The hours of the night piled up. The silent, muffling snowfall
continued. And Cora McBride began to sense an alarming weariness. It
finally dawned upon her that her old-time vigour was missing. The
strength of youth was hers no longer. Two experiences of motherhood
and no more exercise than was afforded by the tasks of her household,
had softened her muscles. Their limitations were now disclosed.
The realization of those limitations was accompanied by panic. She
was still many miles even from Blind Brook Cabin, and her limbs were
afire from the unaccustomed effort. This would never do. After
pauses for breath that were coming closer and closer together, she
set her lips each time grimly. "Tomboy Allen" had not counted on
succumbing to physical fatigue before she had climbed as far as
Blind Brook. If she were weakening already, what of those many miles
on the other side?
Tuesday the twenty-eighth of October passed with no tidings of
Ruggam's capture. The Holmes boy was fatally shot by a rattleheaded
searcher near Five-Mile Pond, and distraught parents began to take
thought of their own lads missing from school. Adam MacQuarry broke
his leg near the Hell Hollow schoolhouse and was sent back by
friends on a borrowed bobsled. Several ne'er-do-wells, long on
impulse and short on stickability, drifted back to more comfortable
quarters during the day, contending that if Hap were captured, the
officers would claim the reward anyhow--so what was the use bucking
the System?
The snowfall stopped in the early morning. Sunrise disclosed the
world trimmed from horizon to horizon in fairy fluff. Householders
jocosely shoveled their walks; small children resurrected attic sleds;
here and there a farmer appeared on Main Street during the forenoon
in a pung-sleigh or cutter with jingling bells. The sun soared higher,
and the day grew warmer. Eaves began dripping during the noon hour,
to stop when the sun sank about four o'clock behind Bancroft's hill.
After the sunset came a perfect evening. The starlight was magic.
Many people called in at the newspaper-office, after the movies, to
learn if the man hunt had brought results.
Between ten and eleven o'clock the lights on the valley floor
blinked out; the town had gone to bed--that is, the lights blinked
out in all homes excepting those on the eastern outskirts, where
nervous people worried over the possibilities of a hungry, hunted
convict's burglarizing their premises, or drawn-faced mothers lived
mentally through a score of calamities befalling red-blooded sons
who had now been absent twenty-four hours.
Sometime between nine o'clock and midnight--she had no way of
telling accurately--Cora McBride stumbled into the Lyons clearing.
No one would have recognized in the staggering, bedraggled
apparition that emerged from the silhouette of the timber the figure
that had started so confidently from the Harrison tract the previous
evening.
For over an hour she had hobbled blindly. It was wholly by accident
that she had stumbled into the clearing. And the capture of Ruggam
had diminished in importance. Warm food, water that would not tear
her raw throat, a place to lie and recoup her strength after the
chilling winter night--these were the only things that counted now.
Though she knew it not, in her eyes burned the faint light of fever.
When a snag caught her snowshoe and tripped her, there was hysteria
in her cry of resentment.
As she moved across from the timber-line her hair was revealed
fallen down; she had lost a glove, and one hand and wrist were
cruelly red where she had plunged them several times into the snow
to save herself from falling upon her face. She made but a few yards
before the icy thong of her right snowshoe snapped. She did not
bother to repair it. Carrying it beneath her arm, she hobbled
brokenly toward the shelter of the buildings.
Her failure at the other cabins, the lack, thus far, of all signs of
the fugitive, the vastness of the hunting-ground magnified by the
loneliness of winter, had convinced her finally that her quest was
futile. It was all a venture of madness. The idea that a woman,
alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a revolver, could track
down and subdue a desperate murderer in winter mountains where
hardly a wild thing stirred, and make him return with her to the
certain penalty--this proved how much mental mischief had again been
caused by the lure of money. The glittering seduction of gold had
deranged her. She realized it now, her mind normal in an exhausted
body. So she gained the walls of the buildings and stumbled around
them, thoughtless of any possible signs of the fugitive.
