The Challenge of the North Part 17

The breed shook his head. "No. De money can't buy w'at I wan'."

"What do you want?"

Again came the twisted smile. "Mebbe-so we eat de suppaire firs'. I got som' feesh. We buil' de fire an' cook 'um."

The meal was eaten in silence, and during its progress Wentworth in a measure recovered his nerve.

"You haven't told me yet what you want," he suggested when they had lighted their pipes and thrown on an armful of greens for a smudge.

Between the narrowed lids the black eyes seemed to smoulder as they fixed upon the face of the white man. "I wan' you heart," he said, casually. "Red in my han's I wan' it, an' squeeze de blood out, an'

watch it splash on de rocks. Mebbe-so I'm eat a piece dat heart, an'

feed de res' to my dog."

Wentworth's pipe dropped to the gravel and lay there. He uttered no sound. The wind had died down and save for the droning hum of a billion mosquitoes the silence was absolute. A thin column of smoke streamed from the bowl of the neglected pipe. In profound fascination Wentworth watched it flow smoothly upward. An imperceptible air current set the column swaying and wavering, and a light puff of breeze dispersed it in a swirl of heavy yellow smoke from the smudge. Dully, impersonally, he sensed that the half-breed had just told him that he would squeeze the red blood from his heart and watch it splash upon the rocks. His eyes rested upon the rocks rimmed up by the ice above the gravelly beach. The blood would splash there, and there, and those other rocks would be spattered with tiny drops of it--his blood, the blood from his own heart which Alex Thumb would squeeze dry, as one would wring water from a sponge. He wondered that he felt no sense of fear. He believed that Alex Thumb would do that, yet it was a matter that seemed not of any importance. He raised his eyes and encountered the malevolent glare of the breed. The black eyes seemed to glow with an inner l.u.s.tre, like the smoulder of banked fires.

With a start he seemed to have returned from some far place. The words of Corporal Downey flittered through his brain: "You'll be servin' with the devils in h.e.l.l if you don't quit makin' enemies of men like Alex Thumb." And there was Alex Thumb regarding him through narrowed smouldering eyes across the little fire. Alex Thumb would kill him!

Would kill _him_--Ross Wentworth! The whole thing was preposterous.

If the man had really meant to kill him he would have done it before this. He wouldn't dare; there were the Mounted. Other words of Downey came to him, "If he does kill you, I'll get him." So there was a possibility that the man would kill him. Why not? Who would ever know? They would think he disappeared with Orcutt's money--would even inst.i.tute a world-wide search from him--but not in the bush. Thought of the money nerved him to speak.

"How much will you take to get into your canoe and paddle back the way you came?" he asked.

The breed laughed. "Wen I'm keel you I'm got you money, anyway. But I'm ain' wan' so mooch de money. I'm wan' you heart." A dangerous glitter supplanted the smouldering glow of the black eyes. "Me--I'm stay ten year in de prison, for 'cause I'm keel my own fadder, an' dat dam' good t'ing. For why I'm keel heem? 'Cause he whip me wit' de dog-whip. In de prison de guards whip me mor' as wan t'ousan' tam. In de night w'en I ain' can sleep 'cause my back hurt so bad from de whip, I'm lay in de dark an' keel dem all. Every wan I ha' keel wan hondre tam dere in de dark w'en I lay an' t'ink 'bout it. An' I know how I'm goin' do dat. Den you hit me wit de whip on de trail. All right. I'm ain' kin keel de guards. I keel you here in de bush; I shoot you in de head, an' I'm cut de heart out before he quit jumpin'."

Wentworth moistened his lips with his tongue. "Downey will take you in, if you do. And they'll hang you--choke you to death with a rope."

"No. Downey ain' kin fin'. I'm bur' you in de bush--all but de heart.

I'm keep de heart all tam."

"Good G.o.d, man, you couldn't kill me like that--in cold blood!" Beyond the fire the half-breed laughed, a dry evil laugh that held nothing of mirth. With a scream of terror Wentworth leaped to his feet and crashed into the bush.

Beside the fire Alex Thumb laughed--and spread his blankets for the night.

