The Hidden Places Part 26

"I might get Charlie Mills to go with me," Lawanne pursued his own thought.

"Mills didn't go out with the rest of the crew?" Hollister asked. He knew, of course, that Charlie Mills was still in the Toba valley because he had seen him with his own eyes not more than half an hour earlier. His question, however, was not altogether idle. He wondered whether Mills had gone out and come back, or if he had not left at all.

"No. He turned back at the last minute, for some reason. He's camping in one of the old T. & T. shacks below Carr's. I rather like Mills.

He's interesting when you can get him to loosen up. Queer, tense sort of beggar at times, though. A good man to go into the hills with--to go anywhere with--although he might not show to great advantage in a drawing-room. By Jove, you know, Hollister, it doesn't seem like nine months since I settled down in this cabin. Now I'm about due to go back to the treadmill."

"Do you have to?" Hollister asked. "If this satisfies you, why not come back again after you've had a fling at the outside?"

"I can't, very well," Lawanne for the first time touched on his personal affairs, that life which he led somewhere beyond the Toba. "I have obligations to fulfill. I've been playing truant, after a fashion. I've stolen a year to do something I wanted to do. Now it's done and I'm not even sure it's well done--but whether it's well done or not, it's finished, and I have to go back and get into the collar and make money to supply other people's needs. Unless," he shrugged his shoulders, "I break loose properly. This country has that sort of effect on a man. It makes him want to break loose from everything that seems to hamper and restrain him. It doesn't take a man long to shed his skin in surroundings like these. Oh, well, whether I come back or not, I'll be all the same a hundred years from now."

A rifle shot cut sharp into the silence that followed Lawanne's last words. That was nothing uncommon in the valley, where the crack of a gun meant only that some one was hunting. But upon this report there followed, clear and shrill, a scream, the high-pitched cry that only a frightened woman can utter. This was broken into and cut short by a second whip-like report. And both shots and scream came from the direction of Bland's house.

Hollister rose. He looked at Lawanne and Lawanne looked at him. Across Hollister's brain flashed a thought that would scarcely have been born if he had not seen Bland spying from the willows, if he had not seen Charlie Mills approaching that house, if he had not been aware of all the wheels within wheels, the complicated coil of longings and desires and smoldering pa.s.sions in which these people were involved. He looked at Lawanne, and he could not read what pa.s.sed in his mind. But when he turned and set out on a run for that shake cabin four hundred yards downstream, Lawanne followed at his heels.

They were winded, and their pace had slowed to a hurried walk by the time they reached the cabin. The door stood open. There was no sound.

The house was as still as the surrounding woods when Hollister stepped across the threshold.

Bland stood just within the doorway, erect, his feet a little apart, like a man bracing himself against some shock. He seemed frozen in this tense att.i.tude, so that he did not alter the rigid line of his body or shift a single immobile muscle when Hollister and Lawanne stepped in. His eyes turned sidewise in their sockets to rest briefly and blankly upon the intruders. Then his gaze, a fixed gaze that suggested incredulous disbelief, went back to the body of his wife.

Myra lay in a crumpled heap, her face upturned, open-eyed, expressionless, as if death had either caught her in a moment of impa.s.sivity or with his clammy hands had forever wiped out all expression from her features. There were no visible marks on her,--but a red stain was creeping slowly from under her body, spreading across the rough floor.

Mills sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his hands braced on his knees to keep his body erect. And upon him there was to be seen no visible mark of the murderer's bullet. But his dark-skinned face had turned waxy white. His lips were colorless. Every breath he drew was a laborious effort. A ghastly smile spread slowly over his face as he looked up at Hollister and Lawanne.

"You fool. You d.a.m.ned, murdering fool!" Lawanne turned on Bland. "You did this?"

Bland did not answer. He put his hand to his face and wiped away the sweat that had gathered in a shiny film on his skin, from which all the ruddiness had fled. Myra's pale, dead face seemed to hold him in some horrible fascination.

Hollister shook him.

"Why did you do that?" he demanded.

Bland heaved a shuddering sigh. He looked up and about him stupidly.

"I don't know," he croaked. "I don't know--I don't know."

A gleam of something like reason came into his eyes.

"I suppose I shall have to give myself up to the authorities," he mumbled. "My G.o.d!"

The last two words burst from his lips like a cry, as for the first time he saw the full import of what he had done, realized the horror, the madness, and the consequences of his act. He shrank against the wall with a groan, putting out his hands as if to ward off some invisible enemy. Then, thrusting Hollister aside, he rushed out of the door, his rifle still clasped in both hands. He ran down the bank, out into the shallows of the river, splashing through water to his knees.

He gained the opposite side where the heavy woods lifted silent and solemn, full of dusky places. Into that--whether for sanctuary or driven by some unreckoning panic, they did not know--but into that he plunged, the last sight either Hollister or Lawanne ever had of him.

They turned to Mills. Myra was dead. They could do nothing for her.

But Mills still lived. The sound of his labored breathing filled the room. He had shifted a little, so that he could reach out and lay one hand on the dead woman's face, where it rested, with a caressing touch. A red pool was gathering where he sat.

"How bad are you hurt, Charlie?" Hollister said. "Let me see."

"No use," Mills said thickly. "I'm done. He got me right through the middle. And I wouldn't live if I could. Not now.

"Don't touch me," he protested, as they bent over him. "You can't do anything. There's a hole in me you could put your hand in. But it don't hurt. I won't last more than a minute or two, anyway."

