THE WITCHERY OF YGERNE
Charlie Madden of the Canadian Mining Company wasn't the man to
squander time which might be valuable in idle surmises. Ten minutes
after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the
hundred miles of trail to Lebarge. The man carried a letter to the
General Manager. The letter ran in part:
". . . I don't know whether the man is crazy or not. Having seen his
specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not. But he's fool enough
to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim. Send me Luke and
Berry and Jernigan on the run. Drennen is laid up with a couple of
bullet holes in him. I'll keep him from filing as long as I can; the
rest is up to the men you send me."
Then, his eyes filled with the glint of his purpose, his jaw seeming to
grow lean with the determination upon him, Madden made himself as
comfortable as conditions permitted in MacLeod's Settlement and settled
down to a period of unsleeping watchfulness. He took a room at Père
Marquette's.
Before the crowd in the camp had thronged Joe's Lunch Counter toward
evening the fever of excitement had grown into a delirium. Madden
hadn't talked; Drennen hadn't talked. And yet the word flew about
mysteriously that Drennen had asked ten per cent of the stock of his
mine and a hundred thousand dollars cash! "God! He had driven his
pick into the mother lode of the world!" That was the thing which many
men said in many ways, over and over and over again. The Canadian
Mining Company was trying to frame a deal with him; Madden had rushed a
man to Lebarge with some sort of message; two other big mining concerns
had their representatives in town. And Drennen hadn't filed on his
claim; the gold lay somewhere in the mountains offering itself to
whatever man might find it. A man who could not buy his own grubstake
to-day might "own the earth" to-morrow.
Before darkness came MacLeod's Settlement, seething with restless
humanity for a few hours, was again pouring itself out into the
wilderness in many erratic streams. And no man left who had not first
gone by Père Marquette's and seen the nuggets which the old man had put
into his one glass-topped show case, and no man but carried the picture
of them dancing before his eyes as he went. Kootanie George, who had
had no word for Ernestine Dumont since she had shamed him, went with
them. Ramon Garcia, having kissed Ernestine Dumont's hand, went with
them. And, oddly enough, Kootanie George and Ramon Garcia went
together as trail pardners.
The one man who evinced no concern at what was going on was David
Drennen. His calm was like that of a chip caught and held motionless
for a little in the centre of a whirlpool while scores of other chips
gyrated madly about him; himself the pivot about which all rotated
while he seemed unmoved. There were hundreds of sharp-eyed old
prospectors looking for the thing he had found; if they in turn found
it it would become theirs and be lost to him.
The Settlement saw more strangers in a week than it had ever seen in
the days of its existence before. The rare opportunity was given to
take stock first hand of men of whom it had talked many times, men
whose names meant something. Such a man was Charlie Madden with the
fresh cheeks and the way of an old captain of industry. Such was the
man who came in behalf of the northwestern company. A man between
fifty and sixty, big bodied, stalwart, stern faced, silent tongued. An
old prospector from the outside put an end to much speculation by
informing a knot of men that this was old Marshall Sothern; the name
carried weight and brought fresh interest. Such a man was Ben
Hasbrook, little and dried up and nervous mannered, a power in the
network of ramifications of a big corporation having its head in
Quebec, its tail in Vancouver, its claws everywhere throughout Canada.
These men spelled big interests; these were the lions come to wrest
away the prey which the pack of wolves was ravening for.
Ben Hasbrook trod almost in Charlie Madden's footsteps going to
Drennen; he came away almost immediately, tugging at his beard,
hot-eyed and wrathful. Marshall Sothern, having had a word with Père
Marquette, a word with Lunch Counter Joe, having seen Hasbrook's
retreat, frowned thoughtfully and postponed any interview he may have
desired with No-luck Drennen. He paid for a room at Joe's for a week
in advance, went into solitary session, smoking his blackened pipe
thoughtfully, his powerful fingers beating a long tattoo upon the sill
of the window through which his eyes could find Drennen's dugout. With
full square beard, iron grey hair, massive countenance, there was
something leonine about Marshall Sothern. It appeared reasonable that
if he were going into the battle against Madden and Hasbrook, then
Madden and Hasbrook would need their wits about them. He seemed at
once gifted with infinite patience and unalterable will. He did not
move from his window until he had seen David Drennen come out of his
dugout, making his slow way to supper at Joe's. Sothern's eyes, as
keen as knife blades, studied the dark face, probing deep for a
knowledge of the man himself. It was as though he were making his
first move in the game from ambush, as though he felt that the most
important thing in the world just now were a thorough understanding of
the man with whom he must deal. He had had Marquette's estimate and
Joe's . . . now he sought to form his own. . . .
