And in reality the man"s thoughts were as busy as never before.
He opened his eyes, struggling for vision. But he could not make out the forms of the men at all, except when they crossed in front of the candles. The candles themselves were mere points of yellow between his lids. One of the candles was sitting just beside him, on a shelf; the other was on the table. He tried to locate the position of all four of his fellow-occupants of the cabin,--Virginia at one end of the table, Joe at the other, Pete opposite him on the other side of the stove, Harold standing in the middle of the room, babbling in his drunkenness.
But the first exhilaration of the drink was dying now, giving way to a more dangerous mood. Even Harold was less talkative: the tones of his voice had harshened. The two Indians, when they spoke at all, were surly and threatening.
The moments pa.s.sed. For a breath the cabin was still. Only too well Bill knew that matters were approaching the explosive stage. A single word might invoke murderous pa.s.sions that would turn the cabin into shambles. The men drank the third time, emptying the first quart and beginning upon the second.
"You"re a pretty little witch," Harold addressed Virginia. "You"re hard to kiss, but your kisses are worth having. What you think about that, Joe? Aren"t I tellin" you the truth?"
Joe! Bill"s first impression had been right, after all. His face made no sign, but he shifted in his chair. For all the ease and almost inertness with which he sat, his muscles were wholly ready for such command as his mind might give them,--to spring instantly to their full power for a fight to the death. Virginia heard the name too, and her fears increased.
"Joe?" she repeated. "You know him, then?"
"Of course I know Joe. He"s an old friend. He"s one that Bill told never to show his face in this part of Clearwater again--but you don"t see anything happening to him, do you?"
He waited, hoping Bill would make response. But the latter was holding hard, waiting for the moment of crisis, hoping yet that it might be avoided. There was time enough when Virginia was safe and his sight had returned him to answer such speeches as this.
"You see he hasn"t anything to say," Harold gloated. "I asked you a question, Joe--about Virginia. Didn"t I tell the truth?"
The girl flinched, then caught herself with a half-sob. She resolved to make one more appeal. "Oh Harold--please--please be careful what you say," she pleaded. "You"re drunk now--but don"t forget you were a gentleman--once. Don"t drink any more. Don"t let these Indians drink any more, either."
"A gentleman once, eh? So you don"t think I"m one any more. But Bill, there--he"s one, ain"t he? It seems to me you"ve been getting kind of bossy around here, lately--and the women of we northern men don"t behave that way."
"I"m not your woman, thank G.o.d--and I ask you to be careful."
"And I repeat that warning." Bill spoke gravely, quietly from his chair. "You"re acting like a rotter, Harold, and you know it. Shut up the bottle and try to hold yourself--and then remember what you"ve been saying. Remember that I"m still here--and if I"m not able to avenge an insult now, the time is coming when I will. And I"ve got one weapon _now_ that I won"t hesitate to use. I mean--an answer to a question of a while ago. If you want to keep her love, be careful."
The Indians turned to him, the murder-madness darkening their faces.
Pete"s hand began to steal toward his hip. He had no ancestral precedent for the use of a miner"s pick for such work as faced him now.
And he held high regard for the thin, cruel blade.
"Do you think I care?" Harold answered. "Tell her if you want to--all about Sindy and everything else. Do you think I"m ashamed of it? I"ve heard all I want to from you too--and I"ll say and drink what I please."
Bill had no answer at first. He had thought that this threat might bring Harold to time; he had supposed that the man valued Virginia"s love as much as he, in a similar position, would have valued it. Harold turned to the girl. "So you"re _not_ my woman, eh?"
"No, no, no! I never will be!" The girl"s eyes were blazing, and she had forgotten her fear in her magnificent wrath. "I suppose--you were a squaw man. These Indians are your own friends."
Harold smiled cruelly. "Yes, a squaw man. And these are my friends.
Don"t you suppose I"ve known--for the last week--you were just fooling me along, all the time fondling Bill? Sindy at least was faithful--and her form wouldn"t take anything from yours."
Pete, watching Joe, was somewhat amazed at the curious start the man made. His searching gaze had leaped over the girl"s form; his dark, smoldering eyes suddenly blazed red. There was no other word than red.
They were like two coals of fire.
There ensued a moment of strange and menacing silence. Pete chuckled, already receptive to Joe"s thought. Harold turned to stare at him.
Joe put his pipe to his lips, then fumbled at his pocket. He seemed to search in vain. "Will you give me a match, please, lady?" he asked.
The tone was strange, thick and strained, yet Virginia"s heart thrilled with hope. The request was a welcome interlude in a quarrel that was already rapidly approaching the fighting stage. Perhaps if these men started to smoke, their blood would cool; she had known of old that tobacco was a wonderful bromide to overstretched nerves. He turned quickly to the shelf above Bill"s head and procured half a dozen matches from the box.
As her back was turned she heard Pete laugh again,--one evil syllable that filled her with instinctive horror. Her wide eyes turned to him; he was watching her intently. Then she stepped back to give Joe the matches.
Instinctively her eyes turned to the wall for a rea.s.suring sight of her pistol. It was gone from its place.