"How did it happen?" Lawanne asked.

"I was sitting here talking to her," Mills said. "There was nothing wrong--unless it's wrong for a man to love a woman and tell her so. I found her sitting here, crying. She wouldn't tell me why. And I suppose maybe that stirred me up. I hadn't meant to start it again--because we'd had that out long ago. But I tried to persuade her to go away with me--to make a fresh start. I wanted her--but I've been doing that for a long time. She's only stuck to this Bland--because--oh, I don't know why. I don't savvy women. She liked me. But not enough. I was trying to persuade her to break loose. I don't remember--maybe I had hold of her hand. A man doesn't remember when he's begging for a chance. I don't know where he came from. Maybe he heard what I was saying. Maybe it just didn't look good to him. I know his face was like a wild man's when I saw him in the door."

Mills paused to catch his breath. The words tumbled out of him as if he had much to say and knew his time was short.

"Don't think he meant to kill her. He popped me. Then she screamed and jumped in front of me with her arms out--and he gave it to her."

Mills' voice broke. His fingers stroked feebly at the twisted coils of Myra's pale, honey-colored hair. His lips quivered.

"Finished. All over--for both of us. Butchered like beef by a crazy fool. Maybe I'm crazy too," he said in a husky whisper. "It don't seem natural a man should feel like I've felt for months. I didn't want to feel like that. Couldn't help it. I've lived in h.e.l.l--you won't savvy, but it's true. I'm glad it's over. If there is any other life--maybe that'll be better. I hope there isn't. I feel as if all I want is to sleep forever and ever. No more laying awake nights thinking till my head hurts and my heart is like a lump of lead. By G.o.d, I _have_ been crazy."

His body began to sag, and Hollister knelt beside him and supported him. He shook his head when Lawanne offered him a drink. His eyes closed. Only the feeble motion of his fingers on the dead woman's face and the slow heave of his breast betokened the life that still clung so tenaciously to him.

He opened his eyes again, to look at Hollister.

"I used to think--dying--was tough," he whispered. "It isn't. Like going--to sleep--when you're tired--when you're through--for the day."

That was his last word. He went limp suddenly and slid out of Hollister's grasp. And they let him lie, a dead man beside the dead woman on the floor. They stood up themselves and stared at the bodies with that strange incredulity men sometimes feel in the face of sudden death.

Both Lawanne and Hollister were familiar with death, death by the sniper's bullet, by machine gun and sh.e.l.l, by bayonet and poison gas.

This was different. It was not war. It was something that touched them more deeply than any of the killing they had seen in war. The low hum of foraging bees about the door, the foxglove swaying in summer airs, the hushed peace of the distant hills and nearer forest,--this was no background for violence and death. It shocked them, chilled and depressed them. Hollister felt a new sort of ache creep into his heart. His eyes stung. And Lawanne suddenly turned away with a choking sound m.u.f.fled in his throat.

They went out into the sunlight. Away down the valley a donkey engine tooted and whirred. High above them an eagle soared, wheeling in great circles about his aerial business. The river whispered in its channel.

The blue jays scolded harshly among the thickets, and a meadow lark perched on a black stump near at hand, warbling his throaty song. Life went on as before.

"What'll we do?" Lawanne said presently. "We've got to do something."

"There's not much we can do, now," Hollister replied. "You go down to Carr's and tell them to send a man with a gas-boat out to Powell River with word to the Provincial Police of what has happened. I'll keep watch until you come back."

In an hour Lawanne returned with two men from the settlement. They laid the bodies out decently on a bed and left the two men to keep vigil until sundown, when Hollister and Lawanne would take up that melancholy watch for the night.

"I wonder," Hollister said to Lawanne, as they walked home, "what'll become of Bland? Will he give himself up, or will they have to hunt him?"

"Neither, I think," Lawanne answered slowly. "A man like that is certainly not himself when he breaks out like that. Bland has the cultural inheritance of his kind. You could see that he was stupefied by what he had done. When he rushed away into the woods I think it was just beginning to dawn on him, to fill him with horror. He'll never come back. You'll see. He'll either go mad, or in the reaction of feeling he'll kill himself."

They went into Lawanne's cabin. Lawanne brought out a bottle of brandy. He looked at the shaking of his fingers as he poured for Hollister and smiled wanly.

"I don't go much on Dutch courage, but I sure need it now," he said.

"Isn't it queer the way death affects you under different circ.u.mstances? I didn't see such an awful lot of action in France, but once a raiding party of Heinies tumbled into our trench, and there was a deuce of a ruction for a few minutes. Between bayonets and bombs we cleaned the lot, a couple of dozen of them. After it was all over, we stacked them up like cordwood--with about as much compunction. It seemed perfectly natural. There was nothing but the excitement of winning a sc.r.a.p. The half-dozen of our own fellows that went west in the show--they didn't matter either. It was part of the game. You expected it. It didn't surprise you. It didn't shock you. Yet death is death. Only, there, it seemed a natural consequence. And here it--well, I don't know why, but it gives me a horror."

Lawanne sat down.

"It was so unnecessary; so useless," he went on in that lifeless tone.

"The d.a.m.ned, egotistic fool! Two lives sacrificed to a stupid man's wounded vanity. That's all. She was a singularly attractive woman. She would have been able to get a lot out of life. And I don't think she did, or expected to."

"Did you have any idea that Mills had that sort of feeling for her?"

Hollister asked.