CHAPTER XXII
THE BLIZZARD
Now that he was nearing God's Voice, it was necessary that he shouldtravel more cautiously and keep a sharp lookout ahead. At any momenthe might come in sight of a Company's trapper, either sitting beneaththe trees by his camp-fire or racing down-river between the tallbanks, following his sled. He might be recognised, and recognitionwould lead to his arrest. Whatever happened afterwards, he desired hisfreedom for yet a little while, so he went carefully. In the course ofthe night he passed by one wigwam; but the Indian was evidently away,for no dog rose up to herald his approach. If the squaw was there, shedid not rouse; he got by unnoticed.
Hoping against hope, he argued with himself, trying to believe thatSpurling was alive. He told himself that this had been a vision sentto him from God to turn him aside from his crime. He had gazed uponhimself as he would have become, and his soul had revolted at thesight.
As he ran on, swearing at his huskies, urging them forward with thelash, he offered up to God many fervid thanks for the mercy which Hehad shown him, hoping that by these means, even though the calamityhad happened, he might shame his Maker by his gratitude into puttingback the hands of time, and so restoring the murdered man to life. Atlast by the constant reiteration of the thing which he desired, hebegan to take it for granted that his prayer was answered. Spurlingwas not dead; he was alive, and he was going to ask his forgivenessfor the evil which he had thought against him.
He put together the words which he would say to him when they met, andthe gestures he would use to make his words convincing. He repeatedthem over many times that he might retain them in his memory. Thensomething would happen to take his attention away, one of the dogswould be shirking or the sled would have overturned, and, when he cameback to the words which he had planned, he would be thrown into afrenzy, finding that they had slipped his mind.
Though he was desperately in earnest over this game at which heplayed, he was aware all the while of its unreality--that it was but agame. His sanity warned him that what he had seen had truly happened,and that the man was dead. This was not the first occasion upon whichhe had seen a mirage when the snow was down and the land was white.There had been times before, when, at the moment of daybreak orsunset, he had witnessed strange freaks of inverted forest and riverhovering in the sky. Once he had seen an Indian ten miles away,attacking a wolf which had been caught by the leg in a steel trap,belonging to another man. So distinctly had he seen his features anddress that, at a later day, when he had brought in his winter catch offurs to exchange, he had recognised him; and when he had offered himthe wolf-skin, had accused him of the theft. Moreover, he knew that,whether the sight which he had witnessed was mirage or fancy, he didnot deserve the leniency for which he prayed. He had had his chanceand warning three times already: once in the Klondike; once after thearrival of Spurling, when God wrote upon the ice; and once at thebend, when in the company of Pere Antoine he had mistaken the body ofStrangeways for that of Spurling.
Then there was the appearance of the murderer to be accounted for, andhis motive in slaying. He had been smaller in stature than himself, ashad been the creature at the Shallows, but he had had the samepeculiarities of clothing and was very much alike. Yet he strove todrive down all his doubts and to believe the thing which hedesired--that the phenomenon was the result of imagination, and thatSpurling was not dead.
He made small progress in his travelling, for his body was worn out byprevious hardships. Sometimes he took over two hours to go threemiles; it was long past midnight when Dead Rat Portage came in sight.
At this point the river made a large curve to the southward andbroadened out into rapids; the portage was eight hundred yards inlength and saved voyageurs six miles, crossing the neck of land by anarrow trail and picking up the Last Chance River on the other side.In summer time the York boats were unloaded here, and dragged acrosson rollers, the freight being carried on men's backs. As he drew near,his hope sank; the place looked so gloomy and forbidding. There werestories told about it and of how it had won its name, which might wellmake any man afraid. An old fort, established by the French at thetime when they disputed the possession of Keewatin with PrinceRupert's Company, had once stood there; it was said that some of thecrosses which fringed the trail marked spots where its defenders layburied. However, it was not the memory of the past, but the knowledgeof what might now await him, which caused him to hesitate.
