Snow-blind
deck supports was sheared in two, neatly as the slicing stroke of a
sharp ax.
They weren’t all using trade guns. Somebody else was doing a problem in
long-distance arithmetic.
Kit tried to locate the sharp-shooter. That crisp, whip-like report
meant high-power and meticulous rifling. Puffs of black powder smoke
drifted above the sledges--all but one. That one stood farthest back and
in the center of the line. By an exertion of will Kit forced his eyes to
stay wide open long enough to concentrate his pupils on the midmost
sledge. No smoke there. Anyhow, maybe not. His vision had cleared for a
few seconds, and now the red and gold clouds were beginning to roll back
in front of him. The middle sledge had seemed to be farther away than
the others. Probably Hell Bent was sprawled behind that one. He’d be the
one to have smokeless powder cartridges.
A bullet tore through the six fat duffle-bags lashed in a row on Kit’s
sledge. He picked up the distant object again--a vague smudge in a
spectrum of fiery colors that wouldn’t stay still. No trajectory tables
or micrometer calculations were possible; just shove the butt to the
shoulder, and guess, and pull the trigger. He couldn’t even see the
sights.
What was the use? Damn his eyes! And the sun and the frightful, glaring
snow! A trickle of syrup was running out of a punctured can over his
bare right hand. He wiped his hand in disgust on the back of his shirt.
His four dogs were crouching at his feet, and he absently scratched a
rough, uplifted head.
“That you, Buzz-saw?” He laughed crazily. “What you sticking around here
for? Why’nt you beat it?”
The firing seemed to be getting in closer. Banging explosions not only
in front and to the left, but off on the right now. The bullets were
dropping around him. They sounded like skate-blades cutting into crusty
ice. Buzz-saw’s hot tongue was licking the rest of the sticky mess off
his fingers.
He started to fire at the echo of the guns, and then changed his mind.
If he missed a few times running they’d guess what was wrong with him,
and jump up and come on headlong. Let ’em crawl up, thinking he was
deliberately holding his fire. It would take them longer to get here,
anyhow.
Not that it mattered when they came.
There was a spot in back of his nose that seemed to be the core of his
troubles, a swirling and flashing, as nerve-racking as fireworks in his
head. The eyesight--what a sensitive, perishable gift! Maltreat it for a
few minutes, and it is gone. He couldn’t see a thing. There were nothing
but shrinking nerves and agonizing colors swimming around in the places
where his eyes ought to be. He was blind. He was snow-blind.
The rifle was of no more use to him than a dictionary. He chucked it
away and groped for the shotgun. This was the tool for a blind man.
Fourteen shells. Some held bird-shot and some buck-shot. It said which
was which on the wads, if he could read them. No difference. He’d try to
get them all in at the last minutes when everybody was jammed around him
so close he couldn’t miss.
He tried the safety and broke the breech and snapped it shut again. A
slug hit the ground by his face and spattered with the noise of an
ice-pick chipping ice. Another knocked a welt of fur off his hood and
ricocheted across the frozen river in two clanging jumps. He must have
stuck his head up too far without knowing it. Blind and blundering!
Buzz-saw let out a terrific growl. Kit dropped his hand to feel the dog
crouching with every muscle tense and his back ridge abristle. The keen,
snarling muzzle was pointing north, down the river-course.
“What? What it is, boy?”
Kit suddenly flung up his gun and turned in sightless staring.
Something--crunching, gliding in the hard snow below the river
bank--coming towards him. He thumbed off the catch, finger crooked,
sighting for the sound.
“Hello!” said a voice. “Hold it! What do you think you’re doing?”
The blood seemed to drain out of Kit’s brain. A swaying weakness
overmastered him. The gun barrels wavered and sagged in his hands--too
heavy to hold. He couldn’t move, or think, or speak.
Somebody strode up to him, and a big, strong, rough-sleeved arm suddenly
wrapped itself about his head and squeezed his ears.
“Hello, Kit,” said the astounding voice. “Hello, Cocky-bird!”
CHAPTER XXIII
BROTHERS-IN-ARMS
Kitchener lost his shotgun as a wave of giddiness swept over him. His
hands went up, incredulous, feebly groping, to cling to a pair of big,
fleshly shoulders, to feel the warmth and vitality of solid human
strength holding him on his feet.
“Jerry,” he said. “Jerry! My God! Jerry!”
“Who the hell did you think it was?” asked the bright, mocking voice
that Kit would have known anywhere, anytime, in any world or state of
existence. Jerry Tearl!
“I thought-- They killed you. I thought you were killed--Jerry!”
“Who killed me? Have you gone nuts or something? What’s the shootin’--
Hey--you damn fool--keep your head down!”
“Back in that cabin. The bloody old red blanket! And all over the floor
and window sill. I thought they got you.”
“What cabin? What _are_ you talking about?”
“Back at Great Owl Run. Grandfather Tearl’s old Hudson’s Bay blanket
with a bullet hole in it. I thought you’d been murdered--”
“Who, me?” Jerry broke in with his scornful laugh. “I wasn’t at Great
Owl Run. I went down the Vermilion, straight to the sea coast. The
blanket. Oho! I’m beginning to get you. I had the blanket strapped on
the back of my sledge, and some of the duffel you’d traded me. It must
have come loose and fallen off. I discovered it was gone late one night
when I went into camp, several miles farther down the Vermilion than the
Great Owl fork. Somebody picked it up. That’s all.”
Kit was laughing while tears ran from the corners of his inflamed
eyelids. “Jerry! I don’t know what to _say_.” His fingers contracted in
his brother’s bulging biceps with bruising force. “Why, you--you
doggoned old scut!”
