The Greater Hate

by Roy Norton

THE GREATER HATE

 

By Roy Norton

 

THE wilderness brought them together. The wilderness compelled them to cry "Truce," and the wilderness glowered at them ever as they wandered through it seeking with desperate struggles the preservation of their self-valued lives.

One was tall and swart with the hand-painting of the sun reflected from Arctic snows. The other was short and stocky, with the beetling brow and somber look of the man who has trying heart history written in the deeps within him. And they, fellow-travelers for the time but hating each other ever, fared away together.

Hunger walked with them and lent staggers to their steps as the squeakings of their snow shoes blended together at their meeting place. Below them for indefinite miles stretched the cañon up which they had come, its only relief from snowy whiteness being the darker copses of green where pine boughs protruded. On all sides, save that slit in the sky line, huge mountains thrust fiercely jagged fingers into the blue and interposed ice-clad steeps. And their only trail of escape from the leering, malignant companion hunger was up and over the icy range. They were mere microscopic things of animation which must assault and conquer the sides of this immense, formidable pocket, or die.

The tall man, hearing the creaking of those other snow shoes, and for the instant stimulated by hope, suddenly pulled himself together and hurried toward the point where their individual paths might meet. From his lips there started forth a glad shout of greeting, but the noise died away in his throat with a curious, clucking intonation as he recognized the other.

The man ahead turned at the sound, gave an involuntary start, and faced the one who would have hailed him. His somber eyes glowered at the other steadily with a world of readable hatred in their depths, but his lips opened not. He stood, despite his inward weakness, with the stolidity of a bull meditating a fierce attack, a certain overaweing deadliness of intensity in his immobility, while the swart one palpably shook and reached for the weapon which was entangled in the ragged belt of his ragged mackinaw. With his hand on the gun he gave salute, challenge, and interrogation in a monosyllabic ""Well, Tom?"

Unwinkingly, but with a certain defined contempt in his look, the other slowly replied, "Not now, Jack; not now, I guess."

The hand of the taller man slid hesitatingly away from the pistol butt. He stood questioningly for what seemed a long time, and then, as if his every nerve had weakened, he stumbled forward beseeching: "Grub, for God's sake, grub! I have eaten nothing for the last two days."

Again there was a pause, but no throb of weakness in the voice that wearily answered, "Nor I for three days."

It was like a blow to the tall man. He squatted on his heels, twisted his fingers and moaned, while tears dripped unheeded down his bearded face. Tom remained immovable and brooding. Here before him was the object of his years of search—the other man and his revenge. Here at his feet, groveling in weakness and selfish self-pity, was the one for whom he had sought over thousands of miles of land and sea, through frontier camps and frontier hills, through great woods and greater mountains, and off up here into the heart of unknown and uninhabited Alaska—and all for this!

Through all those years he had thought that when this man was found the end would come without delay. He had pictured to himself the savage joy and satisfaction of the kill. God! How he wanted to kill!

It was this starved and weakened and sobbing thing that in those far-away years had stepped in between him and his betrothed—the only woman who had commanded all his heart's homage—and with cunning lies, clever insinuations, and heartless malignments had estranged her. Yes, worse than that, had taken her for his own and then instead of cherishing her had made her life such a hell on earth that she had been glad to pass from this into the portals of another world—had been glad to rest—to sleep—to find the great quiet.

And never until she lay dying in his arms had he known all this. And never until then had he realized that life could hold as its sole object and ambition a desire to kill another man. Never until then had he known that hatred could become so intense, so cumulative, so pervading, that even in the nights it filled sleep with fierce combat and savage triumph and brutal exultation. Sometimes in those years he had vaguely wondered whether or not his sanity had been broached upon; sometimes he wondered whether the steadfast resolution within him that had always been a part of his nature had not become distorted. But always, as time went on, the difficulties of finding this man had acted upon his stubbornness and only increased his determination.

And all for this!

Now his eyes sought those of the other.

"She is dead," he said in a monotone, almost as if speaking to himself and uttering a commonplace.

"Good God! And—and——"

"Yes. She remembered and forgave you. But I haven't You killed her."

The tall man buried his face in his arms upon his knees and his body shook with sobs. The other watched unmoved. The fire of speech that had fanned the murder light into his eyes was followed by more brooding.

The few minutes that had slipped away since they met seemed ages. Suddenly the terrors their own position smote upon them, and together they turned and faced that terrific and forbidding wall that towered above them, a plane of snow whose crusted surface glistened coldly repellent.

"No other chance," said the stocky one, more to the mountainside than to his hearer.

"No," was admitted. "To go around any other way takes twenty days. That means—" He shrugged in hopelessness.

