Scarlett of the Mounted Part 19

"A license!" exclaimed Travers. "What for?"

"To legalize the marriage," Maclane instructed him. "You must get one from the Gold Commissioner or Justice of the Peace."

"Then that queers the show," stated old Blenksoe, "sence thar ain't no gold round these here diggings, nor no justice, nor no peace."

"Is there no way of dispensing with it, under exceptional circ.u.mstances?" Evelyn asked, anxiously. "If you knew how imperative my reason for desiring haste----"

"In lieu of it, then," the minister conceded, "I will accept a copy of the appropriate clause of the Dominion Marriage Act, signed by the Mounted Policeman in charge of the district where Miss Durant resides."

And before Raish, who sprang forward, with an oath, could stop him, he had entered the Customs building, calling for Sergeant Scarlett.

XII

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Scarlett looked from Evelyn to Travers and back again, in bewilderment, dismay. "Miss Durant," he at last found voice to say, "surely there is some mistake! Surely there's no love lost between ye and this--gentleman!"

"My private affairs, my feelings, seem to cause a great deal of unnecessary comment," remarked Evelyn, hiding her emotion under a mask of irony. "May I beg you to refrain from criticism, and to give us the requisite authority?"

Scarlett looked at her fixedly, and seeing her control weaken, her color change, and her eyes fill and falter beneath his penetrating gaze, shook his head. "That I must absolutely decline to do!"

"And why, pray?" she commanded herself to ask.

"Oh, the reason is plain!" Raish sneeringly interposed. "Every one knows the Sergeant's own matrimonial aspirations. Every one has heard of the cheap device by which on the very day of her arrival he tried to worm himself into the favor of my fiancee. If he did but know it, her father's chief reason for insisting on the immediate celebration of our marriage is to protect her from the persecutions of adventurers!"

"I beg," cried Evelyn, checking Scarlett's furious retort, "that there may be no such personalities! Mr. Travers, pray understand that I do not, in the least, a.s.sent to your characterization of the Sergeant, who, up to this moment, has treated me and my friends with the utmost delicate consideration and chivalry!"

"Forgive me, dearest"--Raish took her hand. "I spoke too warmly! Yet who could blame me? Come, come, my good Sergeant, put your name to that paper without further ado, unless you wish to suffer under the imputation of sacrificing official honor to personal revenge."

Not deigning to heed the taunt, Scarlett turned to the minister. "I can't sign, because down in yonder valley is a la.s.s in a red cloak who has a prior claim upon this man."

Raish forced a contemptuous laugh. "The red-cloak, who should not even be mentioned in this presence, may stay in the valley for me. My acquaintance with the red-cloak belongs to a day before I knew Evelyn.

She condones the past, accepts the dedication of my future life."

Drawing Evelyn aside, he whispered, "Don't be alarmed. My pledge holds good. This is all bluff, my doing the devoted, to throw them off the track." Stooping suddenly he kissed her.

"My young friend," Maclane restrained and admonished Scarlett, "my sympathies are yours wholly. But are you not exceeding your authority?"

"Aye," confessed the Irishman, "I'm stretching it a bit, maybe, to fit me intuitions. Dominie, I tell ye 'tis a fishy business. Not an hour since, the girl was in these arms of mine, lip to lip, and liking it.

And now, look at her shudder at that fellow's touch."

"Sergeant Scarlett"--breaking from Raish, Evelyn came to him and laid a coaxing hand upon his arm--"I know that in your heart you are despising me for a cheap coquette. And I deserve it. I have given you cause to think the worst of me. I can't explain. But if you could only read my heart--could only know what this means to me--it's the happiness of my life! It will be misery to the end of my days if I fail him at this supreme test. You're magnanimous, above all pettiness, I know. You simply want to save me, as you think, from making a mistake. But believe me, trust me, I know what I'm about. Now, will you do me the greatest favor one human being ever entreated of another, by signing your name to that doc.u.ment?"

Scarlett looked tenderly down on her, and, swayed against his judgment by her earnestness, he might have yielded, had not the Dandy inopportunely added the word too much.

"Sergeant Scarlett will hardly dare take the consequences of refusing when I tell him that without the protection of my name Miss Durant will be irretrievably compromised!"

Scarlett checked an almost overwhelming impulse to kick the speaker.

Instead, he took Evelyn's cold fingers into his honest grasp. "I'd give my name to shield ye, my life to serve ye, and now I'm going to risk my official honor, to--as I think, to save ye." He tore up the paper.

Above the general outcry that ensued, Sarah's tones were heard. "A pretty country where you can't marry whom you please! America's good enough for me!"

"America!" exclaimed Evelyn, struck by a sudden thought. "Are there such restrictions with us in America?"

"Unfortunately not, my dear," replied Maclane, who had once occupied a Chicago pastorate. "In the States the sacred tie is made and broken far more easily."

"Then, quick," she cried, "across the boundary!" And seizing Travers'

hand she ran, the others following breathlessly, not halting till she reached the tall mast from which proudly floated the emblem of the free.

"G.o.d in Heaven!" Scarlett looked after her, his personal grief swallowed up in anxiety. "Is there no power above, below, to stop a wilful woman from cutting her own throat with a wedding-ring?" He cast about for aid.

