Chapter 17

In the end he went; setting off two hours before dawn, according to his custom. On issuing from the shack, he found with some anxiety that the sky had become heavily overcast, and an east wind had sprung up. This would prevent his hearing as well as he wished; however, he considered that if Grylls intended a night attack, he would scarcely wait until so near morning: and he kept on.

He sat in the stern of the canoe pushing hard against the opposing wind. The raised bow danced over the water, slapping the little waves, and sending out musical cascades of drops on either side. The wind had the same cool, damp smell of the east winds at home; and he was reminded of a score of nights when he had nothing heavier on his mind than the approaching end of a vacation. After two days' imprisonment in the shack, the tussle with the wind was highly exhilarating; and it was very good to measure the strength of his arms. He sang under his breath as he worked. Black as it was, he could guide himself by the dimly-sensed outline of the tree masses; and when they receded he knew he had arrived opposite the meadow.

It took him longer than he had counted on to gather what he could carry; for he was hampered by the intense darkness. He collected the hay into small armfuls, which in turn he tied into great bundles; and wedged them into the canoe. Embarking again, he raced back before the wind at double the speed he had made against it.

On the way, a single, dull sound, coming muffled through the night, brought his heart into his throat. He paused; but no other sound followed, except the song of the water, and the sweep of the wind through the branches on shore. He redoubled his strokes, filled with a vague anxiety; and pausing only to cast out his bundles on the shore of the island, hastened back to the camp. He heard no other untoward sounds; but crossing from the island, he saw that the fire in the other camp had died down. This had never happened any night before; and it added to his uneasiness. The increased chill of the air now heralded the approach of dawn; but it was not yet any lighter.

As he landed, the familiar outline of his own house, just as he had left it, allayed his fears. Everything about the camp was still. Cautiously drawing up the canoe, he advanced with confidence to give the prearranged knock on the door. His knuckles beat upon the air. The door was wide open.

Then Garth's heart shrivelled in his breast; and his throat was constricted as by sudden deadly fumes. He staggered in. There was a stale odour of gunpowder in the room.

"Natalie! Charley!" he called, in a choked whisper.

The stillness mocked him.

He ran into Natalie's room, still faintly illumined by the embers of the hearth. A glance told him it was empty; but he felt with his hands in all the dim corners, agonizingly whispering her name. There was no evidence here that any struggle had taken place.

Running out to the outer room toward Charley's bed, he fell over a body lying on the floor. A touch told him it was the boy. He disregarded it, until he had made sure Natalie was not there. Then dragging the body into the inner room, he built up the fire. He saw the boy was not dead; he could find no wound on him. He worked desperately to bring him to.

Charley stirred at last, and opened his eyes.

"What happened?" besought the distracted Garth.

The boy only looked at him stupidly.

"For God's sake collect your wits, and tell me!" he cried.

Charley, suddenly clutching Garth's arm, raised himself on his elbow. "Garth!" he cried wildly. "Natalie! Where is she?"

"God knows!" groaned Garth.

Terrible recollection returned to the boy's eyes. He sat up dizzy and nauseated. "I remember now!" he stuttered.

"Quick! Quick!" implored Garth.

"It was a little while after you went," Charley continued, getting it out with difficulty. "Natalie came and shook me. She said she heard a sound outside.... We waited and listened--a quarter of an hour it seemed.... We heard nothing.... Then suddenly with one big crack, the door flew open. They drove a log against it.... I couldn't tell how many came in--maybe three.... I shoved Natalie behind me in the farthest corner. I had the Winchester ready in my hands.... They dropped to the floor when they came in; and scattered. I couldn't tell where they were--I don't know how long it was.... Suddenly I heard something close to--somebody breathing. I fired. In the flash I saw them all, Xavier, Mary, and right over me, Nick Grylls, swinging the butt of his gun--then my head split in pieces ... and you came!"

"Oh, my God!" cried Garth.

He picked up his rifle, and ran like a madman from the cabin.

XXII

THE BLIZZARD

Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted in obedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with the fancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeballs were seared with the picture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he crashed through the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; and the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt into unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock.

He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came to a stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of the direction they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracks in the grass, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheer madness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faint groan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this time been woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound, he found a human form prone in the grass; and he saw it was a woman lying on her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.

A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.

"Get up!" he said roughly.

She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garth apprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he poured part of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, and turned her head away.

"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"

The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him at first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.

"Tell me what happened!" he said hoarsely. "If they have wronged you, too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"

"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as the sound of all-day rain in the grass. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. He see me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. I t'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' my stomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in--but my head go off!"

In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant down her throat. Presently she was able to sit up. She bowed her back, and buried her face in her crossed arms.

"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour's start! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"

But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die! He glad I die!"

Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he said coolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"

Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she said tremblingly. "Grylls, him took her--not 'Erbe't!"

"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like a dog--unless you come with me."

Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" she stammered.

"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged. "I will give it to you!"

She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily, clinging to his arm for support.

"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go get your horses. When you come back I ride with you."

She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her. Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of the water, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to his own shack.

It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral mist hung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like a steel cuirass, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley had gone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them. The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face was twisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead without question or comment.

No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles were carried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthed them, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, as heavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider. Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester had been won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weapon they possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door of the hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.

