Part 15

Arousing Davy, and putting him on watch, they set off on the trail. Crossing the stream, they plunged anew into the fragrant forest of old pines. It was a close, still night; the sky was heavily overcast, and it became very dark for that latitude. The trail stretched ahead like a pale ribbon vanishing into the murk at half a dozen paces. In the thicker places they had literally to feel for it with their feet. They had not very far to go. After about fifteen minutes' walking the stillness was suddenly shattered by a chorus of barking from a few hundred yards ahead.

"That will be Jean Paul getting into camp," Mary said.

The forest ended abruptly, and they found themselves at the edge of a natural meadow reaching down to the Darwin River. Below them was a quadrangle of tepees, faintly luminous from the little fires within, as if rubbed with phosphorous. The dogs were still barking fitfully.

"Wait for me here," Mary commanded.

He unconsciously put out his hand toward her. "Mary----"

She lingered. "Well--Jack?"

"Let me go instead. I can't stay quiet here."

"You must. You don't know their talk as well as I do. Nothing can happen to me. If they do find me out, they are my friends."

"But the dogs----"

"They bark at nothing. No one minds them."

Her eyes beamed on him softly, like stars through the night; her soft voice was of the night too; and so brave and tender! She was adorable to him. He abruptly flung himself down in the grass to keep from seizing her in his arms.

"Go on," he said a little thickly. "Hurry back."

Hours passed, it seemed to him; it was perhaps half of one hour. The dogs barked and howled, and finally fell silent. A partridge drummed in the depths of the forest, and an owl flew out from among the trees with a moan that rose to a shriek of agony. Down the valley a fox uttered his sharp, challenging bark, and the dogs returned with a renewed infernal clamour. A band of horses stampeded aimlessly up and down between the tepees. It was a heavy, ominous night, and every creature was uneasy.

At last quite suddenly he saw her crouching and running up the grassy slope toward him. His heart bounded with relief.

"Be quick," she whispered. "Jean Paul has started back."

They set off at a run through the black forest, with warding hands outstretched in front of them. Their flying feet gave little sound on the thick carpet of needles. In a few minutes she slowed down, and caught Jack's arm.

"All right now," she said. "He'll take his time. He suspects nothing yet."

"What did you learn?" Jack asked.

Following him in the trail, she put her hand on his shoulder to keep in touch with him in the dark. The light contact warmed Jack through and through. "Jean Paul came to Etzeeah, the head man, to tell him what to say to us to-morrow. I listened outside with my ear at the bottom of the tepee. They spoke softly. I couldn't hear everything. It seems Jean Paul's talk is always for the people to stand together and drive the white men out of their country."

"The old story," said Jack.

"He is clever and they are simple. He tells them my father cheats them, and gets their furs for nothing. He says all the redmen are ready to rise when he gives the word. He makes them think he is not a man like themselves, but a kind of spirit. They are completely under his influence. They are excited and ugly, like bad children."

"What about Garrod?"

"Nothing," she said sadly. "I think they know, but I heard nothing."

"One thing is certain," said Jack; "if we wish to get anything out of them to-morrow, we'll have to leave Jean Paul behind."

"How can we prevent him from coming with us?"

"I'll have to think about that," Jack said grimly.

Next morning Jean Paul issued out of his tent as demure and smooth-faced as a copper-coloured saint. Looking at him they were almost ready to believe that he had never left it. He did his full share of the work about camp, did it cheerfully and well. He even had the delicacy--or whatever the feeling was--to retire with his breakfast to a little distance from the others, that they might be relieved of the constraint of his company.

"He's a wonder," Jack said to Mary with a kind of admiration.

When they had finished eating, Jack spoke a word to Davy, and the two of them got a tracking line out of the baggage, a light, strong cord that Jack had included because of the thousand uses to which it lends itself. He gave the coil to Davy to carry, and they returned to Jean Paul. Jack covertly made sure that his six-shooter was loose in its case. The half-breed, having finished eating, was sitting on the ground, lighting his pipe. Jack stood grimly waiting until he got it going well. Jean Paul flipped the match away with an air of bravado, and a sidelong sneer.

"Put your hands behind you!" Jack suddenly commanded.

Jean Paul sprang up astonished. Jack drew his gun.