Barney, who might have thrown some light on the plot, had returned to duties at headquarters, but Nick and Gelly might yet be reached in time, and for them he sent messengers flying. Meanwhile, he bethought himself of Chilkat Jo. Sheltered by the Customs water-b.u.t.t, he found the trader squatting peaceably, whittling a mimic totem-pole. On his shoulder Scarlett laid a gauntleted hand. "Chilkat Jo, man, look what devil's work is going on forninst ye! Can't ye say the word to stop it?"

There was an appreciable pause while, with a silken sound, the soft shavings curled, fell, under the skilful knife. Then without looking up, the Siwash gently replied, "Me no such G.o.dam-h.e.l.lan-blazes Clistian fool! Laish mally Missy Dulant! I mally Gelly!"

In desperation Scarlett strode toward the bridal group, reaching it just as the minister's solemn tones rolled forth, challenging the wilderness to show just cause or impediment why these two persons might not lawfully be joined together.

"Just or unjust," he shouted, "sure it's myself will furnish the impediment"--as, collaring the bridegroom, with a series of violent jerks he sent him flying back into precincts that rendered him amenable to Dominion law, where he neatly knocked him down, and sat on him. "Now, I've got ye in my own jurisdiction, I'll detain ye as a suspicious person till evidence for or against ye is forthcoming!" Maclane's protests, Evelyn's tears, Sarah's shrieks and taunts, and old Blenksoe's curses were as unavailing as Raish's struggles; the young giant held the position by main force till Nick, who had been easily overtaken, by courtesy of his custodians arrived in response to the recall.

"There, there," Scarlett soothed the squirming Dandy. "If I find I'm mistaken; if that d.a.m.ned incriminating face of yours belies ye, sure I'll apologize in sackcloth and give ye the satisfaction of a gentleman." Jerking Travers to his feet, he confronted him with Gelly's father. "Nick," he inquired, "what is your unvarnished opinion of this fellow?"

"Wa'al, thar's things in his past," admitted the Bully, "same as in most men's, thet you wouldn't hold up as a shinin' example to a Sunday-school, d'ye see? But bygones is bygones. Arter wot he projected ter-day, I've nought but good words fer Dandy Raish."

"Not another syllable, Nick, I beg," Travers hastened to cut short the Bully's elogium at a period so favorable to his plans. "Now, Sergeant, we accept your apology for your ill-directed zeal, and dispense with your further company."

"Say, Scarlett," wrathfully demanded Nick, "I kin cheek yer now I'm goin' ter be hanged by U. S. law! Take yer hands off'n Raish! Wot the h.e.l.l d'ye mean by damagin' my son-in-law?"

"Your son-in-law?" in one breath cried Evelyn, Sarah and Maclane.

"I sent my gal a letter," elucidated Nick. "Your pop Lucky put it in writin' fer me, Missy. That's it you got in your hand."

"This letter! And that villain made me believe---- Oh, oh, oh!" Evelyn burst into a flood of humiliated tears.

"You black scoundrel; you'd 'a' deceived her as you deceived my gal!"

Nick made a blind rush at Raish, but was held back by his custodians.

"Sure as thar's a G.o.d in Heaven, Raish," he vowed, as they restrained him, "I'll live ter kill ye yet!"

Vain threat! A sharp sound cleft the crystal air and, echoing, died away in soft detonations among the hills. The Dandy threw up his hands as he had forced so many luckless travelers to do in his career of highway robbery, and fell, gracefully, as he did everything, face downward, with a little trickle of blood, upon the snow. With a shriek of anguish a girl in a red cloak, who had been speeding up the hill, threw herself beside him, calling his name with all the loving epithets that even the lowest of the low seems able to win from some woman's heart.

Tears wrung from his being's depths for baffled retribution coursing down his rough cheeks, the Bully lifted pinioned hands to Heaven and uttered the one prayer of his life: "O Almighty Gawd, with all respect, why did You b.u.t.t in? O Gawd! I've made cold meat of a score o' men on end from fust ter last! But they was jes' accident or playfulness, d'ye see? This here skunk were the only livin' thing I ever hankered fer ter kill! And Thou hast called my bluff, and took the wind outen my sails by puttin' the shootin'-iron of my vengeance inter another's hand! Thar ain't no four-flushin' Thee, O Gawd! Thou hast plumb squared the reckonin' fer all my sins, past and ter come, world without end. Amen."

Whose the hand that shot Dandy Raish no one ever knew, though many a young fool, in his cups, boasted of the high distinction. In the case of a man so universally detested perhaps official enquiry thought it policy to rest. But, possessed at the moment by a literal interpretation of duty, with a heavy heart the good minister sought his favorite Indian proselyte.

Sitting beside him, where he found him whittling peaceably in the shelter of the Customs water-b.u.t.t, "O Joseph, Chilkat Jo," sighing, he began. "My son, if on your hands there be blood-guiltiness, you must repent, confess!"

The soft shavings slithered, curled and fell, as the emblem of the Raven and the Frog grew beneath the skilful knife. Then, in unimpa.s.sioned monotone, the Indian remarked, "Some day, when I velly old, old chief, I lepent, confess, make G.o.dam-h.e.l.lan-blazes Clistian deathbed. But now----" He paused to twist the weird features of his tribal G.o.d into an inscrutable smile. "Now, I mally Gelly."