For an instant she stared in horrified amazement. The matches dropped idly from her hand. A sob caught in her throat, a sob of hopeless and utter terror, but she fought a brave little fight to suppress it. She knew she must appear to be brave; at least she must do this much. She looked at Joe; his evil, leering face told her only too plainly that his eager hand had seized and secreted her pistol. Pete"s face was drawn too; Harold only looked bewildered.
He was her last hope, but in one instant"s scrutiny she saw that this had vanished, too. Some terrible thought had sobered and engrossed him.
Now he was eyeing her like a witless thing, his features drawn, his eyes burning. The moment was charged with ineffable suspense.
"What is it, Virginia?" Bill asked.
"One of these men--" she answered brokenly--"has taken my pistol. I want him to give it back----"
The circle laughed then,--a harsh and sinister sound that filled her with inexpressible horror. For a moment she stood motionless in the center of that leering circle, her eyes wide, her face white as death,--a slight figure, trying to hard to stand straight, crushed and defenseless, only her eyes pleading in last appeal. Instinctively her lips whispered a prayer.
Joe spoke then, a single sentence in the vernacular for Harold"s ears.
With one gesture he indicated Harold, himself, and Pete in turn, then pointed to the girl. His face was hideous with eagerness.
Harold started at the words, but at first made no answer. He had lost her anyway; there was no need of further restraint. The silence, the stress, most of all the burning liquor flung a wild and devastating flame through his veins, a dreadful madness seized his brain. There was no saving grace, no impulse of manhood, no memory of virtue to hold him back.
His degeneracy was complete. He could not go lower. His father"s wicked blood pulsed in his veins; the final brutality that the North bestows upon those it conquers was upon him. He answered with a curse.
"Why not?" he said. "The s.l.u.t"s thrown me over. When I"m through you can do what you want. And crack the skull of that mole with the pick and throw him out in the snow."
The two Indians lurched forward at his words. Bill left his chair in a mighty leap.
x.x.xI
When Bill sprang forward to intercept the attack upon the girl he came with amazing accuracy and power. There was nothing of blindness or misdirection about that leap. It was as if his sight had already returned to him. The real truth was that by means of his acute ear he had located the exact position of every actor in the impending drama.
What was more important, he knew the location of both candles. For all his almost total blindness, he could discern through his watering eyes the faint, yellow gleam of each. The one that burned beside him, on the little shelf, he brushed off with one sweep of his hand as he leaped.
He knocked the second from the table; it fell, flickered, filled the room an instant with dancing light, and then went out. The utter darkness dropped down.
The act had been so swift and unexpected that neither Joe, standing nearest to the girl, or Harold across the room could draw their pistols and fire. Seemingly in a flash the darkness was upon them. No more was Bill the blind and helpless mole, to strike down with one careless blow.
He was face to face with his enemies in his own dark lair. He had turned the tables; the advantage of vision on which they had presumed had been in an instant removed. They could see no more than he could now. Besides, in the hours since his rescue, he had already learned to find his way around the cabin.
And this was no half-darkness--that which descended as the candles were struck down. It was the infinite, smothering gloom of an underground cave in which no shadow could live, nor the sharpest outline remain visible. Harold cursed in the blackness; as if in a continuation of the leap he had made to upset the candles, Bill seized Virginia in his strong arms. He thrust her to the floor and into the angle between her bunk and the wall, the point that he instinctively realized would be easiest to defend and safest from stray bullets. Then, widening his arms, almost to the width of the little s.p.a.ce between the table and the wall, he lunged forward again.
Virginia"s pistol was in Joe"s hand by now, and he shot in Bill"s direction. Two spurts of yellow fire broke for an instant the utter gloom. But there was no time for a third shot. He was the nearest of the three attackers, and Bill"s outstretched arms seized him. The woodsman"s muscles gave a mighty wrench.
His grasp was about Joe"s chest at first, but with a great lurch he slung the man"s body out far enough so that he could loop his sinewy arms about the man"s knees. Joe was shifted in his arms as workmen are sometimes s.n.a.t.c.hed up by a mighty belt in a machine shop; he seemed simply to snap in the remorseless grasp. Bill himself had no sensation of his enemy"s weight. He had him about the knees by now, Joe"s body thrust out almost straight from centrifugal force, and with a terrific wrench of his mighty shoulders Bill hurled him against the wall.
It was well for his enemies that none of them were in the road of that human missile. They would have taken no further part in the ensuing battle. Joe"s body crushed against the logs with a sound that was strange and horrible in the utter darkness; the pistol spun from his hand and rattled down"; then he fell with a crash to the floor. There was no further movement from him thereafter. His neck had been broken like a match. The odds were but two to one.
Harold had taken out his own revolver now and was shooting blindly in the darkness. Ducking low, Bill leaped for him. In that leap there was none of the gentle mercy with which he had dealt with him first, so long ago in Harold"s cabin. But a quick movement by Harold saved him from the full force of the leap; in a moment they were grappling in each other"s arms.
Bill wrenched him back and forth, and in an instant would have crushed the life out of him if it hadn"t been for the interference of Pete. The latter breed leaped on his back, and Bill had to neglect Harold an instant to stretch up his arms and hurl Pete to the floor. Harold still clung to him, trying to seize his throat, but Bill wrenched him down.
He flung his own body down on top of him, then seized him by the throat with the deadly intention of hammering his head on the floor; but before he could accomplish his purpose Pete was upon him again.