As if by common thought and single impulse, they loosened their packs of blankets which must be abandoned and dropped them upon the snow, their smaller camp impedimenta jangling as it fell. Eying each other to see whether the truce was to be in full, they discarded their rifles. They tightened their belts around their torn and worn garments. Their snowshoes were unthonged and lashed fantastically across their backs. They were ready.

And thus with but a pick and shovel they assaulted the mountain range, cutting foothold in its glassy face and climbing upward, like doggedly persistent insects, toward the ridges high above them. With the instincts of the mountaineer they had chosen the lowest place in this three-sided battlement, which shut them off from the other side of the divide where were cabins and—grub.

At intervals as they progressed they changed places, working carefully past each other, the one in front cutting—always cutting—footholds into which the moccasins fitted, mere toeholds between them and death. And the one in the rear always repeated the same gesture and pose, the planting of the shovel point alongside, the leaning forward against the face of the frozen snow, and the holding of the arms overhead as a protection against the stray bits of ice chipped out from above.

Hour after hour they advanced at snail's pace until the great trees in the cañon far below them looked like a mere fringe of green against the foot of the interminably long and horrifyingly steep incline.

The breeze came coldly down upon them from off the altitudes, and, although but a soft movement of air, it seemed to them in their precarious footholds as a terrific and demoniacal gale, striving steadily and cruelly to wrest them from their clutch and hurl them to swift destruction. Coldness and weariness piled on and on until the gnawing of starvation were forgotten.

Even the mountain was an enemy, whose glacial face was imbued with life. Now it jeered them; now, with devilish animosity, it put forth hands to shove them off. When they dared look, the peaks across the cañon seemed watching them derisively, but with great solemnity. They felt how infinitely puny they were, and in their weakness and fatigue and danger it seemed that even the whirling of the earth was palpable and a menace. The gray of the skies, leaden and uniform, became a shroud ready to cover them both. The immensity of height overpowered them and they dared not look downward. And though they might falter and wish to retrace their steps, it would be impossible, for the warmth of their moccasins melted slightly their tiny footings, which as they abandoned them became peculiarly slippery and absolutely treacherous. There was no hope of anything but to gain the top. And then? Perhaps even then there would be no hope. Perhaps all this was useless, and it might be better to surrender to the mountain now. The end would come quickly—yes—it wouldn't take long to fall.

Yet that subconscious desire to live—just to live a little longer—held them and made them fight their way upward; but their mouths broke no silence. There was no sound other than that of the ringing pick nibbling its way for fresh footholds and gnawing an almost invisible ladder toward hope.

And so they reached the crest of the divide, a wind-swept ridge where little swirls of cutting, blinding, biting snow smote them in their faces and drove chill teeth into their starved bodies.

They rested, lying on their aims and gathering strength for the traversement of the ridge which stretched away before them like a narrow path on the backbone of the world. Chilled with their respite they arose to their feet and staggeringly made their way along this pathway to shelter and food. Still the malignancy of the mountains was upon them and the ridge seemed to diminish as they advanced, rendering their positions more precarious and their footing more difficult. The tall one took the lead. Behind him, with steadier step, grim face, and clinched fingers, strode the smaller one. They slipped now and again as they went, and always they lodged only at their feet, fearing the unnerving of a glance outward into the depths on either side. Sometimes they leaned to the icy blasts until they looked like attenuated scarecrows wavering in the wind and aslant. Their feet rose and fell with clumsy irregularity and without the firmness of strength. Their weakness told upon them.

With the shock of the unexpected the feet of the man in front slipped. His ice-incrusted moccasins gave forth a rasping sound as he vainly fought for firmer footing; his arms, holding the burden of the shovel, wrenched wildly to and fro, and with strange sprawlings of awkwardness he fell off the apex of the ridge and slid from its meager flatness out upon the ice-clad declivity. His body seemed to shoot downward in a straight line, flying always with greater speed on the steep slope, which terminated in nothingness—a nothingness across whose brink was wide space and at the foot of which, thousands of feet below, stood the pine trees dwarfed by distance into solid colors. And as he went, feet foremost, he still clutched, in hands upraised at length above his head, the shovel.

It was this thwarted the sentence of the mountain. Its sharp corner clove into the crust with a gritting "skr-r-r," turning up in its flight a little furrow of snow that whisked weirdly away as a cloud of diamonds adrift. It acted as a brake striving by chance to arrest tragedy. It caught on a stronger projection of ice. The outshooting body of the man came to a sudden stop and almost jerked loose the hands which, with the blind instinct of self-preservation, clung tensely to the only hold between him and the abyss.

The stocky man, paralyzed by the suddenness of the catastrophe, stood high above him, the pick still over his shoulder and one hand in his pocket. In outline against the sky, he looked a firmly immovable statue, a part of the mountain watching a men spectacle of interest.