They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullen self--but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray. Refusing any assistance, she climbed into the empty saddle without comment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garth lingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those they expected to follow.

As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with the eye of a commander. It was not a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fed beasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and for his aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-class weapon and a toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meet and overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were so preposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At the last there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up his brain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealed Garth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and his eyes contracted to two icy points.

As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. Nick Grylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."

At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth, searching the grass. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown, undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.

Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulée, southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'ink they come together."

"What horse was _she_ on?" Garth demanded.

"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They mak' a bag for her to sit in. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."

"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.

Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.

"Find the heaviest tracks then!"

She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; riding around them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadly patience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, and Garth and Charley spurred after.

"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up. "Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coulée."

"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.

Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.

For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill, damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its cold shadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look that clutched at the breast.

"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.

It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground his teeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerly searching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at the stretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly such a pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was the necessity of going slowly.

"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.

She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I too friendly for you!"

Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soon as Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "They catch all horses, and keep them up coulée, and pack everyt'ing. Mary Co-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house all the time, for good chance to tak' _her_. When you go out she mak' little fire under the bank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all go down. They not tak' me."

Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into their hands.

"I wait, and bam-by they bring her back," continued Rina in her toneless voice. "She ver' quiet. She mak' no cry. By the fire I see her face. It is the face of a dead woman."

A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?" he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for the final stroke.

But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite," she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."

He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.

The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head, and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They 'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die when I see 'Erbe't with _her_. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"

Garth forbore to question her further.

His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing eyes.

Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly, hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily losing in the chase.

To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long night. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end its own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.

With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before; and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.

Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."

Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will walk."

Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting forth on the prairie alone--that would come later. At present he stood equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them together, if it would save Natalie.

The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and food enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added to the complaining backs of the other two horses.

Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two marches. There's plenty of grub there."

But Charley flatly refused.

"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop, telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night or to-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a day or so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be in the same boat again."

It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as they left him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what the lowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart it was a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, and strode manfully after.

Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man had never seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he looked back, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under the weight of his pack.

"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more than once--perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.

Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to care either way.

About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coulée whose stony bed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls's party had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were still warm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear the whole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coulée, even Garth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horses over the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw that the way always led due northwest.

Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass. Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plain little square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neat characters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied the scrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness of desperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into a gallop. Rina indifferently followed.

Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting down as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the piano--large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.

Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back to the coulée," she called after Garth.

He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A flurry of snow can't hurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"

She shrugged, and said no more.

The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. The flakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind was a hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view was little by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, and the white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed to be traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling into a misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earth and sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earth was the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little way behind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.

They came to another and a shallower coulée, which seemed to take a northeasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercourses they had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watch for any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. On the other side of this coulée he found he could no longer trace the passage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. He impatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.

"No can follow in the snow!" she said contemptuously.

At every hint of stoppage, Garth's blood surged dangerously upward. He pressed his knuckles against his temples, and strove to think. The two horses, instinctively drawing close together, turned their tails to the driving flakes. Rina sat hunched in her saddle, as indifferent as a squat, clay image.

"I will ride on," he said thickly.

She gave no sign.

He consulted his compass. "We have ridden due northwest all the way," he said. "Where are they heading for?"

"Death River, I guess," she answered, pointing. "The crossing is northwest."

"How far?" he demanded.

"Two days' journey, maybe seventy-five miles."

"You wait for the boy in the shelter of the poplar bluff across the coulée," he said. "When the snow stops, follow on as well as you can."

"Charley not come any more," said Rina in a tone of quiet fatalism. "When snow hide our track, he walk round and round. Bam-by he fall down, and not get up. He die. He know that."

Garth, ready to push into the storm, reined up again. Her sureness chilled his impatient hurry; and the oft-told tragedies of prairie snowstorms recurred to him.

"Die in the snow!" he repeated dully, hanging in agonizing indecision between the two images; Natalie ahead, and the solitary boy plodding behind. On the one hand he thought: "The storm has held them up, somewhere just ahead! It is my only chance of overtaking them!" and then he turned his horse's head north. But the other thought would not down. "The kid knew it meant death to walk; and he chose it!" Garth finally led the way back over the coulée.

Rina had no difficulty making herself comfortable among the young poplar trees. She improvised a shelter out of a blanket stretched over two inclined saplings; and in front of it she built a fire. Garth meanwhile changed to the fresher horse, and started back over their own dimming trail.

"You never find him now," Rina said hopelessly, as he left her.

Garth merely set his jaw.

His watch told him it was past eleven. He calculated they had covered five miles between the two coulées, and that it would be about twenty-five miles all told back to their own camping-place. Supposing the boy to have averaged three miles an hour, he would now be some twelve miles away, and if he kept walking, Garth, at his present pace, should come upon him in an hour and a half's riding.

The marks of their previous passage were soon completely obliterated; and thereafter Garth rode compass in hand. With the wind behind, his horse showed a better stomach for travelling; and he made the first coulée in something under an hour. Here a little search revealed the half-burned logs of Grylls's fire under the snow; and this put him directly in the path again. He stood up the logs, to make a better mark against his return.

He began to keep a sharp lookout for the boy, frequently shouting his name. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd, deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard very far. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extreme improbability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meeting point-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding the boy. It maddened him to think how close they might pass, without either being aware.