The Heart of Unaga Part 28

"You been hunting gophers, Uncle Steve?" The childish interest leapt afresh.

The man nodded, and his smiling eyes encountered those of the squaw. He read the understanding he beheld there, and turned quickly to the child again.

"Sure," he said drily. "But I didn't get him."

"No." The boy turned regretful eyes towards the open, where he, too, had just failed to bag his quarry. "You kill 'em when you get 'em, Uncle. We do, don't we, An-ina?" he added, appealing for corroboration.

"We always kills 'em, Uncle Steve," he went on, "'cos gophers are very bad."

"Yes. Gophers are bad, old fellow. Always kill them. That's how I'd have done if I'd got the one I was after. But I didn't get him. He ran too fast for me. Maybe I'll find him another time. You never know. Do you?

Boy and Uncle and An-ina are going a great long way soon. We'll find better than gophers to hunt, eh?"

"Yes--wolves! Where we go?"

"We go back to the Sleepers--and the old fort."

Steve searched the child's face anxiously as he made the announcement.

He was half afraid of a lingering memory that might jeopardize his plans, or, at least make their fulfilment more difficult. But he need have had no fear. The child remembered, but only with delight. And again the man recognized the guiding hand of the squaw.

"Oo-o, Uncle! Soon? We go soon?" Marcel cried, his eyes shining. "The forests where the wolves are. And the Sleepers. And the snow comes down, and we dig ourselves out. And the dogs, and sleds, and--we go soon--very soon! Can't we go now? Oo-o!"

"Not now, but--soon."

Steve's satisfaction was in the glance of thanks which he flashed into An-ina's watching eyes.

"But now I must really go along to the house, old fellow," he said, with a sigh. "Guess boy'll come, too, or maybe he'll go on with his game?"

The question was superfluous. Gopher hunting was a glorious sport, but walking hand in hand with Uncle Steve back to the house, even though bed and a bath were awaiting him, was a delight Marcel had no idea of renouncing.

The plump figure of Millie Ross half filled the doorway, while the sunset sought out the obscure corners of the comfortably furnished hall place behind her.

The doctor's great figure was supported on the table on which he had flung his hat while he welcomed Steve. The latter's arrival had been quite unheralded, completely unexpected. So long was it since his going that husband and wife had almost abandoned the thought that some day they would be called upon to render an account of their stewardship with regard to young Marcel, and hand over the little human "capital"

originally entrusted to them. It was not to be wondered at. They loved the boy. They had their two girls, but they had no son. And Marcel--well, Steve was so long overdue, and his absence had been one long, unbroken silence. So, all unconsciously, they had come to think that something had happened, something which had caused him to change his mind, or which had made it physically impossible for him to return.

Now, after the first warmth and delight of the meeting had pa.s.sed, a certain pre-occupation restrained the buoyancy so natural to the warm-hearted pair.

Steve was seated in the chair beside the table, the chair which the doctor was wont to adopt when the mosquitoes outside made the veranda impossible. Perhaps he understood the preoccupation which more particularly looked out of Millie's eyes. He felt the burden of his debt to these people, a debt he could never repay; he understood the feelings which his return must inspire if the child, left in their care, had become to them a t.i.the of that which he had become to him. He knew it was his purpose to tear the child out of their lives. And the wrench would be no less for the thought that he purposed carrying him off to those regions of desolation which had already come very near to costing the child's helpless little life.

So his steady eyes were watchful of the woman's att.i.tude, and he looked for the sign of those feelings which he knew his return must have set stirring. He knew that, whatever the big Scotsman felt and thought, the woman was the real factor with which he must reckon.

With this understanding he frankly laid bare much which he otherwise would have kept deep hidden. He told these two, who listened in deep sympathy, the story of his pursuit of the man who had wronged him, from the beginning to the end. And, in the telling, so shorn of all unnecessary colouring, the simple deliberateness of his purpose, contemplated in the coldly pa.s.sionate desire of an implacable nature, the story gained a tremendous force, the more so that his pursuit had ended in failure.

He told them how for nearly a year, after winding up the affairs of his dead father, which had left him with even a better fortune than he had expected, he had systematically devoted himself to spreading a wide net of enquiries. In this process he had to travel some thousands of miles, and had to write many hundreds of letters, and had spent countless hours in the official bureau of local police.

He told them how finally he had discovered the trail he, sought in a remote haunt in the poorer quarters of Winnipeg. This, after many tortuous wanderings and blind alley searchings, had finally led him to the waterside of Quebec, and the purlieus of Mallard's, where, under the guidance of the celebrated Maurice Saney, he ran up against the blank wall of that redoubtable harbour of crime.

"All this," he said, without emotion, "took me over two years. And I guess it wasn't till I hit up against Mallard's that I sat down and took a big think. You see," he went on simply, "I wanted to kill that feller.

I wanted to kill that feller, and take my poor girl back and get back my little, little baby. I had a notion I might have to hang for the job, but, anyway, I'd have saved her from a life--well, I'd have saved them both, and been able to fix them so they didn't need a thing in life.

