Part 18

She rose with an abrupt movement, and went to look at the sick man. She came back presently with a pale, composed face, and quietly set to work mixing dough for their evening meal. There was a long and sufficiently painful silence.

"It's a funny situation, isn't it?" said Jack at last, with a bitter note of laughter.

"Better not talk about it," she murmured. "Let us just wait and see."

Being forbidden to talk about it, the desire to do so became overmastering. "Suppose he doesn't say anything," he began.

"It won't make any difference to your friends," she said. "They know you're not a thief."

"It's a queer business this having a good name and not having one," Jack went on, plucking blades of grass. "As if anybody cared who took the money."

Mary offered no comment.

"I'd lose my claims," Jack went on. "I couldn't go out to file them. But the governor would never put the police on to me, now. He'd be too jolly glad to get rid of me."

Mary refused to raise her eyes from the dough.

Jack thought she hadn't understood what he was driving at. "You see it would let me out there," he went on. "This would be my country for ever and ever, and the people up here my only friends."

There was another silence. He looked at her hungrily. The hard young face was soft enough now.

"Mary," he murmured hoarsely at last; "I don't give a damn if he never speaks."

The dough-pan was dropped at last. She lifted a tortured face. "Don't," she murmured low and swiftly. "Don't you see what it means? Don't you see how you're hurting me? You mustn't wish it. Maybe our thoughts are influencing his sick brain this minute. He must speak! He must tell the truth and clear you. Nothing else matters. You must be able to go wherever you choose. You must be able to look any man in the face. I couldn't bear anything else."

Jack scowled, very much hurt--and a little ashamed perhaps. "I didn't think you were so anxious to send me outside," he muttered.

She threw him the look of pity and despair that women have for the men they love who will not understand them, and, springing up, went to look at her patient again.

By and by Davy arrived. His greeting to Jack supplied the warmth that Mary's had lacked. Jack hugged the boy with a sidelong look at his sister. Afterward Jack briefly and baldly told his story by the fire. Our hero had no talent for description.

"I slept until dark, and then just crawled around the edge of the slide below the ridge, and climbed up the back of the rock."

Davy's and Mary's eyes were big. "Climbed up the back of the summit at night?" murmured Mary.

"Sure," said Jack. "I took it slow and easy. As soon as I got light enough I dropped on him from behind. That was one surprised redskin!"

"Then what happened?" demanded Davy, breathlessly.

Jack frowned. "He jumped off," he said shortly.

"Jumped?" they cried. "Was he killed?" asked Davy.

"Quite," said Jack grimly. "And some to spare." That was all they could get out of him.

They ate their supper, and the sun went down. Mary, leaving the boys smoking by the fire, took up her vigil within the door of the little A-tent. Davy chattered about the prairie chicken that had flown across the trail, about the squirrels that had broken into the cache, about the moose he had seen swimming the river. Jack with an unquiet breast sat listening for a sign from Mary.

Suddenly she came out of the tent, dropping the flaps behind her. "Jack!" she whispered breathlessly.

He sprang to her.

Her clenched hands were pressed hard to her breast. "He's awake," she murmured.

"Is he--sane?"

"I--I don't know," she said a little wildly. "He looked at me so strangely. Oh, Jack!"

He took her trembling hand in his firm one. There was no selfish passion in him now. "Steady, Mary," he said deeply. "We've done the best we could. Whatever will happen, will happen. Better go away for a little."

She gave his hand a little squeeze, and shook her head. "I'm all right," she murmured. "I must know."

Jack threw back the flaps, and, stooping, entered. "Hello, there!" he said quietly.

The sick man turned his head. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and a feverish colour suffused his face; his lips were swollen. "Macgreegor," he whispered. He passed a hand across his eyes. "It is Macgreegor, isn't it?"

Something melted in Jack's breast at the sound of the old boyish nickname. "Sure thing," he said, kneeling beside him.

Garrod reached out his hand, and Jack took it. "Thank God, you're here," he murmured in the soft, hurried accents of the fever patient. "I'm going, Macgreegor. I've made a rotten mess of it, haven't I? I'll be glad to go if I can square myself with you first. Where are we? It doesn't matter. Can anybody take down what I want to say?"