The stars were out in myriads. The Milky Way was a spectacle to
recall vividly the sentiment of the Nineteenth Psalm. The
log-buildings of the clearing, every tree-trunk and bough in the
woods beyond, the distant skyline of stump and hollow, all stood out
sharply against the peculiar radiance of the snow. The night was as
still as the spaces between the planets.
Like some wild creature of those winter woods the woman clumped and
stumbled around the main shack, seeking the door.
Finding it, she stopped; the snowshoe slipped from beneath her arm;
one numb hand groped for the log door-casing in support; the other
fumbled for the revolver.
Tracks led into that cabin!
A paralysis of fright gripped Cora McBride. Something told her
intuitively that she stood face to face at last with what she had
traveled all this mountain wilderness to find. Yet with sinking
heart it also came to her that if Hap Ruggam had made these tracks
and were still within, she must face him in her exhausted condition
and at once make that tortuous return trip to civilization. There
would be no one to help her.
She realized in that moment that she was facing the primal. And she
was not primal. She was a normal woman, weakened to near-prostration
by the trek of the past twenty-four hours. Was it not better to turn
away while there was time?
She stood debating thus, the eternal silence blanketing forest-world
and clearing. But she was allowed to make no decision.
A living body sprang suddenly upon her. Before she could cry out,
she was borne down precipitously from behind.
She tried to turn the revolver against the Thing upon her, but the
gun was twisted from her raw, red fingers. The snow into which she
had been precipitated blinded her. She smeared an arm across her eyes,
but before clear sight was regained, talon fingers had gripped her
shoulders. She was half lifted, half dragged through the doorway,
and there she was dropped on the plank flooring. Her assailant,
turning, made to close and bar the door.
When she could see clearly, she perceived a weak illumination in the
cabin. On the rough bench-table, shaded by two slabs of bark, burned
the stub of a tallow candle probably left by some hunting-party.
The windows were curtained with rotting blankets. Some rough
furniture lay about; rusted cooking-utensils littered the tables,
and at one end was a sheet-iron stove. The place had been equipped
after a fashion by deer-hunters or mountain hikers, who brought
additional furnishings to the place each year and left mouldy
provisions and unconsumed firewood behind.
The man succeeded finally in closing the door. He turned upon her.
He was short and stocky. The stolen corduroy coat covered
blacksmith's muscles now made doubly powerful by dementia. His hair
was lifeless black and clipped close, prison-fashion. His low
forehead hung over burning, mismated eyes. From her helplessness on
the floor Cora McBride stared up at him.
He came closer.
"Get up!" he ordered. "Take that chair. And don't start no
rough-house; whether you're a woman or not, I'll drill you!"
She groped to the indicated chair and raised herself, the single
snowshoe still dragging from one foot. Again the man surveyed her.
She saw his eyes and gave another inarticulate cry.
"Shut your mouth and keep it shut! You hear me?"
She obeyed.
The greenish light burned brighter in his mismated eyes, which gazed
intently at the top of her head as though it held something unearthly.
"Take off your hat!" was his next command.
She pulled off the toque. Her hair fell in a mass on her
snow-blotched shoulders. Her captor advanced upon her. He reached out
and satisfied himself by touch that something was not there which he
dreaded. In hypnotic fear she suffered that touch. It reassured him.
"Your hair now," he demanded; "it don't stand up, does it? No, o'
course it don't. You ain't _him_; you're a woman. But if your hair
comes up, I'll kill you--understand? If your hair comes up, _I'll
kill you_!"
She understood. She understood only too well. She was not only housed
with a murderer; she was housed with a maniac. She sensed, also, why
he had come to this mountain shack so boldly. In his dementia he knew
no better. And she was alone with him, unarmed now.
"I'll keep it down," she whispered, watching his face out of
fear-distended eyes.
The wind blew one of the rotten blankets inward. Thereby she knew
that the window-aperture on the south wall contained no sash. He
must have removed it to provide means of escape in case he were
attacked from the east door. He must have climbed out that window
when she came around the shack; that is how he had felled her from
behind.
