"Tell me," said Tom, his heart in his mouth. "Maybe, if I knew--I might help him." The old man"s words woke fear in him. He well knew his pa.s.sionate, remorseless sense of justice.
"Help him," repeated the other. "For a man skeered in his soul there ain"t no help. But--if you want to hear--I"ll tell you."
"Tell me," cried Tom. "I _will_ help him," while rising anger fought back rising fear.
John took another pull at his gla.s.s.
"Jest between you and me like."
"Between you and me," said Tom. "Get on with it."
There was a deep silence in the little room. Only the sound of the sea came in, the wind behind it.
"The Wolves," whispered old Rossiter. "The Wolves of G.o.d."
Tom sat still in his chair, as though struck in the face. He shivered.
He kept silent and the silence seemed to him long and curious. His heart was throbbing, the blood in his veins played strange tricks. All he remembered was that old Rossiter had gone on talking. The voice, however, sounded far away and distant. It was all unreal, he felt, as he went homewards across the bleak, wind-swept upland, the sound of the sea for ever in his ears....
Yes, old John Rossiter, d.a.m.ned be his soul, had gone on talking. He had said wild, incredible things. d.a.m.ned be his soul! His teeth should be smashed for that. It was outrageous, it was cowardly, it was not true.
"Jim," he thought, "my brother, Jim!" as he ploughed his way wearily against the wind. "I"ll teach him. I"ll teach him to spread such wicked tales!" He referred to Rossiter. "G.o.d blast these fellows! They come home from their outlandish places and think they can say anything! I"ll knock his yellow dog"s teeth...!"
While, inside, his heart went quailing, crying for help, afraid.
He tried hard to remember exactly what old John had said. Round Garden Lake--that"s where Jim was located in his lonely Post--there was a tribe of Redskins. They were of unusual type. Malefactors among them--thieves, criminals, murderers--were not punished. They were merely turned out by the Tribe to die.
But how?
The Wolves of G.o.d took care of them. What were the Wolves of G.o.d?
A pack of wolves the Redskins held in awe, a sacred pack, a spirit pack--G.o.d curse the man! Absurd, outlandish nonsense! Superst.i.tious humbug! A pack of wolves that punished malefactors, killing but never eating them. "Torn but not eaten," the words came back to him, "white men as well as red. They could even cross the sea...."
"He ought to be strung up for telling such wild yarns. By G.o.d--I"ll teach him!"
"Jim! My brother, Jim! It"s monstrous."
But the old man, in his pa.s.sionate cold justice, had said a yet more terrible thing, a thing that Tom would never forget, as he never could forgive it: "You mustn"t keep him here; you must send him away. We cannot have him on the island." And for that, though he could scarcely believe his ears, wondering afterwards whether he heard aright, for that, the proper answer to which was a blow in the mouth, Tom knew that his old friendship and affection had turned to bitter hatred.
"If I don"t kill him, for that cursed lie, may G.o.d--and Jim--forgive me!"
3
It was a few days later that the storm caught the islands, making them tremble in their sea-born bed. The wind tearing over the treeless expanse was terrible, the lightning lit the skies. No such rain had ever been known. The building shook and trembled. It almost seemed the sea had burst her limits, and the waves poured in. Its fury and the noises that the wind made affected both the brothers, but Jim disliked the uproar most. It made him gloomy, silent, morose. It made him--Tom perceived it at once--uneasy. "Scared in his soul"--the ugly phrase came back to him.
"G.o.d save anyone who"s out to-night," said Jim anxiously, as the old farm rattled about his head. Whereupon the door opened as of itself.
There was no knock. It flew wide, as if the wind had burst it. Two drenched and beaten figures showed in the gap against the lurid sky--old John Rossiter and Sandy. They laid their fowling pieces down and took off their capes; they had been up at the lake for the evening flight and six birds were in the game bag. So suddenly had the storm come up that they had been caught before they could get home.
