Snow-blind
from prison. His idea must have been the same as yours. He must have
expected Bent to come back after the hidden gold sledge, just as you
were sure that he would. Like you, I gather that he intended to ambush
himself in the Great Owl woods so that he might catch Bent red-handed
when he tried to recover his loot.”
“It would seem so,” agreed Jerry. “And this Durand would have even a
blacker account to settle with Bent than you and I. We thought that Bent
had something to do with Dad’s disappearance. But Durand knew! He was an
eye-witness. He’d seen his sister shot down. You can guess what he meant
to do!”
“The woman.” Kit’s half-seeing eyes turned broodingly towards the south.
“If she was Durand’s sister and Diane his niece, then she either was
Diane’s aunt or her mother.”
Jerry tilted his head sidewise to regard his brother searchingly. “You
call her ‘Diane’ now, do you?”
Kitchener wasn’t listening. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought
out a fragment of paper that had been crumpled and then carefully
smoothed afterwards. “Here’s a note she wrote when she left me
yesterday. I haven’t been able to read it.”
Without comment Jerry took the sheet and spread it open in his left
palm. In a faintly mocking tone he read aloud:
Dear Cocky-bird:
I don’t know any other name for you, and I guess maybe it’s
better that I don’t. I’m leaving you because I don’t want to
go north, and anyhow I’d be a hindrance to you. You and Oogly’ll
travel faster without me. You may believe me--I’ll never hint
to the police which direction you went.
You remember the bad thought I had, that gave birth to Shedim,
the owl? And I couldn’t tell you what it was. But now that we’ll
never see each other again I think I’d be not quite so unhappy
in the years to come if I knew you knew.
From the very first I guessed that you were no policeman.
I don’t quite know how you fit into the horrible crimes at
Great Owl Run, but I know that you do, somewhere, somehow.
When I see you and talk with you it’s something that is utterly
impossible to believe. But I’ve had to force myself to believe it.
I ought to hate you, and I don’t and can’t. And my bad thought
is simply this: that it is filled, days and nights, with nothing
in the world but you. Good-by. I’m praying that I’ll never
see you again.
Diane.
Jerry folded up the paper and bent a brotherly grin at Kitchener. “A
demon with the girls!” he remarked. “How do you do it, Oakheart?”
Kit took the note back and tucked it into his pocket and buttoned the
flap.
“I can see where she might mistake you for an old crow,” remarked Jerry,
“but an owl--”
“Shut up!” Kit broke in fiercely.
“It’s turned out to be the craziest mess that anybody ever heard of,”
ruminated Jerry in a sobering voice. “Everybody ramming and bulling
around at cross-purposes. We picked Durand out for Hell Bent. And you
thought Diane was a crook, and she thinks you’re one.”
“Diane has gone back to Great Owl Run to wait for Durand,” said Kit, and
softly shook his head. “And he’ll never come.”
“It’s odd,” reflected Jerry, “the way everybody’s scuttling all over the
place waiting for this Bent bird to get out of prison. He’s been out now
for two or three months, and none of us has seen him or heard a thing of
him yet.” His forehead creased perplexedly. “What I’d like to know is
where the deuce is Hell Bent?”
“How do I know--” Kit started to say, and then stopped with his mouth
open.
“There was a man at the police post the other night!” he burst out. “A
big, ugly-looking cuss with a scarred face. His excuse for being in the
woods in mid-winter sounded phony to me. But I didn’t give it much
thought until this minute--
“He heard me say I’d moved the gold bags, and that Diane knows where I
hid them.” Kit’s face looked ghastly in the dying sunlight. “Diane is
alone at the Great Owl cabin, and this man is loose in the woods.
“Jerry!” It was a stricken cry. “He must be Bent. I know it! As sure as
the devil it’s Hell Bent!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
SNOW-BLIND
Kit was on his feet, grabbing for the shotgun with one hand and his
mittens with the other. He was like a man demented. A dozen miles or
more back to Great Owl Run, and night was at hand and he could barely
see and Jerry was badly wounded and the dogs were dead. Diane would be
waiting at the old cabin, at the mercy of the monster who had come back
at last like an evil genius to hunt out the scene of his bloodiest
crime.
Kit knew now that the stranger he had met at the police shack was Hell
Bent. He knew it, not merely by surmising and guessing, but by an inward
conviction, a clear and absolute prescience that left him without doubt
and without hope. He knew it as positively as he had known all these
weeks that he loved Diane. If anything happened to her before he could
see her and pour out all the astonishing things that were in his heart,
if he lost her now after she had vouchsafed him a glimpse of loveliness
and incredible happiness that might have been....
He was nearly frantic with his visions of her, alone in the dismal
night, needing him.
“Nothing else counts,” he told Jerry. “We’re leaving now.”
“Righto!” Jerry was perfectly willing to undertake the killing march
across the barrens, but when he stooped to tighten up his snowshoes he
simply doubled in the middle like a grain bag and pitched headforemost
into a drift of snow.
Kit was down beside him, pulling his face out of the snow, propping the
sagging back against one of the sledges, peering beseechingly. “Jerry!
What is it--what’s wrong?”
The sergeant let his legs sprawl apart for added support, and managed
something like a laugh. “Just went dizzy all at once. A minute ago--a
big, hulking slob, and now-- I thought I was going to faint--or
something. Kit--you go on!”
