Kent did not move. His senses for a space were stunned. He was almost
physically insensible to all emotions but that one of shock and horror.
He was staring at Kedsty's gray-white, twisted face when he heard
Marette's door close. A cry came from his lips, but he did not hear
it--was unconscious that he had made a sound. His body shook with a
sudden tremor. He could not disbelieve, for the evidence was there.
From behind, as he had sat in his chair Marette Radisson had struck the
Inspector of Police with some blunt object. The blow had stunned him.
And after that--
He drew a hand across his eyes, as if to clear his vision. What he had
seen was impossible. The evidence was impossible. Assaulted, in deadly
peril, defending either honor or love, Marette Radisson was of the
blood to kill. But to creep up behind her victim--it was inconceivable!
Yet there had been no struggle. Even the automatic on the floor gave no
evidence of that. Kent picked it up. He looked at it closely, and again
the unconscious cry of despair came in a half groan from his lips. For
on the butt of the Colt was a stain of blood and a few gray hairs.
Kedsty had been stunned by a blow from his own gun!
As Kent placed it on the table, his eyes caught suddenly a gleam of
steel under the edge of a newspaper, and he drew out from their
hiding-place the long-bladed clipping scissors which Kedsty had used in
the preparation of his scrap-books and official reports. It was the
last link in the deadly evidence--the automatic with its telltale
stain, the scissors, the tress of hair, and Marette Radisson. He felt a
sensation of sudden dizziness. Every nerve-center in his body had
received its shock, and when the shock had passed it left him sweating.
Swiftly the reaction came. It was a lie, he told himself. The evidence
was false. Marette could not have committed that crime, as the crime
had visualized itself before his eyes. There was something which he had
not seen, something which he could not see, something that was hiding
itself from him. He became, in an instant, the old James Kent. The
instinctive processes of the man-hunter leaped to their stations like
trained soldiers. He saw Marette again, as she had looked at him when
he entered the room. It was not murder he had caught in her wide-open
eyes. It was not hatred. It was not madness. It was a quivering,
bleeding soul crying out to him in an agony that no other human eyes
had ever revealed to him before. And suddenly a great voice cried out
in his brain, drowning all other things, telling him how contemptible a
thing was love unless in that love was faith.
With his heart choking him, he turned again to Kedsty. The futility of
the thing which he had told himself was faith gripped at him
sickeningly, yet he fought for that faith, even as his eyes looked
again upon the ghastly torture that was in Kedsty's face.
He was becoming calmer. He touched the dead man's cheek and found that
it was no longer warm. The tragedy must have occurred an hour before.
He examined more closely the abrasion on Kedsty's forehead. It was not
a deep wound, and the blow that had made it must have stunned the
Inspector of Police for only a short time. In that space the other
thing had happened. In spite of his almost superhuman effort to keep
the picture away from him, Kent saw it vividly--the swift turning to
the table, the inspiration of the scissors, the clipping of the long
tress of hair, the choking to death of Kedsty as he regained
consciousness. Over and over again he whispered to himself the
impossibility of it, the absurdity of it, the utter incongruity of it.
Only a brain gone mad would have conceived that monstrous way of
killing Kedsty. And Marette was not mad. She was sane.
Like the eyes of a hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about the
room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On the walls,
hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On one end of
Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone tomahawk. Still
nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by papers, was a boot-lace.
Under his limp right hand was the automatic. With these possible
instruments of death close at hand, ready to be snatched up without
trouble or waste of time, why had the murderer used a tress of woman's
hair?
The boot-lace drew Kent's eyes. It was impossible not to see it,
forty-eight inches long and quarter-inch-wide buckskin. He began
seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marette Radisson
had been standing. And again the unanswerable question pounded in
Kent's brain--why had Kedsty's murderer used a tress of hair instead of
a buckskin lace or one of the curtain cords hanging conspicuously at
the windows?