Mary's eyes were big with tears. She produced the pencil Jack had given her, but it appeared there was not a scrap of blank paper in the outfit, not a scrap of paper except the little Testament with its ugly stains. Davy handed it to her. On the fly leaves, with their damp, red borders, Mary prepared to write as Garrod dictated.

"Lift me up a little, Macgreegor," Garrod said. "I can breathe easier. Your arm under my shoulders. That's good. It's like the day at Ste. Anne's when I fell out of the tree. We were seventeen then. You were always holding me up one way and another, Macgreegor. You never knew what you were to me. It was quite different from your feeling for me. I can say it now, anyway. I was a bit cracked about you."

"You'll wear yourself out talking," said Jack with gruff tenderness.

"It won't take me long," Garrod said. "I'll have time."

He expressed no further curiosity as to where he was, or how Jack had come there. He referred to no recent happening. His attention was fixed on the all-concealing gray curtain ahead, through which he must presently pass, and he hurried to get what must be said, said in time. There was something uncanny in the perfect clearness of his thoughts, after what had passed.

"You wonder how I could do as I did if I felt like that toward you," he went on. "Well, sometimes I hated you too. I was jealous of you, you were so much cooler and stronger than I, so much more of a man. I don't suppose you understand. We're not supposed to be like that. I guess I was born with a queer streak."

On the other side of Garrod sat Mary, ready with the pencil and the book. Davy, large-eyed and solemn, filled the doorway.

"I, Francis Garrod, being about to die, do desire to make my peace with God if I may, and with my friend Malcolm Piers, whom I have deeply wronged. It was I who took the money from the Bank of Canada that he was accused of stealing. None but I knew before-hand that he was going away, nor his reasons for going. The morning after he went the sight of the money in the vaults tempted me. He had influential friends and relatives, and I knew there would be no scandal. I took the money in old bills that could not be traced. I have not known a minute's peace since then. It drove me mad by degrees, and it is the cause of my death.

"Should any doubt be cast on this confession, it is easy to verify it. Within a month of the theft I opened accounts in the following banks and branches of banks in Montreal." A list of the banks followed. "In each I deposited a small sum. The total will be about forty-five hundred dollars. The rest I kept by me. Furthermore, among the papers in my desk will be found a letter from Malcolm Piers dated from Winnipeg a few days after his disappearance. The post-mark is intact. In every sentence of this letter there is proof that the writer had no theft on his conscience when he wrote it, and no money. So help me God!"

Garrod signed the page with a sufficiently firm hand, and Davy and Mary wrote their names beneath for witnesses. Jack gave Mary the grim little volume to keep for him, and she and Davy went away.

"That's done," murmured Garrod with a sigh. His fictitious strength seemed to ebb with the sigh. He slipped down on Jack's arm a little. "Don't leave me, Macgreegor," he murmured. "It's all right with us now, isn't it?"

"Sure, I won't leave you," said Jack.

The voice came in a whisper now with many breaks and pauses. "The lights of Ste. Catherine's street, Macgreegor, on a Saturday night, and the crowds, and the stairs up to the gallery of the old Queen's, how they echoed under our feet! We saw the 'Three Musketeers!' ... 'Member the rink in the winter? And the old Park Slide? ... And Ste. Anne's, with the sun shining on the river? There's another pair of kids winning the tandem paddles now, eh? ... How good it is to have you here, old fel'! 'Member the first day I came to work at the bank! You blacked Husky Nickerson's eyes because he blotted my ledger. We nearly all got fired, but you saved us with your pull. Husky, too! How I admired you, with your crooked eyebrow, and your curly hair, and your straight back!

"Well, it's all over for me, old fel' ... and nothing to show! I'll be twenty-six next month.... Life's a sad thing ... and empty! ... I wish--I wish I had done differently. It's good to feel your arm, Macgreegor! ... What time is it, old fel'? Pretty near closing-time? ..."

