THOMPSON!
Thompson it was, if it seemed incredible. And Billy Jones exclaimed, as
he pointed to him, "He can't have been dead longer than since last
night! And I can't understand this thing, Mr. Stretton! It's but six
weeks since Thompson _left_ here; and from what he said he didn't mean
to come back. He told me he was in a hurry to get away, because he was
taking a position in a copper mine in the West. I remember I warned him
you hadn't got all your swamps corduroyed, and likely he couldn't drive
clear into Caraquet; so he left his wagon here and borrowed a saddle
from me to ride over. And a boy brought his horse back next day, or day
after,--I forget which. I remember Thompson forgot to send me a tin of
tobacco he promised to get me off Randall, at Caraquet!"
"D'ye mean you think he never went to Caraquet?" It was a stupid
question, for, of course, I knew he had gone there, and farther, or he
could not have sent Macartney to La Chance, or a letter to Dudley now.
But what I was really thinking of was that I had been right about the
date old Thompson left the mine, and that he had gone over my road on
one of the two days I was away with all my road men, getting logs out of
the bush.
Billy Jones scattered my thoughts impatiently: "Oh, he went there all
right. It's his--coming back--that beats me!"
It beat me too, for reasons Billy knew nothing about. Why Thompson had
come back was his own business; but it was plain he had been dead a
scant twenty-four hours, and the only place I could think of where he
was likely to have been killed was on my corduroy road the night before.
Only I did not see how Thompson's clothes could have got water-soaked in
a frozen swamp; and I did not see, either, what a decent man like
Thompson could have been doing out there like a wolf, with wolves. I had
more sense than to think he could have had any truck with Collins about
our gold. I nodded back at the teamsters: "Where did they find him?"
"They didn't find him," returned Billy simply, "it was my hound dog. He
was yelling down at the lake shore this morning, like he'd treed a
wildcat, and when I went down it was Thompson he'd found,--lying right
on shore in the daylight! You know how that fool Lac Tremblant behaves;
the water in it had gone down to nothing this morning, and on the bare
stones it had left was Thompson. Only I don't see how he ever _got_
there unless he was coming back, from wherever he'd been outside, by Lac
Tremblant instead of your road!"
"Where was his canoe?"
"He didn't have any! But you know that lake--it might have smashed his
canoe on him like an egg, and then--just by chance--put him ashore!" I
did know: I had had all I wanted to keep from being smashed myself the
night I crossed to La Chance. I nodded, and Billy choked. "It--it kind
of sickened me this morning; I _liked_ Thompson, Mr. Stretton!"
So had I, if I had laughed at his eternal solitaire. Billy and I laid
him on the bed, decently, after we had done what we could for him. And I
was ashamed to have even wondered if he had been the man Paulette had
shot at on the La Chance road; for there was not a mark on him, and a
fool could have told he had just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. There
was nothing in his pockets to tell how he had got there: only a single
two-dollar bill and a damp pack of cards in a wet leather case.
Thompson's solitaire cards! Somehow the things gave me a lump in my
throat; I wished I had talked more to Thompson in the long evenings.
The letter in my pocket from him was Dudley's, and I did not mention it
to Billy. I said I would try to find out where the dead man had come
from, and anything else I could, before he buried him. And with that I
left old Thompson lying on Billy's bed with his face covered, and rode
home to La Chance.
When I got in, Dudley and Macartney were in the living room, talking.
Any other time I might have wondered why Dudley looked so jumpy and
bad-tempered, but all I was thinking of then was my ugly news. But
before I could tell it, Dudley flew at me. "Where the devil have you
been all day? And what's happened to my gold?"
I don't know why, but I had a furious, cold qualm that either Dudley or
Macartney had _found out_,--I don't mean about Collins so much as about
Paulette having been mixed up with him. Till I knew I was damned if I'd
mention him.
"I don't understand," I said shortly. "The gold's in Caraquet. But the
reason I didn't get home this morning is that Thompson's back!"
"What?" Macartney never spoke loud, yet it cracked out.
