Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE MURDER IN THE SKY

  However lightly he travels and however hard the snow may have packed,a man who has only two huskies and is handicapped by a body justrecovered from sickness does not make much speed in winter travelling.

  Through the long hours of the dreary November night Granger, withhard, set face, had pushed on up the Last Chance River, towards God'sVoice, following in Spurling's tracks. It was the gold that hedesired. And if he recaptured it, what then? He was not capable ofcarrying it out to Winnipeg by himself. He knew that his pursuit wasmadness; he had nothing to gain by it but revenge. He was hardlylikely to gain even that, for the man in front of him had three dogsto his one, fuller rations, and a start of several hours; he couldonly hope to overtake him by the happening of some accident.

  Yet he knew that he would overtake him, for he felt, beyond reach ofargument, that Spurling was fated to die by his hand. Both of them hadstriven to avoid it; once he himself had fled that he might not committhe crime, and Spurling was now trying to escape that it might notcome about. No matter what they did, it must happen. Though God should"advance a terrible right arm," and pluck them apart, and fling themto the opposite extremes of the world, they would surely travel andtravel, perhaps involuntarily, till they came again together. It wouldhave been far better if he had not been interfered with at theShallows and had been permitted to accomplish his enmity there--so,more than three years of futile suffering might have been spared andMordaunt would be still alive.

  He was hardly conscious of any anger; his was the unreasonedrelentless instinct of the pursuing hound. He was savage justice andthe law of self-preservation personified. He was the will of destinydecreeing that Spurling should not reach El Dorado alive.

  The dogs struggled on uncomplainingly; this was their first trip ofthe season and they were still comparatively fresh, though the man wastired. To the eastward the crescent of a faint old moon hung low inthe sky. As Granger ran, he turned his head and, watching it, wasthankful to see that at last the tardy dawn had begun to spread. Overthe withered stretch of woodland to his right the Aurora swept betweenthe stars, like an extinguishing angel, who caused them to flickerand, as he beat his wings about them, one by one to go out.

  It was a morning of bitter coldness. As the breath left his nostrils,he could almost see it congeal and fall to the ground, a filmy sheetof ice. The heads of the huskies were clouded with smoke, so that theyseemed to be on fire as they panted forward dragging on the traces.

  The tracks, which he was following, now branched off to the left, and,mounting the river-bank, entered into a little hollow at the edge ofthe forest. Here, about the base of a tree, the snow had been recentlytrampled and a fire smouldered. It was Spurling's first camp.Granger, having unharnessed and fed his huskies, taking his axe fromhis girdle, cut down a sapling fir and roused the dying embers to ablaze. The flames shot up, and, climbing the bark of the tree,crackled among the branches overhead. Unpacking his tallow he meltedit in a cup. Before it was all drunk, the surface was frozen solid.Then, lest his muscles should stiffen, he set out again.

  The air was full of minute particles of snow, like frozen dew, whichcaused the whole atmosphere, as far as eye could reach, to sparkle inthe sunshine. The sky was greenish grey and without a cloud. Thestillness of the world was magical; in the miles of landscape whichwere visible, nothing stirred. The snapping of a twig sounded like thecrashing ruin of a forest giant. The gliding of the sled across thesnow, and the padding footsteps of the huskies, thundered down thetunnel of the river through the pines like the galloping of heavyartillery over gravel. When, at rare intervals, the river cracked,perhaps four or five miles away, it reverberated through thetree-tops, causing their burden of snow to tremble and glisten, likethe report of neighbouring cannon. Every whisper was exaggerated to ashout, so that the ears were deafened and longed for quiet--quietwhich, unlike silence, consisted of a multitude of small soundssinging, almost inaudibly, together.

  Shortly after noon the light faded, and the blinding whiteness wasconverted into iron grey. Over to the westward the sun was hidden, andthe horizon became threatening with a leaden bank of cloud. Thetemperature sank lower and the twilight was obliterated; night rusheddown.

  The dogs were now thoroughly worn out; only by continual lashingcould he keep them to their work. The roughness of the ice had mangledtheir feet; they marked out the trail which they traversed withcrimson dots of blood. He had hoped to reach Spurling's nextcamping-place before making another halt; but his rate of travellinghad grown slower, and already the advantage of Spurling's fouradditional huskies was beginning to tell. At last his dogs lay down intheir traces and refused to budge. He knew that he could force them togo no further.

