Part 13

He had paid the hire before he took out the horse that now lay dead upon the road. He heard the steamer's whistle at the nigh wharf and ran to catch her. In ten minutes he was on his way down stream to the Ferry.

He knew it would be, or so easily might be, "a close call" for him. And yet there was nothing else to do but to risk it. As the cool air of the river struck him he shivered. For he thought he had killed Ned Quin and, now that the heat went out of his blood, chilling the fever of revenge in him, he began to be very much afraid.

But he took a drink.

Far back upon the road the cattle ringed round Mary's body and the body of the horse, and a million flies blackened the pool of blood and drank against the dust that soaked it up. The cattle to leeward, smelling the horror of a spilt life, tossed their heads uneasily and challenged strange death, that horror of which their instincts spoke to them. Some to windward came closer and blew at the flies. They rose in black swarms and settled again. From a distance other cattle marched to the wavering ring about this wonder. Some came running. One of the inside steers touched Mary's body with his horn. She moaned and lifted her hand. The steer ran backwards, snorting, backing on others, who horned each other angrily. Then the steers crept up again to Mary and blew at the dust in which she lay.

But this time she rose to a sitting position, and the ring of cattle with their lowered heads retreated from her.

She wondered where she was, and how she came to be there. Then she saw the dead horse, and the gun that a cow smelt uneasily. She remembered that Pete had killed Ned, and that he had perhaps tried to kill her. She scrambled to her feet and the cattle jostled each other to get away from her. She staggered as she stood: for she had no strength, and all desire of life had gone out of her. And with that there came a sickness of the notion of revenge: it would only be trying to revenge herself on the inexorable destiny which was hers. Pete had killed her man and had gone. She would go back to her dead.

Overhead the sun burnt as she staggered on the road, the long, endless, wearying road, so like to life. She went at a foot pace, and the miles were weary endless spaces without hope. For her man was dead, and Pete was a cruel madman, and there was nothing left for her. Yet still she walked, like some painful hurt creature returning to its lair. She ached in every limb: her head seemed splitting: the physical torture of her being dulled her mind. And as it seemed to her only the sun of all things moved swiftly. It was drawing on towards evening when she came to her house and stood outside the door. Her knees trembled: she clutched at the latch and door-post to prevent herself falling.

Inside was her man dead: her man who had been so good and so cruel. She began to weep and opened the door, letting the westering sunlight in. The next moment she screamed dreadfully, for the place where she had left him was vacant!

"Oh, Ned, Ned!" she cried in a most lamentable voice. And yet within her murdered heart there sprang a faint poor flower of hope even as she cried. If he had been moved was it not that someone had come and taken him away? Then--then, oh, God, perhaps he was not dead! Her brain turned: she reeled again and clutched at the table and held to it.

"My God, listen to me, be merciful, where is my man, the man I love?"

She wrestled with the dark gods of fate whose blinded eyes knew not, nor cared, whom they trod down upon the dusty roads of earth.

And then she heard a rustle in the room, as of something stirring! She prayed that this was true: that she did not hear amiss and that when her eyes opened she would see Ned once more.

She heard a groan and ran to it blindly and found her man there, on the bed, their bed, still alive, though half blinded, blood-covered and hardly conscious!

"Ned, Ned!"

In her mad desire for revenge she had left him, believing him dead. She fell beside him with a scream that was no more than a sigh, and when she became conscious again after that awful shock of joy, she found his wounded hands seeking hers. She heard his hurt mouth whisper for water. For the little good that came with all the evil she thanked her God very humbly and brought the man water. He spoke to her and did not know that she had been away from him. He knew not how he had reached the bed, or come back to life and to her. He was very weak and gentle.

"My dear," he said feebly. She washed his wounds and bound them up. She cried softly over his pain, which was so much less than her own.

"I've been a brute to you," he mumbled. "But God help me I'll be that no more."

"You've always loved me," she said. It was true in spite of everything.

