The Law-bringers/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
"THE FORCE ISN'T A NURSERY"
The mystery of the people of the world; the strangeness of the many lives about him had always consoled Dick in other days for the troubles that fell on him. It was his nature to keep himself busy, bodily and mentally; and when he came back to the old daily routine at Grey Wolf and passed the empty house across the Lake in his patrols he found the value of the work-habit which he had taught himself. Work was the only leash which could hold his temper just now, and he needed all that life could give him. Day and night the district saw him prowling through it; stalking faint trails of wrong-doers, examining into the state of roads and crops and bridges, hearing petty details of complaint and squabble in that alert silence which promised swift redress, and exercising prisoners with a bland mercilessness which made men fear to come under the harrow of his power.
Tempest went his own way these days. Since Dick's rebuke to him the old friendship seemed to have slid off the two, and each man walked his daily round, king in his own right of jurisdiction, and neither giving nor asking sympathy or understanding. Trouble dulled Tempest's energies; it quickened Dick's. And no love of woman nor of himself could blurr the sharp edge of his calculating mind. Before he went to Edmonton he had discovered that flattery, gross, daring flattery was the simplest way in which to manage Grange's Andree. To the heat of it she would open the doors of her heart while Tempest's gentle and reverent prayers only irritated or amused her.
Dick's clear mind had grasped this salient fact fully, and with Jennifer's face sweet and grave-eyed in his mind, he began to make private sketches and bold outlines of Andree; planning his attack with restless eagerness, and bringing at last to Moosta a strongly-finished girl-head that was Grange's Andree glowing in her young wild beauty.
Moosta was in the back passage with her arms full of babies when Dick presented it to her; holding it away from chubby fingers and reaching mouths and finally taking it into the back parlour and pinning it on the wall between a garish oleograph of the Madonna and a little guttering lamp on the bracket below. Moosta demurred, being a devout Roman Catholic just now, with five children going to the Mission School. But Dick went away and left it there, smiling in its rounded contours and deep warm colours below the stiff, flat-faced Madonna.
Andree snatched the lamp up when she saw it, and looked at it long and very close. Then she whipped round on Moosta with parted lips that drew quick breaths, and eyes that made the lamplight pale.
"Dieu!" she cried. "That—that not me!"
Moosta looked up with her mouth full of silk threads. She was embroidering a mooseskin moccasin-front with exquisite neatness.
"Tanse?" she said. "Aha. C'est vous." And then she dropped her work. "Eh!" she cried. "He is ver' bon, cet pickshure, mais vous êtes mechatwow plus bonne."
Andree's colour ran up the smooth, glowing skin to the dark curls that made blue shadows about her temples. She turned to the painting again.
"He do that!" she said, quick and low. "Ah—c'est vrai. He made me like so!"
She had often seen herself as the distoted common mirrors of the houses she knew showed her to her own girl's eyes. She had not before seen herself as a man saw her, and that man the man of all others who had piqued her by his careless indifference, and roused her hate by his strength, and her interest by the stories men told of him. This was a triumph, a dizzy burning triumph; an unbelievable surprise. She pulled the painting down; breathing into it; sending the light of her eyes to meet those painted ones; the laugh on her lips to those red lips curved by a cunning hand. For the first time in the bald, raw life she had lived she saw absolute human beauty; vital, wonderful, elusive. And that beauty was her own. She flung the sketch aside and hurled herself on her knees before Moosta.
"Look!" she cried. "Look on me. Omisse—with the straight eyes. Am I so? Ah—est-il that je suis is belle? Moosta! Dites-moi! Vouis êtes tapwa mynatun; mais moi—I am so! Ah! Tell me!"
She shook the placid fat Moosta until the silk threads were half-swallowed, and Moosta gasped:
"Wah! Wah! Andree! Feenish! Vous mak' keep. Eh? Aha; him say vous mooch plus preety."
"Nemoweya! Ah, say that again, Moosta, and I'll love you kakeka mena kakeka."
"Vhy you s'prise?" Moosta rubbed her wide, flat nose. "Wee all mak' see vous laike dat—tous les jours."
Andree sprang up; swaying, glowing, glorious. She was drunk with joy in her own beauty.
"I did not know. I" She stopped suddenly with her deep eyes turned sideways like a listening animal and her breast heaving quickly. Grange was speaking in the passage, and both women knew the voice with a laugh in it which answered.
"Ah!" Andree whipped the moccasin from Moosta's astonished hands, and sat herself down to work demurely.
"Dans les prisons des Nantes,
Dans les prisons des Nantes . . ."
she sang, sweet and low, setting careful scarlet stitches into a growing bud on the deer-skin.
Grange giggled as he pushed the door wide.
"Here's the Corp'ril came along fur a game o' cards," he said. "You take a hand, Andree? You sure will?"
Andree broke her song one half-moment, but she did not raise her eyes.
"Too busy," she said sedately.
"But" began Moosta, finding her voice in her dismay, and then Andree's voice carolled out, high and clear:
"Lui y a-t-n prisonnier, gai,
Faluron, falurette, faluron, falurette."
Dick's voice came in with hers on the last line:
"Faluron, falurette, donde."
"That's pretty," he said, indicating the bud under the slim brown fingers. "He'll be a lucky man who gets those, Andree."
