Snow-blind
fall; writhing sinews and muscles in Kit’s clutch and a fist trying to
pound his face: everything was dreadfully mixed in his brain, events and
their sequence of happening.
He remembered the feel of the hot steel in his hand, but how he got the
gun he did not remember. Afterwards he found torn flesh under his nails;
but at that moment he only knew that the butt had settled down in his
fist and he was looking everywhere and softly crying because he could
not see well enough to shoot.
Gliding snowshoes moved off hurriedly in the dusk. Everybody in the
wilderness would have heard by this time that Kit was deadly with a
six-shooter; nobody could have learned as yet that anything was wrong
with his eyesight. The intruder had fled. To follow would be hopeless.
Kit groped behind him and his arms circled a stumbling, furry
hulk--Oogly.
“He got you, didn’t he?” said Kit, and lowered the sagging body to the
snow.
The Esquimau said nothing. He was fumbling at the front of his shirt.
The tufts of fur were matted together, warm and wet. But it was not that
that bothered Oogly. He was pulling at the bit of tin on his chest--his
medal--trying with failing fingers to unbuckle the wrist-watch strap.
“Murderem once more,” muttered Oogly.
Kit felt something come into his throat to choke him. Oogly believed he
had killed another man. He had flung his spear, and did not realize that
the first pistol shot had spoiled his aim and stolen the force from his
stroke. By breaking a promise he had forfeited his medal.
“No, Oogly.” Kit slipped off his mitten and stilled the uneasy hands. He
saw no reason to disillusionize the man. Let him think that his last
spear-thrust had been magnificently delivered. “It’s a good murder this
time. You saved my life. The medal’s still yours to keep. You’ve won it
twice over. This time it’s something for pride. It’s yours now forever.”
“Keep um?” whispered the Esquimau.
“Nobody can ever take it away from you.”
“Thanks--thanks you--” Oogly tried to sit up, tried to laugh. But the
sound died choking, and the broad body grew slack and heavy, and slipped
down from Kit’s arms to lie in the snow.
Kit touched the man’s pulse and his temple, and then he stood over the
quiet, baggy shape in the snow. “White men!” It was a short and savage
ejaculation. “I knew a better, Oogly. The best man I ever knew was not a
white man!”
His voice broke and a sudden wetness soothed the dry stinging of his
eyes. Oogly had no other funeral oration.
Kit stooped and scooped handfuls of snow over the motionless body. He
patted the surface down and shaped out a clean, smooth grave-mound.
Oogly’s destiny always had marked him for nothing less and nothing
greater than a mound in the clean, cold snow.
The sun was gone and it was growing darker. How good the darkness felt
in Kit’s swollen eyes! He picked up the captured six-shooter. Yes--this
was it--carved ivory butt, engraving on a silver name-plate. It was the
gun he had seen Hell Bent wearing, Inspector Bill Tearl’s old service
revolver. Kit shoved the weapon into his empty holster. Well, it was
back in the family now. The last Tearl had three more shots on his hip.
He left Oogly and went back to camp--trudged wearily up the frozen river
until he came to the place where a sledge was parked and dogs bounded
forward to greet him.
“Diane?” he said.
There was no reply.
“Queer!” Then louder: “Hello--Diane?”
The dogs leaped up, pawing at him, and he trod on their back toes to
keep them down. There was nobody in camp. The sleeping bag was empty.
And the red Hudson’s Bay blanket seemed to be missing. Further search
discovered a sheet of paper pinned to the topmost duffle-bag on the
sledge.
Evidently it was a note from Diane. She was gone. Probably she had
escaped as soon as darkness fell. Kit’s jaw hardened. He might have
expected it. Diane would be on her way back to Great Owl Run, looking
for her uncle. He shrugged unpleasantly. Well, what of it? He couldn’t
stop her now. Let her go.
Kit struck a match and frowned at the sheet of paper. There was writing,
but the lines wabbled and ran together when he tried to read them. He
flipped out the match and gave up the effort. It didn’t matter what she
wrote. What did he care? He crumpled up the paper and threw it away.
As soon as the dogs were fed, Kit went to bed. He was worn to utter
exhaustion. His two or three hours sleep that afternoon meant nothing at
all. If he expected to get on he could do with no less than eight or ten
hours of solid, unbroken rest. Maybe his eyes would feel better by
morning. If anybody came in the night it couldn’t be helped. He simply
had to sleep.
But strangely he didn’t drop off in a delicious sense of forgetfulness.
In fact, he couldn’t lie still. His bag didn’t fit him. One minute he
felt too hot, and the next, too cold. Finally he went to the trouble of
unlacing himself and crawling out of the flea-bag, a mean and
undignified undertaking. He staggered around in his stocking feet, and
finally found the wad of paper that he had thrown away. Then, with
Diane’s note buttoned in his shirt pocket, he crept back into his fur
pouch and went to sleep.
The pitiless morning sun appeared in a frosty-blue sky. For miles and
miles around, the snow fields flashed and glinted and threw back the
sun-rays with a blinding brilliancy. Far to the southward black
figurines, no bigger than pencil strokes, moved in the undulations of
light.
Kit had discovered the approaching specks the moment he awakened. He
studied them briefly, and then made leisurely preparations for their
reception.
