Even in Death

by George Allan England

  EVEN IN DEATH

  GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

  I.

  HARSH, clamant, wild, the braying of the long tin horn that hung by a rawhide lashing from the tamarack on the American shore of the Madawaska ferry hurled echoes over the far reaches of the river.

  At its second blaring call, imperatively eloquent of deadly haste, the door of the little ferry-shack swung wide and a girl looked out — a girl clad strangely and for rough toil, in faded blue overalls and a checkered mackinaw of felted stuff.

  For a moment she stood there in the fading light of that chill October evening, peering out across the waters that slid away, cold, dark, foam-streaked, toward the tumbling whirls of Tobique Rapids, four miles below — the white-lashed, thundering leap whose sullen roar never by day or night was still from shuddering through that northern air.

  As she gazed away over the swift swirl of the current, straining her eyes at the far bank where the road plunged steeply to the water’s edge, the winds of the north country fingered the black hair lying over her strong shoulders.

  Keen-visioned, this girl; of hardy, vigorous race. One hand held open the cabin door, the other rested on her lithe hip. Behind her, lamp-shine from within silhouetted her sinuous outlines.

  And ever the wind, wantoning with her bare, brown throat where the mackinaw gaped wide, flung her hair across her full bosom, modeled like a statue’s.

  Again the horn brayed its urgent call across the Rivière St. Jean; and now a far voice hailed — “Hal-loo-o-o! Hal-loo-o-o!” with wild insistence.

  “Comin’! Comin’!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Seems like you’re in a most amazin’ hurry!”

  Another horn, rust-red, dangled beside the ferry-house door. On this she blew a single, full-lunged blast.

  Then, waiting only to pull a coarse-knit lumberman’s cap over her shapely head — for the evening chill of the northland had already risen from the flood and breathed down from the spruce-cloaked mountains that raggedly notched the sky — she ran down the steep and curving road to where the cumbersome flat-boat nosed against its moorings on the bank.

  Far overhead, striding like a colossus beside the road — the trail, rather, so rutted, stony, and narrow it was — the three huge, rough-hewn firs that formed a tripod for the hempen ferry-cable rose against the darkening sky.

  To their iron-banded juncture stretched the manila, taut as a banjo-string, from its anchorage at the large steel ring-bolt let into a granite ledge.

  Then, far across the river it sagged away, away, till again it mounted on the other bank to meet the companion tripod there.

  The ferry-boat, fastened by two long ropes connecting with pulleys that ran upon this cable, lay in a little cove, safe from the incessant gripping tug of the current whose swift force, spent against rudderlike boards set at proper angles by rude levers, urged the craft ponderously back and forth.

  As the girl swiftly cast off the moorings, jumped aboard and, taking a pike-pole from its iron hooks, flung her supple strength against it to shove off, the mellow and flutelike insistence of a whippoorwill’s chant drifted from the haunch of Saddleback Mountain.

  An eerie sound, that, there at the deserted fringes of the wild with nightfall glooming down; a warning of ill omen and of death in the northern lore; nevertheless, Kate Fergus gave no heed.

  Daughter of the grim black forest, the forest resinous and ever murmuring, her blood the blood of pioneering breeds, for her the north woods held no fear nor any mystery.

  “But I wish pa was home from Pointe au Bouleau, just the same,” she murmured to herself, panting a little as the uncouth craft slowly yielded to the force of her rounded arms. “Seems kind of like I didn’t have the strength I used to. Ever since they took ’Polyte and caged him up like a varmint, I ain’t had no get-up-an’-get.

  “Of course, ’Polyte hadn’t oughta dynamited Long Pool for mascalonge, and he hadn’t oughta shot that there game-warden through the leg. And he used to be mighty rough with me, off an’ on. But no matter! They didn’t have no right to lock him up, that way, and that’s a fact. It’s sure death, I cal’late, puttin’ one of us north people in the pen. And ’Polyte — he loved the woods, you bet. Loved ’em a’most as much as he used to love — me.

  “Seems like I couldn’t get over it, nohow. I ain’t half the woman I was afore that!”

  Firm breast and muscled shoulder leaned on the long pike-pole as she shoved off.