Moosta's English always failed her before these men of the red coats and the direct eyes. She plunged at incoherent explanation; ended in a squeak of Cree despair, and then obeyed Grange's order to bring glasses and a bottle. Grange was proud through every honest inch of him at Dick's presence for the first time in the back-parlour, and he was content to smoke in silence, until his guest chose to remember him again.
"Won't you tell me who they're for, Andree?" said Dick.
Andree looked up; saw his eyes; saw the painting on the table, and flung restraint off in a breath.
"Ah!" she cried. "Say it! Is that like—me?"
"No. You are lovelier than that, Andree. Much lovelier."
"So-o" It was long-drawn wonder and delight. She looked at him. "When men did call me pretty I did not know it was all that pretty," she said.
Dick bit the smile off on his lips.
"That is why you can hurt us all so much, Andree," he said.
"So-o," she said again, and her hands fell idle on her lap and her big eyes burned as she stared across the room. Dick looked at her with amused comprehension, seeing the vanity which swayed her. And at that moment there was nothing else in Grange's Andree. He took up the moccasin, touching her warm hands as he did it.
"If I paint more pictures of you may I have these?" he said. "I think I don't want you to make them for another fellow."
The scarlet blazed in her olive skin again.
"You paint me over—some more? In my new dress?"
"Perhaps. You finish those moccasins for me?"
Possibly Andree had forgotten that the moccasins were Moosta's. Possibly it would not have affected her if she had remembered. A smile curved her lips.
"Perhaps I say nemoweya, but not nemoweya nia," she said.
Dick knew well the distinction between those two "Noes."
"But you will leave out even the nemoweya next time, won't you, Andree?" he asked, and smiled as she sprang up to get the cards in sudden confusion.
His eyes followed her through the little dark room. She really was a beauty; so amazingly full of colour and movement. He had enjoyed painting that little picture of her from memory. He would enjoy much more painting from the model. There certainly was some excuse for Tempest. Then he put Tempest out of his mind. It was hardly the time to find excuses for Tempest on this point.
For ten days Andree worked on the moccasins, silencing Moosta's mild objections by promises that she would buy her more silk blue and purple and magenta silks, and lots of little white beads to go round the edge of everything, some day. Then, one afternoon, she carried them up to the low hill behind Grey Wolf when she went to pick lowbush cranberries, and put the last stitches in them with her dreaming eyes glancing down, now and again, on the ugly little dull village below.
She was more excited about that picture than she had ever been in her life. Like a second Narcissus she loved her own beauty better than she loved anyone else, and the thought that Dick might make some more of those delightful colours and curves which were herself intoxicated her. She filled her bowl, and then she stitched the long tie-thongs into place, and scraps of French songs came and went on her lips. She was utterly happy; forgetful of all but the delicious, excited feeling that held her, and the day had life enough to fit her mood. Swallows were making steely-blue flashes across the warm, golden light where they chased the glancing moths. Butterflies trembled in the tall grass-stalks where the wind went dreamily, and in the scattered balsams vireo and fly-catcher were dipping and calling.
Dick came over the crest of the hill, whistling. He came near; stopped, and looked down. In her yellow gown and the yellow light, with the soft wind in her short curls and shadow and sun across her face, Grange's Andree was something to stir the most phlegmatic blood. And Dick had never been phlegmatic. Andree held out the moccasins.
"I did make feenish—pour vous," she said; and a sudden impulse brought Dick down beside her to push away the curls that made blue veins on her temples and hid the dimple in her cheek.
It was a full half-hour before he rose and went down the hill with long, swinging strides. And his eyes were uneasy. For he did not care to remember all that he had done and said in that half-hour.
To-morrow the yearly Sessions were to be held in Grey Wolf, and the one street of it was choked with passing life. In the dust a half-dozen north-bred huskies were fighting; the smell of bananas and tar and hot leather and groceries hung heavily round the -Hudson Bay Store. Two Indian women squatted outside the Store with round-eyed babies on the backs, and within a score of bucks were buying ammunition and tobacco.
Dick heard Leigh's voice raised in fluent Cree expostulation, and he knew that the men were bargaining for debt on the furs of the coming winter. He swung past with a shrug. Most of those Indians were bankrupt now. They would be more bankrupt by spring, and then would begin trouble with the Hudson Bay and Revillons; starvation perhaps, and theft.
All these things and many more would come in Dick's way later on. They were the warp and woof of the North-West. They were the day's work and the grim night's anxiety.
Tempest met him outside the barracks.
"An Indian has reported a Galician sick and alone in a shack along the trail to Stony Point," he said. "I can't go, because of the Judge, and Kennedy's not back. If you go at once you can be back in time for breakfast, Dick. And I'm afraid I'll have to send you."
Dick was in no mood for twelve hours and more of lonely forest. Since he came back from Edmonton he had been in no mood for twelve hours of himself.
"Damn the Galician," he said. "We could do with a few less of him."
Tempest pushed up the brim of his Stetson, looking at Dick with more friendliness than usual in his grave eyes.
"You are not very gay yourself," he said. "Feel fit to go?"
"Oh, Lord, yes. And that's more than you are, by the look of you, old man."
Tempest's face softened.
"I haven't been good company lately," he said. "But I don't want to make you pay for it. A man doesn't care to alienate one of the few friends he has affection for."
Dick looked at the ground. No; a man did not care to do it, but it was probably going to be done very shortly.
"We'll both feel better when this heat's over. It certainly was a snorter in the court-house this morning. And it will be worse to-morrow, very likely. I'll take a snack with me and go, then. Shall I take Flanks or the piebald?"