"Don't move again," he harshly warned him. "Put your hands behind you."

Jean Paul slowly obeyed, and Davy twisted the cord around his wrists.

"Wat you do?" Jean Paul protested, with an eye on the gun and an admirable air of astonished innocence. "I your man, me. I all time work for you. You always moch bad to me. No believe no'ting."

"Next time you leave camp at night tell us where you're going," said Jack with a hard smile.

It did not feaze Jean Paul. "Mus' I tell w'en I go to see a girl?" he demanded, highly injured.

Jack laughed. "Very clever! But the girl was Etzeeah, and I know all you said."

Jean Paul fell suddenly silent.

"Kneel down," commanded Jack. "Tie his ankles together, Davy, with his wrists between."

Jack finished the job himself, going over all the knots, and taking half a dozen turns around Jean Paul's body, with a final knot on his chest, out of reach of both hands and teeth. He and Davy then picked him up and laid him inside his own tent. His pipe dropped out of his mouth in transit. Jack, with grim good-nature, picked it up and thrust it between his teeth again. Jean Paul puffed at it defiantly. Jack fastened the tent flaps back, affording a clear view of the interior.

"I'll have to leave him to you while we're gone, Davy. Keep away from him. Don't listen to anything he says. Above all, don't touch him. I don't see how he can work loose, but if he should"--Jack raised his voice so it would carry into the tent--"shoot him like a coyote. I order you to do it. I take the consequences."

Jean Paul lay without stirring. His face was hidden.

"God knows what poisonous mess is stewing inside his skull," Jack said to Mary, as they rode away.

When the two of them cantered into the quadrangle of the tepees, with its uproar of screaming children, yelping curs, and loose horses, it needed no second glance to confirm the report that the redskins were in an ugly temper. An angry murmur went hissing down the line like the sputtering of a fuse. Every one dropped what he was doing; heads stuck out of all the tepee openings; the little children scuttled inside. Men scowled and fingered their guns; women laughed derisively, and spat on the ground.

Jack and Mary pulled up their horses at the top of the quadrangle, and coolly looked about them. Filth and confusion were the keynotes of the scene. This was the home-camp of this little tribe, and the offal of many seasons was disintegrating within sight. All their winter gear, furs, snowshoes and sledges, was slung from vertical poles out of harm's way. Between the tepees, on high racks out of reach of the dogs, meat was slowly curing.

As for the people, they were miserably degenerate. Their fathers, the old freebooters of the plains, would have disowned such offspring. The mark of ugliness was upon them; pinched gray cheeks and sunken chests were pitifully common; their ragged store clothes hung loosely on their meagre limbs. A consciousness of their weakness lurked in their angry eyes; in spite of themselves the quiet pose and the cold, commanding eyes of the whites struck awe into their breasts. They saw that the man and the girl had guns, but they hung in buckskin cases from the saddles, and they made no move to reach for them. They saw the two speak to each other quietly. Once they smiled.

It was upon Jack's calling Mary's attention to the absurdity of it, this little company of tatterdemalions seeking to defy the white race. There were eighteen tepees, small and large, containing perhaps ninety souls. It was absurd and it was tragic. Remote and cut-off even from the other tribes of their own people, they had never seen any white men except the traders at Fort Cheever and Fort Erskine, and the rare travellers who passed up and down their river in the summer.

"I'm sorry for them," Mary murmured. "They don't know what they're doing."

"Don't look sorry for them," Jack warned. "They wouldn't understand it."

An old man issued from the largest tepee, and approached them, not without dignity. He was of good stature, but beginning to stoop. He wore a dingy capote, or overcoat made out of a blanket, and to keep his long, uncombed gray hair out of his face, he had a dirty cotton band around his forehead. Not an imposing figure, but there was a remnant of fire and pride in his old eyes.

"Etzeeah, the head man," Mary whispered to Jack.

Etzeeah concealed his feelings. Approaching Jack's horses he silently held up his hand.

Jack's eyes impaled the old man. He ignored the hand. Jack had enough of their talk for his purpose. "I do not shake hands with horse thieves," he said.

Etzeeah fell back with an angry gesture. "I am no horse thief," he said. "All the horses you see are mine, and my people's!"

"You drove away the governor's horses," said Jack. "And drove them back after he had gone. They are company horses. It was a foolish thing to do."

