SKUNK'S MISERY
Paulette said, "Oh my heavens, Dudley!" and went straight to pieces.
I don't know that I made much of a job of being calm myself. All I could
get out was, "The wolves! We thought they'd eaten you--Paulette found
your cap out by the Caraquet road."
Dudley, for whom the whole of La Chance had beaten the bush all one
livelong night, whom his own sister had sworn was killed and eaten,
Dudley made the best show of the three. He had a flask, of course,--when
had he not? He dosed Paulette and me with what was left in it, but even
with the whisky limbering my parched throat I hadn't sense to ask a
coherent question. Dudley looked from Paulette to me and spoke pretty
collectedly to both of us.
"I wasn't eaten, if that's what brought you two here--though judging
from your conversation I imagine it wasn't. Thank the Lord you are here
though, anyway. I've been pretty wild, tied up here with this snow.
But"--sharply--"where the devil's Marcia?"
"Hidden away from Macartney, with Charliet to look after her." It was
all I could bring myself to say, except that she thought Dudley was
dead.
"Does Macartney think so too?" the corpse demanded.
"He worked hard enough to feel safe in thinking it," I returned
bitterly, and came out with the whole story. How Macartney said the
wolves had howled around the shack till their noise drove Dudley
distracted, and he had slipped out after them unnoticed, with a gun;
that Macartney, the two girls and half the men had gone to look for him,
when he never returned, till Paulette found his wolf-doped cap torn up
by the Caraquet road, and Marcia found him, in the bush--unrecognizable
but for what rags of his sable-lined coat were left on his body. And
Dudley's hard-boiled egg face never changed with one word of it.
"So that was how it was worked," he reflected quite composedly. "And
Macartney thinks it was I Marcia found! Well, it wasn't--though I
daresay it was my coat, all right, just as it was my cap Paulette picked
up by the road. But it damn well would have been me, if it hadn't been
for"--he paused casually, and pointed behind him--"Baker."
"Baker! That good-for-nothing devil who was always trailing after you?
Why, Macartney said----" but I remembered Macartney had only said Baker
was missing, too. I wheeled on the dimness of the inside cave and saw
what I had missed in my flurry over Dudley. A second man--white-faced,
black-eyebrowed, slim looking--was standing just where the fire glow did
not reach him, staring at Paulette and me. I said, "Land of love,
_Baker_!" And I may be forgiven if I swore.
Baker nodded as undramatically as Dudley. "Yes, it was me. I had sense
enough all along to guess Macartney was going to finish Mr. Wilbraham
with the wolf dope he'd tried out on you, if the rest of the gang
hadn't. And I wouldn't stand for sculduddery like that, for one thing;
and for another I thought I'd come out better in the end by sticking to
the boss, like you seen me doing often enough! So I just told him he was
being lain for and brought him out here. I knew this cave was safe, for
I lived here two months before me and the rest of us dribbled into La
Chance. And I knew the Halfway wasn't--for the two men who turned Billy
Jones out of it, with a sham letter from the boss, were the two who
drowned old Thompson! I've played honest in my way, Mr. Stretton, if
you never thought so."
"Shut up," Dudley interrupted him indignantly. "I'd be where Marcia
thought she found me, if it hadn't been for you. Listen, Stretton! I got
fussy after you left for Billy Jones's that afternoon; I'd been hitting
it up the day before, and you know how that leaves me! I didn't see why
in blazes I hadn't gone with you to Billy's instead of sitting around
the house, and a couple of hours after you left I started out to get a
horse and follow you. But it's a lie that I heard wolves, or thought of
them: there wasn't one around the place. Macartney wasn't around,
either. I guess he was out in the bush fixing up the wolf-baited ground
that was to get me, for he'd fixed up my coat and cap with it before he
started. I thought something smelt like the devil when I put them on,
but I never guessed it was my own things. I went out to the stable just
as I might on any other day, only nobody happened to see me go, and
right there I ran on Baker. I told him to come for a ride with me, but
he didn't seem to think much of the horse racket; said he knew a short
cut to Billy's, and it would be better for my head if we just walked. It
was Baker told me the devilish reek I smelled was coming from my own
coat, and I chucked it down by the stable door. God knows which of
Macartney's men picked it up and wore it after I left it, for Marcia to
find," even Dudley looked sick, "but it wasn't me! I smelt my cap, too,
after I'd walked some of the muzziness out of me, and I threw that
away--where Paulette found it. We didn't leave a sign of a track, of
course; it was long before there was any snow. If I'd known why Baker
had me out there, walking away from La Chance, I'd have turned back and
defied Macartney, or I'd never have started. But it wasn't till it was
black dark, and I'd walked enough sense into myself to ask why we were
not getting to Billy Jones's, that Baker took his life in his hands--for
you may bet I was fighting mad at having seemed to run away--and told me
that you and I and all of us were in a trap that was going to spring and
get us, and give Macartney our mine. He let out about Thompson's murder,
and you and the wolf dope; and that Macartney'd kicked Billy Jones out
of the Halfway with a forged dismissal from me, and had his own men
waiting there to get you while he limed the bush and my cap and coat,
for the wolves to get _me_. And you know I'd have been dead sure to go
out after them with a gun, just as he said I did, if I'd heard them come
yowling around the shack while I was in it! I'd have gone back to face
Macartney, even then, only----Well, you've had experience of
Macartney's wolves, and you'd know I couldn't! We could hear the row
they were making even where we stood, miles away. We set off on the dead
run for Caraquet and help, but we had to break the journey somewhere. We
couldn't face Macartney's men at Billy's, for neither of us had a
gun--and that's another lie to Macartney--and it was no good leaving the
devil to run into hell. So Baker brought me here."