Four hours later the breed wriggled from his blanket and lighted the fire. While the water heated for his tea, he carried the two canoes back into the scrub and cached them, together with the two packs. He swallowed his breakfast and picking up his rifle walked slowly into the bush, his eyes on the ground. A mile away the lips twisted into their sardonic grin as he noted where the fleeing man had floundered through a muskeg, the flattened gra.s.s telling of his frequent falls. In a balsam thicket he lifted a sc.r.a.p of cloth from a protruding limb, and again he smiled. Where Wentworth forded a waist-deep stream he had lain down to rest on the sand of the opposite bank. The trail started toward the south. By midforenoon Thumb noted with a grin that he was traveling due east.

At noon he overtook Wentworth, mired to the middle in a marl bed, supporting himself on a half sunken spruce.

Laying aside his rifle, the breed cut a pole with his belt ax and after some difficulty succeeded in dragging the engineer to solid ground.

Wentworth was muttering and mumbling about a Russian sable coat, and Thumb had to support him as he bound him to a spruce tree.

On the edge of the lake Corporal Downey picked up the trail. He located the cached canoes, and returning to the fire, he reached down and picked Wentworth's pipe from the gravel. "It's Thumb, all right,"

he said, as he stood holding the pipe. "I know his canoe. They were both here at the same time. I don't savvy that, because Wentworth left first. Thumb's trail is only three hours old. Maybe--if I hurry----"

From far to the southeastward came the sound of a shot. Downey straightened, and for the s.p.a.ce of minutes stood tense as a pointer.

The sound was not repeated--and swiftly the officer of the Mounted sped through the bush.

AN EPILOGUE

Two days later, into the trading room of the Hudson's Bay Company's post on G.o.d's Lake, burst Orcutt, white of face, shaken of nerves, and with his disheveled garments bespeaking a frenzied dash through the timber.

"What's the meaning of this?" he cried, holding out a telegram.

McNabb reached for the message and read it. "It means just what it says," he answered. "Cameron has stated it plain."

"But where is Cameron? Where is the three hundred and fifty thousand I paid him? Where is Wentworth?"

"Cameron is not here. He left after turning over your money to Wentworth. He said he held a paper that const.i.tuted Wentworth your legal representative."

"But--where is Wentworth?" gasped Orcutt.

"He left the night he got the money--a week ago to-night, wasn't it, Dugald?"

"Good G.o.d!" The words were a groan. "I'm ruined. Ruined, I tell you!

There's just one chance. John, the material that's on your mill site.

Will you take it over?"

"Sure, I'll take it," answered McNabb. "On the same terms you offered for my tote-road. Ten cents on the dollar, wasn't it, Orcutt?"

"But, man, you don't understand!"

"I understand that the shoe is on the other foot," answered McNabb, coldly. "Listen to me, Orcutt; by your own admission you've been trying for more than twenty years to ruin me. I've let you go, never turning out of my way to injure you. I'm not turning out of my way now. If you're squeezed it is because of your own deeds--not mine."

"Squeezed!" sobbed the banker hysterically. "I'm ruined! It means the bank--my home--everything! It means--more. I was so sure--I--I'm into the bank's money for thousands! It means--the penitentiary!"

McNabb looked at the cringing man, whose knees seemed to sag beneath the weight of his woe. Coldly his eyes traveled the length of him: "Maybe ye're right," he said, and his words cut icy cold. Then, deliberately he turned his back upon the man and strode through the door.

Upon that same day, also came Corporal Downey, of the Royal North West Mounted Police, and in his custody he held a man. The man was the half-breed Alex Thumb.

"We've got the goods on him this time," Downey told the factor. "And a d.a.m.ned peculiar case. I picked him up a few miles south of the lake.

I heard a shot, and an hour later I located him and crept up through the brush. He had just finished burying Wentworth's body all but the heart--that was dryin' on a little stick beside the fire. There was an empty sh.e.l.l in his rifle. But--what I can't make out is this." He paused and withdrew from his pocket a small tin box, and opening it, disclosed a handful of ashes and the half of a United States gold certificate for ten thousand dollars. "He was holdin' it over a little fire," explained the officer. "I located him by the smoke smell. I covered him, and he dropped this last fragment to throw up his hands.

It's money. I didn't know they made 'em so big. But why in h.e.l.l should he burn it?"

Murchison examined the fragment with its burned edge. "Alex Thumb was canny," he muttered. "The bills was too big. He didn't dare to spend 'em."

THE END