On the river's bank, where the portage commenced, was a cleared space,from which a path led round the cabin and tunnelled into the forest.As he eased his sled out of the river-bed, he caught the smell ofburning, and, when he had topped the bank, he saw the glow of analmost extinguished fire. The overhanging trees, casting their networkof shadows across the snow, prevented him from distinguishing at thatdistance any object that lay beneath them. While he halted, halfinclined to wait till daybreak before proceeding further with hisinvestigation, he was startled by the sound of footsteps. They cametoward him very cautiously and there were many of them. He saw theglint of eyes in the darkness, shining out and disappearing among thecrosses. He tried to count them; as far as he could make out therewere six pairs. Then he called them softly by name, and there cametoward him Spurling's four grey huskies and the two of his own team,which had been taken.
And still he clung desperately to his hope and would not allow himselfto believe that in the shadow of the trees, a dozen yards from wherehe was standing, the man whom he had set out to kill was lyingmurdered. He whispered his name, not daring to speak louder. When noanswer was returned, he rallied his retreating faith by saying, "He issleeping. I must approach him gently. If he awakes and hears me, hemay think I am his enemy and escape me."
Leaving his dogs, he stole toward the sparks of fire. Although hestill denied the mirage, telling himself that what he had seen wasfancied, he directed his steps by that which he had witnessed in thesky.
Drawing nearer, he made out the smouldering log; cowardice promptedhim to procrastinate, he crept round behind it. The air was heavy withthe smell of scorching leather. His eyes growing more accustomed tothe shadow, he saw the figure of a man, lying on the snow with hisarms stretched out in the shape of a cross and his moccasined feetprotruding above the glowing ashes. The last vestige of hope left him;he knew that Spurling was dead. With certainty, his power of decisionreturned; he still had a purpose to live for--to avenge this death.
Having pulled the body aside and heaped branches against the log, herekindled the fire. In the light which it cast he could see theblurred trail of Spurling, where he had crawled to and from the cabin;also he could see the tracks which the slayer's snowshoes had left ashe strode away through the forest following the portage. He stoopedand examined them. By so doing he learnt a new fact--that the man whohad done the deed was of Indian blood, for the toes of his footprintsinclined to turn inwards, and in carrying his feet forward he had keptthem closer together than does a white man; also he judged that he waslightly built, for the snow beneath his steps was not much crushed.
So Beorn was not the culprit, nor was his phantom-self from theKlondike. He thought of Eyelids; but Eyelids was a tall man and hisstride ought to have been longer. That which he had witnessed in themirage led him to believe that the act had been premeditated, andtherefore had some strong motive; either it had been done for thereward or for the sake of theft.
He looked round for Spurling's sled and found it in the cabin; it wasstill loaded--the gold had not been touched. He was puzzled. If theftwas not the object, why had the body been left? Without its productionor some part of it that was recognisable, the thousand dollars wouldnot be awarded. The best way to solve the mystery was to follow up themurderer; and, if he were to do that, there was no time to lose.
Dragging the remains into the cabin, he made fast the door, that thewolves might not destroy them; he would care for them on his homewardjourney--if he survived to come back. Harnessing the four grey huskiesinto his sled, since they were the freshest, he set out
across theportage. Turning his head, as he entered the forest, he took one lastlook at the deserted camp. The fire, burning brightly, with no one tosit by it, added the final touch to the general aspect of melancholy.Wailing through the darkness the huskies wandered; and in thebackground, when the flames shot up, appeared the crosses, bending onetoward another, which marked the sleeping-places of men who, yearssince, had lived and suffered, and obtained their rest.
Beneath the trees, the gloom was so heavy that he could see nothing;but on coming out on to the banks of the river on the other side heagain picked up the murderer's trail. It led up the Last Chance in asouth-westerly direction towards God's Voice, which was only ten milesdistant. He had begun to take it for granted that the man was a HudsonBay employee, hurrying toward the fort to claim the reward, when thetracks, branching off to the left, climbed out of the river andplunged into a low-lying, thickly wooded wilderness, striking duesouth.