"It is Ascota who speaks me ill," cried Etzeeah with a great display of anger. "He comes here, and he makes trouble. He calls us thieves and bad men. What do I know of white men, and white men's horses?"

"This is what Jean Paul told him to say," Mary murmured in English. "They were going to make believe to quarrel before us."

"Since when has the chief of the Sapis learned to lie?" demanded Jack coldly.

"I, no liar!" cried Etzeeah, taken aback.

"You told a different tale when Ascota came to your lodge last night."

Etzeeah was silenced. His jaw dropped, and his black eyes looked old and furtive.

"I have come for the sick white man, Garrod," said Jack. "Where is he?"

"I have seen no sick white man," muttered Etzeeah. "Ascota ask me already."

"Your women hear you lie," said Jack scornfully. "They are laughing behind you. I have had enough lies. Call everybody out of the tepees!"

Etzeeah stood motionless and scowling.

"Call them out!" repeated Jack, "or I will pull them out by the hair."

Etzeeah raised his voice in sullen command, and the rest of the women and the children issued out of the tepees, the little children scurrying madly to hide behind their mothers, and clinging to their skirts.

Jack pointed to the bottom of the square. "All stand close together!" he ordered.

The men scowled and muttered, but obeyed. There was no reason why any one of them should not have put a bullet through Jack's breast, sitting on his horse before them empty-handed--no reason, that is, except the terrible blue eyes, travelling among them like scorching fires. Many a little man's soul was sick with rage, and his fingers itching for the trigger, but before he could raise his gun the eyes would fall on him, withering his breast. It was the white man's scorn that emasculated them. How could one fire at a being who held himself so high?

"Go through the tepees as quickly as you can," Jack said to Mary. "I will hold your horse and watch them."

Dismounting, she made her way to Etzeeah's lodge.

A hundred pairs of black eyes watched their every movement. Etzeeah made to edge back toward the crowd.

"Stand where you are!" Jack commanded. "I am not through with you."

Etzeeah lowered his eyes, and stood still.

"Etzeeah, you are a fool," said Jack, loud enough for all to hear. "Ascota feeds you lies, and you swallow them without chewing. Do you think you can fight all the white men with your eighteen lodges? To the south there are more white men than cranes in the flocks that fly overhead in the spring. When your few shells are spent, where will you get more bullets to shoot the white men?"

"Ascota will give us plenty shells!" cried a voice in the crowd.

"Why isn't Ascota here now to help you?" asked Jack quickly. "He said he would be here to show you how to fool me? Why? Because I tied him like a dog in his tent, with a boy to watch him."

They looked at each other and murmured.

"If you did drive the white men away," Jack went on, "how would you kill the moose for food without their powder? Who would buy your furs? Where would you get flour and tea and tobacco, and matches to light your fires? Wah! You are like children who throw their food down and tread on it, and cry for it again!"

What effect this had, if any, could not be read in the dark, walled faces that fronted him.

Mary returned to Jack, bringing a gun, which she handed him without comment. He recognized it. It was a weapon that had lately been aimed at him.

"This is the sick man's gun," he said, looking hard at Etzeeah.

The chief threw up his hands. "A Winchester thirty-thirty, like all our guns," he protested. "There are twenty here the same."

Other men held up their weapons to show. Jack merely turned the gun around, and pointed to initials neatly scratched on the stock.

"F. G.," he said grimly; "Francis Garrod."

"How do I know?" said Etzeeah excitedly. "I have no letters. If it is the white man's gun, Ascota left it."

"Ascota does not leave a gun," said Jack. "Where is Garrod?"

"I don't know," muttered Etzeeah. "I have not seen him."

"You are lying," Jack said coldly. "For the last time I ask you, where is Garrod?"

Etzeeah fell back on a sullen, walled silence.

Jack turned to Mary. "Is there a woman or a child that he sets great store by?" he asked swiftly in English.

"Etzoogah, his son, the pretty boy yonder," she answered.

Following her glance, Jack had no difficulty in picking out the one she meant. He was a handsome, slender boy, a year or so younger than Davy. Where the other children were in rags, he was wearing an expensive wide-brimmed hat from the store, a clean blue gingham shirt, new trousers, and around his waist a gay red sash. Moreover, he had the wilful, petulant look of the spoiled child; plainly the apple of the old man's eye.