  “Huh!” she muttered scornfully. “They had to catch him asleep, anyhow! Couldn’t take him in a fair an’ square fight, an’ they knowed it. ’Polyte could ha’ licked the bunch with one hand if he’d had a chance. I don’t care if he did use to get full sometimes, an’ once give me a black eye. Guess I deserved it that time, tryin’ to knife him ’cause I seen him kissin’ that there Céleste Laplante.

  “It don’t matter if he did skip out an’ leave me — and me with nary ring! Don’t matter if I would shoot him down, now, same as pa would, if ever we set eyes on him again! He was a real man, anyhow, and I cal’late in a fair fight he could clean up any six o’ them white-livers that have got him penned. A man, ’Polyte was, and he loved me — once!”

  She frowned blackly, there in the gathering dusk, as she poled the craft out into the river. Her crimson mouth grew straight as a knife-blade, when — the current now gripping the boat and tautening the pulley-ropes — she applied herself to the two windlasses that controlled them.

  The forward rope she shortened, and let the aft one out. Then she dropped the boards; and now with no more effort on her part the ferry began to crawl across the flood. Unevenly the big wheels jerked along the hempen cable.

  Now they lagged and stopped, now spun swiftly forward. The huge rope swayed and gave; but, stayed by the massive tripods, held the craft. And so it crept, slowly, steadily, toward the gloomy further shore.

  Kate stood with the pike-pole in her capable hands, and listened to the gurgling swash of the current, which blended overtones with the dull roar of the rapids below.

  Suddenly a motor-siren ca-hooted through the chill evening air, far down the river-road that edged the torrent. Wildly it screamed, seeming to shout tidings of strange, unusual speed.

  Before its echoes died among the hills, once more the ferry-horn blared furiously. And then the hail rose once again:

  “Hal-loo-o! Hal-loo-o-o there! Halloo-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

  “I’ll take ’em both over at once,” murmured Kate. “That’ll save one trip, anyhow. Guess he can’t be in such a ’tarnal hurry he can’t wait five minutes. Though he seems to be in an all-fired to-do about somethin’ or other, that fella does!”

  A kind of instinctive uneasiness pervaded her.

  “What in time can be the matter o’ him, anyhow?” she questioned as she peered anxiously at the approaching shore. “Somebody sick or dyin’? But nobody’d cross over this way, into the big Temiscouata woods, if there was! They’d be goin’ to Fort Kent, more likely.

  “I been at this here ferry, with pa, six years, and I don’t recollect no such ’tarnation hurryin’, to cross. New Brunswick’s all right, but most folks can wait a few minutes to get out o’ the States. What’s up now, I’d like to know?”

  Again the siren yelled, startlingly loud as a slatch of wind bore its harsh note to her ears. Kate looked down stream.

  For a moment she thought to glimpse a vaguely shining glow, as if high-powered electric lights of a car shooting up a grade had cast some reflection on the low-hung mists that lagged along the valley of the Rivière St. Jean.

  But all at once this vanished; and so she stood there wondering, her back against the high board si
ding of the boat.

  Now, already, she had nearly reached the Maine shore. Slowly and still more slowly the complaining wheels lagged along the cable as the speed slackened. Kate strode to the forward end of the boat, pole in hand, to make a proper landing.

  “Hello! Who’s there?” she called. “Who’s wantin’ to cross?” For her keen eyes, sweeping the road that plunged to the water, detected no one. “Hello, hello!”

  No answer.

  Puzzled, she laid hold on the lever to raise the current-board so it should not drag upon the shelving bottom.

  “Who blew that there horn?” she demanded. “Anybody here?”

  All at once a crouching figure rose from the dense alders fringing the stream. Once more the siren screeched, nearer now by a mile.

  “Zat you, Kate?” hoarsely cried the man on the bank, his voice aquiver with feverish haste.

  She found no word, but stared blankly in the gathering gloom. This voice from the shadows touched every nerve. Clutching the pole, she peered with wide eyes at the vague form now plashing out into the river toward the drifting boat.

  “Set your boards de odder way!” cried the man, already waist-deep. “Let out your forrard rope! Send her back, vite, vite!”