"Better have Flanks. Kennedy had the pony most of yesterday. Bring the man in if necessary. And you can't waste time, you know. There is work to put through before the cases start in the morning."
Dick nodded and went in to hurry Poley over the providing of eatables for him. His pocket-flask he filled himself. Since he came back from Edmonton it had required to be filled more often than any case of assistance on the patrols seemed to warrant. Then he harnessed up the big chestnut into the buckboard; took such things as guesswork and knowledge suggested for the aid of the sick man, and plunged from the blazing heat of afternoon into the cool greens of the forest. The Galician might be suffering with anything from smallpox to angina pectoris or broken limbs. That did not trouble Dick. It was all in the day's work, just as the knowledge that a king-bolt or a spring, or a shaft might break on this rough trail of corduroy, deep pot-holes and tree-butts was all in the day's work. Chance and danger were fed to him with his daily meals, and, like many another man, he found their sauce the principal thing which made his food worth while.
In all directions the birds were home-coming. Their calls and twitters and flurry of quick wings knit up the long aisles into runs and chords of sweet, eager sound. Scents blew along the trail to Dick's face; damp and clean and piney. Golden light dredged through the black needles of the jack-pines and the wide-spread spruces, and powdered the slender white of birch and cotton-wood with yellow dust. And, hour by hour, the beat of hoofs and the jarring of the rig could do more than faintly blurr the surface of the deep, warm silence that lay like Peace itself upon the earth.
The chestnut swung along with his awkward, tireless gait; obedient to the light hand of the man whom he knew for his master; and Dick sat still, with his lean face expressionless and his eyes staring out, unblinking, below the heavy brows. He was thinking of a comparison in Ruskin's "Ethics of the Dust"; a comparison of the awful, hopeless difference between the hyaline block which is pure, untouchable in its integrity; which unhesitatingly repulses everything evil, and of its brother block; weak, immoral, accepting corruption, unable to deny the insiduous power of corroding fluids. To the lay eye those two blocks looked alike, even as he and Tempest had looked alike—years ago. Life had used various acids to test the two men. But Tempest only had won out. Grange's Andree might break his heart and his work, but neither she nor anything else could make him evil. Dick of his own free will had taken tests which had left their scars and their rotten places, and which had eaten out of him the power to stand where he would have chosen to stand now.
Fully he saw this, as a man may bring himself unflinchingly to look on himself. And still he drove through the calling musical forest with that concentrated look on his face. Ahead came faintly the smell of cooking-fires; of green wood smoke and fresh-grilled bacon and coffee. Round a sharp elbow in the trail showed a clearing sunk among the dark pines and a knot of covered wagons like huge brown beetles asleep. Where the flames pulsed up women moved and children's laughter echoed, sweet and shrill. A man slouched forward big and sunburnt, leaving a trail of tobacco-smoke blue on the still air.
Dick pulled up. He knew these for settlers trekking in with their wives and children to the Peace River country; and he knew that they had left Manitoba when the last snows yet patched the earth, and that the leaves of fall would be orange and red on the long, silent forest trails before they homed at last to the new, unhandled places that waited them. The man's hands showed callosities along the palm. He and his mates had worked their way up these many hundred miles by splitting wood for the river-steamers; trenching ground for a farmer; cutting a much-needed trail with the aid of the Mounted Police. And the green summer moved over their heads, and their cattle fattened on the lush grasses, and their children grew brown and strong as they went, untroubled, trusting in their gods, to an unknown future.
"We heered there was apt to be a river somewheres," said the man, and touched his thick-haired head in vague salute. "You could likely tell us, sir. Would we want to raft our freight over?"
"There are a creek or two close by. You can cross those very easily," said Dick. "You'll have to raft over the Peace, of course. But you won't be there for a good while, I imagine."
"We've rafted two a'ready. Durned slow work. What's that, missus?"
A young, bright-eyed woman with a baby in her arms spoke at his ear.
"Ask the gentleman won't he have supper, Jerry. It's waitin'."
"No, thanks." Dick looked at the two. They were the kind of importations Randal would have approved. "I'll get something where I'm going. That's a remarkably young settler you've got there."
"Born on the trail." The man handed up the pink and white bundle with pride. "The missus she would have him christened in Grey Wolf yes'day. Guess we won't find no parsons where we're going."
"You'll have one monthly—like the bills in cities. But there are no doctors or nurses or hospitals." Dick looked at the woman. "If your children get sick, you'll have to cure them yourself," he said.
"Jerry can," said the young wife, and her face glowed. "He kin do most all things, I guess." And Dick's last sight as he drove on was of the two strolling back, close together, to the red fires and the brown wagons and the dark forest which made their home.
The forest had been Dick's home so many times. She was the breath of the North-West; the door of Life; the lover who called men; flattered them; played with them, and who stood against them in her austerity the long winter through with face changed and aloof and unconcerned. Dick loved her best in her latter moods, when he met her as he had ever done, with set teeth and fingers crooked to tear from her that which was necessary for his bare life. He loved her then because of the pain she gave him; because her very sternness made him more of a man; because she paid him in self-respect for all she took from him. And self-respect was not the usual coin of Dick's exchange.
