Presently he stood erect, and asked in a low voice, "Did you do that?"
"What?"
"Look for yourself."
Granger looked, and saw that the b.a.l.l.s of the leader"s forefeet had been gashed several times with a knife.
"How should I have done it?" he replied. "I"ve been in your company every minute since you arrived."
"Who did it, then?"
"You know as well as I."
"And what do you think of a man who could do that?"
"That he was very desperate."
"I should call him a Gadarene swine."
Strangeways stood in angry thought for a few seconds; then he jerked up his head, and asked, "Can you lend me another team of huskies? Be careful when you answer that you tell me the truth this time."
Granger smiled at the childishness of such threatening.
"You will gain nothing by speaking like that," he said. "Unfortunately for you, unlike Spurling, I am not afraid of death--I should welcome it. Yet, while I live, I am curious; therefore I will promise you help on one condition, that you tell me who has been murdered, and where."
Strangeways lifted his eyes and surveyed Granger, asking himself, "And is this statement also a lie?" But, when he spoke there were the beginnings of a new respect in his voice. "So you are not afraid of death?" he said. "Well, then, I owe you an apology for what I have called you, for I am; I am horribly afraid. I am afraid that I shall die before I have avenged this death."
"Tell me, who was it that was killed?" cried Granger, impatiently.
"Was it a girl? There was a girl whom I loved in the Klondike; you don"t know how you make me suffer."
"Don"t I?" replied Strangeways, grimly; and then with affected indifference, "There are a good many girls in the Klondike; the body of this one was found washed ash.o.r.e near Forty-Mile."
"What"s her name?"
"That"s what I"m here to find out."
"Did Spurling know that she was a woman when he shot her?"
"So you know that also--that he shot her? Whether he knew, I don"t care; the fact remains that she is dead and that he is suspected."
"Only suspected?"
"Well, . . ."
"By G.o.d!" cried Granger, bringing down his fist in Strangeways" face, "but you shall tell me! Was her name Mordaunt, and was she his partner, and did she wear a man"s disguise?"
Strangeways turned his head and dodged aside so that the blow fell lightly; drawing his revolver, he covered his opponent. Granger advanced close up, until the barrel of the revolver touched his face; then he halted and waited.
Strangeways watched him; looked into his eyes amazed; then lowered his weapon and laughed nervously. "Oh," he said, "I remember, you are not afraid of death."
"But I am of madness and suspense."
Strangeways did not reply at once. Perhaps a sudden understanding had dawned on him, pity and a vision of what it meant to live through the eternal Now at Murder Point. He may have been asking himself, "For the lack of one small untruth, shall I thrust this man into h.e.l.l?" At any rate, when he answered he spoke gently. "No," he said, "she wore a woman"s dress; be sure of it, your girl-friend is safe up there."
Granger looked at him steadily, wondering why he should have lied; than he took his hand and pressed it in the English manner, "I believe you," he said. Yet, at the back of his mind a voice was persistently questioning, "Do I believe him? But can I believe that?"
He was interrupted in his thoughts by Strangeways saying, "It"s a pity that that poor brute should suffer; he"s certain to die."
The corporal went near, levelled his revolver and shot the leader between the eyes. The bullet did its work; the dog shivered, and tottered, rolled over on its side, tried to rise again, then stretched itself out wearily as if for sleep at the end of a hard day"s travel.
"You can do that for a mere husky," said Granger bitterly; "but you refuse to do it for a man."
"The husky had a harsh time of it in this world and has no other life."
"If that"s so, he"s to be congratulated; but there was the more reason why he should have been allowed to live his one life out. We wretched men are never done with life; if I were sure that there was only one existence and no reproaches in a future world, I could be brave to the end. It"s this repet.i.tion of mortality, which men call immortality, that staggers my intellect, making me afraid--afraid lest there is no death."
Strangeways shrugged his shoulders and scowled. He did not like the subject--it caused him discomfort; there was so much left for him in life. He planned, when he had captured Spurling and seen him safely hanged, to buy himself out of the Mounted Police, return to England, and there live pleasantly at his club in London and as squire on his estate. He would marry, he told himself; and though not the girl whom he had most desired, for he believed her to be dead, yet, like a sensible man, some other girl, who would be his friend, and bear his children, and make him happy. If once he could get out of Keewatin, having performed his duty honourably, he would do all that--when Spurling had been captured alive or dead.
Therefore he broke in on Granger roughly, inquiring, "Where are those huskies which you are going to lend me?"
"They are Spurling"s huskies which he left behind when I lent him mine."
"How long ago was that?--If they"re Spurling"s, they must be pretty well played out."
"They are. They"ve rested for thirty hours more or less; but I don"t think you"ll manage to catch him up with them."
"Perhaps not, but I"ll try; he can"t be more than three hours ahead."
"Three hours with a fresh team is as good as three days."
"You forget the difference between the two men."
"No, I don"t, for the one has the memory of his crime."
"It"s the memory of his crime that"ll wear him out, and that same memory that"ll give me strength."
"Why? What makes you hate him so? Supposing he did kill a woman, it may have been an accident. She may even have felt grateful for the bullet, as I should have done just now had you shot me dead. It"s horrible to kill anyone, but then the poor devil"s fleeing for his life and he"s suffering a thousand times more pain than he inflicted."
"Is he? Does he suffer the pain of the man who follows behind?
Supposing a certain man had loved that woman and had lost her, and had planned all his life on the off-chance of meeting her again, dreaming of her day and night, and then had suddenly learnt that she was brutally dead by Spurling"s hand on some G.o.d-forsaken Yukon River, where the ground was hard like iron so that no grave could be dug by the murderer, and her body froze to marble and lay exposed all winter through the long dark days, with the bullet wound red in her forehead, and her grey face looking up toward the frosty sky, till the spring came and the water washed her body under and threw it up in a creek near Forty-Mile, where a year later it was discovered mutilated and defiled, do you think that her lover would be glad of that? Do you think that he would pity the black-guard who could do such a scoundrelly deed as that?"
Strangeways was speaking wildly, his voice was trembling and his face was haggard and lined; he was crying like a child. "The man who could do a deed like that," he shouted, menacing the stars with his clenched hand, "the man who could do a deed like that is so corrupt that even G.o.d would search for good in him in vain. It"s the duty of every clean man to hound him off the earth. While we allow him to live, we each one share his taint. I"ll pray G.o.d every day of my life that Spurling may be d.a.m.ned throughout the ages--eternally and pitilessly d.a.m.ned."
When Granger could make his voice heard, "You don"t mean that she was Mordaunt?" he cried. All this talk about a woman who had been lost and loved paralleled his own case--he took it as applied to himself.
Strangeways recovered himself with an effort, "No, no," he said huskily. "Mordaunt, you have told me, was a man. I was only supposing all that."
"But Mordaunt was not a man, but a woman in man"s clothing."