"Yes," said old Ned. Then he fell asleep and woke in an hour and wandered a little in his talk. But she soothed him into peace again and he rested quietly. Yet she could not leave him to get help till next morning, and when she went over to their nearest neighbour, Missouri Simpson, he was away from home. It was noon when he returned and rode into Kamloops for the doctor. He told the police what had happened, and found that someone had already brought into town Ned's gun and told them of the horse. They telegraphed to all stations to the Coast to hold a certain Sitcum Siwash, known as Pitt River Pete. But by that time Pete was in hiding on the south side of the Fraser, over against the Mill, with a canoe, stolen from a house near Ruby Creek, where he had left the train. For it seemed to him that he could not escape if he went further. That he had not been arrested yet was a miracle.

"They'll catch me and hang me," he said with a snarl.

He felt sure they would and he had something to do before they did.

As he lay in the brush, across the river, he tried to pick out the lights of the house, high upon the hill, in which Jenny and George Quin lived.

XXI

The news that one Pitt River Pete was wanted by the police, by the "bulls," spread fast through the town and into Shack City. As soon as they heard, and as soon as Indian Annie was chuckling grossly over the possible delight of seeing Pete hanged, the police came down and searched every hole and corner in the sawdust swamp. They routed out Annie almost the first of the lot, and she screamed insults at them as they searched her den.

"Kahta you damn plisman tink I hide Pete?" she yelled. "Pete hyu mesachie, him damn bad Siwash; if him come I say 'mahsh, klatawa, go, you damn thief.' Oh, you damn plisman, what for you make mess my house? You tink Pete him one pin I hide him lik' dat?"

They bade her dry up and when she refused they took her by the scruff of the neck and bundled her outside. She sat in sawdust and yelled till they left her shack and searched the others. They found nothing, of course, but they found out one thing, and that was the readiness of most of the men of the Mill, Siwashes or Whites, to give away Pete with both hands. For they, at any rate, were certain that it was he who had spiked the logs and killed poor old Skookum Charlie. And since he had killed a Chinaman, too, all the men from the Flowery Kingdom were ready to do the same. Old Wong said so to the "damned plismen." But as the Chinamen relied on the police to save them from abuse and injury, they were even readier to help than the Siwashes.

"Supposee we savvy Pete, we tellee you allo tim'," said Wong. "My tink Pete damn bad man, spikee logs, killee my flin Fan. Fan velly good man, my flin, and Pete spoilum 'tumach,' killee him dead. All light, we come tellee."

There wasn't a doubt about it, that if Pete turned up in Shack-Town he would be given away, and though the police went away empty-handed they had high hopes of nailing him shortly.

They had had a considerable pow-pow that morning in the Engine-Room before work started up and there wasn't a soul found there to say a word for Pete. This was natural enough.

"A man that'll spike logs ain't a human being, boys," said Long Mac seriously.

"Killing his own tilikums," said Shorty Gibbs. "It was horrid seein' pore old Skookum!"

"The Chinky was horridest," said Tenas Billy. "I picked him up."

"So you did," said Shorty. "But what d'ye think Pete's doin'?"

"He'll be on the scoot."

"To be sure, but where?"

"Oh, to hell and gone out of this."

"That's your tumtum. It ain't mine by a mile. If he's been spoilin' Ned Quin's face what'll he do 'bout George, eh?"

Mac intervened.

"Waal, boys, these Injuns are a rotten crowd. You can't bet on what they'll do. Some o' them don't care a damn if their klootchmen quit. I know, for I've run with 'em on the Eastern Slope o' the Rockies and on the plains. Sometimes they will though."

He told a ghastly tale.

"Pete's a holy terror, that's what," said Tenas Billy. "I never give him credit for sand, I admit, but he has it."

"Sand be damned," said Long Mac; "he hasn't sand. It's only Injun temper. I know 'em. They ain't sandy in the way we speak of it, boys. Bein' sandy is bein' cool. Pete don't do notion' unless he's mad. None of 'em do, at least none of these fish-fed coast Injuns. They's a measly crowd."