"Get me a horse and a rope bridle," Jack whispered to Mary.

There were several horses picketed within the square, handy to their owners' uses, and Mary made for the nearest.

"You take my horse?" Etzeeah demanded, scowling.

"It is for your son to ride," Jack said with a grim smile. "Etzoogah, come here!" he commanded.

The boy approached with an awed, scared air. Etzeeah started to his side, but Jack coolly separated them by moving his horse between. Mary returned with the other horse, and the boy fell into her hands. She smiled at him reassuringly.

"Get on," she said. "Nobody's going to hurt you. Come with us to our camp. Davy is there."

All the children knew Mary and Davy. Moreover, there were always good things to eat in a white man's camp. The boy was well pleased to obey. Etzeeah shrilly commanded him to dismount, but the apple of his eye merely laughed at him. The old man began to break. His eyes dulled with anxiety; his hands trembled.

"What you do with my boy?" he demanded. "We shoot if you take him."

Jack laughed. "A red man can't shoot a white man," he said. "His hand shakes too much. We will take the boy to our camp. We will keep him until you bring the sick white man to us. If you don't bring him back, well, maybe we will send the boy outside and make a white man of him."

Jack gave him a moment. There was no sign from Etzeeah, except his trembling.

"Ride on," Jack said to Mary.

They wheeled their horses, and Etzeeah broke down.

His hand went to his throat. "Stop!" he muttered thickly. He did not cry out or protest. He merely shrugged. "So be it," he said stoically. "I will find Garrod if I can. Ascota took him away from camp two days ago, and came back without him."

"Killed him?" cried Jack.

Etzeeah shook his head. "He was mad. Madmen are not harmed. He took him into the bush and left him."

"Left him to starve?" cried Jack. "Good God!"

"He was mad," repeated Etzeeah. "The beasts and the birds will bring him food."

Jack shrugged impatiently. "Very well," he said. "I'll have no more lies. You come back and show me the place now, or I take the boy."

"I come," he said. "Etzoogah, get down. Get my blanket!"

The boy obeyed, none too willingly, and Etzeeah mounted in his place. "You feed me?" he asked.

"There is plenty," said Jack. To Mary he said in English. "Make him ride ahead of you out of camp. I'll stay and hold the crowd. Sing out when you reach the trees, and I'll come."

In spite of herself, fear for him transfixed her eyes. "Jack," she murmured.

He frowned. "No weakness. You must do as I say."

Etzeeah got his blanket, and he and Alary rode out of the square. The Indians stirred and muttered angrily, but the blue eyes still held them chained. When Mary's "All right!" reached his ears, Jack turned his horse, and, swinging himself sidewise with a thigh over the saddle, walked out of the square, watching them still. The theatrical instinct of a young man suggested rolling a cigarette to him. Slipping his arm through the bridle rein, he got out the bag of tobacco and the papers.

At a hundred yards distance the spell that held the Indians began to break, and they moved forward between the tepees, cursing Jack, and brandishing their arms. Jack's horse started forward; pulling him in, he moistened the cigarette, watching them still. Guns were raised at last--and fired. Still Jack walked his horse. He could see that as yet the gun-play was merely to save themselves in the eyes of their women. No bullets came in his direction. But he could not tell how long---- He lit his cigarette.

A bullet whined overhead. Another ploughed up a little cascade of earth alongside, and his horse sheered off. A chorus of maniacal yells was raised behind him. It was only fifteen yards to the trees. Jack threw away the cigarette, and gave the horse his head. They gained the forest, with the bullets thudding deep into the trunks on either side.

XVII

ASCOTA ESCAPES.

When Etzeeah caught sight of the little tents through the trees, he pulled up his horse. Extending a trembling forefinger, he asked hoarsely:

"Ascota, is he there?"

"Yes," said Jack. "He can't hurt you. He's tied up."

Etzeeah slipped from his horse. "I wait here," he said. "I not go where he is."

"Are you afraid?" asked Jack with curling lip.