And, while Tom welcomed them, looked after their creature wants, and made them feel at home as in duty bound, no visit, he felt at the same time, could have been less opportune. Sandy did not matter--Sandy never did matter anywhere, his personality being negligible--but John Rossiter was the last man Tom wished to see just then. He hated the man; hated that sense of implacable justice that he knew was in him; with the slightest excuse he would have turned him out and sent him on to his own home, storm or no storm. But Rossiter provided no excuse; he was all grat.i.tude and easy politeness, more pleasant and friendly to Jim even than to his brother. Tom set out the whisky and sugar, sliced the lemon, put the kettle on, and furnished dry coats while the soaked garments hung up before the roaring fire that Orkney makes customary even when days are warm.
"It might be the equinoctials," observed Sandy, "if it wasn"t late October." He shivered, for the tropics had thinned his blood.
"This ain"t no ordinary storm," put in Rossiter, drying his drenched boots. "It reminds me a bit"--he jerked his head to the window that gave seawards, the rush of rain against the panes half drowning his voice--"reminds me a bit of yonder." He looked up, as though to find someone to agree with him, only one such person being in the room.
"Sure, it ain"t," agreed Jim at once, but speaking slowly, "no ordinary storm." His voice was quiet as a child"s. Tom, stooping over the kettle, felt something cold go trickling down his back. "It"s from acrost the Atlantic too."
"All our big storms come from the sea," offered Sandy, saying just what Sandy was expected to say. His lank red hair lay matted on his forehead, making him look like an unhappy collie dog.
"There"s no hospitality," Rossiter changed the talk, "like an islander"s," as Tom mixed and filled the gla.s.ses. "He don"t even ask "Say when?"" He chuckled in his beard and turned to Sandy, well pleased with the compliment to his host. "Now, in Malay," he added dryly, "it"s probably different, I guess." And the two men, one from Labrador, the other from the tropics, fell to bantering one another with heavy humour, while Tom made things comfortable and Jim stood silent with his back to the fire. At each blow of the wind that shook the building, a suitable remark was made, generally by Sandy: "Did you hear that now?" "Ninety miles an hour at least." "Good thing you build solid in this country!"
while Rossiter occasionally repeated that it was an "uncommon storm" and that "it reminded" him of the northern tempests he had known "out yonder."
Tom said little, one thought and one thought only in his heart--the wish that the storm would abate and his guests depart. He felt uneasy about Jim. He hated Rossiter. In the kitchen he had steadied himself already with a good stiff drink, and was now half-way through a second; the feeling was in him that he would need their help before the evening was out. Jim, he noticed, had left his gla.s.s untouched. His attention, clearly, went to the wind and the outer night; he added little to the conversation.
"Hark!" cried Sandy"s shrill voice. "Did you hear that? That wasn"t wind, I"ll swear." He sat up, looking for all the world like a dog p.r.i.c.king its ears to something no one else could hear.
"The sea coming over the dunes," said Rossiter. "There"ll be an awful tide to-night and a terrible sea off the Swarf. Moon at the full, too."
He c.o.c.ked his head sideways to listen. The roaring was tremendous, waves and wind combining with a result that almost shook the ground. Rain hit the gla.s.s with incessant volleys like duck shot.
It was then that Jim spoke, having said no word for a long time.
"It"s good there"s no trees," he mentioned quietly. "I"m glad of that."
"There"d be fearful damage, wouldn"t there?" remarked Sandy. "They might fall on the house too."
But it was the tone Jim used that made Rossiter turn stiffly in his chair, looking first at the speaker, then at his brother. Tom caught both glances and saw the hard keen glitter in the eyes. This kind of talk, he decided, had got to stop, yet how to stop it he hardly knew, for his were not subtle methods, and rudeness to his guests ran too strong against the island customs. He refilled the gla.s.ses, thinking in his blunt fashion how best to achieve his object, when Sandy helped the situation without knowing it.
"That"s my first," he observed, and all burst out laughing. For Sandy"s tenth gla.s.s was equally his "first," and he absorbed his liquor like a sponge, yet showed no effects of it until the moment when he would suddenly collapse and sink helpless to the ground. The gla.s.s in question, however, was only his third, the final moment still far away.
"Three in one and one in three," said Rossiter, amid the general laughter, while Sandy, grave as a judge, half emptied it at a single gulp. Good-natured, obtuse as a cart-horse, the tropics, it seemed, had first worn out his nerves, then removed them entirely from his body.
