The camp-fire threw its cheerful glow, and set the shadows dancing.
The moon had risen, a golden globe just hovering above the horizon.
Its yellow light searched out the three figures dimly, and the dancing flames of the camp-fire supported its effort.
Kars" eyes were directed upon the tongues of flame licking about the camp-kettle. But they held in their focus the round, undiminished figure over whom he sat ward. Bill sat facing the captive in full view of the slung arm in its rough splints. Murray seemed to have no concern for those about him. His haunted eyes were on the rising moon disc, and his thoughts were on all those terrible problems confronting him.
He smoked from habit, but without appreciation. He could have no appreciation now for bodily comfort when all mental peace was destroyed.
His pipe went out and Bill held matches towards him. Silently, almost automatically, he relit it, using his sound arm with the skill of weeks of practice.
He pa.s.sed the matches back. He offered no thanks. Then, with a sudden stirring of his unshapely body, he glanced swiftly in the direction of Kars. A moment later he was gazing across at Bill and addressing him.
"We"ll make the Fort before sun-up?" he said.
"Before daylight," came the prompt correction.
Kars had abandoned his pleasant train of silent thought. His keen eyes were alight with the reflection of the fire. They were searching the prisoner"s face for the meaning of his inquiry.
"How long do we stop around?"
Murray"s voice was sharp.
"We don"t stop around." Again Bill"s reply came on the instant, and in tones that were coldly discouraging.
"But I guess I need to collect things. My papers. Kit. I"ve a right that way. You can"t deny it," Murray protested swiftly.
"You got no rights in this layout." It was Kars who replied. "You"ll pa.s.s right on down the river for Leaping Horse. And you aren"t stopping on the way to pay calls. Guess the p"lice in Leaping Horse will allow you your rights. But there"s nothing doing that way till you"re quit of this outfit."
His decision was coldly final, but it was a blow in the face which the murderer refused to accept.
"You can"t act that way," he protested fiercely. "You got a charge against me you haven"t proved, and I don"t guess you ever will prove.
I"m a prisoner by force, not by law. I demand the right to decent treatment. I need to get papers from the Fort. There"s things there to help my case. Maybe you figger to beat me through holding me from my rights. It would rank well with the way you"ve already acted. I need to see Father Jose and Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie----"
"Cut that right out!" Kars" words came with a vicious snap. "You"ll see no one till you"re in the hands of the Mounted P"lice at Leaping Horse. That goes. I don"t care a cuss for the law of this thing.
We"ll fix that all later."
Murray"s burning eyes were furious as they searched the unyielding features of his captor. His absolute impotence drove him to an insane desire for violence. But the violence was not forthcoming. He was powerless, and no one knew it better than he.
"We surely will," he cried, hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion. "You can"t prove a thing. Allan was murdered by the neches. I was at the Fort with the rest. You know that. Others can prove it."
The fierce anger which the mention of Jessie"s name had set leaping in Kars" brain subsided as swiftly as it had risen. He sat silent for some moments regarding the storm-swept features of the man whose crimes had devastated the life of the girl he loved. His anger changed to an added loathing. And his loathing inspired a desire to hurt, to hurt mortally.
This man as yet knew nothing of the discovery of his second crime. The time had come when he must realize all that this thing meant to him.
There were weeks of journey yet before him. Kars knew no mercy. The wild had taught him that mercy was only for the weak, for those who erred through that weakness. This man was not of those. He was a vicious criminal whose earthly reward would be inadequate to his crimes.
"That won"t help you a thing," he said frigidly. He knocked out his pipe and thrust it into his pocket. His gaze was steadily fixed on the eyes so furiously alight as they watched his every movement. "There"s more to this than the murder of Allan Mowbray, your share in which can be proved clear out. Guess you"ve acted pretty bright, Murray. I allow you"ve covered a whole heap of tracks. But you haven"t covered them all. Guess there never was a murderer born who knew how to cover all his tracks. And it"s just a mercy of Providence for the protection of us folk. If you"d covered your last tracks you"d have dropped your automatic in the Snake River, and lost it so deep in the mud it wouldn"t have been found in years. But you didn"t act that way, and that"s why you"re going to hang. You"re going to hang for murdering the son, as well as the father, and the whole blamed world"ll breathe freer for your hanging. Do you need me to tell you more? Do you need me to tell you why you"re not landing at the Fort? No, I guess not.
