Snow-blind
after Oogly, and nobody else. And he’ll be as safe living with the owls
as he would be in jail.” Kit turned to the Esquimau. “You afraid to
sleep where the night birds roost?” he asked.
Oogly shook his head scornfully. “Hellno!” he declared.
“You expecting to stay around here?” the girl asked in a tone that was
almost too careless.
“Sure,” said Kit. “I’ve got to try to find the body of Oogly’s victim.”
Diane looked at him somberly. She knew perfectly well that his staying
had nothing to do with the dead Yellow Knife. Her eyes measured him with
a challenging hardness.
“I may not see you again,” she informed him. “If a chance comes along to
get out of this country, I’m going. This place is getting on my nerves
frightfully.”
Kitchener regarded her skeptically. She wasn’t likely to leave until she
could get into touch with her uncle, and the two of them had recovered
the hidden gold-sledge. That’s what she was here for. And Kit had seen
enough of her inflexible will to feel certain that she would not run
away and leave her errand unaccomplished. He would meet her again,
undoubtedly, and their next encounter was not apt to be so agreeable for
either of them.
He shrugged his shoulders. “If you need me for anything in the meantime
you’ll know where to find me.”
“If I ever want anything from you,” she told him stiffly, “it’ll be on
account of Mayauk or the baby.”
“Send if you want me,” he repeated.
The short-lived December day reached its noontide and waned as the
pallid, heatless sun crossed the short arc and set beneath the
white-topped forest. There followed the brief, breathless moments of the
gloaming; then the stars broke with electric brilliancy through the
frozen night, a thin, wan moon sailed into the sky, and savage, prowling
life began to awaken among the dark coverts and underwoods.
Kit and Oogly made back packs of the few belongings that necessity
advised them to take, they said good-by to the women, and quietly left
the cabin.
The forest was full of noises, ice-stiff branches cracking of their own
weight, the babble of the brook between the rifts of ice, the groan and
strain of floes piling up under pressure, the long-drawn howl of a
distant wolf, the horribly plaintive cries of owls arousing themselves
after heavy sleep. There were other sounds, small, furtive stirrings,
not so easily identified, that might have meant anything. For all Kit
knew there might be twenty Yellow Knives hidden around the clearing.
He kept close to the brook, and Oogly followed in the silence of his fur
boots. In a few seconds the two men reached the woods. No hostile
shadows rose up to intercept them. They plunged into the nearest thicket
and worked their way into the deepest tangles of the Great Owl woods.
Along the creek and at the edges of the clearing the glimmering of the
moon touched the great columns of the firs, but in the denser woods not
a ray of light penetrated the interlacing of snow-sheeted branches. But
they did not need the power of sight to know when they stood under the
roosting places of the owls. The dead, rank air about them pulsated with
soft, feathery movements, and without seeing they knew that seeing eyes
were looking down at them.
In a hollow of ground between two enormous tree stubs they dropped their
meager equipment and made preparations for the night. It promised to
turn extremely cold before morning, and they would need a fire. Kit
didn’t think there was a chance in the world that any Indian would
venture into this owl-haunted pit in the darkness, or even in the
daytime for that matter. Oogly gathered a few sticks of down-wood and
some dry twigs for kindling. Kitchener struck a match and applied the
light.
He was on his knees as the fire ignited and leaped into flame. Shadows
and shapes emerged in the gloom and wavered drunkenly around the dancing
firelight. One of the owls scooped past his head so close that he felt
the rustle of pinions, and was gone again as mysteriously as though it
had dissolved in the air. Kit was about to stand up and stretch his
tired muscles to the warmth, and then he changed his mind.
There was a sound behind him like a hatchet driven into a block of wood.
He looked around slowly, and then tumbled and rolled away on all fours
in his haste to get outside the range of the firelight. A two-pronged
fishing-head spear was sticking in the tree behind the fire, quivering
there in arrested flight.
Kitchener bumped into Oogly and carried the Esquimau with him, tumbling
through the brush and into a hole where an uprooted tree had once stood.
It was a good crater to hide in, and they crouched together and peered
back towards the mounting fire.
Somebody had hurled the fishing spear at Kit. He could see the double
prongs buried almost to the haft in the trunk of the old fir. The shaft
was pointed towards the brook. It must have come from that direction.
Thrown with greater strength and ill-will than accuracy. A few inches
lower and Kit would have been pinned to the tree like a beetle to a
cork.
The intended assassin had moved as quietly as the owls. Kit had had no
inkling of another presence in the jungle of trees. And now, if he
hadn’t seen the spear, he never would have dreamed that anybody was
hidden near by.
He reacted with anger. “You go that way, Oogly,” he whispered and
pointed towards the brook. “I’ll circle around. We’ll get him.”
Oogly had said himself that he was a good man in an affray. Kit could
have asked none better. The Esquimau was not flurried, and he was not
afraid. He owned a trade gun, but for close-in work he preferred his
short, heavy hunting spear. He reached the weapon and drifted away as
unobtrusively as the smoke from the fire.
Kit slipped behind the nearest tree and stole around from the opposite
direction. He moved with utmost stealth, down through the alders that
lined the edge of the brook. And then he stopped. The snow had been
shaken off the branches near his head and a furrow was piled up
underfoot. Somebody had crept through the underwood at this point. For a
moment he waited. There was nobody in sight now, no alarming sound.
