by Dean Owen
Startled, he hurried over to the door for a better look.
With a jolt that made him gasp, he recognized the visitor’s soldierly walk, Stetson hat, uniform.
“My Lord! Rhodes! To see me!”
He could not believe that Rhodes was coming with good news; that Sergeant Spencer of the Secret Squad had nailed Greenie and those other three and had dragged a Crown confession from one of them. It was too soon for any such miraculous tidings. Sergeant Spencer had been working on that case for only two days. To round up four wandering foot-loose men in that time was humanly impossible.
“Rhodes has got a wire from headquarters,” he thought; and for a moment the meadow and woods went reeling before his eyes. “They ordered him to take me.”
He was seized with the impulse to grab Leda’s rifle and make a break, before the steel jaws of the law closed upon him. But in every direction except Saghelia lay impassable ranges. Escape from the Police was a fool’s delusion. And he had given Rhodes his solemn promise to be ready if his call came. Now that promise had to be honored.
With a long glance at Leda, he silently picked up his hat and jacket—his only earthly possessions; walked out of the cabin, and started across the little meadow, to go away quietly and without cringing.
At the meadow edge Rhodes paused for a kindly “hello” to old Nat, and then came on. Besides a boulder in the middle of the open, Gary confronted him.
The pleasantness of Rhodes’ smile puzzled Gary, and the friendly handclasp puzzled him even more. How could any person smile and shake hands like that if he came on a hangman’s mission?
“I’ve had a trickle of news from Winnipeg, Frazier,” Rhodes said, in his point-blank way. “It’s good news, and I came up here to tell you about it immediately. Also to get some more information from you.”
“Good news?” Gary cried, hearing only those two unbelievable words. He shook Rhodes by the arm, thinking the officer merely was trying to soften the blow with an encouraging falsehood. “Tell me the truth, man. I’ve been expecting it; I’m set for it. Don’t lie to me. Not about this.”
“I am telling you the truth, Frazier. The news is not much, but such as it is, it’s favorable. I have a wire from Spencer at The Pas. He traced one of those three lads, this Calloway boy, up there, flew up by plane, found him throwing money freely, and arrested him. Spencer is breaking his story down now. So far there have been no developments about this Greenie or those other two.
“I also have a wire from headquarters ordering me to hold you in technical arrest so that you can be sent East, if necessary, to identify those men.” He paused a moment, then added, “From my knowledge of Spencer’s ability, I feel rather safe in predicting that he’ll hang to this case till he takes you off the blotter, Frazier, and puts the right men on it. He’s the Mounted’s finest bloodhound.”
Gary could not answer. Could not even say “thank you” to the gray-eyed sergeant who had befriended him in his hour of need. Weak and shaky, he leaned against the boulder for steadiness, trying to believe this news.
Rhodes regarded him with sympathy. “I can’t exactly blame you for wilting a bit. If a person ever had a rope around his neck, you’re the man. But now pull yourself together. Spencer wants me to go over your story again and wire him every tag-end of data which you remember about those four men and that Winnipeg night. Then, I want to ask you about Hugh Ludlow. This situation between him and you looks ugly, from what I can gather about it. Hugh’s gone pretty badly to pieces, and there’s no telling what he might attempt. I don’t want you to get killed, or have any killing tacked onto you. Let’s go sit down and have a talk.”
Gary hardly heard. As he followed Rhodes over toward the woodpile, his thoughts were a confused giddy whirl. Free, after two long months of nerve-shattering outlawry. Free, after being hounded day and night by the gallows shadow. Free to go among men again without fear of a sudden hand on his shoulder. Free to live and hope and work like other humans… It was all too staggering for him to grasp. He felt as though a black weight as big as old Sentinel had fallen upon him at far-off Winnipeg, crushing heart and courage out of a man; and now, in this tiny meadow that mountainous weight had suddenly rolled away.
* * * *
When Rhodes had gone, an hour later, Gary went into the cabin and tiptoed to the bunk where Leda was asleep.