“Steady-on there, bird!” Kit felt a pair of fingers poking
experimentally into his eye-sockets. “What’s wrong with you, Crow-eye?”
“Nothing. Just a little blind--snow-blind. The cursed sun--and the
snow--”
Jerry made a queer sound with his lips. “You mean to say--you been
carrying-on here--and can’t see?”
“Trying to.”
“What’s it all about--?”
A chunking hunk of lead slapped a metal brace of the sledge and burst
into particles around their ears.
“Pardon me,” said Jerry, “may I cut-in?”
He stirred, then steadied, and five rifle-shots rattled spitefully over
the river embankment. The clip tinkled and he shoved in a fresh round.
“Slaveys--Yellow Knives? What’s the racket?”
“Yellow Knives,” said Kit. “It’s a long story.”
“If I could shoot like you used to,” remarked the sergeant, “I’d have
got that baby with the red cap. But I’ll bet his ear’s burning. They’re
not pushing in quite so fast.”
“It’s the ones behind,” said Kit. “Where are they now?”
Jerry was silent for a moment. “Yeh!” he observed at length. “Six of
’em--making way around to the west. The bunch in front are going to hold
us until the others are in our rear. The second bunch are going to be
the bananas. Well, we had lots of fun when we had it.”
Kit heard a scratching sound, and a savor of strong pipe-tobacco drifted
into his nostrils. Then Jerry moved off a few paces along the river, and
said something in thick, rasping syllables of speech that Kit was unable
to understand.
A second voice answered in heavy gutturals. Kit threw up his head with a
start, his facial muscles contorted in a straining effort to see through
multicolored mists. Jerry had brought a companion with him, an Esquimau,
judging by the talk.
“Who’s that?” Kit demanded.
“Just a friend,” said Jerry lightly. “He came down with me from the
Arctic Circle.”
Kit sighed and shook his head. One more victim in the trap. On the other
hand, if this newcomer was anything like Oogly, he’d be a stout comrade
for a last-hour stand.
The sergeant was giving the man some sort of instruction in the Esquimau
tongue. Feet moved down the slope, and then Jerry came back to Kit.
“I’ve got him planted on the river ice to guard our rear. He’s a good
man, a crack shot, but there are too many of ’em for us, and they’ll get
us all before sundown. Well-o, Cocky-bird, we’ll go out of this
heathenish country together!”
The rattle of rifle-fire in front of them had died away to only an
occasional report. Jerry’s recent burst of shots had taught caution to
the crowd behind the sledges. They’d hold their real attack, of course,
until the men in the rear were in position.
“Jerry! Who do you suppose was murdered in that cabin?”
“I don’t know. How do I know? Say, how’d you get in this jam, Kit? Who
started it, and why?”
“Oh, there was some trouble about a man that the Yellow Knives wanted to
kill--who was shot down last night by Hell Bent. Bent’s here now,
keeping ’em ribbed-up. That business back at Great Owl Run--somebody was
murdered there that night. Trail of the body dragged across the floor
and dumped into the river.”
“No!” ejaculated Jerry. “Oh--that’s how! I _found_ him.”
“What?”
“Body in the river. About fifty miles north of here--on our way back. A
tall, raw-boned chap with a bullet in his back. Drifted out from an ice
hole and washed up on the bank. Poor devil! Must have floated all the
way down under the ice--Great Owl Run into the Vermilion River. Funny
thing about him--”
“Hell Bent killed him,” interrupted Kitchener. “And I thought it was
you!” He blinked and dug the back of his fist into his eyes. The pain
came and went in waves. But if he forced his bare eyeballs to endure the
daylight he could still see something of his blurred surroundings. Jerry
sat on the snow-shelf with his knee locked in his fingers and a pipe in
his teeth.
“Bent’s square-meshed tracks went to the cabin,” Kit ruminated. “Why did
he shoot this chap? Who do you suppose he was?”
“Keep ’em shut, Kit,” advised Jerry. “Not that it’ll do any good now,
but they won’t hurt so much. The only thing that’ll cure snow-blindness
is a long stretch of total darkness.” He laughed grimly. “Well, I guess
we’re going to have that soon--a long, long stretch.”
“Who do you think he could be?” Kit persisted doggedly.
“The dead man? I went through him, and he didn’t have an identifying
mark on him. But I’ll tell you something that he did have--in an old
wallet, buttoned up with a big bunch of money. A stack of old express
company and postal money order receipts for five thousand dollars
each--dated in January for twelve consecutive years. In whose favor do
you suppose they’d been made out, Kit?”
“I don’t know. How’d I--” Kitchener’s chin lifted sharply. “You
don’t--you don’t mean--”
“Yes. The slips were all made out in the name of Mrs. William Tearl, New
York City. The source of the mysterious annuity. That man, whoever he
was, was the chap who has sent five thousand dollars to our family
around the first of every year. He could have told us a lot of things, I
guess, if we’d got to him in time. And now he’s dead.”
“But who--why?” Kit faced his brother blankly.
“Don’t know. Any guess you’d make would be only a wild shot. Maybe Dad
did something for him some time, or he did something to Dad, and he’s
been squaring accounts with his conscience ever since. And for some
reason wanted to remain incognito. Funny he should be at the Great Owl
place the night Hell Bent got there--and is murdered by him.”
“Here it is!” said Kit tensely. “This chap must have been mixed up some
way in Dad’s disappearance. Maybe he felt responsible somehow for what
happened. Tried to make it up to Mother the best way he could--by
sending money. When Bent is released from prison this chap goes to the