  Using the sled as a shovel, he dug out a hollow, throwing up acircular mount to protect him from the wind, should it arise.Searching along the river-bank, he collected wood for a fire,sufficient to last him till morning. He set up his sled on end, like atombstone, for a head rest, and lay himself down with his feet towardthe blaze. The dogs gathered round him shivering, lying one on eitherside, striving to share the warmth of his body. He beat them off atfirst, but they always crept back; so at last, becoming languidlysorry for them, he let them stop there.

  He was terribly tired; his bones felt like bars of red-hot ironscorching their way through his flesh. The hardness of the ice beneaththe snow surface had racked his body in every joint. Every now andthen he would get up and throw some wood on the fire, and lie downagain, pulling his blanket over his head, folding his arms tightlyacross his chest, and gathering his knees up close to his body toconserve whatever heat he had. Though his body slept, never for asecond did his brain lose consciousness of the cold and of the senseof travel. Always he seemed to be pressing on, doggedly, wearily, withthe forest rushing past him on either hand. Spurling was in sight;sometimes he would halt, and jeeringly beckon to him. When he had comewithin speaking distance of him, he would start off again, leaving anarrow track of gold behind, for one of the sacks had burst.

  Gradually the most fatal feeling that any man can experience innorthland travel stole upon him--_he felt that he did not care_. Ifthe fire went out, what matter? He would not get up to relight it. IfSpurling were standing at his side, he would not disturb himself tolook at him. If Mordaunt were to come to him, well, he might perhapsturn round to look at her.

  He began to dream of her as he had seen her in the locket. They wereboth back in the old homeland. He was talking with her in an Englishgarden and a thrush was singing overhead. How long it was since he hadlistened to the song of any bird! Why, he had almost forgotten thatthere was such an ecstasy in the world. So exalted was he, that hepaid more attention to the thrush's song than to the words whichMordaunt said. Then she grew angry and shook him; but he sat theremotionless, looking up into the branches of the tree, away from her,watching the sun through the greenness of the leaves, and thequivering throat of the bird. She rose up and left him in indignation;then darkness fell. He tried to follow her, but had no power to movehimself. He tried to cry out, but his tongue was joined to the roof ofhis mouth. Making a great effort, he came to himself.

  When he pushed up his arms to throw off his covering, they seemed tobe lifting a weight of surpassing heaviness. He sat upright and triedto open his eyes; he was blind--he could see nothing. He groped tofeel his eyeballs with his hands; but his fingers were frozen--theycould feel nothing. He rose to his feet in panic and stood thereswaying, as though he had been set upon a dizzy pedestal which hadgrown to be part of himself, so that he could not move, but could onlybend.

  "I must keep quiet," he told himself; "I must keep quiet. If I getfrightened, I shall wander away to my death."

  When he tried to step forward his feet clapped together like solidblocks of ice. Very distantly, it seemed to him, he could make out alittle glow of red and feel a breath of warmness. Going down on hishands and knees, he crawled towards it. It was coming to meet him;they had met. He lay down bes
ide the redness and his panic left him.

  Then he became conscious that it was hurting him and he commenced tohate it. In struggling to get away from it, he found that he couldmove more freely. Sensation had come into his hands; raising them hefelt his eyes. His great terror was not of death, but that he shouldbe forever sightless. He ran his fingers across his eyes and foundthat they were covered with flesh--that his eyelids were frozentogether. With his two hands he forced them apart, and gazed abouthim. Wherever he looked there was endless space with nothing to deterhim, stretching away on every side. The moon, in her last quarter, wasbarely visible--a mere shadow of silver in the sky; so indistinct washis vision, that it seemed to him as though he were looking at theimage of the firmament reflected in water, rather than at the starsthemselves. Yet, in the certain renewal of his sight, there came tohim a gladness which he had not known for many a day.