The sun dropped big and crimson behind the dark pine-trees ranks. The bird-songs frayed into tender silence, and the pink flush died out of the sky and the blue shadows darkened and thickened. Where pot-holes and tree-boles made alike black blots on the trail and the buckboard bumped out of one to bump over the other, Dick's keen eyes saw the little low log cabin half-hid among the swaying blue-grass just where the lip of the forest fell away to the open downs. Dick hitched the chestnut to the broken snake-fence; brushed through the tall grass to the door, and pushed it wide. A cool scent of hemlock boughs and water came to his heated face. Then something moved in the dusky shadows; took a slush-light from beside the stove, and showed as a woman, wrinkled and worn, with a white shawl on the slender, straight shoulders. Dick stepped back, embarrassed and amazed.
"I—I beg your pardon," he said. "I was told—isn't there a Galician sick in this shack? I was told he was alone."
She answered him in French; the old-world French of Normany and Touraine.
"There is a Frenchman here—my husband. He was seeking work, and he fell ill."
"The Indian said he was a Galician. I hope he is not very sick, madame?"
"I thank you, monsieur. He is very tired." She held the light toward the rough bunk, and Dick stooped over it, feeling for the pulse in the knotted, sinewy wrist. The dignity in the withered old face and the slow, refined tongue had over-set him for the moment, and the weak passage of the blood through the old thin body on the bunk told him more than he was quite ready to put into words. For his own young vigorous life and his knowledge gave him the truth without hesitation.
He pulled his flask out and lifted the half-unconscious man. Anything was better than inaction with that grave, sweet face looking out of the shadows.
"He has lived a long and a difficult life, madame," he said civilly.
"And he was not fitted for it," she said. "Mary, the mother of all men, will give this man his rest."
Dick shot one glance at her.
"Then you know it, madame?" he said. "I—I was afraid"
She smiled just a little, holding the slush-light near.
"Love has quicker eyes than the eyes of a stranger, monsieur," she said; and Dick, half-abashed, laid the grey head back on the grass-stuffed pillow, and took the light from her hand.
"Let me put it aside," he said. "It is not needed. I do not think he will suffer, monsieur, your husband."
"Bien," she said softly as the sigh of a breeze, and sat on the bunk-side holding the chilling, withered hand between her own.
Dick trod gently to the window and waited there, astride of a box. He felt the hush of her great acceptance of the inevitable closing down on him. Out of the storms and the sordid things that were breaking his own life he had come twice to-day into the beauty and the purity and the wisdom of love: those two in the forest with the child between them, strong and glad, beginning a new life together; these two in poverty and age and death, parting in the dark with a stranger as witness. He sat very still with his head in his hands, and beyond the open window the breath of the living night went by.
The man on the bed stirred, muttering. Then the old woman felt strong hands under her arms, and Dick lifted her away.
"Pardon me," he said, and raised the dying man, holding him deftly towards the incoming wind. And, slow and more slow, through the following hour, the last fight was fought; weakly, and very nearly in silence, for the man was worn by years. At last Dick laid him down again.
"He has gone in peace, madame," he said, and walked to the door and stayed there until in a little she came to him.
The night was grave and pale with stars where the wandering wind blew the grass on the low-sloped hills. Night-hawks were calling, and their thin "peent peent" slid, fine as a thread, along the large stillness. The forest stood motionless, a black wedge with no end to it, and Dick turned his eyes from it to the little indistinct shape at his side.
"It is that you win much gratitude, monsieur, you men of the Mounted Police," she said, and her voice was lower and very steady.
"I have done no more than my duty, madame."
"Then of that common word you do make a beautiful thing," she answered, and Dick tuned on her in sudden bitterness.
"Do not offer me gratitude" he said. "I did not come here in pity" He broke off, tried to shape an apology, and felt her withered hand on his shoulder.
"You have done no more than your work, then," she said. "And a man's work is himself. I have lived long enough with a man to know them. But the one ennobles the other, monsieur."
"Not always." Dick spoke dryly. "We can shame our work, and it can shame us."
"And yet you can rise above shame nobly—you men," she said, as though remembering.
Dick moved with a sudden jerk.
"You think that?" she said. "I congratulate you on your—your imagination, madame."
She looked past him to the forest where in many thousand little round nests the warm eggs lay close to the mother's breast; where in many burrows the sharp-eared vixen crouched, guarding her young; where the great pulsing life and love of the universe beat the deathless tune in the blood of a myriad hearts. And something of the eternal fellowship of the world spoke on her lips.
"It is the age for struggle," she said. "The age for fight. The young cry their souls out to gain what they desire—and the taste of those drops is very bitter to the tongue. And the pride of the struggle is more than they will forego. And yet, for us there are compensations, monsieur. Like little children we creep home and say, 'Our God does understand—all things. For He is bigger than our creeds!’"
"God is only another name for creed—any creed. The creed of the Koran or the Eddas or the Zenda-vesta—all creeds. And God is no more, madame."
"A creed is something made and accepted by our finite intelligence. How dare you or the world judge an infinite intelligence by that?"
Dick was silent. This old woman with the toil-worn hands and the cotton dress and the speech of courtly France was only one of the many anomalies which had come under his hand in this new ever-changing Canada. But she had stirred him. He wanted to say more, and he held his lips locked, fearing lest he should say too much. In a little she spoke again.
"I have kept you long. And perhaps you come from far. I am deeply indebted to your courtesy, monsieur, and you shall tell me what is now your desire for me and for him."
"I have to get back at once, I'm afraid," said Dick. "If you care to come with me, I can fasten the shack safely until the afternoon. If not I will come or send for you then."