Your whole play is in our hands. You"re here by force, sure, and by force you"re goin" to stay. Just as I guess by force you"re going to die. You"ve lived outside the law such a long spell I don"t guess you need teaching a thing. If we"re acting outside the laws of man now, I guess we"re acting within the laws of justice. That"s all that gets me where you figger. I guess we"ll eat. Charley"ll know how to hand you your food."
The prisoner made no reply. It was the final blow. Kars had withheld it till the psychological moment. He had withheld it, not with any thought of mercy, but with a crude desire to punish when the hurt would be the greatest.
He had achieved more than he knew. Buoyed with the belief that his earlier crime on Bell River had been so skilfully contrived that no court of law could ever hope to convict him of a capital offence, Murray McTavish had only endured the suspense and haunting fear of uncertainty. Now he realized to the full the disaster that had overtaken him. He was stunned by the blow that had fallen.
The cooked meat that was pa.s.sed to him by the Indian was left untouched. The dark night journey pa.s.sed before his wide, unsleeping eyes as the canoes sped on towards the Fort. The last hope had been torn from him. A dreadful waking nightmare pursued him. It was the complete wrecking of a strong mentality, the shattering of an iron nerve under a sledge-hammer blow that had been timed to the moment. He might walk to the scaffold with a step that was outwardly firm. But it would be merely the physical effort of a man in whom all hope is dead.
So the Fort landing was reached and pa.s.sed. Kars alone disembarked, his canoe remaining ready to overhaul his companions at their next night camp. He was going to tell his story to those who must learn the truth. It was a mission from which he shrank, but he knew that his lips alone must tell it. He hoped and believed it was the final act of the drama these cruelly injured people must be forced to witness. Then the gloomy curtain would be dropped, but to rise again on scenes of sunlight and happiness.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE SUMMER OF LIFE
The pa.s.sage of time for John Kars had never been so swift, so feverish in the rush of poignant events. Four months had pa.s.sed since he had landed like a shadow in the night on the banks of Snake River, to tell the story of men"s evil to those to whom he would gladly have imparted only happy tidings.
Now he was at the landing again, with pages of tragic history turned in his book of life. But they were turned completely, and only the memory of them was left behind. The other pages, those remaining to be perused, were different. They contained all those things without which no life could ever be counted complete. That happiness which all must seek, and the strong and wise will cling to, and only the weak and foolish will make a plaything of.
It was the crowning day of his life, and he desired to live every moment of it. So he had left his bed under the hospitable roof of Father Jose to witness the first moment of its birth.
The first gray shadow lit the distant hilltops. To him it was like the first stirring of broken slumber. Strange but familiar sounds broke the profound stillness. The cry of belated beast, and the waking cries of the feathered world. The light spread northward. It moved along stealing, broadening towards the south. It mounted the vault of night.
Again, to him it was the growth of conscious life, the pa.s.sing from dream to reality.
He saw the stubborn darkness yield reluctantly. He watched the silver ghosts flee from the northern sky, back, back to the frigid bergs which inspired their fantastic steps; the challenge hurled at the star-world"s complacent reign. Even the perfect burnish of the silver moon was powerless before the victorious march of day.
His spirit responded in perfect harmony. As the flush of victory deepened it reminded him of all that a life of effort meant. The myriad hues growing in the east were the symbol of human hope of success so hardly striven. The ma.s.sing billows, fantastic cloud-shapes, rich in splendid habiliments, suggested the enthronement of joy supreme. And then, in blazing splendor, the golden rising sun pointed the achievement of that perfect happiness which the merciful Creator designs for every living creature.
It was a moment when there should have been no room for shadowed memory. It was a moment when only the great looking forward should have filled him. But the strong soul of the man had been deeply seared by the conflict which had been fought and won. In the midst of all the emotion of that day of days memory would not wholly be denied, and he dwelt upon those events of which he had read so deeply in the pages of his book of life.
For all his desire to forget, the rapid moving scenes of the summer days came back to him now, vivid, painful. It was as though the pure search-light of dawn had a power of revealing no less than its inspiration of hope and delight. He contemplated afresh his journey down the river with his prisoner and his loyal friends. He remembered his landing on that very spot when sleep wrapped the Mission of St.