  When he turned toward the fire, he perceived the cause of his mishap:he had overslept himself and it was nearly out. By the way in which itwas scattered abroad and the smouldering of the fur which was abouthis throat and arms, he guessed that in his blindness and instinctivedesire for warmth, he had thrown himself upon its ashes. Havinggathered what remained of it together, he flung on more fuel and setto work to chafe his extremities, restoring circulation. He was toochilled to think of attempting sleep again that night: so, when hislimbs were sufficiently thawed out, he renewed his journey.

  The atmosphere was wonderfully clear, but there was in the air a senseof evil and foreboding. Even the dogs seemed to be aware of it, for asthey ran, turning their heads from side to side to see which way thewhip was coming that they might dodge it, there was a look offoreknowledge and terror in their eyes which warned Granger.

  As the dawn was spreading, he was startled by a long-drawn sigh, whichtravelled from horizon to horizon and died out. The dogs heard it, andsitting down abruptly in their tracks nearly overturned the sled.Gazing away to the northward, he saw a shadowy cloud arise, whirl anddrift languidly over the tree-tops and fall back again out of sight.He lashed at the huskies, and with difficulty set them going. But thesled drew heavily, as though it were being dragged through sand, forthe snow was gritty as the seashore: so intense was the cold that allslipperiness had gone out of it. He fastened a line to the load andwent on ahead, breaking the trail and hauling with all his strength.

  Before long the sigh was heard again; but this time it came nearer,and columns of white smoke rose up and danced in the river-bed. Thenhe knew that he was in for a _poudre_ day--the day which of all othersthe winter voyageur holds in most dread. While such weather lasts,even the hardiest traveller will refuse to leave his fire; for heknows that before long every land-mark will be blotted out, that hisvery dogs will refuse to obey him, and that to-morrow, when the windhas dropped and the snow has settled, the chances are that the sunwill find him with a quiet face turned upward to the sky, immobile andstatuesque as if carved from Parian marble.

  Leaving Spurling's trail, he ascended the bank and worked along by theforest's edge, that so he might gain shelter. With every fresh puff ofbreath from the north, the coiling snakes of snow grew larger,writhing across the tree-tops and pouring tumultuously into theriver-bed, where they rioted and fought till the day grew dark and itwas difficult to see the next step. Respiration became painful, butGranger was determined not to halt, for this was one of the accidentswhich would help him to come up with Spurling. Feeling his way fromtree to tree, he struggled on. His head became dizzy with the effort.His body, for all its coldness, broke out into a chilly sweat. He wasinvaded by a terrible inertia, so that he was half-minded to lie downand go to sleep; but the thought that Spurling had halted somewhere,perhaps only twenty miles ahead, and was losing time, drew him on.Presently his dogs sat down again, lifting their voices above thestorm in a dismal wailing.

  He cut their traces and went forward, dragging the sled himself. Theyfollowed him a few paces behind, slinking through the darkness withtheir heads down and their tails between their legs. They reminded himof the timber-wolf on the Forbidden River; there were times when,catching a partial glimpse of them, he could have sworn that they hadbeen joined by a third.

  By midday the wind died down, the atmosphere began to clear and thesnow to settle. Returning to the river he sought in vain forSpurling's tracks; either he had passed him in the blackness or theyhad been obliterated. He would know the truth in the next six hoursfor, if he were still ahead, he would come to his abandoned camp.

  Towards sunset he halted and lit a fire; he intended to travel throughthe night and was in need of rest. He had fed his huskies and wasstooping above the flames, cooking himself some bacon, when he raisedhis eyes to the west. For a minute he crouched, gazing with thefascination of horror at what he saw taking place apparently not morethan fifty yards away, but with such clearness that it might not havebeen more than ten paces. Where ten seconds before there had beennothing in view but the straight length of river and the snow-cappedforest, dripping with icicles, there was now, hanging above the treesface-downwards, anchored to the sky by crimson threads, the invertedimage of a portage, leading up from the right-hand bank of a river,hedged in on either side with a row of crosses which marked graves ofbygone voyageurs. Midway in the path was a little cabin, which hadbeen set up for the shelter of bestormed travellers by employees ofthe Hudson Bay. Granger recognised the place; it was Dead Rat Portage,and must be at least fifteen miles from where he was now standing andten from God's Voice.

