His emotions were deeply stirred. They were displayed in the mounting flush under his weather-stained cheeks. In the hot contentiousness of his eyes. He was leaning forward with his feet tucked beneath his chair.
"Sure you have. So have I. So have the police." Bill"s reply came after a moment"s deliberation. "Josh Wiseman handed that out. Josh reckons he"s seen them, and recognized them. But Josh is a big souse.
He"s seeing things "most all the time. He figgers the feller young Alec shot up was one of them--by name Peter Hara, of "Frisco. The other, we haven"t seen, he reckons is "Hand-out" Lal. Another "Fris...o...b..u.m. But the police have had the wires going, and they can"t track fellers of that name in "Frisco, or anywhere else. Still, it"s a trail they"re hanging to amongst others. And I guess they"re not quitting it till they figger Josh is right for the bughouse. No," he added with a trouble that would no longer be denied, "the whole thing is, Pap"s clear. There"s not a thing points his way. It"s the result of a dance hall brawl, and we--why, we"ve just got to hand on the whole pitiful racket to two lone women at the Fort."
For moments the two men looked into each other"s eyes. Then Kars started up. He began to pace the soft carpet with uneven strides.
Suddenly he paused. His emotions seemed to be again under control.
"It seems that way," he said, "unless Murray starts out before us."
"Murray"s quit," Bill shook his head. "He"d quit the city before this thing happened. The morning of the same day. His whole outfit pulled out with him. He doesn"t know a thing of this."
"I didn"t know he"d quit." Kars stood beside the centre table gazing down at the other.
"The police looked him up. They wanted to hold up the news from the boy"s folks till they"d investigated. He"d been gone twenty-four hours."
"I hadn"t a notion," Kars declared blankly. "I figgered to run him down at Adler"s." Then in a moment his feelings overcame his restraint. "Then it"s up to--me," he cried desperately. "It"s up to me, and it--scares me to death. Say--that poor child. That poor little gal." Again he was pacing the room. "It"s fierce, Bill! Oh, G.o.d, it"s fierce!"
Bill"s gravely sympathetic eyes watched the rapid movements of the man as he paced restlessly up and down. He waited for that calmness which he knew was sure to follow in due course. When he spoke his tones had gathered a careful moderation.
"Sure it"s fierce," he said. Then he added: "Murray drives hard on the trail. This story isn"t even going to hit against his heels. Say, John, you best let me hand this story on. Y"see my calling makes it more in my line. A doctor"s not always healing. There"s times when he"s got to open up wounds. But he knows how to open "em."
"Not on your life, Bill!" Kars" denial came on the instant. "I"m not shirking a thing. I just love that child to death. It"s up to me.
Some day I"m hoping it"s coming my way handing her some sort of happiness. That being so I kind of feel she"s got to get the other side of things through me. G.o.d knows it"s going to be tough for her, poor little kid, but well, it"s up to me to help her through."
There was something tremendously gentle in the man"s outburst. He was so big. There was so much force in his manner. And yet the infinite tenderness of his regard for the girl was apparent in every shadow of expression that escaped him.
Bill understood. But for once the position was reversed. The doctor"s kindly, twinkling eyes seemed to have absorbed all that which usually looked out of the other"s. They were calm, even hard. There was bitter anger in them. His mellow philosophy had broken down before the human feelings so deeply stirred. He had pa.s.sed the lover"s feelings over for a reversion to the tragedy at the Elysian Fields. It was the demoniac character of the detested Pap Shaunbaum. It was the hideous uselessness of it all. It was the terrible viciousness of this leper city which had brought the whole thing about.
But was it? His mind went further back. There was another tragedy, equally wanton, equally ferocious. The father as well as the son, and he marveled, and wondered at the purpose of Providence in permitting such a cruel devastation of the lives of two helpless, simple women.
His sharp tones broke the silence.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "this thing needs to be hunted down, John. It needs to be hunted down till the "pound"s" paid. Those two lone women are my best friends. Guess they"re something more to you. I can"t see daylight. I can"t see where it"s coming from, anyway. But some one"s got to get it. And we need a hand in pa.s.sing it to him, whoever it is.
I feel just now there wouldn"t be a thing in the world more comic to me than to see Pap Shaunbaum kicking daylight with his vulture neck tied up. And I"d ask no better of Providence than to make it so I could laugh till my sides split. It"s going to mean dollars an" dollars, and time, and a big work. But if we don"t do it, why, Pap gets away with his play. We can"t stand for that. My bank roll"s open."
"It doesn"t need to be." All the gentleness had pa.s.sed from Kars"
eyes, from his whole manner. It had become abrupt again. "Guess money can"t repay those poor folks" losses. But it can do a deal to boost justice along. It"s my money that"s going to talk. I"m going to wipe out the score those lone women can never hope to. I"m going to pay it.
By G.o.d, I"m going to pay it!"
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE SPRINGTIME
So the day came when the outfit of John Kars "pulled out." There had been no change in his plans as the result of Alec Mowbray"s murder.
There could be no change in them, so long as hundreds of miles divided this man from the girl who had come to mean for him all that life contained. The old pa.s.sion for the trail still stirred him. The Ishmaelite in him refused to change his nature. But since his manhood had responded to natural claims, since the twin gray stars had risen upon his horizon, a magnetic power held him to a definite course which he had neither power nor inclination to deny.
The days before the departure had been busy indeed. They had been rendered doubly busy by the affairs surrounding Alec Mowbray"s death.
But all these things had been dealt with, with an energy that left a course of perfect smoothness behind as well as ahead.