He wanted to tell her, instantly, the tremendous news which Rhodes had brought. Wanted to see her wild joy over it and feel her ecstatic hug. But she was sleeping so soundly, she seemed so worn out by the stormy events of the last several days, that he had not the heart to rouse her. He could tell her when she awoke—he was not going to leave the cabin that evening, as he had planned.
Yet he simply could not keep the news wholly to himself, and so he compromised, unaware that his compromise was absurd. Bending down, he whispered to her, very softly:
“Did you hear what Rhodes said, Lee? In a coupla weeks at the most I’ll be off the blotter! Can you believe it, honey? I can’t, quite—just as you can’t quite believe that the cache of gold is really ours. We’ll go away; we’ll start doing all the things we’ve talked about; we’ll leave Saghelia and go ’way off where you’ll never hear a word of slander in all your life. But we’ll roll up old Paradise Trail and take it along and have it with us wherever we go. After what we’ve been through, any sort of trail would look mighty fine to us, Lee.”
His whispering threatened to wake Leda, and he stopped.
At the door, shielding himself against a possible bullet from the woods, he looked out at the first faint twilight settling over Little Saghelia. Though he was thankful that now he would not have to run the long dark gantlet in to town, he wished that the next few hours were over with. It would be midnight before Rhodes could reach Saghelia, gather three or four men and get back here. Those hours were going to be dangerous.
As he gazed into the thickening gloom, a little chill crept over him—of uneasiness, of premonition. In choosing to stay here he might have made a fatal mistake.
Far away across Big Saghelia Valley he could dimly see the high pass, a great V-notch in the ranges, where the narrow-gauge led south to the Grand Trunk. “That’s the trail which Lee and I’ll be taking,” he mused, remembering the day when he had come through the pass to Saghelia, alone, penniless, fugitive. He could not see beyond the blue V, or say where their trail would take Leda and him, in the world outside; but he did not greatly care.
He did know that he and she would never head for the city. The mountains, the freedom of the open, had claimed him, as it always had claimed Leda’s wild-born spirit. In a vague way he believed that eventually he would go back to a school, not to finish his law studies but to get a solid and substantial grounding in forestry, a calling which he had thought about longingly since his earliest childhood.
In the past month he often had felt that he had turned a corner of his life on the morning when he climbed to the top of old Sentinel. Those black acres and the ruined valley had dwelt with him ever since; and in his mind’s eye he saw other ranges and valleys, hundreds of them up and down the continent, despoiled by that same blind and ruthless destruction. There was room for men on the other side, room and limitless horizons for a man’s life work—rebuilding what old Hugh Ludlow and his kind had laid waste.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In the dark cabin, lighted only by a few red gleams from cracks in the old stove, Leda groped across from the table to the window, where Gary was looking into the stormy darkness outside.
It was long after supper. Night had come on early, the darkest night Gary had ever known; and a wild willawaw out of the northwest—rain, snow, sleet and flying debris, all mingled in one—was lashing the trees till the tops of the nearest balsams were beating upon the cabin roof.
“Gary?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Do you think those men are around here tonight
? Have you seen anything suspicious out there?”
“Not a thing, Lee.” He put his arms about her, to drive away her fears. “Let’s not borrow trouble, sweet. I don’t believe those slinkers would stir an inch out of camp in a storm like this. Besides, Rhodes will be here in two or three hours, and that’ll be the end of all our worries.”
Leda tried to look through a rain-splashed pane. “Gary, why hasn’t Dads come back? He’s staying out too long.”
Gary drew her back from the window, out of danger. “He went to see about Jinny, Lee. Jinny was all worked up over something—probably the grizzly that’s been prowling around here, lately.”
“I know, but he’s been gone half an hour.”