He went to each of these windows and found them locked. Then, a last
time, he bent over Kedsty. He knew that in the final moments of his
life Kedsty had suffered a slow and torturing agony. His twisted face
left the story. And the Inspector of Police was a powerful man. He had
struggled, still partly dazed by the blow. But it had taken strength to
overcome him even then, to hold his head back, to choke life out of him
slowly with the noose of hair. And Kent, now that the significance of
what he saw began to grow upon him more clearly, felt triumphing over
all other things in his soul a slow and mighty joy. It was
inconceivable that with the strength of her own hands and body Marette
Radisson had killed Kedsty. A greater strength than hers had held him
in the death-chair, and a greater strength than hers had choked life
from the Inspector of Police!
He drew slowly out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind
him. He found that the front door was as Kedsty had left it, unlocked.
Close to that door he stood for a space, scarcely allowing himself to
breathe. He listened, but no sound came down the dimly illumined
stairway.
A new thing was pressing upon him now. It rode over the shock of
tragedy, over the first-roused instincts of the man-hunter,
overwhelming him with the realization of a horror such as had never
confronted him before. It gripped him more fiercely than the mere
killing of Kedsty. His thought was of Marette, of the fate which dawn
and discovery would bring for her. His hands clenched and his jaws
tightened. The world was against him, and tomorrow it would be against
her. Only he, in the face of all that condemning evidence in the room
beyond, would disbelieve her guilty of Kedsty's death. And he, Jim
Kent, was already a murderer in the eyes of the law.
He felt within him the slow-growing inspiration of a new spirit, the
gathering might of a new force. A few hours ago he was an outcast. He
was condemned. Life, for him, had been robbed of its last hope. And in
that hour of his grimmest despair Marette Radisson had come to him.
Through storm that had rocked the earth under her feet and set ablaze
the chaotic blackness of the sky over her head she had struggled--for
him. She had counted no cost. She had measured no chances. She had
simply come--_because she believed in him_. And now, upstairs, she was
the victim of the terrible price that was the first cost of his
freedom. For he believed, now that the thought came to him like a
dagger stroke, that this was so. Her act in freeing him had brought
about the final climax, and as a result of it, Kedsty was dead.
He went to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet, he
began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marette's name even before he
came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his arms
outstretched. But he came silently to her door and looked in.
She lay in a crumpled, huddled heap on her bed. Her face was hidden,
and all about her lay her smothering hair. For a moment he was
frightened. He could not see that she was breathing. So still was she
that she was like one dead.
His footsteps were unheard as he moved across the room. He knelt down
beside her, reached out his arms, and gathered her into them.
"Marette!" he cried in a low voice.
He felt the sudden quiver, like a little shock, that ran through her.
He crushed his face down, so that it lay in her hair, still damp from
its wetting. He drew her closer, tightening his arms about her slender
body, and a little cry came from her a cry that was a broken thing, a
sob without tears.
"Marette!"
It was all he said. It was all he could say in that moment when his
heart was beating like a drum against her breast. And then he felt the
slow pressure of her hands against him, saw her white face, her wide,
staring eyes within a few inches of his own, and she drew away from
him, back against the wall, still huddled like a child on the bed, with
her eyes fixed on him in a way that frightened him. There were no tears
in them. She had not been crying. But her face was as white as he had
seen it down in Kedsty's room. Some of the horror and shock had gone
out of it. In it was another look as her eyes glowed upon Kent. It was
a look of incredulity, of disbelief, a thing slowly fading away under
the miracle of an amazing revelation. The truth thrust itself upon him.
Marette had not expected that he would come to her like this. She had
believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping from her as
he would have run from a plague. She put up her two hands, in the trick
they had of groping at her white throat, and her lips formed a word
which she did not speak.
Kent, to his own amazement, was smiling and still on his knees. He
pulled himself to his feet, and stood up straight, looking down at her
in that same strange, comforting, all-powerful way. The thrill of it
was passing into her veins. A flush of color was driving the deathly
pallor from her face. Her lips were parted, and she breathed quickly, a
little excitedly.
"I thought--you would go!" she said.
"Not without you," he said. "I have come to take you with me."
He drew out his watch. It was two o'clock. He held it down so that she
could look at the dial.
