I was lying beside the fire, Jessie rubbing my forehead with snow in lieu of water, when I again became cognizant of my surroundings. Barreau stood on the other side of the fire, putting on fresh wood.
"I"m sorry, sorry, Bob," she whispered, and her eyes were moist. "But you know I couldn"t stand by and see you-it would have been murder."
I sat up at that. Across the top of my head a great welt was now risen.
My face, I could feel, was puffed and bruised. I looked at Barreau more closely; his features were battered even worse than mine.
"Did you hit me with an axe, or was it a tree?" I asked peevishly. "That is the way my head feels."
"The rifle," she stammered. "I-it was-I didn"t want to hurt you, Bob, but the rifle was so heavy. I couldn"t make you stop any other way; you wouldn"t listen to me, even."
So that was the way of it! I got to my feet. Save a dull ache in my head and the smarting of my bruised face, I felt equal to anything-and the physical pain was as nothing to the hurt of my pride. To be felled by a woman-the woman I loved-I did love her, and therein lay the hurt of her action. I could hardly understand it, and yet-strange paradox-I did not trouble myself to understand. My brain was in no condition for solving problems of that sort. I was not concerned with the why; the fact was enough.
If I had been the unformed boy who cowered before those two hairy-fisted slave-drivers aboard the _New Moon_-but I was not; I never could be again. The Trouble Trail had hardened more than my bone and sinew; and the last seven days of it, the dreary plodding over unbroken wastes, amid forbidding woods, utter silence, and cold bitter beyond Words, had keyed me to a fearful pitch. There was a kink to my mental processes; I saw things awry. In all the world there seemed to be none left but us three; two men and a woman, and each of us desiring the woman so that we were ready to fly at each other"s throats. Standing there by the fire I could see how it would be, I thought. Unless the unseen enemy who hovered about us cut it short with his rifle, we were foredoomed to maddening weeks, perhaps months, of each other"s company. Though she had jeered at him and flaunted her contempt for him at both MacLeod and the post, Jessie had put by that hostile, bitter spirit. To me, it seemed as if she were in deadly fear of Barreau. She shrank from him, both his word and look. And I must stand like a buffer between. Weeks of suspicion, of trifling, jealous actions, of simmering hate that would bubble up in hot words and sudden blows; I did not like the prospect.
"I have a mind to settle it all, right here and now!"
I did not know until the words were out that I had spoken aloud. As a spark falling in loose powder, so was the effect of that sentence upon a spirit as turbulent and as sorely tried as his.
"Settle it then, settle it," he rose to his feet and shouted at me.
"There is your gun behind you."
I blurted an oath and reached for the rifle, and as my fingers closed about it Jessie flung herself on me.
"No, no, _no_," she screamed, "I won"t let you. Oh, oh, for G.o.d"s sake be men, not murdering brutes. Think of me if you won"t think of your own lives. Stop it, stop it! Put down those guns!"
She clung to me desperately, hampering my hands. He could have killed me with ease. I could see him across the fire, waiting, his Winchester half-raised, the fire-glow lighting up his face with its blazing eyes and parted lips, teeth set tight together. And I could not free myself of that clinging, crying girl. Not at once, without hurting her. Mad as I was, I had no wish to do that. At length, however, I loosened her clinging arms, and pushed her away. But she was quick as a steel trap.
She caught the barrel of my rifle as I swung it up, and before I could break her frenzied grip the second time, a voice in the dark nearby broke in upon us with startling clearness.
"h.e.l.lo, folks, h.e.l.lo!"
The sound of feet in the crisp snow, the squeaking crunch of toboggans, other voices; these things uprose at hand. I ceased to struggle with Jessie. But only when a man stepped into the circle of firelight, with others dimly outlined behind him, did she release her hold on my gun.
Barreau had already let the b.u.t.t of his drop to his feet. He stood looking from me to the stranger, his hands resting on the muzzle.
"How-de-do, everybody."
The man stopped at the fire and looked us over. He was short, heavily built. Under the close-drawn _parka_ hood we could see little of his face. He was dressed after the fashion, the necessity rather, of the North. His eyes suddenly became riveted on me.
"G.o.d bless my soul!" he exclaimed.
He reached into a pocket and took out a pair of gla.s.ses wrapped in a silk handkerchief. The lenses he rubbed hastily with the silk, and stuck them upon the bridge of his nose. I could hear him mumbling to himself.
A half dozen men edged up behind him.
"G.o.d bless me," he repeated. "Without a doubt, it _is_ Bob Sumner.
Somewhat the worse for wear, but Bob, sure enough. Ha, you young dog, I"ve had a merry chase after you. Don"t even know me, do you?"
He pushed back the hood of his _parka_. The voice had only puzzled me.
But I recognized that cheerful, rubicund countenance with its bushy black eyebrows; and the thing that favored me most in my recollection was a half-smoked, unlighted cigar tucked in one corner of his mouth. It was my banker guardian, Bolton of St. Louis.
Wakening out of the first doze I had fallen into through that long night I was constrained to rise and poke my head out of the tent in which I slept to make sure that I had not dreamed it all. For the event savored of a bolt from a clear sky. I could scarcely believe that only a few hours back I had listened to the details of its accomplishment; how Bolton had in the fullness of time received both my letters; how he had traced me step by step from MacLeod north, and how he had only located me on the Sicannie River, through the aid of the Hudson"s Bay Company.