"But," I gasped, "I don't see how you missed me! I was here, too, that
night!"
"Well, we weren't--till the morning," Dudley snapped in his old way. "It
was just beginning to snow when we crawled down the burrow you'd crawled
out of and found this place--and your boy."
"But I told him----D'ye mean he just _let_ you find him?"
"He did not," grimly. "He was hidden away somewhere, and I don't suppose
he'd ever have come out, if I hadn't happened to use what seems to have
been your password! I said out loud that I'd give twenty dollars to any
one who'd get me some food; and out comes your friend, and says you told
him to trust any one who said that, and where was the twenty? So, after
that, we settled down!"
"But----" Dudley's selfishness had always been colossal, yet this time
it beat even me. "What did you suppose was going to become of your
sister and Paulette--left with Macartney when you'd disappeared, and the
Halfway picket had got _me_?" I burst out.
"My acquaintance with you made me hopeful they wouldn't get you," Dudley
began drily, "and as for the girls----" but his sham indifference broke
down. "Don't talk of it, will you?" he bellowed. "I did think you'd be
all right, but I was in hell for those girls till I could get to
Caraquet and take back help for them! Only this cursed snow stopped me.
We had to wait till it was packed enough for Baker to sneak down to the
Halfway and steal a couple of my own horses, for us to ride to Caraquet.
But that's how I'm here--and how Marcia found a half-eaten man in my
top-coat, that she thought was me!"
I was speechless. It was all so simple, even to Dudley's twenty dollars
and my boy. But before I could say so, Dudley turned on me with his old
vicious pounce. "Why in blazes don't you tell me what you left Marcia
for, after bullying me because I did? And why are you and Paulette here,
if you thought I was killed?"
"We left her because we had to, with a thousand tons of earth between us
and the only way we could have got back to her alive," said I
wrathfully. "And as for why we're here,"--I poured out the whole story
of my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that met
me and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collins
and Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left out
Marcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff.
"Marcia always was a fool about Macartney! But it's no matter, since she
isn't with him--whether he's alive or dead. Only you were a worse fool,
Stretton, to cross that lake with a girl in tow. I don't know why you
weren't both drowned, like Thompson----" but his voice broke. He was a
good little man, under his bad habits, or he never would have done what
he had for Paulette. He muttered something about all the decent men
who'd met their death because he wouldn't listen to Paulette when she
tried to tell him the truth about Macartney, damned him up and down, and
turned to Paulette with a sweet sort of roughness:
"You look done up, my girl! Here, get down by the fire and eat what our
chef's got ready!" For the crippled boy had gone on with his cooking,
regardless of the talk round him, and his rabbit was done.
But Paulette never looked at the food Dudley held out to her. "You're
not angry, Dudley?" she asked very low. "I mean--for what I said to
Nicky as we came in?"
"I was," but Dudley grinned in the half dark. "It was true enough, only
nobody likes to hear their own obituary. But I knew about Stretton long
ago, if you hadn't the sense to! You take him, my child, and my
blessing. God knows I never asked you to marry an old soak like me!"
He shoved Paulette's hand into mine and stared at the two of us for a
second. Then--"By gad," he added, in a different voice, "I hope
Macartney's got drowned, or he may walk in on the lot of us!"
"How?" I demanded scornfully. "He couldn't do thirty-two miles in the
time Paulette and I did fifteen, even if he knew where to do it to!"
"He doesn't have to, my young son," Dudley stood musing on it. "Baker
and I didn't do any twenty, coming here; and it was Macartney's own path
we came by. That doesn't go round by any Halfway! If he takes a fancy to
come here by it, and strikes your tracks as you two came into Skunk's
Misery, the rest wouldn't take him long! I believe--hang on a minute,
while I speak to Baker!" He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into the
dark of the cave where Baker stood aloof.
"You needn't worry about Macartney," I said to Paulette. "We didn't
leave any tracks, once we got into broken snow!"
I turned at a rustle behind me and looked straight into the muzzle of
Macartney's revolver and into Macartney's eyes!