  The girl’s heart lashed wildly. Motionless and mute she stared, her face now tense and pallid in the wan dusk. Then she drew up the steel-shod pole, like a harpoon, as though to stab.

  “You — who — what’s the matter? she stammered. “What is it?”

  With a tremendous splash the man plunged, swam a few powerful strokes and reached the boat. He gripped the hinged end-board and drew himself up, streaming like a water-rat.

  “Quick!” he panted. “Dey’re after me! Vite!”

  She seized him by the dripping arm, wrenched him around, and peered into his face. As in a daze she saw his close-cropped, bullet-shaped head, his wild eyes, his sodden stripes of black and gray.

  “Dey’re after me!” he chattered between dancing teeth. He wrenched her hand away. “Sacré bleu! Let go my arm, you! After me, an’ I ain’t got no gun, moé! Dem boards; dat rope — For God’s sake, quick!”

  “’Polyte!” she choked, and staggered backward, clutching at her heart.

  II.

  OF a sudden, a lull in the wind made audible the ripping exhaust of the onrushing car. And, as it swept around a bend in the road half a mile to westward, the glare of the search-light shot the thin mist with white and ghostly radiance.

  The siren, wailing now in long, continuous dissonance, racketed across the river, summoning the ferry.

  Cursing in bitter “habitant” French, he snatched the pike-pole from Kate’s hand, and with a maniac’s strength plunged it into the muddy bottom. The boat’s drift checked, it hung a moment motionless, hauling against its taut pulley-ropes.

  And in that moment the girl, voiceless still, lived, as it seemed to her, a lifetime. She comprehended nothing. How this miracle had come to pass she knew not.

  All she knew was that this furtive, fleeing man; this man gaunt, gray-faced, gray-striped with the shameful garb of the felon; this cowering man, a million miles removed from the bronze-cheeked and quick-eyed ’Polyte Garneau of other days, lay in her power now.

  Though he had fled to her in his last and bitter extremity, she gloried that she held him in the hollow of her hand. And, with her face ablaze, she sprang at him and snatched him from the windlass, whither he had run.

  “No, you don’t!” she gasped. “What d’ you mean, comin’ to me now, after I been through hell? An’ you — you got the nerve to come to me?”

  Eh? Quoi? “ he stammered, trying in vain to shake her off. “You ain’t — ain’t goin’ for geeve me up? You, Kate — you ain’t goin’ for —”

  A sudden brightening of the glow, then a dazzling glare as the pursuing motor swung steeply down the last hill to the river, struck her speechless. The wailing of the siren seemed the screeching of a million fiends, tearing her heart-strings, numbing all her wrath and bitter hate.

  “Va donc!” he cried savagely, facing her. “Go on, kill me!” And now by the waxen light she saw his eyes — those eyes which, waking or in sleep, had never ceased to haunt her. “Kill me, if you want to. But I tell you, I ain’t goin’ back! Never, so help me God! I’m out t’ree day, Kate, starvin’. Kill one man for get away. If dey take me now, I go up for life. But dey ain’t goin’ for take me! Bon Dieu, never! Never!”

  He flung a hand at the blazing cone of light, now sweeping with wild lurches down the rocky and precipitous road to the ferry.

  “Not dat, Kate; not dat. One bullet — all right. Down in de rivière — all right. But not dat, not dat!”

  A wild hail shivered down the dusk. And vicious in its anger, a sudden, silvery spurt of water leaped to spray beside the flat-boat. Then the smack of a rifle cracked from hill to wooded hill.

  The girl’s fingers, gripping like steel, ridged the flesh on his wrist.

  “Lemme go!” snarled the habitant, hurling her away. “Dem boards — time enough yet! Dey can’t hit nothin’ till dey stop de machine. Quick!”

  The barriers of her hate swept downward in shattered fragments as the flood-tides of memory — of all that had been — surged over her.

  Another water-jet, flicked upward by a second bullet, leaped into the air. Another crackling shot startled the gloom.

  Kate sprang to the lever.

  “Out with the rope, ’Polyte!” she cried. “I’ll drop the boards!”

