He heard again the quick, running step that he had recognized on the trail. The bushes behind him parted, and in the white starlight Meleese fell on her knees at his side, her glorious face bending over him in a grief that he had never seen in it before, her eyes shining on him with a great love. Without speaking she lifted his head in the hollow of her arm and crushed her own down against it, kissing him, and softly sobbing his name.
"Good-by," he heard her breathe. "Good-by--good-by--"
He struggled to cry out as she lowered his head back on the snow, to free his hands, to hold her with him--but he saw her face only once more, bending over him; felt the warm pressure of her lips to his forehead, and then again he could hear her footsteps hurrying away through the forest.
CHAPTER X
A RACE INTO THE NORTH
That Meleese loved him, that she had taken his head in her arms, and had kissed him, was the one consuming thought in Howland"s brain for many minutes after she had left him bound and gagged on the snow. That she had made no effort to free him did not at first strike him as significant. He still felt the sweet, warm touch of her lips, the pressure of her arms, the smothering softness of her hair. It was not until he again heard approaching sounds that he returned once more to a full consciousness of the mysterious thing that had happened. He heard first of all the creaking of a toboggan on the hard crust, then the pattering of dogs" feet, and after that the voices of men. The sounds stopped on the trail a dozen feet away from him.
With a strange thrill he recognized Croisset"s voice.
"You must be sure that you make no mistake," he heard the half-breed say. "Go to the waterfall at the head of the lake and heave down a big rock where the ice is open and the water boiling. Track up the snow with a pair of M"seur Howland"s high-heeled boots and leave his hat tangled in the bushes. Then tell the superintendent that he stepped on the stone and that it rolled down and toppled him into the chasm. They could never find his body--and they will send down for a new engineer in place of the lost M"seur."
Stupefied with horror, Howland strained his ears to catch the rest of the cold-blooded scheme which he was overhearing, but the voices grew lower and he understood no more that was said until Croisset, coming nearer, called out:
"Help me with the M"seur before you go, Jackpine. He is a dead weight with all those rawhides about him."
As coolly as though he were not more than a chunk of stovewood, Croisset and the Indian came through the bushes, seized him by the head and feet, carried him out into the trail and laid him lengthwise on the sledge.
"I hope you have not caught cold lying in the snow, M"seur," said Croisset, bolstering up the engineer"s head and shoulders and covering him with heavy furs. "We should have been back sooner, but it was impossible. Hoo-la, Woonga!" he called softly to his lead-dog. "Get up there, you wolf-hound!"
As the sledge started, with Croisset running close to the leader, Howland heard the low snapping of a whip behind him and another voice urging on other dogs. With an effort that almost dislocated his neck he twisted himself so he could look back of him. A hundred yards away he discerned a second team following in his trail; he saw a shadowy figure running at the head of the dogs, but what there was on the sledge, or what it meant, he could not see or surmise. Mile after mile the two sledges continued without a stop. Croisset did not turn his head; no word fell from his lips, except an occasional signal to the dogs. The trail had turned now straight into the North, and soon Howland could make out no sign of it, but knew only that they were twisting through the most open places in the forests, and that the play of the Polar lights was never over his left shoulder or his right, but always in his face.
They had traveled for several hours when Croisset gave a sudden shrill shout to the rearmost sledge and halted his own. The dogs fell in a panting group on the snow, and while they were resting the half-breed relieved his prisoner of the soft buckskin that had been used as a gag.
"It will be perfectly safe for you to talk now, M"seur, and to shout as loudly as you please," he said. "After I have looked into your pockets I will free your hands so that you can smoke. Are you comfortable?"
"Comfortable--be d.a.m.ned!" were the first words that fell from Howland"s lips, and his blood boiled at the sociable way in which Croisset grinned down into his face. "So you"re in it, too, eh?--and that lying girl--"
The smile left Croisset"s face.
"Do you mean Meleese, M"seur Howland?"
"Yes."
Croisset leaned down with his black eyes gleaming like coals.
"Do you know what I would do if I was her, M"seur?" he said in a low voice, and yet one filled with a threat which stilled the words of pa.s.sion which the engineer was on the point of uttering. "Do you know what I would do? I would kill you--kill you inch by inch--torture you.
That is what I would do."