Gary believed he knew what had happened to old Nat, in the storm-torn dark out yonder. The wind and raw cold and slashing rain should have driven old Higgens indoors long before this. If those men were out there—and he was all but certain of it—they had pounced on old Nat, made a prisoner of him, and were holding him till this grim business was over. They wanted no unnecessary killing on their hands, and killing was their errand here tonight.
But he said nothing to Leda about his suspicions. It would only drive her frantic, to no good whatsoever. Neither he nor she could lift a hand to help the old man.
Personally he hoped that old Nat had been taken. As prisoner of those unscrupulous men, the old fellow would be far safer than in this cabin.
While Leda was across at the stove, putting in fresh wood, he stepped over to the door and made sure that the heavy beam was in place so that the Ludlow pack could not burst into the cabin with a sudden overwhelming rush.
Back at the window, he flattened himself against the split-logs again, watching and listening for his enemies. With no factual grounds for believing so, he felt, he knew, that Hugh’s men were scouting the cabin out, were planning their swoop and strike; and that tonight the long struggle between him and Hugh Ludlow was going to end.
So far he had seen or heard nothing whatever of a single enemy, but that was little reassurance. The night was so black that a person could not see his hand before his face; and the storm was howling down the valley and through the timber like a million-throated loup-garou.
He wished now, too, late, that he had slipped away from the cabin at twilight, as he had debated doing, and had hidden in the woods till Rhodes came with the men from Saghelia. To walk off and leave old Nat and Leda alone would have looked cowardly of him yes; but it would have been the sane and sensible thing to do.
He reproached himself savagely: “I didn’t have the courage to damn appearances; I fell down over my manly pride; and now look at the fix we’re all in! If Lee gets hurt or killed, it’ll be my fault.”
That was what harassed him the worst—Leda’s great peril. Here in this cabin with him, she was facing the same fearsome danger as he. Those men had nothing against her save that she was his friend and partner, and they would not harm her deliberately; but in the passion of a life-death battle they would hardly pause to make sure who was shooting at them.
Leda came back from the stove and rejoined him, afraid to be alone in the creepy darkness. The black storm outside, the creaking of the lodgepole rafters, the whistle and moan of wind past the eaves, had preyed on her imagination; and as she groped for his hand, she whispered, quaveringly:
“Gary, I’m—I’m scared! I know those men are around here. That shooting last night was a preparation for—for something.”
Though his words sounded hollow to his own ears, Gary tried to comfort and steady her.
“Honey, those men are hugging their tents down at camp. If they weren’t, if they were up here, they’d have been blazing away through the windows at us a long time ago. For that matter, you and I could stave them off till Rhodes comes. I don’t think Hugh Ludlow has got the nerve for a brazen attack on this cabin.”
“I do! It isn’t a question of nerve but of—of desperation. He’s got to act. Everything has gone crashing with him. I can imagine the temper he’s in. And he’ll try to take it out on you. That’s his way.”
As she paused, Gary felt her small fist clench, in his hand; and he wondered what thought was in her mind. Presently she burst out:
“I wish Hugh Ludlow was dead! I wish I’d shot him, the night he was trying to kill you! If I had it to do over again, I’d do it! He’s vicious all through. He hasn’t got anything but evil in him—evil to other people. Everybody that comes in contact with him suffers for it. Look what he did to Mona! Look how his selfishness and willfulness broke and ruined his dad! Look what he’s tried to do to us—and has done! He’s put us through a month of constant misery just because he thinks he owns Little Saghelia and me and that cache and everything!
“If it wasn’t for him, you and I’d be in the clear now. But we can’t draw a safe breath as long as he’s alive. We can’t be happy about the cache or Sergeant Rhodes’ news or about anything else! Because of Hugh!”
“That’s all very true, Lee, but no person can go smashing and crashing through other people’s lives without paying the fiddler eventually. It may sound like moralizing, but those who take up the sword—”
“I don’t believe that! Hugh won’t perish by it! He sits clown there safe at camp and has his men do his killing.”