The men chewed on that.

"Nevertheless," said Shorty, considering the matter fully, "I'd rather be me than George Quin with Pete loose on the tear. The man that spiked our boom and hunted old Cultus Muckamuck's steers into a dry cañon and then hammered him to pulp with a club mayn't have sand, but he's dangerous."

"He's the kind of Johnny that'd fire the Mill," said Ginger White, who so far had held his tongue.

"White's on the target," said Mac as the whistle blew. But he forgot about it when the song and the dance of the day commenced. There's fine forgetfulness in work.

Quin was as foolish as the rest of them. That is to say, he talked to the police and came to the conclusion that Pete wasn't likely to be on hand now and for ever after. He knew what Mac knew and despised the average Coast Indian. It was true enough they weren't up to much unless they were "full," full, that is, of liquor. And a man like Quin knew by instinct the weakness there was in such as Pete, in spite of his now bloody record. For Quin had a fine square jaw and Pete hadn't. But then Quin was incapable of underhand night work. And he didn't know that Pete was like a rat in a trap, as a criminal is in British Columbia. And there was another thing. He knew that Ned wasn't dead, by any means. It never occurred to him that Pete believed he had killed Cultus and must be desperate if he wasn't out of the country.

"I wish the swine was dead," said George Quin. "I believe I'd marry Jenny."

She had twined herself round his heart, and when he saw her nursing the one child he had ever been father of he was as soft as cream with her. Not a soul about the City would have believed it was George Quin if they had seen him with his naked boy in his arms. Only the Chinamen knew about it, for Sam told them, being delighted, as they all are, with male offspring. They really sympathised with the big boss as they thought of their own wives far away in "China-side" and the children some of them hadn't seen. Old Wong wept secretly, for he had worked and gone home to marry a wife, and she had died. It wasn't likely he would ever make enough money to buy another, unless he got it by gambling. He was as bad at that as old Papp, the German, who still hadn't made sufficient to go home to "California," in spite of all his work, and those muscles which made him feel as if he would "braig dings" if he didn't toil.

Yes, tilikum, George Quin, "Tchorch," was happy, as happy as he could be.

And Jenny was nearly as happy as she could be. Her child was a gift from heaven, even if heaven frowned as it gave her the beautiful boy. She never saw the Bible or the horrid pictures and she saw instead the scripture of the child's pure flesh hourly and read the dark language of her man's heart. He adored what she had given him, and she knew, as a woman may know, that underneath his awkward roughness and his careless ways, sometimes not wholly gentle, there was real love for her and the wish to be good. And when he sat with her and smoked, she caught the paternal look of full satisfaction that he feigned to hide from himself. What a boy it was!

He was as fat as a prairie chicken, and as full of life as a fresh-run salmon. How pink he showed in hot water: how he squealed like a dear little pig and kicked his crumpled dimpled legs! Was there ever such a boy before?

"Oh, Tchorch, see," said Jenny. She showed him the baby's thick dark hair. The child was a garden of delight that she cultivated all day long.

But she never forgot "Tchorch," who had been so good to her, and had taken her to Victoria and driven her about in a fine carriage: who had showed her the world. If she had only been his wife the whole earth could have offered her nothing.

And yet behind her was the dark shadow of Pete. George never spoke of him, and if he had known that Sam did he would have kicked the Chinaman from the house to the Mill. Yet it wasn't Sam's fault, though he was a chatterbox and always ready for "talkee" at any time. Jenny asked him about things. She knew that men said it was Pete who had spiked the logs. Sam told her of the death of his poor countryman. She wept bitterly about Skookum, who had always been a kind, thick-headed chap, very good to his klootchman. She had now taken up with another who wasn't good to her.

"Poor old Skookum," said Jenny. Oh, it was dreadful of Pete. And yet it was her fault.

But she had her boy! Oh, not for anything, not for life or heaven or all the round world contained of good, would she have parted with her child and George's. She hadn't lived before. And now "Tchorch" loved her so much more. He was so satisfied, so content to sit and smoke. Her Indian blood was happy to see her man sit solemnly and puff the clouds into the air without a word.