In Keewatin the rivers are the only highways; to leave them even insummer time, if you have no guide and are not a man born in thedistrict, is extremely dangerous; to do so in winter when, after everyprecaution has been taken, travel remains precarious, is to courtalmost certain death. For a moment Granger hesitated. He examined theprints of the snowshoes and saw that they were very recent. The manmust have waited somewhere, and seen him coming. He must know now thathe was being followed, and could not be far ahead. "Well, it's deathwhatever happens," thought Granger; "to go on to God's Voice is death;to return to Murder Point is death. I'd just as soon die by this man'shand, trying to avenge Spurling, as one cold morning in Winnipeg witha rope about my neck."
The day rose late and cloudy. The sun did not show itself. The skyweighed down upon the tree-tops, as if too heavy to support itself.Presently large flakes of snow, the size of feathers, drifted throughthe air, making a gentle rustling as they fell. Granger pressed onmore hurriedly, for he feared that, if he dropped too far behind, thesnow would cover up all traces of the man, and so he would escape him.Sometimes he fancied that he could hear him going on ahead, for everynow and then a twig would snap. In the heat of his pursuit he took noaccount of direction.
About midday he halted; of late all sounds had grown rarer and thesnow had thickened, causing even his own footprints to appear blurreda few seconds after they had been made. Of the trail which hefollowed he could see nothing himself, trusting to his huskies' senseof smell to lead him aright.
Soon he grew strangely nervous, for he thought that he heard thecrunch of snowshoes coming up behind. He persuaded himself that it wasimagination, until his dogs, swinging round in a half-circle, began totravel back in a direction parallel to the route they had alreadytraversed. He paused and listened again; behind him he coulddistinctly hear the sound of something stirring. Then he knew that hewas no longer the pursuer.
His blood froze in his veins, and he began to lose confidence. Herealised that if the murderer knew the district and was moving in acircle purposely, he was doing so in order that he might lure him tohis death. Abandoning all thought of pursuit, his sole endeavourbecame to regain the river-bed. He lashed his dogs, urging themforward to the limit of their strength; but he came to nothing thatwas familiar; and, when he paused for breath, he could always hear thesnowshoes following.
Then he awoke to the knowledge that he was lost. His first sensationwas of blank bewilderment, producing in him an utter loss of memory.He strove to quiet himself, but his will-power refused to operate. Whohe was, and why he was there, he could not remember; of two thingsonly was he conscious, that he was pursued by something that was evil,and that he was lost.
A state of chaos reigned within him, which was soon succeeded by anall-pervading terror. He must escape somehow to safety, to a placewhere there were men. He longed to dash on somewhere, on and on; buthe was paralysed by his utter inability to think consecutively or tochoose out any particular direction. He began to see horriblecontorted shapes about him, and to imagine modes of death which werestill more horrible. He might die of starvation, he might die ofthirst, he might die of frost; but his worst fear was of somethingwhich he would never see, which would steal softly up, when he was toocold to turn his head, and strike him from behind. He circled roundand round to avoid the blow; but he felt that, as he moved, the thingmoved keeping pace with him, so that, for all his alertness, it wasalways behind his back.
In a way in which he had never desired it before, he longed for humancompanionship--just to look once more upon a living face. And to allthese fears and yearnings there was the undertow of an addedhorror--the terror lest he should become insane. He burst into apassion of weeping; as the tears fell they froze upon his face. Theair was thick with snow which the rising wind drifted about, drivingit into curious and fantastic shapes. Had he been more quiet, he wouldhave known that his only wise plan was to lie down until the blizzardwas past. It would bury him, but as a covering it would act as ablanket to keep him warm. The blizzard seemed to him to be hemming himin, building up about him a shifting wall through which the pursuercould attack him unseen.
Always he was conscious of the pursuer's presence; always he could seethe picture of Spurling's uplifted face and the pleading that was inhis eyes as the assailant, with his back turned towards the onlooker,poised the axe above his head. That he might not share that fate hebroke away into the greyness, tripping over snow ridges, falling intodrifts, and bruising his body against the trunks of trees in themadness of his flight. His huskies added to his panic by followinghim.