I nodded. "I mean he's dead, poor chap! They found his body in Lac
Tremblant this morning." And suddenly I knew I was staring at
Macartney. His capable face was always pale, but in one second it had
gone ghastly. It came over me that he had known old Thompson all his
life, and I blurted involuntarily, "I'm sorry, Macartney!"
But he took no notice.
"They found Thompson's body," he said heavily, as a man does when he is
sick with shock. "Who found it? Why,--he wasn't _here_! What in hell do
you mean?"
I told him. Dudley sat and goggled at the two of us, but Macartney
stared at the floor, his face still ghastly. "I beg your pardon,
Stretton," he muttered as if he were dizzy. "Only Thompson was about the
oldest friend I had. I thought----" But he checked himself and exclaimed
with a sudden sharp doubt, "It can't be old Thompson, Stretton; you must
be mistaken! He couldn't be here--he was going out West. I was expecting
a letter from him any day, to say he'd started."
"It's here. At least, I mean there's _a_ letter from him, that I got in
Caraquet, only it's for Mr. Wilbraham. And I wasn't mistaken, Macartney.
I wish I were!"
Macartney could not speak. I was surprised; I had not suspected him of
much of a heart. I pulled out the letter, and Dudley opened it.
"Down and out--the poor old devil," said he slowly, staring at it, "and
came back. Well, poor Thompson!" He read the thing again and handed it
to Macartney. But Macartney only gave one silent, comprehensive stare at
it, in the set-eyed way that was the only thing I had never liked about
him, and pushed the letter across the table to me.
It was dated and postmarked Montreal. There was no street address, which
was not like Thompson. But its precise phrases, which _were_ like him,
sounded down and out all right.
"DEAR MR. WILBRAHAM: I write to inquire if you will take me
back at La Chance. There is no work here, or anywhere, and
the British Columbia copper mine, where I intended to go,
has shut down. I have nothing else in view, and I am
stranded. If by to-morrow I cannot obtain work here I see
nothing between me and starvation but to return to La
Chance. I trust you can see your way to taking me back, in
no matter how subordinate a position, at least till I can
hear of something else. If I am obliged to chance coming to
you I will take the shortest route, avoiding Caraquet, and
coming by Lac Tremblant.
"Yours truly,
"WILLIAM D. THOMPSON."
"That's funny," I let out involuntarily. And Dudley snapped at me that
it wasn't; it was ghastly.
"I don't mean the letter," I said absently. "It's that about Lac
Tremblant. Thompson was scared blue of that lake; he used to beg me not
to go out on it. And by gad, Dudley, I don't see how he could have come
that way! He couldn't paddle a canoe!"
"What?" Macartney started, staring at me. "You're right: he couldn't,"
he said slowly. "That does make it queer--except that we don't know he
meant to paddle up the lake. He might have intended to walk here along
its shore, and strayed or slipped in or something, in the dark. But what
troubles me is--can't you see he'd gone crazy? This letter"--he put a
finger on it, eloquently--"isn't sane, from a self-contained man like
Thompson! He must have been off his head with worry before he wrote it,
or started back to a place he'd left for----"
"Incompetency, if you want the brutal truth," Dudley broke in not
unkindly. "He was too old-fashioned to make good elsewhere, I expect;
and if he found it out, I don't wonder if he did go off his head."
I glanced over Dudley's shoulder at the letter he and Macartney were
studying. It did not look crazy, with its Gaskell's Compendium
copperplate and its careful signature. I don't know why I picked up the
envelope from where it lay unnoticed on the table by Dudley and fiddled
with it scrutinizingly, but I did. The outside of it looked all right,
with its address in Thompson's neat copperplate. But it wasn't well
glued or something, for as I shoved my fingers inside, the whole thing
opened out flat, like a lily. I looked down mechanically as I felt it
go, and--by gad, the inside of it _didn't_ look right! There was nothing
on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't
blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat
copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at
me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope
unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more,"
I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take
care--something----' What's this? What on earth did the old man mean?"