"If the storm keeps up, we have three hours before dawn," he said. "How
soon can you be ready, Marette?"
He was fighting to make his voice quiet and unexcited. It was a
terrific struggle. And Marette was not blind to it. She drew herself
from the bed and stood up before him, her two hands still clasped at
her throbbing throat.
"You believe--that I killed Kedsty," she said in a voice that was
forced from her lips. "And you have come to help me--to pay me for what
I tried to do for you? That is it--Jeems?"
"Pay you?" he cried. "I couldn't pay you in a million years! From that
day you first came to Cardigan's place you gave me life. You came when
the last spark of hope in me had died. I shall always believe that I
would have died that night. But you saved me.
"From the moment I saw you I loved you, and I believe it was that love
that kept me alive. And then you came to me again, down there, through
this storm. Pay you! I can't. I never shall be able to. Because you
thought I had killed a man made no difference You came just the same.
And you came ready to kill, if necessary--for me. I'm not trying to
tell myself _why_! But you did. You were ready to kill. And I am ready to
kill--tonight--for you! I haven't got time to think about Kedsty. I'm
thinking about you. If you killed him, I'm just telling myself there
was a mighty good reason for it. But I don't believe it was you who
killed him. You couldn't do it--with those hands!"
He reached out suddenly and seized them, slipping his grip to her
wrists, so that her hands lay upward in his own, hands that were small,
slim-fingered, soft-palmed, beautiful.
"They couldn't!" he cried, almost fiercely. "I swear to God they
couldn't!"
Her eyes and face flamed at his words. "You believe that, Jeems?"
"Yes, just as you believe that I did not kill John Barkley. But the
world is against us. It is against us both now. And we've got to hunt
that hidden valley of yours together. Understand, Marette? And
I'm--rather glad."
He turned toward the door. "Will you be ready in ten minutes?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yes, in ten minutes."
He ran out into the hall and down the stair, locking the front door.
Then he returned to his hiding-place under the roof. He knew that a
strange sort of madness was in his blood, for in the face of tonight's
tragedy only madness could inspire him with the ecstatic thrill that
was in his veins. Kedsty's death seemed far removed from a more
important thing--the fact that from this hour Marette was his to fight
for, that she belonged to him, that she must go with him. He loved her.
In spite of whoever she was and whatever she had done, he loved her.
Very soon she would tell him what had happened in the room below, and
the thing would be clear.
There was one little corner of his brain that fought him. It kept
telling him, like a parrot, that it was a tress of Marette's hair about
Kedsty's throat, and that it was the hair that had choked him. But
Marette would explain that, too. He was sure of it. In the face of the
facts below he was illogical and unreasonable. He knew it. But his love
for this girl, who had come strangely and tragically into his life, was
like an intoxicant. And his faith was illimitable. She did not kill
Kedsty. Another part of his brain kept repeating that over and over,
even as he recalled that only a few hours before she had told him quite
calmly that she would kill the Inspector of Police--if a certain thing
should happen.
His hands worked as swiftly as his thoughts. He laced up his service
boots. All the food and dishes on the table he made into a compact
bundle and placed in the shoulder-pack. He carried this and the rifle
out into the hall. Then he returned to Marette's room. The door was
closed. At his knock the girl's voice told him that she was not quite
ready.
He waited. He could hear her moving about quickly in her room. An
interval of silence followed. Another five minutes
passed--ten--fifteen. He tapped at the door again. This time it was
opened.
He stared, amazed at the change in Marette. She had stepped back from
the door to let him enter, and stood full in the lamp-glow. Her slim,
beautiful body was dressed in a velvety blue corduroy; the coat was
close-fitting and boyish; the skirt came only a little below her knees.
On her feet were high-topped caribou boots. About her waist was a
holster and the little black gun. Her hair was done up and crowded
under a close-fitting turban. She was exquisitely lovely, as she stood
there waiting for him, and in that loveliness Kent saw there was not
one thing out of place. The corduroy, the turban, the short skirt, and
the high, laced boots were made for the wilderness. She was not a
tenderfoot. She was a little _sourdough_--clear through! Gladness leaped
into Kent's face. But it was not the transformation of her dress alone
that amazed him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were
flushed. Her eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she
looked at him. Her lips were red, as he had seen them that first time
at Cardigan's place. Her pallor, her fear, her horror were gone, and in
their place was the repressed excitement of one about to enter upon a
strange adventure.