He stepped backward now until he felt the edge of the bench touch
his calves. Then he sank down, one arm stretched along the table's
rim, the hand clutching the revolver.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"I'm Cora McB----" She stopped--she recalled in a flash the part her
husband had played in his former capture and trial. "I'm Cora Allen,"
she corrected. Then she waited, her wits in chaos. She was fighting
desperately to bring order out of that chaos.
"What you doin' up here?"
"I started for Millington, over the mountain. I lost my way."
"Why didn't you go by the road?"
"It's further."
"That's a lie! It ain't. And don't lie to me, or I'll kill you!"
"Who are you?" she heard herself asking. "And why are you acting
this way with me?"
The man leaned suddenly forward.
"You mean to tell me you don't know?"
"A lumberjack, maybe, who's lost his way like myself?"
His expression changed abruptly.
"What you luggin' _this_ for?" He indicated the revolver.
"For protection."
"From what?"
"Wild things."
"There ain't no wild things in these mountains this time o' year;
they're snowed up, and you know it."
"I just felt safer to have it along."
"To protect you from men-folks, maybe?"
"There are no men in these mountains I'm afraid of!" She made the
declaration with pathetic bravado.
His eyes narrowed.
"I think I better kill you," he decided. "You've seen me; you'll
tell you seen me. Why shouldn't I kill you? You'd only tell."
"Why? What have I done to you?" she managed to stammer. "Why should
you object to being seen?"
It was an unfortunate demand. He sprang up with a snarl. Pointing
the revolver from his hip, he drew back the hammer.
"_Don't_!" she shrieked. "Are you crazy? Don't you know how to treat
a woman--in distress?"
"Distress, _hell_! You know who I be. And I don't care whether
you're a woman or not, I ain't goin' to be took--you understand?"
"Certainly I understand."
She said it in such a way that he eased the hammer back into place
and lowered the gun. For the moment again she was safe. In response
to her terrible need, some of her latent Yankee courage came now to
aid her. "I don't see what you're making all this rumpus about," she
told him in as indifferent a voice as she could command. "I don't
see why you should want to kill a friend who might help you--if
you're really in need of help."
"I want to get to Partridgeville," he muttered after a moment.
"You're not far from there. How long have you been on the road?"
"None of your business."
"Have you had any food?"
"No."
"If you'll put up that gun and let me get off this snowshoe and pack,
I'll share with you some of the food I have."
"Never you mind what I do with this gun. Go ahead and fix your foot,
and let's see what you got for grub." The man resumed his seat.
She twisted up her tangled hair, replaced her toque and untied the
dangling snowshoe.
Outside a tree cracked in the frost. He started in hair-trigger
fright. Creeping to the window, he peeped cautiously between casing
and blanket. Convinced that it was nothing, he returned to his seat
by the table.
"It's too bad we couldn't have a fire," suggested the woman then.
"I'd make us something hot." The stove was there, rusted but still
serviceable; available wood was scattered around. But the man shook
his bullet head.
After a trying time unfastening the frosted knots of the ropes that
had bound the knapsack upon her back, she emptied it onto the table.
She kept her eye, however, on the gun. He had disposed of it by
thrusting it into his belt. Plainly she would never recover it
without a struggle. And she was in no condition for physical conflict.
"You're welcome to anything I have," she told him.
"Little you got to say about it! If you hadn't given it up, I'd took
it away from you. So what's the difference?"
She shrugged her shoulders. She started around behind him but he
sprang toward her.
"Don't try no monkey-shines with me!" he snarled. "You stay here in
front where I can see you."
She obeyed, watching him make what poor meal he could from the
contents of her bag.
She tried to reason out what the denouement of the situation was to
be. He would not send her away peacefully, for she knew he dared not
risk the story she would tell regardless of any promises of secrecy
she might give him. If he left her bound in the cabin, she would
freeze before help came--if it ever arrived.