There were times when he ran so far ahead that he could neither seenor hear them; but, when he halted, panting, they would emerge and laythemselves down at his side. He hated them; they were sinister in hiseyes. Had they not brought Spurling from Winnipeg, and had not theiryellow-faced leader been the cause of Strangeways' death?
The wind, rising higher, shrieked among the branches. He wandered on,neither knowing nor caring where he went, for he had lost all sense oflocality or time. There were intervals during which he must havedreamed and slept, for he passed down an endless street of tallhouses, built in the English fashion, and the blinds were up and itwas nightfall. On the windows danced the light of fires, burning onthe hearths inside; and sometimes he could see the faces of childrenlooking out at him. He held up his blue hands at them, making signsthat they should let him in that he might warm himself; but they shooktheir heads mischievously, and ran away and laughed.
After one of these experiences, more real to him than the others, hecame to himself. Surely that was the sound of music and dancing thatcame to him above the cry of the storm. He waited for a lull andlistened, then followed the direction of the sound. As he drew nearer,he caught the thud of moccasined feet beating time upon a boardedfloor, and snatches of the tune which the violin was playing.Something loomed up out of the darkness to meet him. He held out hishands to force it from him, and drove them against a door. Then heknew that he had arrived at God's Voice.
He was half inclined to knock; at least they would not threaten himand drive him away this time as they had done in the previous winter.What was more likely to happen was that the man who opened to him,recognising him, would seize him by the throat, drag him inside andquickly slam the door. He would push him before him across the squaretill he came to the room where the trappers were dancing, where, inall probability, the factor was. And Robert Pilgrim when he saw him,wagging his red beard at him, would shout, "Ha, so you heard mewhistle, and have come like a dog!"
He drew himself upright and stepped back from the gateway. No, hecould not endure that. Any death was preferable to the price that hewould have to pay for such shelter.
He worked his way along the wall till he stood beneath the windowwhere the fort was assembled. It was a comfort to him to hear againthe sound of voices. He listened to the fiddling and recognised it asthat of Sandy McQuean, the half-breed son of a famous Orkney man. Hehad learnt his art from his father. They were all Scotch airs that heplayed. He could sing, when he chose, with a Highland accent, and hadc
aught the knack of imbuing what he sang with an intolerable pathos.
The stamping of feet had ceased, but the violinist wandered on.Presently a new melody began to emerge from the improvisations, and aman's voice rose above the storm. The words he sang were _The Flowerso' the Forest_:
"I've seen the smiling Of fortune beguiling; I've felt all its favours, and found its decay; Sweet was its blessing, Kind its caressing; But now 'tis fled--fled far away."
Granger shifted his feet uneasily as he listened, and half-turned togo.
As he did so, he found that someone was standing close behind him. Hedid not see his face, but one glance was enough to warn him. He dodgedand ran to the river. The man was following him again. He took thedirection which was open to him, and set out down-stream, returning tothe portage.
The wind was dead against him, blinding his eyes and choking him withsnow. He bowed his head and struggled on. He made a brave effort, buthe knew that he was slowly freezing. His flesh was icy and his bonesseemed heavy, weighing him down. The blood halted, and leapt forward,and halted in his veins and arteries, as though there were frequentstoppages past which it had to squeeze its way; he could hear itsurging.
Gradually his physical pain grew less and, as it did so, his mindattained an unwonted clearness. He had somewhat the same experience asis said to come to drowning men in their last moments ofconsciousness. He was able to review his life as a whole and justly,attributing to each separate action its proper importance, and shareof praise or blame. He realised that his hiding from Robert Pilgrim onHuskies' Island, journey to the Forbidden River, and pursuit ofSpurling, had been one long series of mistakes, each one tending tomake him appear more guilty of Strangeways' death. He owned that allhis life had been spent in avoiding his most obvious duties, and insetting himself hard tasks in exchange, which were impossible ofaccomplishment. His first duty had been towards his mother, and he hadabandoned it nominally for the sake of a childish pledge, really forthe glamour of El Dorado. His more recent duty had been to fulfil hisobligations to his half-breed wife, especially now that she was aboutto bear him a child; he had forsaken her for his old dream's sake andfor the sake of a revenge which he had persuaded himself was noble.