"I will stay until then. But you have had no rest—no food. If you"
"Thank you; I can't wait." Dick struck a match, and in the blue spurt of light he looked at his watch. "I can only just make it," he said. "I have work to do to-day—this morning."
"May the good God prosper you in it," she said gravely, and Dick laughed.
"Gad, he could be better employed," he said. And then he suddenly stooped and kissed her hand.
"It's for women such as you that men have died—and will die," he said. "Because you believe in us, madame."
The she heard his spurred feet go quickly through the grass to the fence, and the sharp tone of his voice as he backed the chestnut and sprang into the buckboard. She watched for his salute as the horse jumped forward in the traces, and then she turned back into the hush of the shack and sank on her stiff old knees by the bunk.
"The dear Lord have mercy on that lad," she said. "For it seems plain to me that he stands at the crossroads of his life."
It was after this that Dick began the little gallery of sketches and paintings and vivid charcoal outlines of Grange's Andree which were to make the eyes of men burn with dry tears and their heart-beats quicken long after the beautiful warm flesh which had been a woman was gone away from human eyes for ever. Something which she did not understand held Andree from speaking to Tempest of these meetings, and something which all men understood held anyone else from telling him of the easel set up in the little back-parlour at Grange's and of the work that went on there. Andree was tired of Tempest. Nothing which he said or did could flatter her as that quick-handed, lazy-eyed man flattered when he sat among his tubes and brushes and made her laugh at her laughing self out of the canvas; but it was not in her nature to let go of any living thing which gave her such adoration as Tempest gave.
Dick had sufficient conscience to avoid Tempest and Slicker when he was able, and Slicker, who had come back to Grey Wolf to straighten such of Ducane's affairs as he could, helped him there. Slicker was lonely when Jennifer had gone East to her mother and the old home; he found no comfort in Tempest's grave silences, and he hated Dick with a virulent hate. The heat of the long summer sapped his strength more than a little, and with that began the sapping of his conscience, until it seemed more than likely that Slicker would take Ogilvie's position as remittance-man of Grey Wolf if something were not done. Hints or suggestions from Leigh or Bond or even Tempest only confirmed defiance in him, and then Dick took matters into his own hands on one burning day in late fall when the smoke from the forest fires came down and blanketed Grey Wolf with a thick pungency which brought an acrid smart to the eyes and a breathlessness to the throat.
Slicker was in the bar with a red-headed freighter who had just driven his team over Halliday's Hill, and who had asked Slicker to drink with him. Slicker did not like the freighter on further acquaintance, and he sat with him at a little table in the corner and tried to think of an excuse to go away from the flow of vulgar talk.
Suddenly the knot of breeds which Jimmy was serving by the door split to let Dick through, followed by a little alert florid man whom Slicker knew for the fire-ranger of Grey Wolf district. Many of the tables were full, for over a dozen teams had come in from the South. Dick gave one sharp glance from end to end; picked his man without hesitation, and walked over to Slicker's corner. He leaned his hands on the table, and stooped over, speaking suavely to the red-headed man.
"Mr. Pery," he said. "You camped at Halliday's Rift two nights ago, and, by some curious oversight, you forgot to put your fire out when you went on. As you have never done such a thing before, of course, it may interest you to know that it is burning yet. And so is Halliday's oat-crop, and all the south end of his section, and possibly his home-lot as well. Do you happen to smell wood-smoke?"
Pery sprang up. He had a virulent tongue; but under Dick's eyes the bluster fizzled out like fire beneath the hose. Slicker felt a pang of envy. He believed himself as much of a man as Dick—if not more. But he could not have silenced the freighter to listen to such words as Dick spoke now.
"You had better be careful, Mr. Pery. I imagine you know the fine for carelessness of this sort; but if you don't we shall be happy to enlighten you when Sergeant Tempest hears your case. Your kind offer to go out with Mr. Carruthers and the rest of us to help Halliday will be an extenuating circumstance, of course. What is it, Carruthers?"
He wheeled as the fire-ranger spoke at his elbow.
"The hotel-man—what's his name? Grange? Well, Grange reckons he can get a half-dozen together. And there's you—and myself—and these two?"
He spoke hurriedly, putting a half-question into the words. Dick saw refusal on both faces, and a little smile ran into his eyes. He liked arranging matters so that men should force themselves to do the thing they disliked.
"Mr. Warriner won't go. There might be some danger. I don't know if the same reason applies to this other gentleman"
"That settled those two," said Carruthers, a few minutes later. "You have rather brutal methods, you know, and the boy looks a bit delicate for the work. But we'll want everyone we can get. I'm dead afraid Halliday will lose everything he has—and Plunkett may do the same. Here are Grange's haul—eight. That's better than he promised."
The smoke curled among the boles of the trees as the men rode South at a slinging gallop. It rose in the long tree-galleries like incense in some dark, still cathedral. In boggy places where the damp drew it low it lapped along the ground like the grey waves of a shoreless sea. On the rim of a rocky ridge where flames forked out of the billow below Carruthers reined up, glancing round with his reddened eyes.
"Is there any man can get us through by a short cut to Halliday's?" he asked. "We can't go down there now."
"I can." Dick pushed forward. "There's a possible trail through a coulée, and across a muskeg. But if any man falls out he may not get found again."
"That's so. Close up, gentlemen." Carruthers reined in behind Dick. "Kick her into it," he said, and with a thunder of hooves the little army swung to the right along the hilltop.
