In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent spruce
trees, he built a fire four days later. Somewhere in that white
anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he knew not
where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through blinding
driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he knew not in
what direction lay BEHIND. It was as if he had just emerged from a
nightmare. He was not sure that four days or a week had passed. He
had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow
divides, followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets,
and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat.
And here he was, well-fed and well-camped. The storm had passed, and it
had turned clear and cold. The lay of the land had again become
rational. The creek he was on was natural in appearance, and trended
as it should toward the southwest. But Surprise Lake was as lost to
him as it had been to all its seekers in the past.
Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a
larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a
moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack of
meat. As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-trail.
The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was well-packed by
travel. His conclusion was that two camps had been established on the
McQuestion, and that this was the connecting trail. Evidently, Two
Cabins had been found and it was the lower camp, so he headed down the
stream.
It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell asleep
wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and if
he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of dawn he was under
way, easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent
snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs should not wallow.
And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of the
river. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously. The
crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing through
and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen coat, pivoted
him half around with the shock of its impact. He staggered on his
twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a second crack of the
rifle. This time it was a clean miss. He did not wait for more, but
plunged across the snow for the sheltering trees of the bank a hundred
feet away. Again and again the rifle cracked, and he was unpleasantly
aware of a trickle of warm moisture down his back.
He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in among
the trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he wallowed
forward at full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing was to be
seen. Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the trees of the
opposite bank.
"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end of
half an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my
feet. Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with circulation
getting slack and a man trying to plug you?"
He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that
sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another half
hour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle of
dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend. Only one man was
with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along. The
effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had
seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks before. His next thought
was of the potential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did not
hear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.
The man whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke when
the rifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into the wood
in the direction of the sound. The man on the river had been struck by
the first shot. The shock of the high velocity bullet staggered him.
He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-falling, and pulled a rifle out
from under the lashings. As he strove to raise it to his shoulder, he
crumpled at the waist and sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the
sled. Then, abruptly, as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched
backward and across a corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see
only his legs and stomach.
From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around the
bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke cried
warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled, and they
dashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and Smoke, calling
his dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There were exclamations
from the men, and two of them, flinging off the mittens of their right
hands, levelled their rifles at him.
"Come on, you red-handed murderer, you," one of them, a black-bearded
man, commanded, "an' jest pitch that gun of yourn in the snow."
Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
"Go through him, Louis, an' take his weapons," the black-bearded man
ordered.
Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of the
others, obeyed. His search revealed only Smoke's hunting knife, which
was appropriated.
"Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I shoot
you dead?" the black-bearded man demanded.
"That you're making a mistake if you think I killed that man," Smoke
answered.
A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the trail
and found Smoke's tracks where he had left it to take refuge on the
bank. The man explained the nature of his find.
"What'd you kill Joe Kinade for?" he of the black beard asked.
"I tell you I didn't--" Smoke began.
"Aw, what's the good of talkin'. We got you red-handed. Right up
there's where you left the trail when you heard him comin'. You laid
among the trees an' bushwhacked him. A short shot. You couldn't
a-missed. Pierre, go an' get that gun he dropped."
"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected.
"You shut up," the man snarled at him. "I reckon your gun'll tell the
story."
All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the
cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
"One shot," Blackbeard concluded.
Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's,
sniffed at the breech.
"Him one fresh shot," he said.
"The bullet entered his back," Smoke said. "He was facing me when he
was shot. You see, it came from the other bank."
Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook
his head.
"Nope. It won't do. Turn him around to face the other bank--that's
how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an' down the
trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank."
Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even a
snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the dead
man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding
this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had perforated
the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half-dollar, its
butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a
cartridge from Smoke's belt.
"That's plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It's
soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed.
It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It's manufactured by the
J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms
Company. Now you come along an' we'll go over to the bank an' see jest
how you done it."
"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said. "Look at the hole in my parka."
While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the
breech of the dead man's gun. It was patent to all that it had been
fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly. "But
he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on, you."
"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.
"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."
They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up the
bank and in among the trees.
"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out. "That
place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w'en him
shoot--"
"And by God there's the empty cartridge he had done it with!" was
Blackbeard's discovery. "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"
"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.
"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.
You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we're decent an'
law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular. How far do
you reckon we've come, Pierre?"
"Twenty mile I t'ink for sure."
"All right. We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back to
Two Cabins. I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch his
neck."