Everything, humanly possible, would be done to hunt down the instigator and perpetrator of the crime, and a small fortune was placed at the disposal of Kars" trusted attorneys for that purpose. For the rest he would be personally responsible. In Bill Brudenell he had a willing and sagacious lieutenant. In Abe Dodds, and in the hard-living expert prospector, Joe Saunders, he had a staff for his enterprise on Bell River beyond words in capacity and loyalty.
But the "outfit." It was called "outfit," as were all such expeditions. It resembled an army in miniature, white and colored.
But more than all else it resembled a caravan, and an extensive one.
The preparations had occupied the whole of the long winter, and had been wrapped in profound secrecy. The two men who had carried them out, under Bill Brudenell"s watchful eye, had labored under no delusions. They were preparing for a great adventure in the hunt for gold, but they were also preparing for war on no mean scale. Their enthusiasm rejoiced in both of these prospects, and they worked with an efficiency that left nothing to be desired.
The dispositions at departure were Kars" secret. Nor were they known until the last moment. The warlike side of the expedition was dispatched in secret by an alternative and more difficult trail than the main communication with Fort Mowbray. It carried the bulk of equipment. But its way would be shorter, and it would miss Fort Mowbray altogether, and take up its quarters at the headwaters of Snake River, to await the coming of the leaders. Abe and Saunders would conduct this expedition, while Kars and Bill traveled via Fort Mowbray, with Peigan Charley, and an outfit of packs and packmen such as it was their habit to journey with.
The start of the expedition was without herald or trumpet. It left its camp in the damp of a gray spring morning, when, under cover of a gradually lightening dawn, it struck through a narrow valley, where feet and hoofs sank deep into a mire of liquid mud.
To the west the hills rose amidst clouds of saturating mist. To the east the rolling country mounted slowly till it reached the foot of vast glacial crests, almost at the limit of human vision. The purpling distance to the west suggested fastnesses remote enough from the northern man, yet in those deep canyons, those wide valleys, along creek-bank and river bed, the busy prospector was ruthlessly prosecuting his quest for the elusive "color," and the mining engineer was probing for Nature"s most deeply hidden secrets.
This was the Eldorado John Kars had known since his boyhood"s days, when the fierce fight against starvation had been bitter indeed. Few of the secrets of those western hills were unknown to him. But now that his pouch was full, and the pangs of hunger were only a remote memory, and these hills claimed him only that he was lord of properties within their heart which yielded him fortune almost automatically, his eyes were turned to the north, and to the hidden world eastwards.
It was a trail of mud and washout. It was a trail of landslide and flood. It was a dripping land, dank with melting mists, and awash with the slush of the thaw. The skies were pouring out their flood of summer promise, those warming rains which must always be endured before the hordes of flies and mosquitoes swarm to announce the real open season.
But these men were hard beyond all complaint at physical discomfort.
If they cursed the land they haunted, it was because it was their habit so to curse. It was the curse of the tongue rather than of the heart.
For they were men who owed all that they were, or ever hoped to be, to this fierce country north of "sixty."
Spring was over all. The northern earth was heaving towards awakening from its winter slumber. As it was on the trail, so it was on Snake River, where the old black walls of Fort Mowbray gazed out upon the groaning and booming glacial bed, burying the dead earth beyond the eyes of man. The fount of life was renewing itself in man, in beast, even in the matter we choose to regard as dead.
Jessie Mowbray was watching the broken ice as it swept on down the flooding river. She was clad in an oilskin which had only utility for its purpose. Her soft gray eyes were gazing out through the gently falling rain with an awe which the display of winter"s break up never failed to inspire in her.
The tremendous power of Nature held her spellbound. It was all so vast, so sure. She had witnessed these season"s changes since her childhood and never in her mind had they sunk to the level of routine.
They were magical transformations wrought by the all-powerful fairy, Nature. They were performed with a wave of the wand. The iron of winter was swept away with a rush, and the stage was instantly set for summer.
But the deepest mystery to her was the glacier beyond the river. Every spring she listened to its groaning lamentation with the same feelings stirring. Her gentle spirit saw in it a monster, a living, moving, heaving monster, whose voice awoke the echoes of the hills in protest, and whose enveloping folds clung with cruel tenacity to a conquered territory laboring to free itself from a bondage of sterility which it had borne for thousands of years. To her it was like the powers of Good battling with influences of Evil. It was as though each year, when the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, these powers of Good were seeking vainly to overthrow an evil which threatened the tiny human seed planted in the world for the furthering of an All-wise Creator"s great hidden purpose.
The landing was almost awash with the swollen waters. The booming ice-floes swept on. They were moving northwards, towards the eternal ice-fields, to melt or jamb on their way, but surely to melt in the end. And when they had all gone it would be summer. And life--life would be renewed at the post.
Renewal of the life at the post meant only one thing for Jessie. It meant the early return of John Kars. The thought of it thrilled her.
But the thrill pa.s.sed. For she knew his coming only heralded his pa.s.sing on.
She sighed and her soft eyes grew misty. Nor had the mist to do with the rain which was saturating the world about her. Oh, if there were to be no pa.s.sing on! But she knew she could not hope for so much.
There was nothing for him here. Besides, he was wedded to the secrets of the long trail.
Wedded! Her moment, of regret pa.s.sed, and a great dream filled her simple mind. It was her woman"s dream of all that could ever crown her life. It was the springtime of her life and all the buoyant hope of the break from a dead winter was stirring in her young veins. She put from her mind the "pa.s.sing on," and remembered only that he would soon return.
Her heart was full of a gentle delight as at last she turned back from the river, and sought her home in the clearing.
Her eyes were shining radiantly when she encountered Father Jose pa.s.sing over to his Mission from his ministrations to a sick squaw.
"Been watching the old ice go?" he inquired, smiling into the eyes which looked into his from under the wide brim of a waterproof hat.