In the first place he decided to stay where he was. His dogs were
footsore, and, with the possible exception of Buzz-saw, none of them was
fit for work. There’d be some fresh, first-rate teams in the gang that
was coming across the tundra. They’d run him down in no time. And he
might not find such a favorable place to dig-in farther along.
The river bank here bent at a sharp angle and rose up from the ice sheer
as a breastwork. He hauled the sledge to the brink and banked up a shelf
of snow on which he could stand shoulder-high and peer over the packed
duffle. The niche in the river bank protected him in front and on two
sides. They could circle and get him from behind. But the river was wide
here and it was a long-range shot from the prairie on the other side.
They’d have to burn up a lot of cartridges, perhaps.
He arranged his own shells in a neat row along the runner of the
sledge--ninety-two for the Winchester and fourteen for the shotgun,
which, for some reason, Diane had neglected to take with her. These were
more than enough. If he lived to use half of them he wouldn’t complain.
A quart pot of strong coffee and the most extravagant breakfast his
larder afforded: he fried his bacon just so and carefully browned his
corn-cakes and used half the can of egg-powder and his last tin of ham
to crisp a beautiful omelette. Into his coffee he dumped the entire jar
of preserved cream that he had been saving for some purpose or another,
he hadn’t quite known what until now. It was the best meal he had eaten
in two months.
His eyes didn’t hurt much this morning. They looked inflamed in his
pocket mirror and the lids were a bit puffy, but he could see what was
going on. He threw a blanket over his head to shut out the light as long
as he could.
But he could not long ignore the approaching figures. They were coming
in a sweeping line, running up yesterday’s trail--Kit’s trail and
Diane’s and Oogly’s. He didn’t bother to count. There were six dog teams
and twenty or thirty men. All Yellow Knives, excepting, perhaps, the
tall one who strode in the rear.
This last one was unrecognizable at such a distance. But he stood a full
head above the others and he did not walk like an Indian. A white
man--who else but Hell Bent? In all probability the savages had been of
two minds about venturing out on the bleak barrens, until Bent returned
last night and stirred them up again. Now he was showing his good
generalship by letting the Indians rush into range ahead of him.
The foremost of the party caught sight of the sledge on the embankment.
Kit heard the yells as the advance dozen fired a spattering volley and
charged. Two or three bullets dusted the embankment, but the rest
plopped short.
He slammed his rifle bolt. A .30-’06 soft nose. No caliber of bullet
ever brought more woe into the world. Four-hundred and fifty yards,
thereabouts. Allow for refraction. Allow for wind-drift. Two and a half
from three, plus one--
This long range rifle practice was too much like surveying or
dressmaking for his taste. Give him a six-inch pistol barrel and an
offhand mark.
He felt the savage buck of the gunstock. One of the distant figures went
down on its hands and knees, and tried to crawl, and couldn’t.
Somehow he didn’t hate these men because they were trying to kill him,
but because they were forcing him to deal with such beastly arithmetic.
He gritted his teeth with annoyance. Fortunately the others had stopped.
No more for the present.
The devilish sun was mirrored into his face by the shining miles of
snow. It was as though a billion white-burning lenses were turned full
into his eyes. He tried to see across the blazing levels with his
eyewinkers almost shut.
The advance squad had scattered and scrambled back for the sledges,
leaving the fallen one, a blot upon the snow. Kit could see them
talking, using their hands vehemently. The tall man came forward and
seemed to have much to say.
For a half hour or more they held their council-of-war. Kit watched them
as a basking seal watches at the edge of his diving hole, opening his
eyes for five seconds and closing them for thirty. But the sun-rays
seemed to bore through his naked eyelids.
The Indians at last decided what was to be done. The six sledges
separated and were driven out in skirmish order, right and left from the
center and fronting the river course. The dogs were unhitched and chased
off into the background. Then a couple of Yellow Knives dropped prone
behind each of the loaded sledges.
A nerve in Kit’s left eyeball had begun to jump and quiver, and he
couldn’t control it. Yet he still was able to make out what was
happening. A party of a half dozen braves detached themselves from the
line and started off in a wide circle across the sun. These obviously
intended to strike the river farther south and to swing back along the
opposite shore to attack Kit’s ambuscade from the rear. It would take
this bunch an hour or so to work into position, and for the present he
dismissed them from his worries.
The real menace now was the sledges in front. He stared at them for a
moment, and was under the impression that they were moving towards him.
He blinked and passed his hand before his face, and looked again.
Surely! Each sledge was gliding forward, propelled by the unseen men who
wriggled flat in the snow behind it.
Kit now understood his enemies’ strategy, but it had been a costly
business finding out. The Yellow Knives could approach with their backs
to the sun that streamed like molten silver into Kit’s squinting,
tortured face. The snow field was beginning to dance before him in
garish colors. He dared not even think the word, but he knew what was
happening to him. Trying to make out things in a quicksilver flood, with
his eyes boggling in his head--
Rifle firing! Sullen thuds of sound at his left and in front of him--he
listened for bullets in the air. Some of them plunged into the snow, not
very close. One went above him, turning end over end, buzzing like a
June-bug. Rotten rifling that wouldn’t spin a bullet properly. Something
hit the sledge resoundingly a dozen inches from his nose, and one of the