Now she knew of the search for Pete, and knew what he had done, just as she knew what wicked Ned had done to poor Mary. She hated Ned, and was sure he was utterly bad. Nevertheless, Mary had gone back to him. That she knew was natural.

"Poor Mary loves him," she said, "but she has no baby!"

If the sky was clear, it was for her little boy: when the breezes blew they were for him: the beauty of the river was his: the loveliness of stars and the goodness of her milk were the gifts of God, who was not angry with her but only sorrowful because she was not married.

"He would marry me if----"

Oh, yes, if Pete were dead! She could not say it, but could not help the bad thought rising within her. To be married to George! She trembled to think of it.

In her heaven Pete was the dark cloud. Perhaps her constant thought of him put it into George's head to say, as he did say, very suddenly that same night--

"I wish I could marry you, tenas!"

She crept to his knee, and laid her head on his hand. She got more beautiful every day, more gentle, more tender.

"There's not a spark of vice in the little woman," said her man, with tears in his eyes. He said he was a damn fool and spoke gruffly next time. But she understood her Chief, her great man, and was pleased to serve his gruffest speech.

"If only that cursed Siwash was dead," said George.

But if he wasn't he would either be in the "pen" for years or would be seen no more on the Fraser River. That seemed certain.

And still George was uneasy. It was impossible to say where the man was. The belief of the police that he had escaped out of the country went for nothing. British Columbia might be a mouse-trap, but it was a handy place for holing up in, and the brush alongside the river would have hidden a thousand. George had a talk about the matter with Long Mac, who was the only one of the workers in his Mill who had brains beyond his daily task.

"What do you think, McClellan?" asked the Tyee.

Mac's eyes showed that he could think.

"He's a dangerous skunk, that's my tumtum, Mr. Quin," said Mac. He told him what Ginger White had said and Quin frowned heavily.

"Fire my Mill!"

The Mill was his life, and till Jenny had borne him a child it had been his true and lasting passion. There was a fascination about it and the work of it that he loved. The scent of the lumber: the sound of the saws: the rush of the work: the hustling of the men, made something beyond words. The Mill was a live thing, warm, strong, adequate, equal to its work. It filled Quin's alert, strong mind.

"Fire my Mill!"

That was Long Mac's "tumtum," his thought, his notion.

"If he ain't really skipped out, that's what a cuss like Pete would do to you, Sir," said Mac. "He's made a holy record for himself, ain't he? We know he spiked the logs and killed poor Skookum, and there ain't the shadder of a doubt he fixed your brother's cattle. And then he's laid him out, and started off down here. They traced him to Ruby Creek, and it's tol'ble sure he kapsuallowed a canoe there. But no one's got on his tracks. It's bad luck there's been such a mighty poor salmon run this year, or he'd ha' been seen on the River."

As it was, the lordly tyee salmon, the quinnat, had been making a poor show in the Fraser that year, as he will at intervals, more or less regular. The canneries were fairly frozen out and shut down. The river was empty of boats and men.

"I'll set another night-watchman on," said Quin. "There's something in what you say, McClellan. The police are damn fools, though."

"I'll take a night or two at it myself, if you like, Mr. Quin," said Long Mac.

"You're the very man," replied Quin.

That night Pete got his hidden dug-out into the water. But his chief thoughts were not of the Mill.

XXII

It was all very well for George Quin, who had brought all the trouble on himself by running after other people's klootchmen, to say the police were fools, but as a matter of fact they had done as much as could be expected of them, and perhaps more, seeing that Quin wasn't very popular with them. His Mill with its Shack-Town gave them more trouble than the whole of the City, and within a year two "damn plismen," as Annie called them, had been laid out cold with clubs in its vicinity. And nobody had gone into the penitentiary for the murderous assaults. Nevertheless they had searched every likely hole and corner for Pete, from his old native hang-out, Pitt River, down to the Serpentine and beyond it. They had beaten the brush along both sides of the Fraser, North and South Arm and the Island. And, indeed, they came within a throw of the dice of catching Pete. One of them missed him and his canoe by a hair's-breadth, and the Sitcum Siwash had been about to cave in and show himself when the man turned aside.