Three days later Jack, Mary, and Davy rode into Fort Cheever in the evening. On the fourth horse was lashed a significant looking bundle neatly wrapped in canvas, the canvas of the other dead man's tent. A heartfelt welcome awaited them. David Cranston showed no anger at his children. He only looked from Mary to Jack and back again with a kind of wistful, inquiring scowl.

During the interval of their absence the steamboat had arrived, and after waiting twenty-four hours, had returned down river only that morning, taking Sir Bryson and his party. Since nothing could be guessed of the probable return of Jack, the captain had not felt justified in waiting. Jack guessed, furthermore, that Sir Bryson had not exerted his authority to delay the steamer. The lieutenant-governor had had his fill of the North. The steamboat had brought up Sergeant Plaskett of the mounted police, and a trooper from the Crossing.

Garrod was buried at dusk on the hillside behind the fort. Sergeant Plaskett read the burial service. Afterward Jack told his story, and at daybreak the policemen started west to interview the Sapi Indians. Before noon they had returned with Ahcunazie, the eldest son of Etzeeah, and the members of his immediate family. He was on his way in to make peace with the authorities, as Jack had advised.

David Cranston learned something more from Mary, and something from Jack. The situation was too much for the honest trader. He shook his head dejectedly, and had nothing to offer. Measles broke out again among the Indians at Swan Lake--at least Mary said it had. At any rate, she rode away with Angus, Davy's next younger brother, the following day, and Jack did not see her again.

Cranston had a letter for Jack. Thus it ran, the paper blistered with tears, and the headlong words tumbling over each other:

MY OWN JACK: You _are_ mine, aren't you? I am nearly crazy. I don't know where you are or what has happened, and they're taking me away! How could you go without saying a word to me? How can you be so hard? As soon as you get this, come to me! Come to me wherever you are, or whatever has happened! I'll bring father around! Only come! I can't live unless you come! When I think of your failing me, I am ready to do anything! I have no one but you. They all look at me coldly. I am disgraced. Only you can save me. I love you! I love you! I love you! ...

And so on for many pages. Older heads can afford to smile, but to the inexperienced Jack it was terrible.

The police hearing was concluded two days later. At evening that day Jack, declining a lift down the river in Plaskett's canoe, pushed off alone on the same little raft that had brought him to Fort Cheever a month before.

XX

THE LITTLE GREAT WORLD

Mr. Malcolm Piers stood before the mirror tying a white bow at the top of an effulgent shirt bosom. It was a room in Prince George's best hotel, and it had been his room for six weeks. His brown ruddiness had paled a little, and his face looked harder and older than the wear of only two months warranted. Unhappiness or perplexity, or indeed any emotion, caused Jack to look like a hardy young villain. Only the eyes told a tale; a profound discontent lurked in their blue depths.

He finished dressing and took down his overcoat and topper. Evening dress became him well, and he knew it, and took a certain satisfaction in the fact, for all that the world was going badly. His abounding health and his hardness marked him out from the usual dancing man. Hunching into his overcoat, he put out the light, and with the act the night out-of-doors leaped into being. Struck by it, he went to the window and flung it up.

The stars were like old friends suddenly brought to mind. So they shone over his own country where there were no grosser lights to outface them impudently; so they shone nights he had lain well-wrapped on the prairie, counting them while he waited for sleep; so they shone through the spruce branches in the valleys. The town of Prince George is built on top of the bench, and his window looked into the deep valley of the river. It brought to mind his own river, the serene Spirit; his and Mary's; Mary's whose eyes were as deep and quiet and healing as the stars.

Leaning against the window-frame, he lost count of time. He thought of the nights he had careered over the prairie on horseback under the stars. He had called his new horse Starlight, a thoroughbred. How the beast would love the prairie! How his knees ached for him this minute, to bear him away from all this back to _her_! How her eyes would shine at the sight of Starlight! Never had such a horse been seen north of the Landing. How he would love to give him to her! How fine she would look on Starlight! He fell to picturing her under all the different circumstances he remembered. Sweetest and most painful was the recollection of how he had kissed her sleeping in the light of the fire, and how her soft, warm lips had smiled enchantingly under the touch of his.

