Snow-blind
shot hit him in the forehead and temple, but they were too tiny, and
only glanced. They only knocked him out for a few minutes.”
Kit started to get up and grope for his boots. “My God!” he exclaimed.
“Where is he? Where is he now?”
“No. Don’t!” Diane’s flexible arm was around his shoulders, holding him.
“He’s safe. As soon as I’d made sure that you hadn’t been killed, I went
to him and tied him up tight. And then two or three hours later the
policemen came.”
“Policemen?” he echoed.
Diane moved discreetly away before Kit had time to regain his breath.
“Devon and Cross. They were searching the woods for you, and happened to
pass here this morning. Cross is outside now, with a tent pitched and a
handcuffed prisoner lying in it.”
“Hell Bent?”
“It was the man we met at the police shack the other night--he called
himself Pettijohn.”
“Yes. I knew it. I figured that out when it was just almost too late.
He’s Hell Bent.”
Kit sat straighter. “Listen!” he said. “I want to see Cross right away.
I want him to go, or send, for a wounded man down in the barrens--”
“All right,” interrupted Diane. “Devon started a couple of hours ago.
When I dragged you in here you muttered something about rescuing a
wounded man. So Devon went as soon as I told him. He’s following your
back trail. Poor Oogly. I hope he isn’t badly hurt.”
“It isn’t Oogly,” said Kit. “It’s my brother Jerry.”
“Who?” Kit was aware of the intensity of the girl’s glance.
“My brother. Sergeant Buck Tearl, the man I was pretending to be. The
one who put you in handcuffs that night, long ago. It was he who put me
up to the masquerading business, and sent me on the trail of Jim Durand,
mistaking him for Hell Bent.”
“You--” Diane stopped in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”
“About you and me and the muddle of everything in general.” Kit spoke
decisively. “We’ve got to straighten it out. You thought I was mixed up
somehow in that old tragedy here at Great Owl Run, and I thought your
uncle was. See? I was after him--after the wrong man, and you thought I
was some kind of a beastly scoundrel, come here to smear my hands in
those rotten bags.”
“Oh, wait--wait a minute!” protested Diane. “You’re going so fast.”
“We can’t clean this up fast enough for me. Jim Durand--your uncle--he
was here in that fight twelve years ago, wasn’t he--when the gold sledge
was lost, and the woman--”
“My aunt,” broke in Diane softly. “I was only just a little girl, but I
remember, Uncle Jim--coming home without her. She was so beautiful--”
“Remember about the man who was with your uncle?” asked Kit. “Who fought
side by side with him--who disappeared and was never seen again?
Inspector William Tearl, R.C.M.P.--did you ever hear of him?”
“I heard--I knew there was a policeman. I may have been told the name.
If they told me, I’ve forgotten.”
“He was my father,” said Kit.
Kit felt the girl move abruptly, and he did not need his own vision to
feel the potency of her eyes looking at him in the shadows. “I didn’t
know,” she whispered. “You say he was--then you--then you’re not--”
“I’m not anything excepting just Kitchener Tearl, who came here to help
Jerry and to find Bill Tearl.”
“But why--why the imposture?” Diane demanded in a shaken voice. “Why did
you impersonate somebody else? Explain please. I’ve got to know--I’ve
got to know the truth.”
“Bill Tearl was lost, and Jerry had to go hunt him, that’s why,” Kit
told her. “And somebody had to stay around here and watch for that
devil--for Hell Bent. We thought it would be better if I was in uniform.
So I traded clothes with Jerry, and he went north and I stayed here.
That’s all there was to that.”
“Oh, God!” Diane was beside the bunk on a box. Her face had suddenly
buried itself in her hands and she was sobbing. “Then you--oh, how could
I have thought for a minute that anything was wrong! Of course not! I
might have known!”
“I might have known too,” said Kit. “Taking Jerry’s word, like a darned
fool. Well, I’ve learned something. I’ve learned only to believe what I
see with my eyes and feel in my heart.”
Diane had straightened on her box, and somehow seemed to have regained
her self-control.
“What a frightful thing it all has been,” she gasped. “I can remember
when Uncle Jim came home, so long ago. He’d been traveling all over,
from city to city, crazed with grief and horror, after he’d seen his
sister’s death.”
“Did he know what had become of Hell Bent?” Kitchener asked.
“He found out some way that one of the men--the worst of the lot--had
gone to prison. And so Uncle Jim waited. He knew that the man would come
back here to the woods as soon as he was freed, and so he waited--with
one idea, with one fixed purpose.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Kit.
“Oh, I know. Of course not. But it was so terrible. Uncle Jim, the
sweetest man that ever lived, but a stubborn and dangerous one, brooding
over one thing, living his life for just one end. He kept away from the
police. He didn’t want anybody to interfere. He wanted to do it with his
own hands--here in the woods.
“He was so restless,” Diane went on in a musing voice. “He spent most of
his time wandering over the world, just--just marking time until the
day. Sometimes he took me with him. I am the only thing on earth he
cares for. But he would never talk to me about what had happened
here--just kept his mouth shut, with that terrifying look of his.
“And one day,” she said, “he left me in Ottawa and told me to wait there
for him. After he was gone I guessed--intuition told me. I found out
that he had started for the north--and I came after him. I thought--I
hoped--if I could catch him in time I might be able to prevent a second
tragedy. That was why I followed.
“But I never found him.” Diane sighed heavily. “Uncle Jim! I don’t know
what ever happened to him.”
Kit’s teeth closed in his lips. He didn’t want to tell her now of the
body that Jerry had found in the river. “I wonder,” he said, “if it
wasn’t your uncle who sent the radio to Jerry about the white man who
was living on the north sea, who--it has turned out--was Dad?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But it is possible. He probably did.”
“But it was signed, ‘Diane.’ Why would he use your name?”
“I suppose he didn’t want to use his own. So he just signed
anything--the first one that came into his mind. And the first name
Uncle Jim would think of, always, would be ‘Diane.’”
“Me too!” said Kit.
“What?” He heard the box scrape on the floor.
“Diane! Come here!”
“No.” And then, after a briefest pause. “What for?”
“I want you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
There was a lingering silence after that, until a log on the fireplace
suddenly broke in two and a shower of sparks sizzled in the chimney. Kit
put one foot on the floor and strove with hungering eyes to see the
shadowy figure that stood so quiet in the dusk. He could hear Diane’s
breathing, but nobody moved and nobody spoke.
“Do you remember Shedim?” Kit asked at length, with a little, husky
laugh.
Still Diane said nothing.
“Last night when I was out there on the barrens--snow-blind--knowing I
had to come to you, and not knowing which way to turn--Shedim flew over
me, and I heard him, and he led me here. I wouldn’t have got here if it
hadn’t been for the owl. Your bad thought that you couldn’t kill--”
“And didn’t want to!” she declared defiantly. “And never would
have--never!”
His forehead was screwed up in a straining effort to visualize the
shadowy face that always seemed to elude him. And suddenly he heard
faint laughter, and something reached to him and gently poked his left
eyebrow.
“Hello, Cocky-bird!”
“Diane! Please!” Kit’s arms reached forward vacantly. “I can’t see you.
I can’t find you!”
“Need you see?”
And Diane was in his arms then, and her young, warm body was clinging to
him, and her lips were feeling their way to his. “You don’t need to find
me--not while I can find you.”
THE END
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