On the floor was a pack only half as large as Kent's and when he picked
it up, he found it of almost no weight. He fastened it to his own pack
while Marette put on her raincoat and went down the stair ahead of him.
In the hall below she was waiting, when he came down, with Kedsty's big
rubber slicker in her hands.
"You must put it on," she said.
She shuddered slightly as she held the garment. The color was almost
gone from her cheeks, as she faced the door beyond which the dead man
sat in his chair, but the marvelous glow was still in her eyes as she
helped Kent with his pack and the slicker and afterward stood for an
instant with her hands touching his breast and her lips as if about to
speak something which she held back.
A few steps beyond them they heard the storm. It seemed to rush upon
the bungalow in a new fury, beating at the door, crashing over their
heads in thunder, daring them to come out. Kent reached up and turned
out the hall light.
In darkness he opened the door. Rain and wind swept in. With his free
hand he groped out, found Marette, drew her after him, and closed the
door again. Entering from the lighted hall into the storm was like
being swallowed in a pit of blackness. It engulfed and smothered them.
Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and he saw Marette's face,
white and drenched, but looking at him with that same strange glow in
her eyes. It thrilled him. Even in the darkness it was there. It had
been there since he had returned to her from Kedsty and had knelt at
her bedside, with his arms about her for a moment.
Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle of it
come to him. It was because of _him_. It was because of his _faith_ in her.
Even death and horror could not keep it from her eyes. He wanted to cry
out the joy of his discovery, to give wild voice to it in the teeth of
the wind and the rain. He felt sweeping through him a force mightier
than that of the night. Her hands were on his arm, as if she was afraid
of losing him in that pit of blackness; the soft cling of them was like
a contact through which came a warm thrill of electrical life. He put
out his arm and drew her to him, so that for a moment his face pressed
against the top of her wet little turban.
And then he heard her say: "There is a scow at the bayou, Jeems. It is
close to the end of the path. M'sieu Fingers has kept it there,
waiting, ready."
He had been thinking of Crossen's place and an open boat. He blessed
Fingers again, as he took Marette's hand in his own and started for the
trail that led through the poplar thicket.
Their feet slopped deep in wet and mud, and with the rain there was a
wind that took their breath away. It was impossible to see a tree an
arm's length away, and Kent hoped that the lightning would come
frequently enough to guide him. In the first flare of it he looked down
the slope that led riverward. Little rivulets of water were running
down it. Rocks and stumps were in their way, and underfoot it was
slippery. Marette's fingers were clinging to his again, as she had held
to them on the wild race up to Kedsty's bungalow from the barracks. He
had tingled then in the sheer joy of their thrill, but it was a
different thrill that stirred him now--an overwhelming emotion of
possessorship. This night, with its storm and its blackness, was the
most wonderful of all his nights.
He sensed nothing of its discomfort. It could not beat back the joyous
racing of the blood in his body. Sun and stars, day and night, sunshine
and cloud, were trivial and inconsequential to him now. For close to
him, struggling with him, fighting through the night with him, trusting
him, helpless without him, was the living, breathing thing he loved
more than he loved his own life. For many years, without knowing it, he
had waited for this night, and now that it was upon him, it inundated
and swept away his old life. He was no longer the huntsman, but the
hunted. He was no longer alone, but had a priceless thing to fight for,
a priceless and helpless thing that was clinging to his fingers in the
darkness. He did not feel like a fugitive, but as one who has come into
a great triumph. He sensed no uncertainty or doubt.
The river lay ahead, and for him the river had become the soul and the
promise of life. It was Marette's river and his river, and in a little
while they would be on it. And Marette would then tell him about
Kedsty. He was sure of that. She would tell him what had happened while
he slept. His faith was illimitable.