He was brought back to earth by the ringing of the telephone bell in the room behind him, and a summons from below. He went down stairs cursing himself. "You fool! To let yourself get out of hand! What good does it do?"

It was the night of the hospital ball in Prince George. The provincial parliament had reassembled, the courts were sitting, and the little western capital was thronged with visitors more or less distinguished. The ball was held under the largest roof in town, that of the armory; the band had been imported all the way from Winnipeg, and the decorations and the gowns of the women would have done credit to Montreal itself. To the women the particular attraction of the occasion was the presence of an undoubted aristocrat, Lord Richard Spurling, seeing Canada on his grand tour.

Linda was radiant, the greatest little lady there! There was nothing here to suggest the frightened child who had left such a desperate note for Jack. Her world had not turned its back on her; on the contrary, she had made a grand reéntrée with the halo of adventure around her pretty head. She was wearing a dress of rose-madder satin straight from Paris, a marvel of graceful unexpectedness, hanging from her thin, alluring shoulders by a hair, and clinging about her delicate ankles. She was wearing all the pearls that had shared her adventures, besides some new ones, and a jewelled aigrette in her dark hair. A whole company of cavaliers dogged her footsteps, including the lordling himself, a handsome and manly youngster, irrespective of the handle to his name.

Jack was not one of the company that surrounded her. Jack and Linda had been leading a kind of cat and dog life the past few weeks. Their engagement was admitted, but had not been announced. Jack did not shine in Linda's world; glumness is the unpardonable sin there. Moreover, Jack was a perpetual reminder of things she was ashamed of now. And there were so many other men! At the same time she kept a tight hold on him by the means that such little ladies know so well how to employ.

Jack kept out of her way until it was time for the first of the two dances she had vouchsafed him. As he approached her she could not but acknowledge his good looks, she was a connoisseur, but a good-looking thundercloud! The dance was not a success; they were out of harmony; they stepped on each other's toes!

"Let's stop," said Linda fretfully.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the crowd she opened on him: "You haven't been near me all evening!"

"You know I'm at your disposal," Jack said stiffly. "But I will not make one of that train of young asses that follow you around."

"You don't have to," retorted Linda. "And you needn't be rude. Follow whoever you please around, but for heaven's sake don't stand against the walls with a face like a hired mute!"

This stung. Nevertheless, Jack doggedly admitted the justice of it to himself, and "took a brace," as he would have said. "I'm sorry, Linda," he said manfully; "I'm a bit off my feed to-night. You know I'm no good at this sort of thing."

She was merciless. "It's not only to-night. It's all the time; ever since you've been here. It's not very flattering to me to have you go round with me as if you were dragged against your will."

Jack pulled in his lip obstinately. He had made his apology; she had rebuffed him; very well. Linda, glancing sideways under her lashes, saw that she would get no more out of him in this connection. She made another lead.

"Take me to the north end of the gallery," she drawled. "I promised to meet Lord Richard there at the end of this dance."

Jack obeyed without comment.

"He's an awfully good sort, isn't he?" she went on, with another sidelong glance at Jack. "I was surprised to find out how well he dances. Englishman, you know! He likes Canada better every day, he says. He's going to stay over for the golf tournament if I will let him. He is looking for a ranche somewhere near town."

Jack woke up. "First-rate head," he said heartily. "We've talked a lot about the North. He wants to make a trip with me."

Linda bit her lip.

Later Jack sought out Kate Worsley, with whom he had a dance. These two had made great progress in intimacy.

"Shall we dance?" she said.

"No, please," said Jack. "Linda says I dance like her grandfather. One gets rusty in five years!"

"To sit out then," said Kate. "Let's get in the first row of the gallery, where we can hang over and watch the giddy young things!"

Their conversation did not flourish. The night outside still had Jack by the heartstrings; loping over the prairie under the stars, the far-off ululation of a wolf, a ruddy campfire in the dark, and beside it, Mary!

"You're not exactly garrulous to-night," remarked Kate.

