The fire in her eyes deepened. "And yet you say you want to be the
friend of a stranger who has tried to kill you. WHY, m'sieu?"
He was cornered. He sensed the humiliation of it, the impossibility of
confessing to her the wild impulse that had moved him before he knew
she was St. Pierre's wife. And she did not wait for him to answer.
"This--this Roger Audemard--if you catch him--what will you do with
him?" she asked.
"He will be hanged," said David. "He is a murderer."
"And one who tries to kill--who almost succeeds--what is the penalty
for that?" She leaned toward him, waiting. Her hands were clasped
tightly in her lap, the spots were brighter in her cheeks.
"From ten to twenty years," he acknowledged. "But, of course, there may
be circumstances--"
"If so, you do not know them," she interrupted him. "You say Roger
Audemard is a murderer. You know I tried to kill you. Then why is it
you would be my friend and Roger Audemard's enemy? Why, m'sieu?"
Carrigan shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. "I shouldn't," he
confessed. "I guess you are proving I was wrong in what I said. I ought
to arrest you and take you back to the Landing as soon as I can. But,
you see, it strikes me there is a big personal element in this. I was
the man almost killed. There was a mistake,--must have been, for as
soon as you put me out of business you began nursing me back to life
again. And--"
"But that doesn't change it," insisted St. Pierre's wife. "If there had
been no mistake, there would have been a murder. Do you understand,
m'sieu? If it had been some one else behind that rock, I am quite
certain he would have died. The Law, at least, would have called it
murder. If Roger Audemard is a criminal, then I also am a criminal. And
an honorable man would not make a distinction because one of them is a
woman!"
"But--Black Roger was a fiend. He deserves no mercy. He--"
"Perhaps, m'sieu!"
She was on her feet, her eyes flaming down upon him. In that moment her
beauty was like the beauty of Carmin Fanchet. The poise of her slender
body, her glowing cheeks, her lustrous hair, her gold-flecked eyes with
the light of diamonds in them, held him speechless.
"I was sorry and went back for you," she said. "I wanted you to live,
after I saw you like that on the sand. Bateese says I was indiscreet,
that I should have left you there to die. Perhaps he is right. And
yet--even Roger Audemard might have had that pity for you."
She turned quickly, and he heard her moving away from him. Then, from
the door, she said,
"Bateese will make you comfortable, m'sieu."
The door opened and closed. She was gone. And he was alone in the cabin
again.
The swiftness of the change in her amazed him. It was as if he had
suddenly touched fire to an explosive. There had been the flare, but no
violence. She had not raised her voice, yet he heard in it the tremble
of an emotion that was consuming her. He had seen the flame of it in
her face and eyes. Something he had said, or had done, had tremendously
upset her, changing in an instant her attitude toward him. The thought
that came to him made his face burn under its scrub of beard. Did she
think he was a scoundrel? The dropping of his hand, the shock that must
have betrayed itself in his face when she said she was St. Pierre's
wife--had those things warned her against him? The heat went slowly out
of his face. It was impossible. She could not think that of him. It
must have been a sudden giving way under terrific strain. She had
compared herself to Roger Audemard, and she was beginning to realize
her peril--that Bateese was right--that she should have left him to die
in the sand!
The thought pressed itself heavily upon Carrigan. It brought him
suddenly back to a realization of how small a part he had played in
this last half hour in the cabin. He had offered to Pierre's wife a
friendship which he had no right to offer and which she knew he had no
right to offer. He was the Law. And she, like Roger Audemard, was a
criminal. Her quick woman's instinct had told her there could be no
distinction between them, unless there was a reason. And now Carrigan
confessed to himself that there had been a reason. That reason had come
to him with the first glimpse of her as he lay in the hot sand. He had
fought against it in the canoe; it had mastered him in those thrilling
moments when he had beheld this slim, beautiful creature riding
fearlessly into the boiling waters of the Holy Ghost. Her eyes, her
hair, the sweet, low voice that had been with him in his fever, had
become a definite and unalterable part of him. And this must have shown
in his eyes and face when he dropped his hand--when she told him she
was St. Pierre's wife.
And now she was afraid of him! She was regretting that she had not left
him to die. She had misunderstood what she had seen betraying itself
during those few seconds of his proffered friendship. She saw only a
man whom she had nearly killed, a man who represented the Law, a man
whose power held her in the hollow of his hand. And she had stepped
back from him, startled, and had told him that she was not St. Pierre's
daughter, but his wife!