As it was, the very search for Pete worked him up to desperation just as he was beginning to get cold on revenge and to think rather of escape. If the police were so keen as to search the brush and go up and down the river, how was he to get away? Like most of his sort he didn't know the country, and would have been puzzled to get even as far as Whatcom. And even if he did there would be someone waiting for him. And to go down stream in the dug-out would be to run right into a trap, like a salmon. His rage began to burn in him again, and to this was added hunger. He had over a hundred dollars in his pocket but hadn't eaten for four-and-twenty hours. He would have given his soul for a square meal and a long drink, and as hunger bit him he knew that if he lingered any longer mere famine would induce him to give himself up. Then he would be hanged, and get nothing more than he had got already as the price of his neck. When the second night fell he was wholly desperate.

"I fix heem to-night, or they catch me," said Pete. "One ting or the other, Pete, my boy!"

If he only could get a drink! With a drink inside him he would be equal to anything. He wondered if he dare trust any of his old tilikums of the Mill. He thought of Chihuahua and of Chihuahua's klootchman, Annawillee, and then of old Annie. They would give him away for a dollar; he knew that, and very likely there was a price on his head. If poor old Skookum hadn't been killed he would have done anything for him. Pete was very sorry he had killed Skookum, very sorry indeed.

But he kept on thinking about that drink. If there was one woman or man in Shack-Town who always managed to have liquor in her shanty, it was old Annie.

"I'd choke her for it," said Pete, as he shoved off in his dug-out and paddled lightly against the last of the flood coming in from the great Pacific. "I'd choke her for it."

The night was moonless and cloudy and as dark as it ever gets on the Fraser in summer. There was even a touch of an easterly wind about, and the faint chill of it made him shiver. Without a drink he felt almost hopeless.

"I try," said Pete in sudden desperation. The lights were out all over the town. Hardly a solitary lamp starred the opposing darkness of the hill above the river. The world was asleep. There was only a moving lamp in the Mill. He knew it belonged to the night-watchman, a sleepy-headed old German, once a worker in the Planing Mill with old Papp. But since he lost his hand he had been made night-watchman.

"I give heem plenty light by-by," said Pete. He slanted across the river and came to an old deserted rotten wharf a little above the Mill. There in the black shadow he ran his canoe ashore and stepped into the mud. He crept silently to where the shore shelved, and, climbing up, thrust his head out between some broken flooring of the wharf. The world was quiet as a tomb. There was even peace in Shack-Town. Whether he got that drink or not he had business there that night. Though Chihuahua most likely wouldn't give him a drink, Pete meant to make the Mexican help him. For at the back of Chihuahua's shanty, which was only a one-room hiding hole, there was a little outhouse. In that Chihuahua always kept some kerosene.

Pete slipped across the road like a shadow, dodging among the piles of lumber as he went. His senses were as alert as a cougar's. And the sawdust under foot made his steps soundless. On the other side of the road he waited to be sure that no one moved. There was only one light in Shack-Town, and it was at Annie's. That meant that she was either awake or had fallen asleep drunk on the floor, forgetful of her lamp. Perhaps she had a bottle, said Pete thirstily. He felt cold and nervous and forgot about the kerosene. He ran lightly across the road and came to Annie's. He had a sheath knife in his belt. It had once belonged to Jack Mottram, but Pete had stolen it. He had no intention of using it on Annie, that is unless he had to, of course. He carried a heavy stick in his hand.

He looked into Annie's window, which was naturally enough foul within and without. He saw nothing at first but the dim light of the lamp, but as everything was quiet he rubbed the glass of one pane with his cap. Then he saw that Annie was lying on the floor, a mere bundle of rags. Was that a bottle by her?