"For G.o.d"s sake, Croisset, tell me why--why--"
Croisset had found Howland"s pistol and freed his hands, and the engineer stretched them out entreatingly.
"I would give my life for that girl, Croisset. I told her so back there, and she came to me when I was in the snow and--" He caught himself, adding to what he had left incomplete. "There is a mistake, Croisset. I am not the man they want to kill!"
Croisset was smiling at him again.
"Smoke--and think, M"seur. It is impossible for me to tell you why you should be dead--but you ought to know, unless your memory is shorter than a child"s."
He went to the dogs, stirring them up with the cracking of his whip, and when Howland turned to look back he saw a bright flare of light where the other sledge had stopped. A man"s voice came from the farther gloom, calling to Croisset in French.
"He tells me I am to take you on alone," said Croisset, after he had replied to the words spoken in a patois which Howland could not understand. "They will join us again very soon."
"They!" exclaimed Howland. "How many will it take to kill me, my dear Croisset?" The half-breed smiled down into his face again.
"You may thank the Blessed Virgin that they are with us," he replied softly. "If you have any hope outside of Heaven, M"seur, it is on that sledge behind."
As he went again to the dogs, straightening the leader in his traces, Howland stared back at the firelit s.p.a.ce in the forest gloom. He could see a man adding fuel to the blaze, and beyond him, shrouded in the deep shadows of the trees, an indistinct tangle of dogs and sledge. As he strained his eyes to discover more there was a movement beyond the figure over the fire and the young engineer"s heart leaped with a sudden thrill. Croisset"s voice sounded in a shrill shout behind him, and at that warning cry in French the second figure sprang back into the gloom.
But Howland had recognized it, and the chilled blood in his veins leaped into warm life again at the knowledge that it was Meleese who was trailing behind them on the second sledge! "When you yell like that give me a little warning if you please, Jean," he said, speaking as coolly as though he had not recognized the figure that had come for an instant into the firelight. "It is enough to startle the life out of one!"
"It is our way of saying good-by, M"seur," replied Croisset with a fierce snap of his whip. "Hoo-la, get along there!" he cried to the dogs, and in half a dozen breaths the fire was lost to view.
Dawn comes at about eight o"clock in the northern mid-winter; beyond the fiftieth degree the first ruddy haze of the sun begins to warm the southeastern skies at nine, and its glow had already risen above the forests before Croisset stopped his team again. For two hours he had not spoken a word to his prisoner and after several unavailing efforts to break the other"s taciturnity Howland lapsed into a silence of his own.
When he had brought his tired dogs to a halt, Croisset spoke for the first time.
"We are going to camp here for a few hours," he explained. "If you will pledge me your word of honor that you will make no attempt to escape I will give you the use of your legs until after breakfast, M"seur. What do you say?"
"Have you a Bible, Croisset?"
"No, M"seur, but I have the cross of our Virgin, given to me by the missioner at York Factory."
"Then I will swear by it--I will swear by all the crosses and all the Bibles in the world that I will make no effort to escape. I am paralyzed, Croisset! I couldn"t run for a week!"
Croisset was searching in his pockets.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he cried excitedly, "I have lost it! Ah, come to think, M"seur, I gave the cross to my Mariane before I went into the South, But I will take your word."
"And who is Mariane, Jean? Will she also be in at the "kill?""
"Mariane is my wife, M"seur. Ah, _ma belle_ Mariane--_ma cheri_--the daughter of an Indian princess and the granddaughter of a _chef de bataillon_, M"seur! Could there be better than that? And she is be-e-e-utiful, M"seur, with hair like the top side of a raven"s wing with the sun shining on it, and--"
"You love her a great deal, Jean."
"Next to the Virgin--and--it may be a little better."
Croisset had severed the rope about the engineer"s legs, and as he raised his glowing eyes Howland reached out and put both hands on his shoulders.
"And in just that way I love Meleese," he said softly. "Jean, won"t you be my friend? I don"t want to escape. I"m not a coward. Won"t you think of what your Mariane might do, and be a friend to me? You would die for Mariane if it were necessary. And I would die for the girl back on that sledge."
He had staggered to his feet, and pointed into the forests through which they had come.
"I saw her in the firelight, Jean. Why is she following us? Why do they want to kill me? If you would only give me a chance to prove that it is all a mistake--that I--"