Slicker was riding a pony of Ducane's, and when the unstable muskeg came underfoot in the drifting smoke something of the craven spirit of its master seemed to possess it and it endeavoured to lie down. Slicker got off and explained his own desires with the whip-butt, and Grange helped him. But before the pony had made his choice of the two evils Grange spoke, and his usual giggle was high and weak.
"I guess they've cut it," he said.
Slicker looked round. The muskeg was like a room with four irregular grey walls. There were neither doors nor windows to that room, nor any sound in it but the far-off sound of the windy fire running in the trees. He turned his startled blue eyes on Grange's inefficient little face, and curbed the words on his tongue.
"Well, we're all right. The muskeg won't burn."
"But we can't git out. An' the smoke may come over. An' we got no food—an' no nothing."
"Dick will come back for us," said Slicker. And then his heart said it again, with a sudden shock of surprise. He believed that he hated and mistrusted Dick. He knew that he had shown Dick all the insolence in his power. And yet he knew quite certainly that this man who had betrayed Jennifer's confidence; who was playing a double game with Tempest; who never upheld the honour of the Law he served one whit more than he had to—he knew that this man would come back through the fire to find them. Why he knew he could not explain; and because this vexed him he unsaddled the pony and invited it to lie down, and hammered it again with the whip-butt because it wouldn't.
The trail into Halliday's Rift was an evil one to the men who followed Dick that day. East and west the fire was eating into the forest with fierce, swift jaws; snapping at tall trees and passing on with reddened dripping fangs. Down open galleries the smoke was thinned by the clear shimmer of heat, and where little fires ran rapidly in the undergrowth came crackling noises that sounded like detached grace-notes on the huge roaring body of sound. The smoke blew across them; blotting out sense and sound. It lifted, showing spouts of flame against the tall canopy of black. And then they stumbled on burnt and broken timber, hot and tangled, and flaming yet here and there; but promising a way through where the fire would not come, because it had already worked its will there.
It was a way through, with men like Carruthers and Leigh and Dick to make that way. But it was done principally on foot and altogether in torment. The smouldering earth burnt their boots and caused the horses to rear and snort. Charred logs were white-hot to the touch, and acrid thick smoke tormented their labouring chests. But they won through it to the width of fresh-ploughed land beyond, and here Dick spoke a consecutive sentence for the first time in two hours.
"Good man, Halliday," he said. "I should think he had saved the house. We'll be out of it across this."
And then, like men passing out of Purgatory with its marks upon them, they rode up to the house. On the east the furrows had belted it in to safety; but down in the oatfield flames were running with the crackling of thorns under a pot, and below the pouring smoke the fighting-line of little figures swayed back and forth, taking a little here to lose it elsewhere. Dick spoke again as the men flocked round a tub of water by the kitchen door; sluicing throats and faces, and gasping with relief and with the sting of the water on their burns.
"Where's Slicker?" he said sharply. "And Grange?"
The men looked at each other. Smeared, blackened, with blood-shot eyes and drawn faces they were hideous enough. But they turned from the more hideous fear which each read in his neighbour's eyes. Dick swung himself back to the saddle.
"I hope you'll have luck with Halliday's oats," he said. "Come up, you old devil."
His big gelding staggered, and Leigh caught at the bridle.
"What are you going to do, Heriot?" he said.
"Oh—just going for a ride," said Dick lightly; and he jerked his bridle free and disappeared into the smoke that rolled above the plough-line.
"There goes a man," said Leigh, and rubbed his eyes. "But I wouldn't quite like to name the figures of the chances he's taking of finding them."
"He's taking more chances than that," said Carruthers. "Well, I guess we'd best go and do what he brought us for, anyway."
Beyond the plough-land and the burnt timber such safety as there was left Dick, and he charged into the columned distances where the fire threaded about to loop him in. Every fibre of him was quick with the knowledge that he must save Slicker. Jennifer loved Slicker, and it was through Dick that he was here, and that thought stung sharper than the little sparks upon his hands. The fate of Grange did not trouble him particularly. He had not very much reverence for human life, and Grange would have to die some day, anyhow. He would have gone after Grange, had the man been alone, because such matters were scheduled in his mind as the natural thing. But a little bit of Grange, such as his charred back-teeth or his knife, would have satisfied Dick very nearly. Slicker was different. He had to bring Slicker out unharmed or to stay in himself; but he was not sure if the choice would be given him.
And yet there was a half-wild delight to him in the danger; in the thunder of the nearing army which shook the forest; in the belching smoke and the rockets of flame that shot the sky, and in the shrieking and the whistling and the almost human screams. Birds flew by, low and darting. One brushed his cheek, and fell dead in his hand. It smelt of burnt flesh and feathers. All the undergrowth was full of the rush and the hurry and the squealing of little animals, and a skunk, singed naked as a young rabbit, lay in the trail. Far-off a vixen was yelping in short, agonised barks. Behind him something was whining. Ahead something cried. He did not know that both were the flames running in the saskatoons and cranberries.
So far he had kept very much to the trail by which he had come. But Grange and Slicker would not be here. Somewhere they would be racing before the fire, unless they were in the muskeg. Dick's whole heart clung to the hope that they were in the muskeg, and he rode on, weaving his way through the smoke-blinded trails, more by instinct than sight.
