The Alaskan Part 10

"I think the circ.u.mstances permit," he explained. In a moment he looked up, puzzled. "The door is locked on the inside, and the key is in the lock."

He pounded with his fist on the panel. He continued to pound until his knuckles were red. There was still no response.

"Odd," he muttered.

"Very odd," agreed Alan.

His shoulder was against the door. He drew back and with a single crash sent it in. A pale light filtered into the room from a corridor lamp, and the men stared. Rossland was in bed. They could see his face dimly, upturned, as if staring at the ceiling. But even now he made no movement and spoke no word. Marston entered and turned on the light.

After that, for ten seconds, no man moved. Then Alan heard Captain Rifle close the door behind them, and from Marston's lips came a startled whisper:

"Good G.o.d!"

Rossland was not covered. He was undressed and flat on his back. His arms were stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth agape. And the white sheet under him was red with blood. It had trickled over the edges and to the floor. His eyes were loosely closed. After the first shock Doctor Marston reacted swiftly. He bent over Rossland, and in that moment, when his back was toward them, Captain Rifle's eyes met Alan's.

The same thought--and in another instant disbelief--flashed from one to the other.

Marston was speaking, professionally cool now. "A knife stab, close to the right lung, if not in it. And an ugly bruise over his eye. He is not dead. Let him lie as he is until I return with instruments and dressing."

"The door was locked on the inside," said Alan, as soon as the doctor was gone. "And the window is closed. It looks like--suicide. It is possible--there was an understanding between them--and Rossland chose this way instead of the sea?"

Captain Rifle was on his knees. He looked under the berth, peered into the corners, and pulled back the blanket and sheet. "There is no knife,"

he said stonily. And in a moment he added: "There are red stains on the window. It was not attempted suicide. It was--"

"Murder."

"Yes, if Rossland dies. It was done through the open window. Someone called Rossland to the window, struck him, and then closed the window.

Or it is possible, if he were sitting or standing here, that a long-armed man might have reached him. It was a man, Alan. We've got to believe that. It was a _man_."

"Of course, a man," Alan nodded.

They could hear Marston returning, and he was not alone. Captain Rifle made a gesture toward the door. "Better go," he advised. "This is a ship's matter, and you won't want to be unnecessarily mixed up in it.

Come to my cabin in half an hour. I shall want to see you."

The second officer and the purser were with Doctor Marston when Alan pa.s.sed them, and he heard the door of Rossland's room close behind him.

The ship was trembling under his feet again. They were moving away. He went to Mary Standish's cabin and deliberately gathered her belongings and put them in the small hand-bag with which she had come aboard.

Without any effort at concealment he carried the bag to his room and packed his own dunnage. After that he hunted up Stampede Smith and explained to him that an unexpected change in his plans compelled them to stop at Cordova. He was five minutes late in his appointment with the captain.

Captain Rifle was seated at his desk when Alan entered his cabin. He nodded toward a chair.

"We'll reach Cordova inside of an hour," he said. "Doctor Marston says Rossland will live, but of course we can not hold the _Nome_ in port until he is able to talk. He was struck through the window. I will make oath to that. Have you anything--in mind?"

"Only one thing," replied Alan, "a determination to go ash.o.r.e as soon as I can. If it is possible, I shall recover her body and care for it. As for Rossland, it is not a matter of importance to me whether he lives or dies. Mary Standish had nothing to do with the a.s.sault upon him. It was merely coincident with her own act and nothing more. Will you tell me our location when she leaped into the sea."

He was fighting to retain his calmness, his resolution not to let Captain Rifle see clearly what the tragedy of her death had meant to him.

"We were seven miles off the Eyak River coast, a little south and west.

If her body goes ash.o.r.e, it will be on the island, or the mainland east of Eyak River. I am glad you are going to make an effort. There is a chance. And I hope you will find her."

Captain Rifle rose from his chair and walked nervously back and forth.

"It's a bad blow for the ship--her first trip," he said. "But I'm not thinking of the _Nome_. I'm thinking of Mary Standish. My G.o.d, it is terrible! If it had been anyone else--_anyone_--" His words seemed to choke him, and he made a despairing gesture with his hands. "It is hard to believe--almost impossible to believe she would deliberately kill herself. Tell me again what happened in your cabin."

Crushing all emotion out of his voice, Alan repeated briefly certain details of the girl's visit. But a number of things which she had trusted to his confidence he did not betray. He did not dwell upon Rossland's influence or her fear of him. Captain Rifle saw his effort, and when he had finished, he gripped his hand, understanding in his eyes.

"You're not responsible--not so much as you believe," he said. "Don't take it too much to heart, Alan. But find her. Find her if you can, and let me know. You will do that--you will let me know?"

"Yes, I shall let you know."

"And Rossland. He is a man with many enemies. I am positive his a.s.sailant is still on board."

"Undoubtedly."