Etzeeah had turned pale; his eyes darted from side to side, and he moistened his lips. "I am afraid," he muttered doggedly. "He is more than a man. He has made the beasts speak to me; the porcupine, the bear, the beaver, each after his own nature. He has made men mad before my eyes, and brought their senses back when it pleased him. He mastered the white man, and made him kneel before him, and bring him his food. This I saw. The like was never known before. Who would not be afraid? What if he is tied? He will wither me with his eyes!"

Jack and Mary looked at each other in perplexity.

"Blindfold Jean Paul," Mary suggested.

"Good," said Jack with clearing brow. "Watch him," he added in English, "and come over when I wave my hand."

Jack led his horse across the brook. Here another evidence of Jean Paul Ascota's evil power awaited him. Davy at sight of Jack sprang up with an odd, low cry, and came running to meet him, running waveringly as if his knees were sinking under him. He cast himself on Jack, trembling like aspen leaves.

"Oh, Jack!" he gasped. "I'm glad--oh, Jack! Jean Paul--"

"He's safe?" demanded Jack.

"He's safe. Oh, Jack!--he said--he's a devil, Jack. He made me want to let him go! He said--oh! it's horrible! He said--oh! I can't tell you! Jack!----"

The boy's agonized voice trailed off; he sighed, and, his slender frame relaxing, hung limply over Jack's arm. Jack let his horse go, and waving to Mary to keep back, he bent, and dashed the cold brook water in Davy's face.

He revived in a moment or two, and clung to Jack. "Oh, Jack!" he murmured, "I thought you'd never come! I was near crazy. He said--oh! I can't tell you!"

"Never you mind, old boy," said Jack gruffly. "Forget it! Mary and I are both here. It's all right now."

He carried him up the bank, and put him down by the fire. A sip from Jack's flask further restored him. Then Jack turned with grim eyes and clenched fists toward Jean Paul's tent.

"You devil!" he muttered. It was the word they all used.

"I want to smoke," Jean Paul said impudently.

"Lie there and want it, damn you!" said Jack. He had much ado to restrain himself from kicking the beast. As it was he flung him over none too tenderly, and taking the handkerchief from the breed's neck, tied it tight round his eyes.

"There's somet'ing you don't want me to see, huh?" sneered Jean Paul.

Jack was a little staggered by his perspicacity.

He waved his hand to Mary. She brought Etzeeah across, and flew to comfort and restore Davy. They never did learn exactly what Jean Paul had said to him. At any mention of the subject the boy's agitation became painful to see.

Etzeeah after coming into camp never once opened his mouth. He regarded Jean Paul's tent as nervously as if its flimsy walls confined a man-eating grizzly. He sat down at some distance, and at the side of the tent where Jean Paul could not have seen him even had his eyes not been blindfolded.

Jack brought wood, and Mary started to prepare a meal for them all, before taking to the trail again. At a moment when there was comparative silence a loud voice suddenly issued from the tent, speaking the Sapi tongue.

"Etzeeah is there!"

They all started violently. It was uncanny. Etzeeah paled, and sprang up. Jack laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"I smell him!" the voice of Jean Paul went on, full of mocking triumph. "Nothing can be hidden from me! Etzeeah has betrayed me! Bound and helpless though I am, don't think you can escape me, old Etzeeah! My medicine travels far! Your son, your fine boy Etzoogah, shall pay. He's paying now! He falls and twists on the ground with the frothing sickness--the fine boy! He curses his father!"

Jack was struggling with the frantic father. "For God's sake, stop his mouth!" he cried to Mary. "A gag!"

She flew to the tent, and presently the voice was stilled. The last sound it uttered was a laugh, a studied, slow, devilish laugh, frightful to untutored ears. We are accustomed to such tricks on our stage.

Etzeeah lay moaning and wailing, clawing up handfuls of earth to put on his matted gray head. Jack arose from him white and grim, and with a new light in his eyes.

"We've had about enough of this," he muttered between his teeth.

Mary, divining what was in his mind, flew to him.

"Jack! Not that! Not that!" she gasped, breathless with horror.

"I'm not going to do it here," Jack said harshly. "I'll take him away. What else can I do? Look at Davy! Look at the Indian! This breed is like a pestilence among us! He'll have us all stark mad if I don't--"

"No! No!" she implored, clinging to him. "You and I are strong enough to stand it, Jack. We'll come through all right. But we never could forget"--her voice sunk low--"not his _blood_, Jack!"