Down the crossed trails tall trees that stood apart were like tortured Indians with their scalp-locks streaming. Grey winding-sheets of smoke wrapped them, and of the out dun clouds a column of fire fell presently, leaving a scarlet streak across the sight. Red flames ran like merry monkeys up the swinging moss-beard of an ancient spruce; twitched little branches off and flung them on Dick's head. Flames crept unseen up the stairway of a hollow trunk, and waved triumphant banners as the wild bees rolled out in a terrified swarm or the squirrels rushed and tumbled to their death below. And everywhere the forest moaned and cried, and fought the coming death, and bowed and fell before it. In the air; from the sky; up from the tormented earth, the man recognised the cry of the helpless against the devourer; of nature against the hideously unnatural; of life against death. Branches cracked and flew off with the report of pistols. Tall trees pitched sideways with a human shriek, bearing others down; and the fire leapt on the ruin with the chuckling hurry of the despoilers of the slain.
A man who knew less of horses than Dick did could never have forced the terrified gelding down those trails where he plunged and reared and struggled against the bit that was growing hot in his mouth. Heat seared the eye-balls and parched the lips; shooting flames snatched and bit, and smoke drove into the labouring lungs. The gelding pitched suddenly; and before Dick found his feet again the glazing eyes and shivering outstretched body told him all that he needed to know. He stooped, wrenching off his spurs in two quick movements.
"But I've only one boot-sole left," he said, and turned and crashed into the brush with never a look behind. The dying horse had come to the end of the passage, even as he himself would come some day. But it had done its work first. If he brought so good a record he would be content.
It was Slicker, smoking his fifth cigarette, and still trying to cheer Grange, who saw something loom and gather shape and stagger near in the rift. He ran forward; caught Dick's shoulder, and felt the cloth crisp and melt under his hand. But sudden strangling, unexpected sobs kept him from any words at all. Dick did not heed. Stopped in his blind reeling progress, he sat down promptly. Then he laid himself flat, feeling the cool spongy mosses against the naked parts of his smarting body.
Later, Dick rode back into Grey Wolf on Slicker's pony; and, once the familiar trail was reached,, Grange raced home on his raking bay mare to his work and to Moosta. But where the one man rode with his burnt shoulder stiffening under the singed shirt, and his foot throbbing where the boot-sole was charred off, and where the other man walked, silent and with long light steps, there was little excitement or speech. Slicker raised his head at last.
"I guess you know I hate you," he said bluntly. "Why don't you hate me?"
"Perhaps I recognise that you have the better right, Slicker."
"Well —f you hadn't been such a cur to Jennifer"
"Do you mind if she is hurt or not?"
"Do I mind? Why—she's always been everything to me. She's like a sister and a mother, and she's the best chum—what are you looking like that for?"
"I was appreciating the way in which you have been proving your words lately, Slicker."
Slicker flushed hotly. He trudged on; and presently he said:
"You always were a sneering beast."
"I know. But I do not expend my powers on my neighbours only, I assure you."
"What's a fellow to do?" Slicker spoke sulkily. "I won't go into my uncle's business in Toronto. He's always at me about it—and I won't do it."
"You want to get your neck under some yoke, though I am the last man to preach obedience to you. Why not try our game? It has some elements of interest."
"Go into the Police?" Slicker stopped short with his blue eyes wide.
"Exactly. If you could manage to think while you were moving—thank you. I would rather like to get back to Grey Wolf before dark."
It was long before Slicker spoke again. Then he said:
"Do you advise it?"
"Do I do what? Oh—the Police, you mean? My dear fellow, no. I never advise a man to do anything. It is a most injudicious and unnecessary way of making enemies. But if you speak to Tempest I have no doubt that he will advise you. He has a soul above the sordidness of personal results."
On the edge of the long ugly street with Grey Wolf clinging to the sides of it Slicker hesitated, jerking his words out.
"I called you a beast, and you are. But you're a brave beast. I concede you that. I hate you because you—you don't seem to recognise what a man naturally owes a woman. But I thank you for coming after me."
"Ah. And now that you have paid your debts you can go on hating me with a clear conscience. I think I would prefer that you did, so long as you realise that you forfeit that right so soon as you place yourself in the same category with myself. You are heading for it, you know."
"Well, I—I guess I'll likely speak to Tempest to-morrow," said Slicker, and he did it; disturbing Tempest where he worked at his office table, and plunging into the subject impetuously.
"My lungs are O. K.," he said. "There was no disease, you know. Only a weakness. De Choiseaux says any doctor would pass me."
Tempest thrust aside his papers and gave his attention reluctantly.
"Well, you should have a pretty fair idea of what it means by now," he said. "You're not blind."
"You should have a better. Dick told me to dress by what you said."
"Ah." Tempest smiled. "Did he? Well—you're a teetotaler, aren't you?"
"No. I've been drinking quite a little bit lately. I was more than half-seas over the other night." Slicker looked at him with his blue eyes darkening. "I want some kind of life that'll make a man of me, Tempest," he said.
Tempest sat still for a space with his jaw in his hand. Then he said:
"Do you think that would help you?"
"Why—I reckon it should. Don't you?"
Tempest turned and looked at him squarely.
"You've seen one little corner of Western life from the inside, Slicker," he said. "You know the two big temptations a man has to meet—for himself or for others. He is no more fit or able to meet them because he has a uniform on his back. That's the mistake that gets us so many wasters in the Force. A man has got to be a man before he goes into the R. N. W. M. P., or I guess he's not particularly likely to become one afterwards. There is so much which he can hide beneath his authority if he has a mind to. And that is a temptation in itself."