His eyes stolidly felt out those of the man below and caught the detail of the swart face grown pallid in extremity.

"Good-by, Tom"—a grim and ample salute from the dying—was wafted up to him.

He carefully sat down on the edge of the white gateway to death and gazed as one fascinated. His reasoning was that of one dulled by physical stress and grounded on personal hatred. It told him that this accident was no fault of his, nor could he be expected to attempt a rescue. Such an attempt were, after all, merely throwing the gauntlet in challenge to the inevitable. That bank of snow, under double weight, would probably become an avalanche to carry them both out to the edge of the precipice, and over it into space, and down, and down, to form part of the covering for the waiting pines a thousand feet below—cruel in their expectancy.

Accident had saved him the trouble of killing. Death was the only sequel. It had been so sworn. His mind traveled backward tn review, reiterating as in all the past years of quest the part this man had played in his own tragedy. It was troublesome to sit there and think while those eyes vaguely questioned his. Jack need expect no rescue from him. He was not worthy, and even the attempt would mean useless self-sacrifice.

The shovel slipped a little, although the man hanging to it had even eased his breathing to avoid jarring its tenure of the ice.

The figure of stern Justice on the brink above leaned forward as though fascinated with the imminent climax, and then, animated by a new thought, sprang into activity. Hurriedly he seized the pick and drove its point into the ice below his feet. The necessity for haste was upon him, and he furiously chipped step after step, angling his way toward the imperiled one's feet, and in his frenzied energy he was heedless of the danger of starting a snowslide, the hungry yawning of the gulf below, or the slipperiness of his own working surface. Once more with him it was a combat with nature, and he fought the fight strongly.

With rare forethought he cut a deeper and broader gash in the unfeeling wall, almost on the verge of the chasm, and eased the slackened frame of the tall man down beside him. With all his strength he steadied him into the little grooves which serrated the terrible slide, boosted him upward when opportunity offered, and all in silence.

Collapsed and nerveless, struggling for breath, and clutching the narrowness of the mountain, they lay face downward on the top, each striving for mastery of emotion. In each was the same weakening of the knees, the violent pumping of the heart, and the terror of the immensity that stretched with such magnificent unfeelingness away from them, a white and frigid panorama below their eerie perch. Yet neither spoke.

Jack looked curiously at his companion and gulped in his effort to control himself. Why Tom had rescued him was beyond reason or comprehension. When the latter said, "We must move along," he obeyed without hesitation or comment.

With great caution they resumed their journey out to a place offering easy descent in the way they would go. In the rescued man's mind there surged a tumult of thought not untinged with remorse. A dormant sentiment awakened, that of regret and gratitude. It was hard to express, and as he stumbled onward he tried to frame a speech. The silence of the Arctic was upon him. They had reached timber level and found in this quietude an unreal world where every twig bore a highly piled burden of frost, where everything was deathly still and life itself seemed expectant.

He stopped abruptly in an open spot between tall trees with the feeling that he was in a cathedral, and must break through this awful speechlessness and into the mind of that other.

Words came fumblingly. "I want to thank you, Tom. Want to thank you for that back up there. It was—was mighty good of you,"

"Good? Good?" came the response in such pent fury that be shrank back amazed. "Good! God, man, I didn't do it because I was good or didn't want you to die," And as he spoke his voice crept from one of repression to unbridled passion; arose to a strained pitch as if floodgates were bursting with the sweep of an irresistible torrent.

The sun lent the glow of a dying day, and through rifted clouds shot reddish rays upon his fiercely working face as he furiously twisted his cap from his head and madly flung it on the snow. He strode forward in this light a picture of ferocity, his shaggy head drawn down within his shoulders, his hair bristling with rage, and his sparsely bearded chin thrust outward. His eyes glared with murderous madness from beneath eyebrows drawn into a straight thatch, his lips were snarled back exposing teeth so tightly locked that the muscles of his jowls stood forth in ridges, and his hands clinched and unclinched. All barriers of restraint broke. He was the primeval savage with only savagery as his guide.

"Good!" he reiterated. "Damn you! Is that what you think? No! No! No! I brought you up because that way was too cursed quick and easy for you! Brought you up because when the time comes I want to drag your worthless life from your more worthless body with my hands. Damn you—with my hands! Want to set my teeth in your throat and know that you suffer as your life goes out. God! I wish I could make you suffer a million deaths! Suffer as you've made me suffer—as she suffered. Why, curse you, your wife died in my arms, and so did your deserted baby."

Trembling with rage he strode upon the other and seemed, as he towered above him, bent on the consummation of his desire to slay. But Jack cowered down upon one knee, surprise and remorse written in his startled eyes and opened lips.