There was a hard smile upon Sothern's face as Drennen passed on, a
smile not without a strange sort of satisfaction, flashing a quick
light into the eyes.
"By God, I like him!" he burst out softly. "So you're David Drennen,
are you? Well, my boy, the hounds of hell are after you . . . that's
in your face. But it's in your face, too, that you can stand on your
own feet. Hm. In this game I'm going to keep an eye on Madden and
Hasbrook, and both eyes on you."
But, despite the dynamic possibilities of action and strife and history
making, the days went by without event. Drennen came his three times
daily to Joe's for his meals, spent the major part of his time in his
dugout or taking short, lonely walks up and down the river, coaxing
back his strength. He saw much of Lemarc and Sefton upon the street,
noting that they, like himself, had stayed behind, letting the other
fools go on their fools' errands, sensing that their craft bade them
linger to watch him. He saw Ygerne several rimes, always from a
distance, and made no attempt to speak with her. He saw Madden, Ben
Hasbrook and Marshall Sothern, grew accustomed to the knowledge that
they were playing their waiting game, not unlike Sefton and Marc
Lemarc, and gave them little attention. They didn't interest him; when
he was ready he would deal with them and until that time came need not
waste his thoughts upon them.
But all of the stubborn will of a David Drennen could not keep his mind
away from Ygerne Bellaire though he held his feet back from taking him
to her, though he drove his eyes away from her. He had let down the
bars once for her to come into his life as he had let them down for no
man or other woman in years. He had yielded to a mood, thinking that
it was only a mood and that so far as he was concerned she would cease
to exist when he willed it. He found himself, however, seeking to
explain her presence here, companioned by such men as Marc Lemarc and
Captain Sefton; he sought to construct the story of her life before she
had come into this land where women from her obvious station in life
did not come; he wrestled with the enigma of her character,
unconsciously striving to find extenuation for the evil he deemed was
in her.
"We are a bad lot here," he muttered once after long puzzling. "A bad
lot. Some of us are bad because we are weak and the world has tempted.
Some of us are bad because we are strong and the world has driven.
Some of us are cruel, like steel; some of us are treacherous, like
poison. Where do you fit in, Ygerne Bellaire?"
Once only had he met her face to face on the street, many men marking
their meeting. Coming unexpectedly upon her he had been tugged two
ways by his emotions, a division and sign of weakness which was no
usual thing in him. But he had caught a quick expression upon her face
in time, and had seen that she was going to pass him with no sign of
recognition. He had deliberately turned his back upon her. He had
heard a man laugh, and a little spurt of venomous pleasure leaped up in
his heart as he knew that she too had heard and as he pictured the
blood whipped into her face.
And now again he came upon her all unexpectedly; this time she was
alone and there were no men near to see. He stopped, staring down at
her insolently. She was sitting upon a fallen log, a mile from the
Settlement down the Little MacLeod, her eyes fixed upon the racing
water with that expression which tells that they see nothing of what is
before them. She had not heard him until he came quite close to her.
She started as she looked up, ready upon the instant to leap to her
feet. Then she settled back quite calmly, an insolence in her eyes not
unlike his. She waited for him to speak, and presently, again
conscious of the tugging two ways, he did so.
"There's a man in camp named Charlie Madden," he said with a
viciousness which evidently puzzled her until he had gone on. "You've
met him, I dare say?"
"Yes," she answered coolly. "He asked me to have dinner with him last
night."
Drennen's laugh jeered at her.
"You don't burn daylight, do you?" he sneered. "The man has money; he
is young; he looks quite the pink-cheeked, impressionable pup, as good
as a gilded youth on Broadway. How did he accept the wonder tale of
the virgin purity of your red lips, Ygerne?"
"I didn't accept his invitation," she retorted as coolly as before.
"Why not?" he said sharply, a little hotly. "Couldn't you tell that
the fool has money?"
"I didn't like him," she said.
"Ho, you didn't like him!" His tone drove a little higher colour into
her face, but she kept the serene indifference in her half-smile. "But
you did dine with me . . . because you liked me, no doubt!"
"Let us say," she replied a trifle wearily, her eyes going back to the
river, "that I was lonely; and that I was prepared to like you, Mr.
Drennen."