What happened to me didn't seem to worry any. But when I hit up against Mallard's, and I'd listened some to Saney I started in to figure. To get that far had taken me over two years, and big money. There might be still years of it ahead of me. And when I'd done, was I sure I'd get Nita and the kiddie back? And if I did, how would I be able to fix them after all the expense? Then there was Marcel. Maybe it was something else urging me to quit. Something I wasn't just aware of. I don't know.

I've heard say that a feller who yearns to kill, either kills quick or goes crazy. There wasn't a thing foolish about me. I hadn't any of the foolishness of a crazy man. Which is a way of saying the yearning to kill hadn't the grip on me it had. It was a big fight, but sense--or something else--won out. I quit for those other things I'd got in my head. Guess I heard that little feller's 'Hullo!' ringing in my ears.

Same as I heard it up in Unaga. So I cut out the other, and got busy right away fixing things for the big play I mean to put up for the kiddie that Providence has left to me. There are times when my whole body kicks at the thought of that skunk getting away with his play. But there's others when I'm glad--real glad--I quit. I can't judge the thing right. I'm sort of torn in different directions. Anyway, there it is.

Maybe the thing I haven't been allowed to do will be done sometime by the Providence that reckons to straighten out most things as it sees fit. I hope the way it sees is my way. That's all. Now I'm ready for the big play. My outfit has gone up by water on Hudson's Bay, a special charter. It's to be landed and cached on the sh.o.r.es of Chesterfield Inlet. I've sunk every cent of my inheritance in it. It's an outfit that'll give Marcel and me a life stake in the work lying ahead. And all that comes out of it is for him. With all this fixed I got back right away."

"But not--in a 'hurry.'"

There was a half smile in the Scotsman's eyes.

"The only 'hurry' I'm in is to get all the season we need," Steve replied simply.

"That means you want Marcel--right away."

Millie spoke without turning from her contemplation of the view beyond the doorway. And there was that in her voice which told Steve of the inroads Marcel had made upon her mother's heart.

"I've thought of all this a whole heap," he said gently. "It's one of the things that clinched my idea of quitting. Later I don't guess I'd have had the nerve to--ask for Marcel."

Millie turned abruptly. And the husband was watching her as urgently as Steve himself.

"That's not fair, Steve," she declared, without attempting to soften the challenge.

"But, Millie--"

The husband's protest was cut short.

"Don't worry, Mac," Millie cried. "I know just the feelings that prompted Steve to think that way. But it's not fair. It's making out that I'd like to go back on my word, and refuse to give Marcel up to the moloch of Unaga. That's the part that isn't fair. Steve, if you'd come to me in twenty years my word would have gone every time. That boy might be my own son, I never had a son, and maybe you can guess just what that means to me when I say it. But there's bigger things in the world than my feelings, and I'm full wise to them. That boy loves you the same as if you were his father. I've helped to see to that. I and An-ina. You've been through h.e.l.l for him. You've been through a h.e.l.l of your own besides. Now you're ready to give your all for him--including your life.

Do you know what I feel in my fool woman's way? I'll try and tell you,"

she went on, forcing back the threatening tears. "There's men in the world made to give their everything for those they love. You're one of them. To rob you of an object for you to work and sacrifice yourself for would be to rob you of the greatest thing in your life. It would be an unforgivable crime, and though it broke my heart I would refuse to commit that crime. Marcel is ready for you the moment you ask for him.

Oh, yes, it's just as I said. His outfit is ready. We've enlarged it as he's grown. An-ina has done her share. There's two of everything, as I said there would be--and a good deal over. But," she added, with a little pitiful break in her voice that showed how near were her tears, "I wish, oh, how I wish, it was not Unaga, and that, some day, I might hope to see his smiling, happy face again. You'll be good to him, Steve, won't you? Raise him, train him, teach him. Don't let him become a wild man. I want to think of him, to always remember him as he is now, and to think that when he grows to manhood at least he's as good a man as you."

PART II

CHAPTER I

AFTER FOURTEEN YEARS

It was boasted of Seal Bay that its inhabitants produced more wealth per head than any other community in the Northern world, not even excluding the gold cities of Alaska and the Yukon. It was a considerable boast, but with more than usual justice. A cynic once declared that it was the only distinction of merit the place could fairly claim.

The boast of Seal Bay was sufficiently alluring to those who had not yet set foot on its pestilential sh.o.r.es. For once, by some extraordinary chance, truth had been spoken in Seal Bay. No one need starve upon its deplorable streets, if sufficiently clever and unscrupulous.

A photographic plate would have yielded a choice scene of desolation, if sun enough could have been found to achieve the necessary record. The long, low foresh.o.r.e of Seal Bay was dotted with a large number of mud huts, thatched with reeds from adjacent marshes, and a fair sprinkling of frame houses of varying shapes and sizes. There were no streets in the modern sense, only stretches of mire which were more or less bottomless for about seven months in the year, and lost in the grip of an Arctic winter for the rest of the time. Foot traffic was only made possible in the softer portion of the year by means of disjointed sections of wooden sidewalks laid down by those who preferred the expense and labour to the necessary discomfort of frequent bathing.