"That"s Malay theology, I guess," finished Rossiter. And the laugh broke out again. Whereupon, setting his gla.s.s down, Sandy offered his usual explanation that the hot lands had thinned his blood, that he felt the cold in these "arctic islands," and that alcohol was a necessity of life with him. Tom, grateful for the unexpected help, encouraged him to talk, and Sandy, accustomed to neglect as a rule, responded readily. Having saved the situation, however, he now unwittingly led it back into the danger zone.
"A night for tales, eh?" he remarked, as the wind came howling with a burst of strangest noises against the house. "Down there in the States," he went on, "they"d say the evil spirits were out. They"re a superst.i.tious crowd, the natives. I remember once----" And he told a tale, half foolish, half interesting, of a mysterious track he had seen when following buffalo in the jungle. It ran close to the spoor of a wounded buffalo for miles, a track unlike that of any known animal, and the natives, though unable to name it, regarded it with awe. It was a good sign, a kill was certain. They said it was a spirit track.
"You got your buffalo?" asked Tom.
"Found him two miles away, lying dead. The mysterious spoor came to an end close beside the carca.s.s. It didn"t continue."
"And that reminds me----" began old Rossiter, ignoring Tom"s attempt to introduce another subject. He told them of the haunted island at Eagle River, and a tale of the man who would not stay buried on another island off the coast. From that he went on to describe the strange man-beast that hides in the deep forests of Labrador, manifesting but rarely, and dangerous to men who stray too far from camp, men with a pa.s.sion for wild life over-strong in their blood--the great mythical Wendigo. And while he talked, Tom noticed that Sandy used each pause as a good moment for a drink, but that Jim"s gla.s.s still remained untouched.
The atmosphere of incredible things, thus, grew in the little room, much as it gathers among the shadows round a forest camp-fire when men who have seen strange places of the world give tongue about them, knowing they will not be laughed at--an atmosphere, once established, it is vain to fight against. The ingrained superst.i.tion that hides in every mother"s son comes up at such times to breathe. It came up now. Sandy, closer by several gla.s.ses to the moment, Tom saw, when he would be suddenly drunk, gave birth again, a tale this time of a Scottish planter who had brutally dismissed a native servant for no other reason than that he disliked him. The man disappeared completely, but the villagers hinted that he would--soon indeed that he had--come back, though "not quite as he went." The planter armed, knowing that vengeance might be violent. A black panther, meanwhile, was seen prowling about the bungalow. One night a noise outside his door on the veranda roused him.
Just in time to see the black brute leaping over the railings into the compound, he fired, and the beast fell with a savage growl of pain. Help arrived and more shots were fired into the animal, as it lay, mortally wounded already, lashing its tail upon the gra.s.s. The lanterns, however, showed that instead of a panther, it was the servant they had shot to shreds.
Sandy told the story well, a certain odd conviction in his tone and manner, neither of them at all to the liking of his host. Uneasiness and annoyance had been growing in Tom for some time already, his inability to control the situation adding to his anger. Emotion was acc.u.mulating in him dangerously; it was directed chiefly against Rossiter, who, though saying nothing definite, somehow deliberately encouraged both talk and atmosphere. Given the conditions, it was natural enough the talk should take the turn it did take, but what made Tom more and more angry was that, if Rossiter had not been present, he could have stopped it easily enough. It was the presence of the old Hudson Bay man that prevented his taking decided action. He was afraid of Rossiter, afraid of putting his back up. That was the truth. His recognition of it made him furious.
"Tell us another, Sandy McKay," said the veteran. "There"s a lot in such tales. They"re found the world over--men turning into animals and the like."
And Sandy, yet nearer to his moment of collapse, but still showing no effects, obeyed willingly. He noticed nothing; the whisky was good, his tales were appreciated, and that sufficed him. He thanked Tom, who just then refilled his gla.s.s, and went on with his tale. But Tom, hatred and fury in his heart, had reached the point where he could no longer contain himself, and Rossiter"s last words inflamed him. He went over, under cover of a tremendous clap of wind, to fill the old man"s gla.s.s.
The latter refused, covering the tumbler with his big, lean hand.
Tom stood over him a moment, lowering his face. "You keep still," he whispered ferociously, but so that no one else heard it. He glared into his eyes with an intensity that held danger, and Rossiter, without answering, flung back that glare with equal, but with a calmer, anger.