He pulled off his mitten and blew his breath on his chilly fingers. Then
he screwed up his courage and snapped the button of his flash lamp.
There was a snowshoe trail in the fresh snow. Instantly he doused the
light. He had seen enough to drop him crouching, with every nerve at
quivering tension. The raquette prints were waffle-webbed.
CHAPTER XVII
VANISHING FOOTPRINTS
Kitchener recognized the snowshoe tracks with a shock of surprise. A
spear is not a white man’s weapon, and he had supposed of course that
one of the disgruntled Yellow Knives had thrown it. It hadn’t occurred
to him that his attacker might be Hell Bent.
For the first time Kit was brought to a full appreciation of his own
danger. This Bent was a subtle and crafty man. He had outwitted the wily
Jerry, and he had just missed his present attack by inches. It was an
artful scheme. He must have been hanging on the outskirts of the
clearing when Kit drove off the Indians. When Kit and Oogly left the
cabin he probably trailed along close at their heels. He had obtained a
native fishing spear somewhere, and he used it instead of a rifle. If he
had spiked his victim to the tree the police would have hunted for a
Yellow Knife, never suspecting that the killer might be a white man. Kit
had escaped this time only by the merest good luck.
He realized that if he hoped to go on living he would have to move in
the future with the utmost caution. Death might be lurking in ambush
almost anywhere in the dark wilderness, at any moment.
The man had faded away into the gloom, but he could not escape from the
betraying line of snowshoe tracks. Kit did not dare to use his lamp
again, but by feeling the snow with his bare fingers it was easy enough
to follow the departing prints. Patiently he groped his way along the
trail, which curved out of the denser forest through clumps of
snow-sheeted alders and willows, and ended finally at the top of the
steep creek embankment.
The moon cast a cold, sickly radiance along the wooded shore opposite,
but on this side a deep shadow hid the ice-bound stream. Bent must have
dropped over the edge of the sheer embankment, but whether he had
followed the ledges upstream or downstream, or was hiding below at the
bottom of the slope, Kit had no means of knowing. This might be a trap.
As he hesitated he saw something rise up on the bank to blot out the
face of the low-riding moon. A short, stumpy figure silhouetted boldly
against the sky--Kit’s reflex towards his gun checked as he scrutinized
the apparition. Nobody but Oogly could be shaped like that.
Watching, he saw the figure suddenly start up in an erect posture. Two
hands grasping a spear flung themselves above the man’s head, and for
twenty seconds he stood thus, stark and motionless, like the statue of
some mythological figure posed in a battle scene. His glance was fixed
rigidly on something in the brook course below him. Kit’s lips were
gripped in his teeth. He expected any instant to see the spear go. But
for some reason it never left the warrior’s hands.
Slowly the tense figure relaxed, the upraised arms dropped and lowered
the weapon. Oogly turned his head and saw Kit. He looked hard for a
moment, and then tucked the spear under his arm and sauntered back along
the embankment to meet his companion.
“Did’n’ kill um,” he announced as Kit moved towards him.
“What?”
Oogly’s wrinkled smile was visible in the moonlight. “Man he come along
down by me,” he explained. “No goin’ murderum anybody.” He inflated his
chest on which proudly glinted the tin “murder medal.” “Let um going on
past along the water.”
Kit regarded the Esquimau quizzically for a space, and then he returned
Oogly’s grin. Evidently Bent had passed up the creek within spearing
range of the Esquimau hunter, who for just that moment was tempted to
let fly. Then he remembered his promise and restrained himself. He
hadn’t wanted to lose his badge. So Hell Bent was still a living menace
instead of a dead man with a spear in his ribs.
On the night of Jerry’s killing Kit would have shot Bent down at sight.
But that hour of madness had passed. He wanted his man alive. Later he
might exact the full measure for his brother’s death, but first he
wanted the truth about that bloody day years ago. Bent probably was the
only one left who could tell the story. If Kit got his hands on the man
he would have it out of him. He’d wring him out like a sponge.
“You’ve done well,” he told Oogly. “No more murders.”
The Esquimau swelled visibly. He had been a good boy.
“Did he see you?” asked Kit.
Oogly shook his head and pointed upstream. Bent had hurried on his way
without knowing how closely death had brushed him by.
The old cabin stood on the creek bank up that direction. The white man
and the Esquimau went forward, hugging the line of alders. Not far ahead
they struck a place along the embankment where the new snow had been
disturbed. Man tracks ascending from the creek bottom. Waffle-webs had
climbed out.
The trail turned through the creek brakes directly towards the clearing.
They followed as carefully as cats in a burr patch. Across the clearing,
among the stumps, straight to the cabin--the waffle-meshes had left
their ominous marks before the closed door. The frozen moon gave just
enough light to see by. Kit’s breathing had grown painfully sharp. It
looked as though he had his man if he were able to take him.
It was dark inside, quiet. Kit spoke to Oogly. “Knock. Tell ’em you want
to see Mayauk.” His voice was just audible.
The obedient Oogly thumped with his fur-mittened fist.