Agatha, as it did now. He thought of his first visit to the Padre, and of his ultimate telling of his story to the two women who had suffered so deeply at the hands of the murderer. It had been painful. Yet it had not been without a measure of compensation. Had he not run the man to earth? And was not the avenging of the girl he loved yet to come?
Yes, this had been so, and he dwelt on the courage and patience which governed the simple women who listened to the details of man"s merciless villainy.
The story told, then had come the great looking forward. His work completed, he had promised that not a consideration in the world should stay his feet from the return. And Jessie had yielded to his urgency.
On that return she would give herself to him, and the beloved Padre should bless their union in the little Mission House. Then had come the mother"s renunciation of all the ties which had so long held her to the banks of the Snake River. Happiness had been hers in the long years of her life there, but the overwhelming shadow of suffering weighed her down completely now, and she would gladly renounce the home which had known her so long.
So it had been arranged under the strong purpose the man had put forth, and, in consequence, added energy was flung into his labors. That night his canoe glided from the landing, and he was accompanied by Keewin, and two other Indians, who had been witnesses of Murray"s movements on the day of the murder in Leaping Horse.
The memory of these things carried him on to his journey"s end where he encountered again the tawdry pretentiousness of Leaping Horse, seeking to hide its moral poverty under raiment of garish hue. He remembered the anxious, busy days when the machinery of outland justice creaked rustily under his efforts to persuade it into full and perfect motion.
The labor of it. How Bill Brudenell had labored. The staunch efforts of the Mounted Police. And all the time the dread of a breakdown in the rusted machinery, and the escape of the murderer from the just penalty of his crimes.
None knew better than Kars the nearness of that disaster. Money had flowed like water in the interests of the accused. It had correspondingly had to flow in the interests of the prosecution. The tradition of Leaping Horse had been maintained throughout the whole trial. And loathing and disgust colored his every recollection. The defending counsel had set out to buy and corrupt. Kars had accepted the challenge without scruple. The case was one of circ.u.mstance, circ.u.mstance that was overwhelming. But the power of money in Leaping Horse was tremendous. The verdict remained uncertain to the last moment. Perhaps the balance was turned through weight of money. Kars cared very little. The Jesuitical method of it all was a matter for scruple. And scruple was banished completely from this battle-field.
And Justice had won. Whatever the method, Justice had won. The relief of it. The cold reward. Allan Mowbray was avenged. Jessie and her mother were freed from the threat which had so long over-shadowed their lives. The bitter air of the northland had been cleansed of a pestilential breath. So he turned his back on Leaping Horse with the knowledge that the murderer would pay his penalty before G.o.d and man.
Nor was the whole thing without a curiously grim irony. Even while Murray McTavish was fighting for his life he was witness of the complete shattering of all that for which he had striven. His trial revealed to the world the secret which his every effort had sought to keep inviolate, and the horde of vultures from the gold city were breaking the trail in their surging l.u.s.t. Word flashed down the boulevards. It flew through the slums. It sung on the wires to the rail-heads at the coast. It reached the wealthy headquarters at Seattle. Thence it journeyed on the wings of cable and wire to every corner of the world. And the message only told the fabulous stories of the new strike on Bell River. The world was left all unconcerned with the crimes it had inspired.
The scenes of the early days were renewed. Nor was there any great difference from them. It was a pell-mell rush. Incompetent, harpy, "sharp" and the gold seeker of substance. It was a train of the northland flotsam, moving again without scruple or mercy. Kars watched its beginning. He understood. None could understand this sort of thing better. All his life had been spent in the midst of such conditions. The thing had been bound to come, and he was frankly glad that those who had served him so well were already in possession of all they required in the new Eldorado.
How the "rush" ultimately fared he neither knew nor seriously cared.
It had no concern for him. The l.u.s.t of gold had completely pa.s.sed from him. All he cared was that it had left Fort Mowbray untouched. The overland route had suited the needs of these folk best. It was shorter, and therein lay its claim. The waterways which would have brought pandemonium to the doors of the folk he loved were circuitous, and the double burden of water and land transport would have been a hindrance in the crazy haste of the reckless souls seeking fortune in a whirlwind of desire.