Jack turned a contrite face to her. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't be rude to you, Kate!"

"Bless your heart! you don't have to talk unless you are moved to it. I don't like to see a pal looking so down, that's all."

"Down?" said Jack with a laugh. "I'm living in hell, Kate!"

"Tell me about it, old man. You can, you know."

He shook his head. "I can't talk about it. I only sound like a fool. It only makes matters worse to talk about it."

Kate knew her men. "Change the subject then," she said cheerfully. "How are business matters going?"

"All right," said Jack. "I have sold my claim and the other one to Sir Bryson's company for twenty-five thousand--a fair price."

"Cash or stock?" asked Kate.

"Cash. I have no talent for business. I don't want to be in the company."

"The other claim?" she asked.

"Miss Cranston's?" he said self-consciously:

"I thought there were three."

"The third belongs to Linda."

"Well, what are you going to do now?" she asked.

He looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"You're too good a man to hang on here in town," she said off-hand.

"Do you think I'm staying because I want to?" he burst out. "Good heavens, I'm mad to get away! I hate all this! I'm fighting myself every minute!"

She looked at him inscrutably. "My young friend, you're blind!"

"You don't understand," muttered Jack miserably.

"Don't I?" she said, wistful and smiling. "I've thought quite a lot about your case, but I wasn't sure that I had the right to speak."

"Oh, Kate!" he said turning to her quickly; "you know I'd take anything from you!"

She smiled at the way he put it. "I'm not going to abuse you. My advice to you is simply--to go!"

Jack stared at her.

"Go!" she repeated. "Ride away! Ride back to your own work in your own country, the place you suit, and that suits you. You'd never be any good here. Look at Linda in her finery! This is the breath of her nostrils. She has her eye on Montreal--London eventually. How could you two ever hope to pull together? Mind you, I'm her friend too, and I believe that I'm doing her a service in advising you to ride. Girls get carried away temporarily like men, though they're not supposed to. Girls often get hysterical, and write much more than they mean. Letter-writing between the sexes ought to be made a felony."

"She has my word," muttered Jack.

Kate shrugged. "There's the man of it! It is a fetich! Would you spoil Linda's life for the sake of keeping your word, not to speak of your own life and--perhaps a third!"

Jack's face was obstinate. "I'll see Linda and put it straight to her," he conceded.

Kate's eyebrows went up. "These men!" she said helplessly. "You ought to know her a little by this time. That will do no good. Much better go without. It's a thing that ought to be broken off. What matter who does it, or how it's done? The result will be good."

"I couldn't go unless she releases me," Jack said.

Kate got up smiling. "We must go back," she said. "A man must do as he will. You are an awfully nice boy, Jack. I believe I love you for your very mulishness. Write to me sometimes out of the North."

"I haven't gone yet," he said grimly. "You must promise to forget every word that has been said if I ask you to."

"I promise, dear old man."

For Jack to think of a thing was to put it into instant execution. He set off in search of Linda. One of the likeliest places to find her was on the balconies. There was a suite of rooms across the front of the armory, the officers' club, with a long narrow balcony overhanging the street. For the occasion of the ball, potted palms had been placed at intervals down the balcony, making a series of little nooks, each with two chairs, and each reached through its own window. The largest of the rooms with the balconies outside had been set apart for Sir Bryson and his party.

Dancing was in full swing below, and Jack found the room empty. None of the little nooks outside were occupied. In one of them Jack sat down to wait for the end of the dance. Almost immediately two people entered the next bower to his. Their voices were pitched low, and at first he did not recognize them.

"Now for a cigarette," said the man.

"Lucky man," said the girl. "I'm dying for a puff!"

"Have one," he said. "I'll take it from you, if any one comes."

There was a silence, and the striking of a match. Then a long-drawn feminine "Ah-h!" which was undoubtedly Linda's. Jack stood up to speak to her over the dividing palms. It was not a thing to do, but Jack was a man of one idea at a time; he had to speak to her, and his other dance was at the tail of the evening. He wished merely to make an appointment to speak with her later.