  Out of the cabin, on his hands and knees, crawled a man. He wasevidently badly frost-bitten, for he tried to drag himself upright bythe door-post, but failed miserably, falling forward along the ground.As he lay there, he turned toward Granger a face which wasexpressionless as if it had been covered with a mask of waxen leprosy;it was frozen solid, as were his feet and hands. Granger knew, more bythe clothes than the ghastly features, that the man was Spurling.

  He seemed now to have given up hope of standing erect, and began tomove painfully on all fours across the snow to where a log of rottenwood was lying. Having reached it, he tried to raise it, but there wasnot the strength in his hands. He tried to fasten his teeth upon it,to drag it back with him; but his jaws seemed paralysed. Then he creptback to the cabin.

  Soon he came out again, and, having reached the log, commenced tolight it with a match. At first it refused to ignite, but when he hadpushed some broken twigs under it, it burst into flame. He bent overit hungrily, drawing so near that Granger expected to see his clothingcatch fire.

  Then, as he watched, he saw a second figure. It was that of a man,dressed precisely as he himself was dressed, and his back was turnedtowards him so that he could not discern his face; he carried in hishand an axe. He moved stealthily on snowshoes, dodging from tree totree, lest he should be discovered by the crouching man. His intentionwas so evidently evil, that Granger cried out a warning to saveSpurling. Murder, when watched in this way, was so brutal that, thoughhe himself had planned to do the deed, his whole moral naturerevolted against it now. He cried again, but his warning was notheard. He wished that the man with the axe would turn his head, thathe might see his face.

  A horrible, grotesque suspicion was growing up within him; he fanciedthat he knew the man--that he had seen him before in the Klondike,_that he was himself_. Spurling, quite unaware of his danger, washolding out his hands to the flames; it was not until the man wasclose behind him that be heard his footsteps and turned his head. Hisface was frozen; the frost had bound him hand and foot, making himdefenceless, so that he could hardly stir; the only means of appeal hehad was the expression in his eyes.

  Granger thought that he saw that expression--the cornered soulgesticulating, shrieking for mercy from the living eyes in thehalf-dead face. When the murderer raised his axe, he saw the soul'spitiful cowardice and how it shrank. The axe came crashing down. Therewas no need to strike twice; he fell limply backward, throwing hisarms out wide--and there was an end of El Dorado and of all his dreamsof avarice. br />
  The murderer, as if suddenly afraid of his own handiwork, withoutturning his head, hurried on across the portage through the forest,and was quickly lost to sight.

  Scenting the blood, the four gray huskies, one by one, came out fromthe cabin, where they seemed to have been asleep, and the othersfollowed them. They came slowly over to where their tyrant was lying,and sniffed his body. They did it cautiously, for as yet they had notlost their fear of him; he might awake and belabour them fordisturbing his last long rest.

  In falling his legs had shot from under him into the fire, scatteringthe embers, so he lay full length, with the red gash in his forehead,his arms spread out like a cross, and his face, in the inverted image,turned earthwards, gazing down on Granger and the Last Chance Riverwith startled, unseeing eyes.

  The mirage began to fade and float cloudwards, drifting up-river abovethe tree-tops higher and higher, till it vanished in the west.

  Of all that he had witnessed Granger had heard no sound--there lay thechief terror of it. Like the handwriting on the wall in Babylon, ithad taken place in silence. The crime which he had so oftencontemplated, and planned, had been transacted before his eyes; theperson who had done the deed had kept his back turned toward him, butin his attire was strangely like himself--and instead of beinggratified he was filled with loathing and hatred for the slayer.

  In the person of another he had seen the vileness which he had beenseeking for himself, and was horrified. He knew that, had he had hischance, he might have taken Spurling's life in just some such way asthat--he had imagined how he would do it many times. And now that itwas accomplished, he was sick with pity for the murdered man.

  To one thing he had instantly made up his mind, that, if this shouldprove to be more than a fancy of delirium--the miraged portrayal of avillainy which had actually occurred--he would track the assassin ashe had tracked Spurling, till the last ounce of his strength failedhim, that Spurling might be avenged. Perhaps, in the avenging he hopedto clear himself in his own sight of his imagined share in the crime.

  He felt as though the deed had been the result of his own projectedhatred, and that he himself was the real murderer. When he rememberedthe appearance of the man whom he now followed, it seemed like goingin pursuit of his own self.