They came into the sodden dip at the foot of the ridge, and the
lightning revealed to him the edge of the poplar growth in which
O'Connor had seen Marette many weeks ago. The bayou trail wound through
this, and Kent struck out for it blindly in the darkness. He did not
try to talk, but he freed his companion's hand and put his arm about
her when they came to the level ground, so that she was sheltered by
him from the beat of the storm. Then brush swished in their faces, and
they stopped, waiting for the lightning again. Kent was not anxious for
it to come. He drew the girl still closer, and in that pit of
blackness, with the deluge about her and the crash of thunder over her
head, she snuggled up against his breast, the throb of her body against
him, waiting, watching, with him. Her frailty, the helplessness of her,
the slimness of her in the crook of his arm, filled him with an
exquisite exultation. He did not think of her now as the splendid,
fearless creature who had leveled her little black gun at the three men
in barracks. She was no longer the mysterious, defiant, unafraid person
who had held him in a sort of awe that first hour in Kedsty's place.
For she was crumpled against him now, utterly dependent and afraid. In
that chaos of storm something told him that her nerve was broken, that
without him she would be lost and would cry out in fear. _And he was
glad_! He held her tighter; he bent his head until his face touched the
wet, crushed hair under the edge of her turban. And then the lightning
split open the night again, and he saw the way ahead of him to the
trail.
Even in darkness it was not difficult to follow in the clean-cut wagon
path. Over their heads the tops of the poplars swished and wailed.
Under their feet the roadway in places was a running stream or
inundated until it became a pool. In pitch blackness they struck such a
pool, and in spite of the handicap of his packs and rifle Kent stopped
suddenly, and picked Marette up in his arms, and carried her until they
reached high ground. He did not ask permission. And Marette, for a
minute or two, lay crumpled up close in his arms, and for a thrilling
instant his face touched her rain-wet cheek.
The miracle of their adventure was that neither spoke. To Kent the
silence between them had become a thing which he had no desire to
break. In that silence, excused and abetted by the tumult of the storm,
he felt that a wonderful something was drawing them closer and closer
together, and that words might spoil the indescribable magic of the
thing that was happening. When he set Marette on her feet again, her
hand accidentally fell upon his, and for a moment her fingers closed
upon it in a soft pressure that meant more to him than a thousand words
of gratitude.
A quarter of a mile beyond the poplar thicket they came to the edge of
the spruce and cedar timber, and Soon the thick walls of the forest
shut them in, sheltering them from the wind, but the blackness was even
more like that of a bottomless pit. Kent had noticed that the thunder
and lightning were drifting steadily eastward, and now the occasional
flashes of electrical fire scarcely illumined the trail ahead of them.
The rain was not beating so fiercely. They could hear the wail of the
spruce and cedar tops and the slush of their boots in mud and water. An
interval came, where the spruce-tops met overhead, when it was almost
calm. It was then that Kent threw out of him a great, deep breath and
laughed joyously and exultantly.
"Are you wet, little Gray Goose?"
"Only outside, Big Otter. My feathers have kept me dry."
Her voice had a trembling, half-sobbing, half-rejoicing note in it. It
was not the voice of one who had recently killed a man. In it was a
pathos which Kent knew she was trying to hide behind brave words. Her
hands clung to the arm of his rubber slicker even as they stood there,
close together, as if she was afraid something might drag them apart in
that treacherous gloom. Kent, fumbling for a moment, drew from an inner
pocket a dry handkerchief. Then he found her face, tilted it a bit
upward, and wiped it dry. He might have done the same thing to a child
who had been crying. After that he scrubbed his own, and they went on,
his arm about her again.
It was half a mile from the edge of the forest to the bayou, and half a
dozen times in that distance Kent took the girl in his arms and carried
her through water that almost reached his boot tops. The lightning no
longer served them. The rain still fell steadily, but the wind had gone
with the eastward sweep of the storm. Close-hung with the forest walls,
the bayou itself was indiscernible in the blackness. Marette guided him
now, though Kent walked ahead of her, holding firmly to her hand.