“You wait and see what happens to him, girl. He’ll get it in the neck as sure as sun-rise. He couldn’t stand pressure, he turned criminal, and he’ll get what any criminal gets in the long run—and usually it isn’t very long, either. Where I came from I saw dozens of his tribe; and not one of them was big enough, shrewd enough or lucky enough to break the human code and get by with it. I happen to know what the wrath of the law feels like, Lee. The retribution of the law and society is a very dreadful thing.”
“But I don’t want retribution! I want you to be safe. What good’ll retribution do me if you should get killed?”
“It won’t happen, Lee. We’ve got not only the law on our side—and one practical consequence of that is Rhodes and his men—but the right, too; and the right is a pretty powerful shield, Lee.”
“I don’t believe that, either! There’s no right or justice or reason in this fighting and bloodshed. It’s brutal and inhuman, and it’s a matter of plain luck. When I remember how near Skunk-Bear came to killing you, I can’t feel any certainty that these men won’t do it, the next time.”
As Gary was thinking of words to still her fears, he heard, or thought he heard, a queer muffled noise at the window.
Bending down, he looked cautiously past the casement, trying to peer into the intense blackness. For a moment or two he saw nothing. But the noise persisted, puzzling and strange—sounding as though something was rubbing against the glass. And then, in the dimmest sort of way, he saw some object moving back and forth across one of the panes.
Leaning still closer, he finally made out that the object was a man’s hand—wiping the rain from the glass for a clearer look into the cabin. And beyond the hand he vaguely distinguished a man’s head, the eyes of a Siwash.
Leda tugged at his arm, whispering, “What are you looking at, Gary?”
He did not move or answer till the man had drawn back and the evil eyes had vanished. Then he straightened up.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just one of your flowers scraping against the window, Lee.”
It was a cool convincing lie, and he kept his voice steady; but he was glad that Leda could not see his face. Those men had come, as he instinctively had known all evening. He had stayed and got caught. Tonight they were not keeping a distance and taking harmless pot-shots at the cabin. They had surrounded the place to cut off any escape.
There was no doubt in his mind, no ghost of a doubt, that they had marked him for death. He had smashed Hugh Ludlow’s plans, taken Leda away, fought Hugh to a standstill, and now the revanche had come.
He stepped across to the stove and glance
d at his watch, by the red glow from a crack. Nine o’clock. Three hours till Rhodes would reach here. Those men would never wait three hours. They had no reason to wait longer at all. They had seized old Nat and scouted out the cabin, and the storm had risen to its full-lunged fury. Long before Rhodes and the Saghelia men could arrive, the fight would be over.
No person to delude himself, he knew that his chances of whipping that whole outfit or even staving them off were next to nothing. There were six or seven of them. They had guns, belt axes, knives; and likely they had brought dynamite cartridges to blow their way inside. They had the advantage of attacking when and how they wished. They had the crushing advantage of being able to maneuver around in the blackness outside while he was trapped and cornered in a little cabin. When the rush came, he and Leda might put out two or three of them, but the others would finish him off. And Leda was doomed along with him.
A thought flashed into his mind. “If I could make a break and get out of this cabin, I could fade into the storm. That’s my chance to get out of this alive.”
But he did not stop, just then, to think about his breakaway. Before those men sprang their attack, there was something to be done, and little time to do it in.
He hurried back to Leda.
“Lee,”—in spite of his feverish haste he spoke casually—“I’m beginning to believe, myself, that old Nat should have come back. Something may have happened to him.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking for half an hour! One of us ought to go out there. He may have hurt himself.”
“Yes, one of us must go,” Gary agreed. He paused an instant, then forced himself to add, “Do you mind going, Lee?”
In the darkness he heard Leda catch her breath in sharp surprise. He could not see her face, but he knew his suggestion had astounded her, almost as though he had struck her a physical blow. Her silence made him wince. Plainer than words, it told him that she was wondering whether he had lost his courage. Wondering whether he was afraid to go himself and was sending her into danger in his stead.