The Challenge of the North Part 8

"I am sorry I hit you," answered Hedin heavily. "It is in here--the thing that makes me strike." He rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

"It is like many worms crawling inside my head, when one speaks ill of women. My eyes get hot, and the red streaks come, and then I strike.

It was such a thing that made me strike Pollak. But I had a hammer in my hand and I looked and saw that Pollak was dead, so I ran away from there and climbed onto the ship. I am glad I did not have a hammer in my hand to-day."

Wentworth regained his feet and glanced at his fast closing eye in the bit of mirror that hung above his wash bench. "So am I," he seconded, forcing a smile. "Where did all this happen? Who was Pollak, and where did the ship take you?"

"It was in London in the place of Levinski, the furrier. Pollak and I worked for him in the sorting of skins. The ship took me to Port Nelson. It was a Hudson's Bay Company ship, and I hired out to the Company and they sent me here to G.o.ds Lake. I like it here."

"So that's it, is it? Well, now you listen to me. We'll just forget the black eye and make a little trade. You keep still about the sable coat, and about hitting me, and I'll keep still about your killing Pollak. Mind you, if I should tell Murchison you had killed a man he would send you back to London, and they would hang you."

"Yes, they would hang me because I killed Pollak. But I do not tell Murchison things that I know. If you do not tell him I killed Pollak, he will not send me back to get hung."

XVI

When John McNabb read Wentworth's report, he reached for his telephone and called Detroit. "That you, Beekman?" he asked, recognizing the voice of the senior partner of one of the foremost engineering firms in the country. "How about you--all set for that G.o.ds Lake job? Just got the preliminary report. Everything O. K. Plenty of water, plenty of head, and we can get it without spreading the reservoir over the whole country. Hustle that road through as fast as you can. Hundred miles of it--only about eight or ten miles of swamp. We can truck the material in quicker than by shipping it clear around through the Bay and track-lining it up the river. Few small bridges, and one motor ferry. Make it good for heavy work. Put on men enough to complete the road in a month at the outside. Most if it will only be clearing out timber and stumps. As soon as the road is done we'll begin to shoot in the cement. Get at it on the jump now, an' I'll see you in a day or two."

The days following the return of Wentworth and Hedin from the survey of the rapids were busy ones at the little post on G.o.ds Lake. For it was the time of the spring trading, and from far and near came the men of the outlands, bringing in their harvest of fur.

The post flag floated gaily at the staff head, and in the broad clearing about its base were pitched the tepees of the fur bringers.

Each rising sun brought additional wilderness gleaners from afar, and additional children, and many additional starving dogs. For these days were the gala days of the Northland; days of high feast and plenty, of boastings, and recountings, and the chanting of weird chants.

The crudity, the primitive savagery of the scene gripped Hedin as nothing had gripped him before. He was astonished that the setting held for him so little of surprise. He fitted into the life naturally and perfectly as though to the manner born. But his own astonishment was as nothing as compared to the astonishment of Murchison, who stood close as Hedin broke open and sorted the packs of fur. Time and again his swift appraisal of a skin won a nod of approval from the factor, who received the skins from his hands and paid for them in tokens of made beaver.

"I do not understand it," said Murchison, between puffs of his pipe, as at the end of a day he and Hedin sat in the doorway of the trading room and watched the yellow flames from a hundred campfires stab the black darkness of the night, and send wavering shadows playing in grotesque patterns upon the walls of the tepees. The harsh din of the encampment all but drowned the factor's words, and Hedin smiled.

"Do not understand what?" he asked.

"'Tis yourself I do not understand. Ye've never handled raw fur, yet in the handling of thirty packs I have not changed the rating of a skin. By your own word, 'tis your first venture into the North, yet since the day of your coming ye have behaved like a man of the North.

The Indians distrust a new-comer. They are slow to place confidence in any white man. An' yet, they have accepted your judgment of fur without question. An' a good half of them ye call by name. 'Tis a combination unheard of, an' to be believed only when one sees it."

"And yet it is very simple," explained Hedin. "For years I have studied fur--finished fur--and in the study I have read everything I could find about fur, from the habits of the animals up through their trapping, and the handling of the skins in every step of their preparation. And as for the Indians themselves, I have merely moved about among them and got acquainted, as I would do in a city of white men."

Murchison interrupted him with a snort. "An' a thousand would try it, an' one succeed! 'Tis no explanation ye've given at all. Ye cannot explain it. 'Tis a something ye have that's bred in the bone. Ye're a born man of the North--an' G.o.d pity ye for the job ye've got! Cooped up in a store all day with the fanfare of a city dingin' your ears from dawn till midnight, an' beyond! An' what's the good of it? When ye might be living up here in the land that still lays as G.o.d made it.

The Company can use men like you. You could have a post of your own in a year's time."

For many minutes Hedin puffed at his pipe. "I am glad to hear that,"

he said at length, "for I am not going back."

"Not going back!" cried Murchison. "D'ye mean it? An' what about that la.s.s of John McNabb's?"

"That la.s.s of John McNabb's has chosen another," answered Hedin in a dull tone.