"I don't want to drink or—or doing anything I shouldn't, Tempest. I am sure I could keep straight if it was worth while."
"It is always worth while. But I see your argument. We are made of such poor stuff that we must have a special motive"—he turned suddenly, and his eyes softened. "No," he said. "That's a lie. We are made of such good stuff that we can do most things if we have a motive at all. But I'm not going to help you into our Service if your only motive is to try to run away from temptation. You wouldn't be doing it, anyway. You'd likely be running in."
"It's not exactly a temptation yet. I could easily give it up if I had something special to interest me."
"Sure? Well, I don't want to discourage you. We need all the men we can get, and we need the finer kind of men—like yourself. There's work in plenty for them. But a drunken life and a sinful life go easily together, Slicker. There's no use burking that truth. You'll have to know it and a good deal worse if you choose to be one of us. You'll see very many sordid things, and very many hideous things, and a few very glorious things. And you'll have your full share of temptations. There are enough of those for every man, no matter what he is made of."
"I know that. But I reckon I want to try it, Tempest."
Then, for God's sake, keep straight." Tempest's voice sharpened—it sharpened more easily now than it used to do. "The Force isn't a nursery for men who can't handle themselves and who expect the discipline to do it for them. And it isn't a stalking-horse for the men who want to do evil without being found out." He stood up, laying his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'll send in your name if you like. And for many reasons I'll be glad to do it. But remember this, Slicker. Our uniform isn't a shield against temptation, and it can be a cloak for sin. The man himself has got to mean as much as the uniform, or the thing's a mockery—a damned mockery." He stopped with a swift stab of conscience. In how far was he upholding these tenets which he taught—which he had always taught and always practised until now? "We have all got our own rows to hoe, Slicker," he went on. "And it isn't easy to hoe them well. But I believe you'll do your best."
"I'll try." Slicker's young face was grave and flushed, and his blue eyes were anxious. "I—I couldn't say much to Dick; he's such a sneering beast. But I do recognise that it—it means a good deal in many ways to wear the uniform. And I do want to make good, Tempest."
"That's right, old chap. Heaven send you do. Now I must turn you out, for I'm busy. Come round to-night and give me particulars. I think it is more than likely that we'll be proud of you later on, you know."
"Thank you, Tempest." Slicker flushed with pleasure. "You are a good sort." And he went out in a glow of friendship and pity for the man who was "having such a rotten time with that little devil Andree." He passed Grange's bar with his chin up, and he went for a long walk in the forest, concocting a letter in which he would explain it all to Jennifer. But the exact connection of the "sneering beast" with this matter which was so exciting him seemed to escape him, although it did not escape Jennifer when she read the letter.
Through the fall and the early winter life went forward as it ever did in Grey Wolf. A few new clerks came and went in the Stores. A prospector drowned himself from a canoe in the Lake, and the young ice broke beneath two sledfulls of freight and necessitated court-cases before any- one would pay the damage. Hotchkiss was publicly convicted and sent to the cells for a month, on account of a specially-prolonged torture of Mrs. Hotchkiss, and Dick varied the monotony of that month for him by all the refinements of unease which discipline allowed. The trackers had come and gone. The yearly Treaty party had passed through from some vague place on the map, and they too had gone. Even the birds had left Grey Wolf before the hunters went to the chilling woods for their long season of silence and labour. Sleighs took the place of wheels, and furs of light coats and uniforms. Tempest had several long journeys on special investigation business, and Dick had much outline work, with or without Kennedy's help. Twice he had written to Jennifer; once she had answered—just a few sweet, true, simple lines, like herself, and Dick carried them in his breast-pocket with the little picture he had made of her. And, when time allowed him, he painted Andree.
He had meant to paint a few pictures of her only. To rouse her vanity to a living force and then persuade her to break with Tempest completely. He knew that nothing short of her actual refusal to speak to him or touch him would cure Tempest. How deeply the man loved her he hardly knew. But how terribly her coquetries and her indifference and her occasional half-yieldings were affecting him Dick knew well. It was time to stop this thing. He should have stopped it long ago. And yet he did not. An explanation with Tempest would mean a discontinuance of those hours which were a sheer delight to the artist in him, and, though this he guessed but vaguely, to more than the artist.
Dick had that force of spirit which dashed colour and heat on all things which he chose to handle. He had the insight which is brutal in its clarity of interpretation, and he had the sick and restless soul which can never run straight to any goal. All these things made a very good medium through which to paint Grange's Andree, and Grange himself began to take pride in the filling portfolio that stood in the corner of the little back-parlour. That girl-head with the smooth round arms and shoulders came to be a joy to more than Dick. He turned her into an Indian, with hair sleeked down, and olive limbs straight and tall. He made a Greek girl of her, draping her with sheets from Moosta's box. He painted her with hair and dress blown back, hauling on a team of husky dogs brought south by a freighter. He sketched her until he knew every trick of her—better than ever he had known Jennifer. It was all a pleasure to himself; a half-acid, tormenting pleasure, because he knew that it must end very soon, and what it might be for Andree herself he neither knew nor cared. She would do anything he told her to do, and when he forbade her to speak to or to look at Tempest again she would obey.
But the days went on and he did not do it. They went on and Tempest did not know of it. For it is only natural that the person most concerned in a matter of this sort is the one kept longest in ignorance. But at last, just after Christmas, the day came for Tempest to know. And it was Miss Chubb, innocently forgetful, who told him.