Macartney caught the splayed-out envelope from my hand, so sharply that
the flap I didn't know I held tore away, and stayed in my fist as he
gazed on the rest of the reversed envelope with his set-eyed stare.
"'Take care, Macartney! Gold, life, everything--in danger!'" he read out
blankly. "Why, it's some kind of a crazy warning to _me_! Only--nobody
wants my life, and I've no gold--if that's what he means! I----" but he
broke down completely. "Old Thompson must have gone stark mad," he
muttered. "I--it makes me heartsick!"
"I don't know," Dudley snapped unexpectedly. "It fits about the gold,
perhaps. Thompson might have suspected something before he left here!"
He looked at Macartney significantly, and I remembered the question he
had rapped at me when I came in. Something inside me told me to hold my
tongue concerning my adventures on the Caraquet road till I knew what
Paulette had said about them,--which I was pretty certain was mighty
little. But once again I had that cold fear that Macartney might have
found out something about the seal she had put on all our gold, or her
talking to Collins in the dark, for the question Dudley flung at me was
just what I had been expecting:
"You didn't see anything of Dunn or Collins between here and
Caraquet--or hear from Billy Jones that they'd gone by the Halfway?"
"No," I fenced with a bland, lying truth. "I saw two of our teamsters at
the Halfway!"
Dudley shook his head. "Not them--I knew about them! But Dunn and
Collins cleared out the day you left, and I thought----" he broke off
irrelevantly. "What the dickens possessed you to take Paulette with you
that night? She might have been killed--I heard you'd the dog's own
trouble on the road!"
That something inside me stiffened up. Whatever he'd heard, I was pretty
certain was not all; and I was hanged if I were coming out with the full
story of that crazy drive till I knew whether Paulette came into it. I
had no desire to talk before Macartney either, in spite of what he might
have found out, or guessed; no matter what Paulette might have been
mixed up in I was not going to have a stern-faced, set-eyed Macartney
put her through a catechism about it. Or Dudley either, for that matter.
I had no real voucher for the terms he and Paulette were on, except
Marcia's word; and Dudley was no man to trust not to turn on a girl.
"We shot a few wolves, if that's what you mean," I said roughly. "I
don't see why that should have worried you about Miss Paulette--or what
it has to do with Dunn and Collins!"--which was a plain lie.
"Few wolves! I know all about them!" Dudley retorted viciously. "Billy
Jones's wife came out with the plain truth--that you'd been chased by a
pack! And as for what Dunn and Collins had to do with my worrying about
the gold you carried, it's simple enough. They----" but he stopped,
chewing two fingers with a disgusting trick he had. "By gad," he looked
up suddenly, "I believe it was them the wolves were after to begin with,
Stretton--before they got started on you! And it wasn't what they left
La Chance for!"
"What d'ye mean?"
Dudley was chewing his fingers again, but Macartney answered with his
usual set-eyed openness. "The gold," he supplied. "I got an idea those
two deserters might have laid up beside the Caraquet road somewhere, to
wait for you and get it. I had trouble with them over some drilling the
morning you left; and when I went back to the stope after seeing you and
Miss Paulette off, they'd cleared out. They must have gone a couple of
hours before you did. They let out something about hold-ups while I was
having the trouble with them, and Wilbraham and I got worried they might
have managed to get over the road before you, and be lying up for you
somewhere."
"They only left--two hours before I did," said I, with flat irrelevance.
I must have stared at Macartney like a fool, but he had knocked the wind
clean out of me as to Collins having been the man in the swamp. With
only two hours' start neither he nor Dunn, nor any man, for matter of
that, could have legged it over my road in time to lie up in the only
place I knew some one had laid up,--on the corduroy road.
"Well, they didn't get me, and I never saw them," I began,--and suddenly
remembered that ghastly noise, like the last flurry of a dog fight, that
had halted the wolves on my track. My first thought of it, and of Dunn
and Collins, had been right. "By gad, I believe I heard them though," I
exclaimed, "and if they were on that road they're killed and eaten! But
I didn't have any trouble about the gold."