Kitchener unloaded the topmost sledge and hauled it into the lee of the
terrace. He got his hands in his brother’s armpits and stumbled
backwards, and bedded the slack, awkward body in a nest of blankets.
There was no need to ask questions. Jerry’s forearm had been smashed by
one of the Yellow Knives’ dum-dums. This after weeks of snow-travel that
would have broken most men. The shock and the loss of blood and an
accumulated fatigue fought off for days and nights: it was a miracle
that he had not collapsed when he was hit. He stood up for a while on
sheer nerve, and then the physical creature finally had demanded
payment.
“I’ll be all right here for a few days or a week,” said Jerry, trying to
make his voice sound as big as it ever had been. “I guess--I don’t
believe I’d better go with you.”
Kit stripped up his brother’s sleeve and bathed the swollen, darkened
flesh, and removed the tourniquet that had begun to cut too deeply. He
kneaded the shattered bones into place as truely as his inexperience
could accomplish the job, while Jerry looked on with a set, awry grin.
Splints and bandages were speedily improvised, and the arm was bound
stiff against the body, like an unused pump handle.
This much, at least, Kit could take the time to do. And then he lingered
for just another moment. “It’s rotten to leave you like this, and yet, I
don’t see what else to do.”
“What would I want with you?” returned Jerry scornfully. “I’ve got
plenty of blankets and plenty to eat and an oil stove. And anyhow--you
know--” His glance sought the reposing shape beside the second sledge.
“It’s better to have somebody to sit here and keep the wolverines away.
And--I don’t know--I’d like to be the one to keep the vigil. You can
come back or send for us when you have a chance.”
Kit drew his hood closer about his mouth and pulled on his mittens. “Can
you still see the Indians?” he asked.
“Just barely. They’re following the river and’ll be out of sight in a
few minutes. If I were you I’d cut more southeast than the river runs.
You’ll save several miles. The wind’s southwest. Keep it on your right
cheek.”
“So-long, Jerry!” Kitchener shouldered the shotgun, and then he bent
down and the brothers’ left hands met and clasped.
“We’ll be waiting for you,” said Jerry lightly.
Kit started to speak, and then decided that he’d better not attempt it.
He nodded and tried to swallow the choking feeling in his throat. Then
he turned his right shoulder to the vanishing sun and started off across
the barrens.
“If you’re in doubt about the direction of the wind,” yelled Jerry, “rub
your face with snow.” His reckless, graceless laughter was the last
sound that Kit was to hear that night. “Give my love to Diane. And give
Hell Bent hell.”
There were only a few more minutes left of the chilling daylight and
then the early, arctic gloaming began to spread down into the awful
silence and lonesomeness of the barrens.
Kit struck off at a gliding trot, his raquettes crunching pleasantly
over the icy surface of the snow. He felt fit enough for enormous
undertakings. The clean frosty air filled his lungs and set his blood
tingling. He could keep up this sort of a dog-jog all night if he must.
Not more than twelve miles to go--if he held the straight line he ought
to reach Great Owl Run long before dawn.
The day vanished quickly and the night grew as dark as it ever is around
the dusky circle of the north. Kit hurried on with his eyes almost shut.
There was no need of seeing the ground ahead. His feet could follow the
gentle undulations of the unbroken prairie.
If there were only a moon he’d have fewer misgivings. The moonshine,
shifting around his head, would have given him a constant check on the
compass points. But there would only be stars to-night. He could look up
and feel the shimmer of the stars in his face, but he could not see well
enough to pick out individuals for guidance. Only the southwest wind was
trustworthy, and he kept its breath on his right cheekbone.
He counted his steps, and allowed twenty-five hundred to the mile. This
ought to be approximately correct. The multiple of twenty-five hundred
by twelve was thirty thousand. The total was appalling. Yet he’d already
counted past the five thousand mark. He must be at least two miles on
his way.
Jerry was back there, probably with his little stove alight and coffee
boiling and his eternal pipe smoldering, while he gazed into the night
and sat in dreamy quiet beside the man he had loved.
Every stride was taking Kit farther from Jerry and nearer to Diane. His
thoughts were like restless terriers, sometimes lagging behind, but more
frequently racing ahead. His longing for Diane and his fears for her
existed as tangibly in his mind as actual forerunners on the trail,
frantically beckoning to him, calling him on. His legs were always
trying to keep up with his anxieties, and his better judgment was
constantly reminding him that if he ran too fast he would spend himself
too soon.
Ten-thousand foot-paces and fifteen-thousand--it seemed to him that he
had been traveling thus for hours, automatically counting the feet into
miles. “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, fifteen thousand three
hundred, one, two, three--” A deadly monotonous business this, saying
numbers to himself, over and over and over again, exactly in the rhythm
of his breathing and his stride. But he kept it up. If he lost track he
would never know how far he had come or how far he yet must go.
As he switched the shotgun from one hand to the other it occurred to him
that he did not know what loads it contained. He snapped open the breech
without slacking his stride, and made sure that there were two shells
chambered. They might carry buck-shot, or only a charge of “6s” for
ducks and ptarmigan. He ought to have asked Jerry before he left. Well,