"A babe? She left a babe—my baby!" he muttered, thinking aloud. "And I never knew!" This day and perhaps other days had wrought upon him. Now came facts marshaled from the years and passing in dread review before the judgment of his introspection. A woman's love unfairly won, then crushed under foot; the unmerited gift of paternity, then the shirking of a father's responsibilities. The joys of pure thinking and pure living with that wife and child ruthlessly sacrificed on the slimy altar of greed and selfishness, adventure and debauchery. His littleness and selfishness and cruelty came upon him in his bitter realization of barren, naked truth. In this awakening and merciless self-arraignment he hated himself, admitted that he merited death at this man's hands and was willing to accept it.

He raised himself to his feet with his whole thought speaking in the twitching of his face, and in one tragic, sweeping gesture of surrender threw back his opened hands and said: "You're right! My life can't pay, Tom. Take it! I don't want to live."

Tom paused with straining fingers outstretched in the very act of clutching at his enemy's throat. His muscles relaxed and his arms dropped heavily to his sides. Amazed at that turn and by the other's relinquishment he paused irresolute.

The light was going. He looked from right to left as if awakening from a bad dream, dazed and uncomprehending. He was back in the world of isolation again, back in the little clearing in the Arctic wilderness, cold and weak and hungry and weary. He picked up his mittens from the snow.

"Not now," he said. "Not now. I guess we'd better mush ahead."

As the long miles stretched out Jack began to weaken more and more. At times he staggered and fell, and with difficulty regained balance on his snowshoes. His arms would thrust themselves through the crust shoulder deep and his body would laboriously writhe and strain to withdraw them. His tenure of the thongs was uncertain and his steps were dragging and halting. Through all this Tom came behind apparently unmoved and callous. Only once or twice toward the last, when the effort to arise became too much for Jack, did he offer assistance.

The night shadows, with stealthy creeping, transformed the sky and rendered the way harder. Insistently they walled in the world with darkness. By and by the clouds dissipated into the chill heavens, and on the white of the snows came the dim reflection of the stars. But the journey was near an end.

Far across an opening in the black masses of the forest and over the dead fields of white, a light from a cabin window sent a glittering pathway toward them—a beacon of life in the loneliness.

Hope fed their starved frames with new fire and diminished the leaden weight of their snowshoes. They went stronger, and Jack fell less frequently. They struggled harder now that a goal was at hand, knowing that across this last stretch of weariness were refuge and food.

As they approached the black, squatty cabin, whose snow-laden roof was outlined against a group of pines, the night painted the picture. Behind it and away off in the dim and mysterious north, the northern lights were spreading a dull glow of red and purple, preliminary to a grander display. The trees on the mountaintops were silhouetted against this sullenly flaming curtain and a hilltop in the near background was sharply defined. Dimly outlined, a trail led away from the front of the cabin toward this hill, and to other habitations in those other miles across its summit.

The man behind broke the silence, "Here's where you stop," he said. "I'm going on."

The other turned slowly on his shoes and faced him, vaguely realizing and understanding a hatred so great that it rendered, even in this terrible distress, one cabin roof too small for both. He was overwhelmed.

"Tom," he said, "I told you back there to-day that I didn't want to live. Well—I don't. You said 'not then.' Better make it now!" He stood waiting.

"Killing's too good for you." Tom's voice, fraught with malevolence, came through the gloom. "Damn you! I hope now that you live forever and never forget!"

He thrust his bearded face forward until his eyes glared into those of the swart one, and concluded between unopened teeth: "By God! You can keep your life. I'm going to leave you with your memory. It'll be hell enough."

Then, with a laugh in which was all of concentrated bitterness and insolent scorn, he trudged away into the darkness.

Hearing, but unheeding, he gave no recognition of the tragic call, "Tom, Tom!" that was borne to him on the wings of the night from the man behind.

The latter cowered and shivered, a quivering figure of despair, and watched the other as he went. His punishment was already upon him. Prescience told him of the awful years to come with no other companions than memory and remorse and the knowledge that the man going out had so hated him that be had given him his life.

Mantled in his hopelessness he staggered toward the cabin door, but before entering turned once more to the north.

There the lights had crept out and upward, throwing coldly gorgeous fingers of weird, uncanny fires across the sky. Purples and dull reds and unknown colors swept to and fro, blended with marvelous rapidity, and brought out still stronger the outline of the hill.

Into this outline there came a slowly plodding form. First the head, then the shoulders, then the entire body, like one arising from a sea of blackness into a world of color. It was Tom crossing the hill.

In this glory of the night he saw him vanish over the horizon, a triumphant figure of vengeance, limned for the moment in sharp grotesqueness, limping onward to the next cabin, grimly conscious of a great revenge and with his quest at an end.

And with the watcher at the door were those two others left behind to give him throughout his weary life their stern companionship—Memory and Remorse.