Unless Fingers had changed its location, the scow should be somewhere
within forty or fifty paces of the end of the trail. It was small, a
two-man scow, with a tight little house built amidships. And it was
tied close up against the shore. Marette told him this as they felt
their way through brush and reeds. Then he stumbled against something
taut and knee-high, and he found it was the tie-rope.
Leaving Marette with her back to the anchor tree, he went aboard. The
water was three or four inches deep in the bottom of the scow, but the
cabin was built on a platform raised above the floor of the boat, and
Kent hoped it was still dry. He groped until he found the twisted wire
which held the door shut. Opening it, he ducked his head low and
entered. The little room was not more than four feet high, and for
greater convenience he fell upon his knees while fumbling under his
slicker for his water-proof box of matches. The water had not yet risen
above the floor.
The first light he struck revealed the interior to him. It was a tiny
cabin, scarcely larger than some boxes he had seen. It was about eight
feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low that, even
kneeling, his head touched it. His match burned out, and he lighted
another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit of split birch that
projected from the wall. He crept to it and lighted it. For a moment he
looked about him, and again he blessed Fingers. The little scow was
prepared for a voyage. Two narrow bunks were built at the far end, one
so close above the other that Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing
between. There were blankets. Within reach of his arm was a tiny stove,
and close to the stove a supply of kindling and dry wood. The whole
thing made him think of a child's playhouse. Yet there was still room
for a wide, comfortable, cane-bottomed chair, a stool, and a
smooth-planed board fastened under a window, so that it answered the
purpose of a table. This table was piled with many packages.
He stripped off his packs and returned for Marette. She had come to the
edge of the scow and called to him softly as she heard him splashing
through the water. Her arms were reaching toward him, to meet him in
the darkness. He carried her through the shallow sea about his feet and
laughed as he put her down on the edge of the platform at the door. It
was a low, joyous laugh. The yellow light of the candle sputtered in
their wet faces. Only dimly could he see her, but her eyes were shining.
"Your nest, little Gray Goose," he cried gently.
Her hand reached up and touched his face. "You have been good to me,
Jeems," she said, a little tremble in her voice. "You may--kiss me."
Out in the beat of the rain Kent's heart choked him with song. His soul
swelled with the desire to shout forth a paean of joy and triumph at
the world he was leaving this night for all time. With the warm thrill
of Marette's lips he had become the superman, and as he leaped ashore
in the darkness and cut the tie-rope with a single slash of his knife,
he wanted to give voice to the thing that was in him as the rivermen
had chanted in the glory of their freedom the day the big brigade
started north. And he _did_ sing, under his laughing, sobbing breath.
With a giant's strength he sent the scow out into the bayou, and then
back and forth he swung the long one-man sweep, twisting the craft
riverward with the force of two pairs of arms instead of one. Behind
the closed door of the tiny cabin was all that the world now held worth
fighting for. By turning his head he could see the faint illumination
of the candle at the window. The light--the cabin--Marette!
He laughed inanely, foolishly, like a boy. He began to hear a dull,
droning murmur, a sound that with each stroke of the sweep grew into a
more distinct, cataract-like roar. It was the river. Swollen by flood,
it was a terrifying sound. But Kent did not dread it. It was _his_ river;
it was his friend. It was the pulse and throb of life to him now. The
growing tumult of it was not menace, but the joyous thunder of many
voices calling to him, rejoicing at his coming. It grew in his ears.
Over his head the black sky opened again, and a deluge of rain fell
straight down. But above the sound of it the rush of the river drew
nearer, and still nearer. He felt the first eddying swirl of it against
the scow head, and powerful hands seemed to reach in out of the
darkness. He knew that the nose of the current had caught him and was
carrying him out on the breast of the stream. He shipped the sweep and
straightened himself, facing the utter chaos of blackness ahead. He
felt under him the slow and mighty pulse of the great flood as it swept
toward the Slave, the Mackenzie, and the Arctic. And he cried out at
last in the downpour of storm, a cry of joy, of exultation, of hope
that reached beyond the laws of men--and then he turned toward the
little cabin, where through the thickness of sodden night the tiny
window was glowing yellow with candle-light.