In the science of criminal analysis Carrigan always placed himself in
the position of the other man. And he was beginning to see the present
situation from the view-point of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. He was
satisfied that she had made a desperate mistake and that until the last
moment she had believed it was another man behind the rock. Yet she had
shown no inclination to explain away her error. She had definitely
refused to make an explanation. And it was simply a matter of common
sense to concede that there must be a powerful motive for her refusal.
There was but one conclusion for him to arrive at--the error which St.
Pierre's wife had made in shooting the wrong man was less important to
her than keeping the secret of why she had wanted to kill some other
man.
David was not unconscious of the breach in his own armor. He had
weakened, just as the Superintendent of "N" Division had weakened that
day four years ago when they had almost quarreled over Carmin Fanchet.
"I'll swear to Heaven she isn't bad, no matter what her brother has
been," McVane had said. "I'll gamble my life on that, Carrigan!"
And because the Chief of Division with sixty years of experience behind
him, had believed that, Carmin Fanchet had not been held as an
accomplice in her brother's evildoing, but had gone back into her
wilderness uncrucified by the law that had demanded the life of her
brother. He would never forget the last time he had seen Carmin
Fanchet's eyes--great, black, glorious pools of gratitude as they
looked at grizzled old McVane; blazing fires of venomous hatred when
they turned on him. And he had said to McVane,
"The man pays, the woman goes--justice indeed is blind!"
McVane, not being a stickler on regulations when it came to Carrigan,
had made no answer.
The incident came back vividly to David as he waited for the promised
coming of Bateese. He began to appreciate McVane's point of view, and
it was comforting, because he realized that his own logic was
assailable. If McVane had been comparing the two women now, he knew
what his argument would be. There had been no absolute proof of crime
against Carmin Fanchet, unless to fight desperately for the life of her
brother was a crime. In the case of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain there was
proof. She had tried to kill. Therefore, of the two, Carmin Fanchet
would have been the better woman in the eyes of McVane.
In spite of the legal force of the argument which he was bringing
against himself, David felt unconvinced. Carmin Fanchet, had she been
in the place of St. Pierre's wife, would have finished him there in the
sand. She would have realized the menace of letting him live and would
probably have commanded Bateese to dump him in the river. St. Pierre's
wife had gone to the other extreme. She was not only repentant, but was
making restitution, for her mistake, and in making that restitution had
crossed far beyond the dead-line of caution. She had frankly told him
who she was; she had brought him into the privacy of what was
undeniably her own home; in her desire to undo what she had done she
had hopelessly enmeshed herself in the net of the Law--if that Law saw
fit to act. She had done these things with courage and conviction. And
of such a woman, Carrigan thought, St. Pierre must be very proud.
He looked slowly about the cabin again and each thing that he saw was a
living voice breaking up a dream for him. These voices told him that he
was in a temple built because of a man's worship for a woman--and that
man was St. Pierre. Through the two western windows came the last glow
of the western sun, like a golden benediction finding its way into a
sacred place. Here there was--or had been--a great happiness, for only
a great pride and a great happiness could have made it as it was.
Nothing that wealth and toil could drag up out of a civilization a
thousand miles away had been too good for St. Pierre's wife. And about
him, looking more closely, David saw the undisturbed evidences of a
woman's contentment. On the table were embroidery materials with which
she had been working, and a lamp-shade half finished. A woman's
magazine printed in a city four thousand miles away lay open at the
fashion plates. There were other magazines, and many books, and open
music above the white keyboard of the piano, and vases glowing red and
yellow with wild-flowers and silver birch leaves. He could smell the
faint perfume of the fireglow blossoms, red as blood. In a pool of
sunlight on one of the big white bear rugs lay the sleeping cat. And
then, at the far end of the cabin, an ivory-white Cross of Christ
glowed for a few moments in a last homage of the sinking sun.
Uneasiness stole upon him. This was the woman's holy ground, her
sanctuary and her home, and for three days his presence had driven her
from it. There was no other room. In making restitution she had given
up to him her most sacred of all things. And again there rose up in him
that new-born thing which had set strange fires stirring in his heart,
and which from this hour on he knew he must fight until it was dead.
For an hour after the last of the sun was obliterated by the western
mountains he lay in the gloom of coming darkness. Only the lapping of
water under the bateau broke the strange stillness of the evening. He
heard no sound of life, no voice, no tread of feet, and he wondered
where the woman and her men had gone and if the scow was still tied up
at the edge of the tar-sands. And for the first time he asked himself
another question, Where was the man, St. Pierre?