It was the seventh of June when Wentworth had dispatched the Indian with the reports to McNabb and to Orcutt, and thereafter he settled himself for three weeks of waiting. The activity at the post bored and annoyed him. He complained of the noisy yapping of the night-prowling dogs, cursed the children that ran against his legs in their play, and when necessity compelled him to cross the encampment, he pa.s.sed among the tepees, obviously avoiding and despising their occupants.

Upon the fifth or sixth day, to rid himself of annoyance, Wentworth essayed a journey to the rapids, and because no one could be spared from the post, he ventured forth alone. When not more than ten miles from the post, he turned his head, as he topped a rock-ribbed ridge for a casual survey of the broad _brule_ he had just crossed. The next instant he brought up rigidly erect as his eye caught a swift blur of motion far back on his trail at the opposite edge of the _brule_. He looked again but could make out only an army of blackened stumps.

Entering the scrub with a vague sense of uneasiness, he circled among the stunted trees and took up a position under cover of a granite outcropping that gave him a view of his back trail. He had hardly settled himself before a man stepped from behind a stump and struck out rapidly upon his trail. The man was traveling light, apparently studying the ground as he walked. Wentworth glanced about him and noted that the rocky ridge would give the man scant opportunity for trailing him to his position. The figure was coming up the ridge now.

As it pa.s.sed a twisted pine, Wentworth got a good look into his face, and the sight of it sent cold shivers up his spine that p.r.i.c.kled uncomfortably at the roots of his hair. For the face was that of Alex Thumb, and at close range Wentworth could see that the black eyes glittered evilly. Icy fingers gripped the engineer's heart. He felt suddenly weak and cold.

Raising a shaking hand to his forehead, Wentworth withdrew it wet and glistening with sweat. His brain conjured fantastic stories of the powers of the Indian tracker, and fearfully he scanned the rocks over which he had come. Suddenly it occurred to him that if the man were still upon his trail, he would have come up with him before this.

Evidently the tracker was wasting no time on the broad rocky ridge, but taking it for granted that his quarry would proceed on his way, figured on picking up the trail again in the softer ground of the next valley; in which case he would soon discover his error and circle to correct it. Discarding his pack, the terrified man swiftly descended the ridge and crossed the _brule_ at a run. Gaining the shelter of the forest he paused and looked back. The wide clearing was tenantless, and regaining his breath, he resumed his flight, crashing through patches of underbrush, and splashing through streams until, just at dusk, the lights of the G.o.ds Lake campfires came into view.

Completely done up, he staggered into his cabin and, closing the door, fell sprawling upon his bunk, where for an hour he lay while his overtaxed muscles slowly regained their strength. Then he stood up, lighted his candle, and proceeded to remove the record of his mad flight from his scratched skin and torn clothing.

That evening at supper he was surprised to find that Downey had returned to the post. And he wondered if he only fancied that the officer eyed him meaningly.

He said nothing of his experience, but thereafter he was content to remain at the post, never venturing alone beyond the boundaries of the clearing. He became more and more nervous with the pa.s.sing of the days. One by one, he checked them off, and during the latter days of June he spent hours pacing restlessly up and down, or making the round of the clearing, shunned by Indian dogs and Indian children, and ignored by their elders. And always three questions were uppermost in his mind: Would Orcutt come? Would McNabb come? Would they both come?

And finding no answer, he would continue his restless pacing, or raise the imaginary stakes in his game of solitaire to stupendous proportions.

He became more and more irritable as the tension increased. The breaking of a shoe lace called forth a flow of profanity, and when the mainspring of his watch snapped, he hurled the instrument against the log wall in his senseless rage.

XVII

The morning of June 29th brought Cameron, armed with credentials which empowered him to transact any and all business connected with the pulp-wood holdings of the Canadian Wild Lands Company, Ltd. Murchison introduced him to Wentworth, who insisted that the man share his cabin.

"So you are McNabb's man?" queried Cameron with a smile, as he swung his pack to the floor and seated himself upon the edge of a bunk. "Do you know, we rather hoped I would not find you here."

"Why?" asked Wentworth, returning the smile.

"Pulp-wood has gone up since that contract was made. If the stuff were to revert to us we could do much better with it."

"How much better?"

Cameron shot a keen glance at his questioner. "Well, considerably," he answered non-committally.

"A dollar an acre?"

"Two of them."

A brief silence ensued, during which Wentworth was conscious that the eyes of the other were upon him. "Seven dollars an acre," he said.

"Pretty high, isn't it, when you consider the inaccessibility to your markets?"

Cameron laughed. "Inaccessibility to markets don't seem to be worrying McNabb any. Bringing his paper mills into the woods seems to have solved that problem. I was talking to the engineer in charge of his road construction day before yesterday----"

"Engineer in charge of road construction!" exclaimed Wentworth. "What road construction--where?"

"Why, north of here. You knew he was building a tote-road, didn't you?

I followed the blazed trail clear down to the rapids of the Shamattawa.

And he's pushing it, too--got twenty-five or thirty miles of it ready for traffic."

"No--I didn't know he had begun construction," admitted Wentworth. "I knew there was to be a road--laid it out myself. But I did not know that the work had started."

"Well, it has, and we may as well conclude out business."