No, either they were going to leave the place and journey forth
together--the Lord only knew where or with what outcome--or the life
of one of them was to end in this tragic place within the coming few
minutes. For she realized she must use that gun with deadly effect
if it were to come again into her possession.
The silence was broken only by the noises of his lips as he ate
ravenously. Outside, not a thing stirred in that snowbound world.
Not a sound of civilization reached them. They were a man and woman
in the primal, in civilization and yet a million miles from it.
"The candle's going out," she announced. "Is there another?"
"There'll be light enough for what I got to do," he growled.
Despite her effort to appear indifferent, her great fear showed
plainly in her eyes.
"Are we going to stay here all night?" she asked with a pathetic
attempt at lightness.
"That's my business."
"Don't you want me to help you?"
"You've helped me all you can with the gun and food."
"If you're going to Partridgeville, I'd go along and show you the way."
He leaped up.
"_Now I know you been lyin_!'" he bellowed. "You said you was headed
for Millington. And you ain't at all. You're watchin' your chance to
get the drop on me and have me took--that's what you're doin'!"
"Wait!" she pleaded desperately. "I _was_ going to Millington. But
I'd turn back and show you the way to Partridgeville to help you."
"What's it to you?" He had drawn the gun from his belt and now was
fingering it nervously.
"You're lost up here in the mountains, aren't you?" she said.
"I couldn't let you stay lost if it was possible for me to direct
you on your way."
"You said you was lost yourself."
"I was lost--until I stumbled into this clearing. That gave me my
location."
"Smart, ain't you? Damn' smart, but not too smart for me, you woman!"
The flare flamed up again in his crooked eyes. "You know who I be,
all right. You know what I'm aimin' to do. And you're stallin' for
time till you can put one over. But you can't--see? I'll have this
business done with. I'll end this business!"
She felt herself sinking to her knees. He advanced and gripped her
left wrist. The crunch of his iron fingers sent an arrow of pain
through her arm. It bore her down.
"For God's sake--_don't_!" she whispered hoarsely, overwhelmed with
horror. For the cold, sharp nose of the revolver suddenly punched
her neck.
"I ain't leavin' no traces behind. Might as well be hung for a sheep
as a lamb. Never mind if I do----"
"Look!" she cried wildly. "Look, look, _look_!" And with her free
hand she pointed behind him.
It was an old trick. There was nothing behind him. But in that
instant of desperation instinct had guided her.
Involuntarily he turned.
With a scream of pain she twisted from his grasp and blotted out the
candle.
A long, livid pencil of orange flame spurted from the gun-point. She
sensed the powder-flare in her face. He had missed.
She scrambled for shelter beneath the table. The cabin was now in
inky blackness. Across that black four more threads of scarlet light
were laced. The man stumbled about seeking her, cursing with
blood-curdling blasphemy.
Suddenly he tripped and went sprawling. The gun clattered from his
bruised fingers; it struck the woman's knee.
Swiftly her hand closed upon it. The hot barrel burned her palm.
She was on her feet in an instant. Her left hand fumbled in her
blouse, and she found what had been there all along--the flash-lamp.
With her back against the door, she pulled it forth. With the gun
thrust forward for action she pressed the button.
"I've got the gun--_get up_!" she ordered. "Don't come too near me
or I'll shoot. Back up against that wall."
The bull's-eye of radiance blinded him. When his eyes became
accustomed to the light, he saw its reflection on the barrel of the
revolver. He obeyed.
"Put up your hands. Put 'em up _high_!"
"Suppose I won't?"
"I'll kill you."
"What'll you gain by that?"
"Five thousand dollars."
"Then you know who I be?"
"Yes."
"And was aimin' to take me in?"
"Yes."
"How you goin' to do that if I won't go?"
"You're goin' to find out."
"You won't get no money shootin' me."
"Yes, I will--just as much--dead as alive."
With his hands raised a little way above the level of his shoulders,
he stood rigidly at bay in the circle of light.