It was true to the letter, for my side had attended to all the trouble,
if my side was only a girl who would not have shot without need. But
when I explained the noise that might have accounted for Dunn and
Collins, Dudley shook his head.
"They didn't get eaten; not they! And your having no trouble with the
gold isn't saying you won't have any. If no one saw Dunn and Collins
going out to Caraquet I bet they're laid up somewhere on your road yet,
waiting for your next trip! And as if that wasn't worry enough, poor old
Thompson has to go out of his mind and come back here to be found
dead--and I mean to find out how!" He was working himself up into one of
his senseless rages, and he turned on Macartney furiously. "You knew
him before I did! Write to his people and find out how he got here,
anyhow. I'm not going to have any man come back, and just be found dead
like a dog, if it is only old Thompson! I'm going to have him traced
from the time he left Montreal."
"He had no people," said Macartney blankly. "As far as I know, he was
just a bit of driftwood. And as for finding out anything about his
journey here, I don't suppose we ever can! All we'll get at was that he
came back--and was found dead." And something made me look past him and
Dudley, sitting with their backs to the living-room door, and the blood
jumped into my face.
Paulette Brown stood in the doorway, motionless, as if she had been
there some time. I didn't know if she were merely knocked flat about the
wolves and Collins, or scared Macartney might have found out something
about her. But she was staring at Macartney's unconscious back as you
look at a chair or anything, without seeing it, and if he were pale she
was dead white,--except her mouth that was arched to a piteous crimson
bow, and her eyes that looked dark as pools of blue ink. But she did not
speak of Dunn or Collins.
"Do you mean Thompson's been found dead?--the quiet man who was here
when I came?" she stammered, as if it choked her. And I had an ungodly
fright she was going to say she must have shot him on the corduroy road!
"Billy Jones found him drowned in Lac Tremblant; it was an accident," I
exclaimed sharply, before she could come out with more about shooting
and wolf bait, and perhaps herself, than I chose any one to know,--till
I knew it first. And I saw the blood flash into her face as it had
flashed into mine at the sight of her.
"Oh, I thought Mr. Macartney meant he'd been--murdered," she returned
faintly. "I'm glad--he wasn't. But if he had been, I suppose it would be
sure to come out!"
"Crime doesn't always come out, Miss Paulette," said Macartney.
But Paulette only answered listlessly that she was not sure, one never
could tell; and moved to her usual seat by the fire.
I was knocked endways about Collins; for who could have been on the
corduroy road if he had not. I would have given most of the world for
ten minutes alone with my dream girl and explanations. But Dudley began
the whole story of Thompson over again, and Macartney stood there, and
Marcia--whom I had not seen since she went to bed with a swollen
face--came in, dressed in her hideous green tweed, and stood on tiptoe
to chuck me under the chin, with a "Hullo, Nicky, you're back again!"
There was no earthly hope of speaking to my dream girl alone. I shoved
the mystery of Collins into the back of my head and went off to my room
before I remembered I was still unconsciously holding that torn-off flap
of poor old Thompson's envelope in my shut fist. I dropped it on my
floor,--and grabbed it up again, to stare at it for a full minute.
Because there was writing on _it_, too.
"For God's sake, search my cards--my cards--my cards," Thompson had
scrawled across the three-cornered envelope flap Macartney's grab had
left in my hand: and, knowing Thompson, it was pitiful. He was the sort
who must have been crazy indeed before he spoke of the Almighty and
cards in the same breath.
I remembered taking his measly solitaire pack out of his pocket at the
Halfway, and wished I had brought them along with me. But it was simple
enough to go and get them from Billy Jones. Meantime I had no desire to
speak to Macartney of them or the scrawled, torn-off flap from
Thompson's envelope: he was sick enough already about old Thompson's
aberration, without any more proofs of it. It hurt even me to remember I
had always laughed at the poor devil and his forlorn cards. I had no
heart to burn the scrap of his envelope either, while old Thompson lay
unburied. I put it away in my letter case, and locked it up.
Which seemed a tame ending; I had not sense enough to know it was not
tame at all!