The captain hesitated. He did not look at Alan as he said: "There is nothing in Miss Standish's room. Even her bag is gone. I thought I saw things in there when I was with you. I thought I saw something in your hand. But I must have been mistaken. She probably flung everything into the sea--before she went."

"Such a thought is possible," agreed Alan evasively.

Captain Rifle drummed the top of his desk with his finger-tips. His face looked haggard and old in the shaded light of the cabin. "That's all, Alan. G.o.d knows I'd give this old life of mine to bring her back if I could. To me she was much like--someone--a long time dead. That's why I broke ship's regulations when she came aboard so strangely at Seattle, without reservation. I'm sorry now. I should have sent her ash.o.r.e. But she is gone, and it is best that you and I keep to ourselves a little of what we guess. I hope you will find her, and if you do--"

"I shall send you word."

They shook hands, and Captain Rifle's fingers still held to Alan's as they went to the door and opened it. A swift change had come in the sky.

The stars were gone, and a moaning whisper hovered over the darkened sea.

"A thunder-storm," said the captain.

His mastery was gone, his shoulders bent, and there was a tremulous note in his voice that compelled Alan to look straight out into darkness. And then he said,

"Rossland will be sent to the hospital in Cordova, if he lives."

Alan made no answer. The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder.

He struggled to keep hold of himself as he returned to his cabin.

Stampede Smith was waiting for him, his dunnage packed in an oilskin bag. Alan explained the unexpected change in his plans. Business in Cordova would make him miss a boat and would delay him at least a month in reaching the tundras. It was necessary for Stampede to go on to the range alone. He could make a quick trip by way of the Government railroad to Tanana. After that he would go to Allakakat, and thence still farther north into the Endicott country. It would be easy for a man like Stampede to find the range. He drew a map, gave him certain written instructions, money, and a final warning not to lose his head and take up gold-hunting on the way. While it was necessary for him to go ash.o.r.e at once, he advised Stampede not to leave the ship until morning. And Stampede swore on oath he would not fail him.

Alan did not explain his own haste and was glad Captain Rifle had not questioned him too closely. He was not a.n.a.lyzing the reasonableness of his action. He only knew that every muscle in his body was aching for physical action and that he must have it immediately or break. The desire was a touch of madness in his blood, a thing which he was holding back by sheer force of will. He tried to shut out the vision of a pale face floating in the sea; he fought to keep a grip on the dispa.s.sionate calmness which was a part of him. But the ship itself was battering down his stoic resistance. In an hour--since he had heard the scream of the woman--he had come to hate it. He wanted the feel of solid earth under his feet. He wanted, with all his soul, to reach that narrow strip of coast where Mary Standish was drifting in.

But even Stampede saw no sign of the fire that was consuming him. And not until Alan's feet touched land, and Cordova lay before him like a great hole in the mountains, did the strain give way within him. After he had left the wharf, he stood alone in the darkness, breathing deeply of the mountain smell and getting his bearings. It was more than darkness about him. An occasional light burning dimly here and there gave to it the appearance of a sea of ink threatening to inundate him.

The storm had not broken, but it was close, and the air was filled with a creeping warning. The moaning of thunder was low, and yet very near, as if smothered by the hand of a mighty force preparing to take the earth unaware.

Through the pit of gloom Alan made his way. He was not lost. Three years ago he had walked a score of times to the cabin of old Olaf Ericksen, half a mile up the sh.o.r.e, and he knew Ericksen would still be there, where he had squatted for twenty years, and where he had sworn to stay until the sea itself was ready to claim him. So he felt his way instinctively, while a crash of thunder broke over his head. The forces of the night were unleashing. He could hear a gathering tumult in the mountains hidden beyond the wall of blackness, and there came a sudden glare of lightning that illumined his way. It helped him. He saw a white reach of sand ahead and quickened his steps. And out of the sea he heard more distinctly an increasing sound. It was as if he walked between two great armies that were setting earth and sea atremble as they advanced to deadly combat.

The lightning came again, and after it followed a discharge of thunder that gave to the ground under his feet a shuddering tremor. It rolled away, echo upon echo, through the mountains, like the booming of signal-guns, each more distant than the other. A cold breath of air struck Alan in the face, and something inside him rose up to meet the thrill of storm.

He had always loved the rolling echoes of thunder in the mountains and the fire of lightning among their peaks. On such a night, with the crash of the elements about his father's cabin and the roaring voices of the ranges filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf Ericksen's cabin.

He saw it at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face, and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage to the floor, and shouted the old greeting that Ericksen would not have forgotten, though nearly a quarter of a century had pa.s.sed since he and Alan's father had tramped the mountains together.

He had turned up the wick of the oil lamp on the table when into the frame of an inner door came Ericksen himself, with his huge, bent shoulders, his ma.s.sive head, his fierce eyes, and a great gray beard streaming over his naked chest. He stared for a moment, and Alan flung off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from Ericksen. They gripped hands.