The Heart of Unaga Part 65

He shrugged indifference.

"It don't matter anyway. I was at work. Same as I'd been at work nights.

I'd a lamp burning. Maybe he saw me through the window. I guess that was so. The door was shut, but unfastened. I didn't dare keep it fast, working in there. Well, I heard a sound. The door was pushed wide and he jumped in on me with a loaded gun at my vitals. He'd got me plumb set.

Sure. But the dope. It didn't give him a chance. It got a strangle-holt right away, and he dropped dead at my feet. He's--he's your step-father?

The man you came to warn me of?"

"Yes."

Steve nodded.

"Here, let's quit this place. Guess it's not wholesome standing around.

Pa.s.s me the masks. We'll get right over to the sheds. There, where it's dry, and we can sit. There's things I need to tell you right away. Both of you."

Marcel and Keeko were sitting side by side on one of the sleds which had not yet been completely unloaded. Steve was squatting on an up-turned box that had been used to contain food stores for the trail. He was facing them, and his back was towards the building of the store. It was rather the picture of two children listening to some wonderful fairy story, told in the staid tones of a well-loved parent. Never for a moment was attention diverted. Never was interruption permitted. Even the approach of An-ina pa.s.sed unremarked.

And as Steve talked a beam of sunlight fell athwart his st.u.r.dy figure, lightening its rough clothing, and surrounding him with a penetrating light that revealed the sprinkling of grey beginning to mar the dark hue of his ample hair. The lines, too, in his strong face, fine-drawn and scarcely noticeable ordinarily, the searching sun of spring had no mercy upon.

"Oh, it's a heap long way back," he said, "and I guess it all belongs to me. Anyway it did till Keeko got around. Say, you need to think of a crazy sort of feller who guessed that most all there was in life was to make good for the woman he loved, and the poor girl kiddie she'd borne him. You need to figger on a feller who didn't know a thing else, and thought he was acting square and right by his wife the whole darn time.

He was a fool, a crazy fool. But he did all he knew, and the way he knew it. His duty was the law and order of a wide enough territory around Athabasca, which is just one h.e.l.l of a piece of country from here. When you've thought of that you want to think of a real good woman, all pretty, and bright, with blue eyes and fair hair, and her baby girl the same. You want to reckon she was just about your ages, and was plumb full of life, and ready for all the play going. When you've got that you want to think of her man being away from their home months and months, winter and summer. It was his work. And all the time there's a feller, a mean, low, skunk of a feller with a good-looker face, and the manners and talk of a swell white man, hanging around on that home doorstep. So it goes on. How long I don't know. Then comes a time when this p'lice officer gets out on a mission to Unaga. And it's the other feller that has to hand him his orders. Do you see? That trip's a two years' trip, and the pore gal is just left around home with her baby the whole time.

Oh, she's got her food, and home, and money. That's so. Well, at the end of that trip the feller gets back. He's found up there a white kiddie, and an Indian nurse woman, and the h.e.l.l of a tragedy of the boy's parents. So he brings the kiddie back, a little brother to his baby girl."

Steve drew a deep breath and stirred. When he went on his eyes were gazing out at the sunlight beyond the shed.

"When he made home with the life well-nigh beat out of him, his outfit a wreck, and the nurse woman and the kiddie no better, his wife and his baby girl were gone. They'd been gone a great while. So had the man.

They had gone together, and the man was wanted for stealing the Treaty Money of the Indians he was the government agent for. Do you get that?"

Keeko nodded. She was listening with breathless interest for she felt the story was addressed to her. Marcel, too, was absorbed. But the ultimate drift of the story was scarcely as clear to him yet.

"Well, it don't need telling you the things that happened after that,"

Steve went on with a half-smile that was something desperately grim.

"Maybe that feller went nigh mad. I don't know. Anyway, when he got better of things he hit out after that skunk of an agent in the hope of coming up with him, and killing him."

"But he was saved that. Maybe it was meant he should be. We can't reckon these things. Anyway he never saw his wife again. He never saw his baby girl. And--he never saw Hervey Garstaing till weeks ago he came under the label of Nicol--right along here to set the story of murder into his book of life. He's there in that store-house and he's been dead weeks.

Only the rottenness in him hasn't broke out because of the weed. Anyway he's dead. He was a sc.u.m that had no place in this world, and I guess Providence handed it to him in its own fashion and time. He robbed me of Nita. He robbed me of----"

"Nita--my mother's name." Keeko's voice was choked. A world of emotion seemed to be striving to overwhelm her. Marcel in bewilderment was regarding only the strong face of the man seated in the sunlight.

Steve inclined his head.

"Yes. Nita was your mother."

An uncontrollable impulse urged the girl. She had no power to resist it.

Why should she? This man--this man to whom Marcel had brought her, with his steady eyes and strong face. He--he----

She sprang from her seat beside her lover, the great creature staring so amazedly at the man, who, for a moment, had permitted a glance into those close-hidden secrets of his heart. In a moment she was on her knees at Steve's side, and the man's hands were grasping hers in their strong embrace.

"And you--you are my--father!" she cried.

Steve crushed the hands in his with a power that told of the feeling stirring.

"Yes," he said simply. Then he added very gently, very tenderly. "And you--you are my little baby girl Coqueline."

And in the silence that followed there reached them from close behind the sound of the low, soft voice of the mother woman.

"So. An-ina glad. Oh, yes."

THE END