He was on his way to the post. Our meeting was purely accidental. And so on. From the tent I saw a lone sentinel plying the fire. I slipped on the few clothes I had taken off, and sat down beside the cheery crackle of the blaze, to meditate upon the miracle. I was sane enough to shudder at what might have been, if Barreau and I had had a few minutes longer.
In an hour all the camp was awake. Bolton"s cook prepared breakfast, and we ate by candle-light in a tent warmed by a sheet-iron stove. How one"s point of view shuffles like the needle of a compa.s.s! A tent with a stove in it, where one could be thoroughly comfortable, impressed me as the pyramid-point of luxury.
After that there was the confusion of tearing up camp and loading a half-dozen dog-teams. Jessie sat by the great fire that was kept up outside, and her face was troubled. Barreau, I noticed, drew Bolton a little way off, where the two of them stood talking earnestly together, Bolton expostulating, Barreau urging. Directly after that I saw Barreau with two of Bolton"s men to help him, load one of the dog-teams over again. He led it to one side; his snowshoes lying on the load. Then he came over to Jessie. Reaching within his _parka_ he drew forth the package he had taken off Montell"s body, and held it out to her.
"Girl," he said, and there was that in his voice which gave me a sudden pang, and sent a flush of shame to my cheek, "here is your father"s money. There is no need for me to take care of it now. Good-bye."
She stared up at him, making no move to take the package, and so with a little gesture he dropped it at her feet and turned away. And as he laid hold of the dog-whip she sprang to her feet and ran after him.
"George, George!" If ever a cry sounded a note of pain, that did. It made me wince. He whirled on his heel, and the dog-whip fell unheeded in the snow.
"Oh, oh," she panted, "I can"t take that. It isn"t mine. It"s blood-money. And-and if you go by yourself, I shall go with you."
"With me," he held her by the shoulder, looking down into her upturned face. Never before had I seen such a variety of expression on his features, in so short a span of time, hope, tenderness, puzzlement, a panorama of emotions. "I"m an outlaw. There"s a price on my head-you know that. And you yourself have said-ah, I won"t repeat the things you have said. You know-you knew you were stabbing me when--"
"I know, I know!" she cried. "I believed those things then. Oh, you can"t tell how it hurt me to think that all the time you had been playing a double part-fooling my father and myself. But now I _know_. I know the whole wretched business; or at least enough to understand. I got into his papers back there on the Sicannie. There were things that amazed me-after that-I stormed at him till he told me the truth; part of it. You don"t know how sorry I am for those horrible, unwomanly things I said to you. How could I know? He lied so consistently-even at the last he lied to me-told me that the Company men had taken the post by surprise, that we were lucky to get away with our lives. I believed that until I saw you find that money. Then I knew that he had sold you out-his partner. I"ve been a little beast," she sobbed, "and I"ve been afraid to tell you. Oh, you don"t know how much I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid. I"m not afraid now. If you are going to strike out alone, I shall go, too."
He bent and kissed her gravely.
"The Northwest is no place for me, Jess," he said. "I cannot cross it in the winter without being seen or trailed, and there is no getting out of that jail-break, if I am caught. I must go over the mountains, and so to the south, where there are no Police. You cannot come. Bolton, and-and Bob will see you safe to St. Louis. If nothing happens I shall be there in the spring."
She laid her head against his breast and sobbed, wailing over him before us all. I bit my lip at the sight, and putting my pride in my pocket went over to them.
"Barreau," I said, "I don"t, and probably never will, understand a woman. You win, and I wish you luck. But unless you hold a grudge longer than I do, there"s no need for you to play a lone hand. Let the dead past bury its dead, and we will all go over the mountains together. I have no wish to take a chance with the Police again, myself. You and Bolton seem to forget that I"m just as deep in the mud as you are in the mire."
Barreau stood looking fixedly at me for a few seconds. Then he held out his hand, and the old, humorous smile that had been absent from his face for many a day once more wrinkled the corners of his mouth.
"Bob," he said, "I reckon that you and I are hard men to beat-at any game we play."
That, to all intents and purposes, ends my story. We did cross the mountains, and traverse the vast, silent slopes that fall away to the blue Pacific. Bolton had gilded the palm of the Hudson"s Bay Company in his search for me, and so they considerately dropped their feud with Barreau-at least there was no more shooting of dogs, nor any effort to recover the money that cost Montell his life. Or perhaps they judged it unwise to meddle with a party like ours.
So, by wide detour, we came at last to St. Louis. There Barreau and Jessie were married, and departed thence upon their honeymoon. When their train had pulled out, I went with Bolton back to his office in the bank. He seated himself in the very chair he had occupied the day I came and saddled the burden of my affairs upon him. He c.o.c.ked his feet up on the desk, lighted a cigar and leaned back.
"Well, Robert," he finally broke into my meditations, "how about this school question? Have you decided where you"re going to try for a B. A.?
And when? What about it?"
"I can take up college any time," I responded. "Just now-well, I"m going to the ranch. A season in the cow camps will teach me something; and I would like to run the business just as my father did. I don"t think I"ll slip back so that I can"t take up study again. Anyway, the schools have no monopoly of knowledge; there"s a wonderful lot of things, I"ve discovered, that a fellow has to teach himself."
He surveyed me in silence a few minutes, his cigar pointed rakishly aloft, his eyes half shut. Then he took the weed between his thumb and forefinger and delivered himself of this sapient observation:
"You"ll do, Bob. As a matter of fact, the North made a man of you."
I made no answer to that. I could not help reflecting, a trifle bitterly, that there were penalties attached to the attaining of manhood-in my case, at least.