Reviewing these facts, he promised himself that, if ever he were givenagain the power of choice, he would return to Murder Point and livefor her. Another matter became clear in his mind; that, whenSpurling's body was discovered, if the man who had done the deed didnot own up, he would be accused of the murder--and it _would_ bemurder, for it would be thought that he had killed him not in thecause of justice, but out of private spite. Morally he knew that hewas the culprit and deserved to be hanged, for he had only avoidedbeing guilty through the accident of having been forestalled in hiscrime.
He stumbled and fell full length in a drift. He did not try to rise.He had no fear of dying; his only desire was to get warm now. Hepressed nearer to the snow and closed his eyes, and gradually lostconsciousness.
He was awakened by someone rubbing his face vigorously. He resentedthe interference; he wanted the rest. Once he opened his eyes, and wasblinded by a roaring fire. As the warmth spread through him and hiscirculation returned, his body became very painful, as though it werebeing pierced by millions of red-hot needles. The agony of it broughthim to himself.
A man was bending over him, whose face he could not see, for the hoodwas fastened before it, leaving only his eyes visible. By his dress heknew that he was his pursuer and Spurling's slayer. Again he wasimpressed with the fancy, not so much by his proportions which weresmaller, but by his clothing, that he was very like himself. Languidlyhe awaited an opportunity to get another glimpse of his eyes; somehowthey were familiar, he knew them. Then, because the man, murdererthough he was, was saving his life, he turned away his head. He wouldnot see anything which, in a weaker moment, might tempt him to giveinformation in order that he might save himself.
The man, seeing that he was recovered and safe to be left, without aword of explanation glided off into the darkness.
Granger sat up and looked after him; he was puzzled by the memory ofthose eyes. He ran through all the list of his acquaintance, and couldnot place them. The blizzard had now subsided, and the stars shoneoverhead. He must have lain unconscious for some time before beingfound. All around him, and as far as eye could reach, the snow lay inshort choppy waves, which took on the appearance of motion by reasonof the shadows. As he watched, something lifted up its head above aridge, and he saw that it was one of the huskies. Either his team hadfollowed him, or the man had brought them with him. Rising to hisfeet, on the other side of the fire he saw his sled. He felt hungry,and going towards it was about to get out some provisions, when hefound that that was unnecessary; in the ashes a can of black tea wasbrewing and some bacon had been left, also a bundle of wood sufficientto last him till morning. He spent the remainder of the night there,and at daybreak continued his journey to the portage.
When he reached the cabin and pushed open the door, he found that itwas occupied. An Indian, of the Sucker tribe, whom he had previouslymet, was sitting there. Looking round he saw that Spurling's body wasin the same place and untouched, but that the load upon the sled hadbeen rifled.
When he had offered him some tobacco, the Indian, jerking his head inthe direction of the body, asked, "You kill him?"
Granger signed denial. The Indian looked doubtful. Then he said,pointing to the old tracks in the cabin which his snowshoes had left,"All the same, those your tracks."
Granger was in no mood for arguing, so he nodded assent. The Indianwas silent for a while. Presently he rose to his feet and harnessed inhis team. As he passed out of the door, he said, "You bad man. All thesame, you kill him."
Granger followed him out and saw him crossing the portage towardsGod's Voice. He scraped a hole in the snow and buried Spurling.
On turning his attention to the sled, he saw that the Indian had takeneverything except the gold. He poured out the dust and nuggets aboveSpurling's grave; it was the thing which he had loved most in life, assome men love goodness and flowers. To both Spurling and himself itwas worthless now; but it was the only offering which he had.
Leaving the mound sparkling white and yellow in the sunshine, hestruck the trail down the Last Chance River, returning to MurderPoint.