  As she slid them, splashing, into the black waters that foamed and quarreled around them ’Polyte struck up the ratchet. The windlass-wheel spun madly. Out whirled the rope, letting the aft end of the boat sag down-stream.

  Creaking, the pulley-wheels began to turn again dragged unwillingly along the cable as the heavy boat, caught by the current, once more trolled back toward the Canadian shore.

  ‘Polyte, his white face blazing with rage and hate, snatched up the pike-pole again and drove it to the river-bottom, pushing till the veins swelled in his powerful neck.

  “Peste!”

  The steel point no longer found a hold. With a blasphemy he flung it down, then shook his fist at the receding bank. Yells answered him from shore, and shots began to crackle viciously.

  “Lay down, ’Polyte!” the girl entreated, plucking at his sleeve. “Look — see there! “

  She pointed where dark shadows, leaping from the car which now had stopped close by the water’s edge not two hundred yards distant, moved on the muddy bank with angry, impotent shouts.

  He only laughed like a madman, and thrust her away.

  Stabs of fire pierced the evening. Splinters flicked up from the rail; steel-jacketed bullets slapped into the black waters and skittered swiftly away. Others zoomed past — wasps of death, potent of sting.

  Blinking, with the woman fearless beside him, ’Polyte stared back full in the eye of that pitiless search-light.

  “Rotten, you are!” jeered the convict through hollowed palms. “You pas capab’ hit de balloons! Nom de Dieu! If I have a gun now, me —”

  “First thing,” cried Kate, “we’d bust that light! Then — them skunks! Lay down, I tell you. Idiot! Lay down!”

  She dragged him to the floor of the slow-moving scow; her strength surpassed his now, as they struggled together.

  “Ouay — you been right,” he admitted, panting. “Only I like better to face ’em, moé!”

  Beside him she crouched — beside him — between him and the sheriffs. Her arm circled his shoulder; her breast was shield for his.

  “’Polyte! You come back to me, anyhow! We’re together again, an’ —”

  “Shut up, you!” he growled with an oath. “Lemme ’lone! All I want is get across de rivière, an’ den —”

  “I’ll get you over, ’Polyte. We’ll be there in a couple o’ minutes now. Yo
u can shift into some of pa’s duds. Afore they can get a bateau an’ cross — with this here current and all — you can be over t’other side of Saddleback and away, away!”

  “An’ then?”

  “Break for the shack up beyond Restigouche, the huntin’ camp where you an’ I — you know — you remember! I’ll stake you, ’Polyte. I’ll get grub to you some way. Take pa’s rifle an’ belt an’ knife. Head for the Saguenay! They’ll never get you there! An’ sometime maybe I — we —”

  With a sudden lurch, a sickening quiver of abandonment, the great cable fell slack. Into the tumbling waters it splashed. Both pulleys dropped.

  The boat, yawing violently around, began to drift down-stream. Through the useless wheels the cable swiftly ran as it lay writhing in the sluicing river.

  “They’ve cut — they’ve cut the cable!”

  Shuddering with horror, the girl’s wail rose on the murk.

  “The cable, ’Polyte — an’ Tobique Rapids only four miles below!”

  III.

  THE outlaw burst into a laugh as the boat slewed down-current; laughed like a maniac and staggered to his feet.

  “Eh, canaille!” he howled, shaking his fist with frightful imprecations in his patois French, while Kate stared, dumb with horror. “Let her go! We mak’ good finish, anyhow. No more de cell for mine. No more rottin’ in de cell!”

  “Listen, ’Polyte! Listen!”

  The girl beside him clutched him desperately, her eyes aflame, her mackinaw flapping in the wind that swept the turbulent floods. Out of the search-light now, safe from the rifle-fire, they stood there peering.

  Her breath was hot on his wasted and unshaven face, so wanly pale and haggard. His fevered eyes dimly saw hers, dark, big and eager in the gloom.

  Suddenly she took his prison-ravaged head in both her hands, and pressed a burning kiss upon his mouth.

  “Here, you!” he growled. “Stop dat dam’ nonsense!”

  He pushed her roughly back and wiped his lips savagely on his dripping sleeve of gray and black.