He found himself in a sudden flaring anger. The anger was
unreasonable, but it but burned the hotter for all that. He had sought
to take a joy out of being brutal to the girl, just why he was very far
from understanding. Now the joy did not come as he had expected it.
In his anger there was a sense of insane resentment against her that
she was just a girl, not a man as he would have her now so that he
might give her the lie and make her suffer physically by beating at her
with his hard fists. In the blind rage upon him he blamed her for
having come into his life at all even though she were merely a passing
figure through a little corner of it. The years, while they had
brought no happiness to him, had at least given him a calm indifference
to all things; now for many days and nights she had broken that calm.
In his heart he cursed her, his emotion rising toward a fierce,
passionate hatred.
"In hell's name," he cried abruptly, his voice ringing with a new
menace in it, "what are you doing here? Why don't you go on? What are
you staying here for? Is the world so damned small that you've got to
come and preen yourself under my eyes?"
For a moment she did not answer. The expression in the eyes turned
upon him changed swiftly. There was a quick fear, gone in a flash in
pure wonder. All this he saw clearly as too he saw a flicker of
amusement. And back of the amusement which maddened him were other
things, emotions hinted darkly, baffling him.
"The other day," she said steadily in the face of his rage, "you
contented yourself by commanding me to take myself off of the mountain
back there. Now you request me to get out of Canada? Or out of
America? Or the western hemisphere, which is it? And, kind sir, _why_
is it?"
Looking up at him, to show him how little he moved her, to make him
doubt if he had read aright when he had thought it was fear in her
eyes, she laughed. The laughter, welling up softly, musically, from
deep in the round white throat, the defiant posture, head thrown back,
something of the vague, sweet intimacy in it, affected him strangely.
His face reddened. His hands shut spasmodically, clenching hard,
lifting a little from his sides. Instinctively she drew back, her own
hand slipping into her bosom, a quick flutter of fear in her heart that
he was actually going to strike her.
"Why?" His lips were drawn back from his teeth; his face was more evil
in the grip of the passion upon him than she had ever seen it before;
his voice harsh and ugly. "Because you come when you do now, a
thousand years too soon or a dozen years too late! Because I hate you
as I have never learned how to hate a man no matter what thing he had
done! I don't know what there is in me that is stronger than I am and
that makes me keep my hands off your throat. Do you know what you have
done, Ygerne, with the infernal witchery of you? You have made me love
you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a
rotten world! I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of
yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you! My life was
as I would have it; in a few days I would be a rich man with all of the
power of a rich man; . . . and then you came. Why do I hate you, your
eyes, your mouth, your body and your brain? Why?" He broke off in a
laugh which showed what his wounds, his sickness, his passion had done
for him, and she drew still further back from him, shuddering. "I hate
you. . . . By God! because you've made of me a fool like the others!
because you have made me love you!"
A frenzy of delirium was upon him. She did not know whether the man
were sane or not; he did not care. But he knew that he spoke the
truth. Twice had he yielded to her, and he was not the man to yield
easily. Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had
let down the bars for her to come in. Now that recklessly he flung
open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the
headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it. It was madness; it
was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his
heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few
times. And yet, be it what else it might be, it was the simple truth.
"Laugh at me, why don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of
perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of
the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his
supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a
good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't
know. Are you loyal and stanch and true--or treacherous and
contemptible? I don't know. I don't know a thing about you, and yet I
let you slip into my life one day and the next rile up all of the mud
which was settling to the bottom. Go and brag of it to your two
hangdogs. But, by heaven," and his fist smashed down into an open
palm, "you and your dogs keep out of my way. If the three of you are
here another twenty-four hours I'll drive them out and with them any
other man you so much as look at!"
He stared at her for a moment, grown suddenly silent and white faced.
He lifted his arms as though he would sweep her up into them. Then he
dropped them so that they fell to his side like dead weights and swung
about, turning his back upon her, going swiftly upstream toward the
Settlement.
Across the river came the call of a robin. A splash of blue fire in
the willows was a blue bird's wing. A solitary butterfly made a half
circle about him, passing close to him as though to beat him back with
its delicate, diaphanous wings. The pale yellowish buds everywhere
were changing to a lusty verdant. Air and grass were filled with
questing insect life thrilling upward with little voices. The snows
were slipping, slipping from the mountainsides, the waters rising in
river and lake. The sap was astir in shrub and tree, bursting upward
joyously. Nature had breathed her soft command to all of the North
Woods; every creature and thing of life in the North Woods had heard
the call.