The Man in the Twilight Part 50

It was a terrific race and all feeling of weariness had pa.s.sed under the excitement of it. The dogs were silent now. Every nerve in their muscular bodies were straining. The pace seemed to increase with every pa.s.sing moment, and up out of the horizon the dark line of the forest leapt at them, deepening and broadening as it came.

For some time the less practised white man saw and heard nothing of his enemies. He was forced to rely on the half-breed. He observed the man closely. He noted his every sign and read it as best he could. Presently Gouter leant forward peering. Then he straightened up and his voice came back triumphantly.

"I see dem," he exclaimed. And pointed almost abreast. "Dogs.

One--two--five. Yes. Two man. Now we get him sure."

Down fell the whip on the racing dogs. The man shouted his jargon at them. The sled lurched and swayed with the added spurt, and Bull held fast to the rail. A glad thrill surged through his senses.

It was a moment of tremendous uplift. Bull had yearned for it for weeks.

But the short days and long nights of deferred hope had had their effect. He had almost come to feel that this thing that was now at hand was something impossible.

Yes. There was the outfit growing plainer and plainer with every moment.

He could see it clearly. He could even count its details as the other's sharper eyes had counted them minutes before. There were five dogs. And they were running hard. They, too, were being flogged, and the man driving them was shouting furiously in his urgency.

Suddenly there was a leap of flame and a shot rang out. It came from the driver of the fleeing dog train. It was replied to on the instant by Gouter who lost not a second. His own shot sped even as the enemy's bullet whistled somewhere past his head. He fired again. A third shot split the air. And with that last shot the enemy's sled seemed to leap in the air. There was a moment of hideous confusion. Then the wreckage dropped away behind the pursuers, sprawled and still in the snow.

A fierce shout from Gouter and his dogs swung round. The sled under him heeled over, and took a desperate chance on a single runner. But the half-breed's skill saved them from catastrophe. It righted itself, and the dogs slowed to a trot. Then they halted. And the occupants of the sled flung themselves p.r.o.ne, with their guns ready for the first sign of movement in the tangled ma.s.s of their adversary's outfit.

Two of the dogs lay buried under the overturned sled. Three others were sprawling at the end of their rawhide tugs. They were alive. They were unhurt. They lay there taking full advantage of the situation for rest.

But for the moment interest centred round the body of a white man lying some yards away. A groan of pain came up to the two men standing over him.

Bull dropped on his knees. He reached down and turned the body over. The eyes of the man were visible between the sides of his fur hood. But that was all.

There was a moment of silent contemplation. Then the injured man struggled desperately to rise.

"Sternford?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed

Gouter was on him in a moment. He heard the tone of voice, and interpreted the man's movement in his own savage fashion. He knew the man to be the driver of the team, whom his boss had told him was his man. So he threw him back and held him.

Bull stood up. The man's voice told him all he wanted to know.

"Laval, eh?" he said quietly. "A second time. I didn't expect it. No."

Then he laughed and turned away. And the sound of his laugh possessed something terribly mocking in the night silence of the wilderness.

He pa.s.sed back to the sled. There had been two men in it. He had seen that for himself.

The wreckage looked hopeless. The sled was completely overturned and its gleaming runners caught and reflected the white rays of the moon. It had been thrown by reason of the fallen bodies of the dogs which lay under it, pinned by its weight, and additionally held fast by their own tangled harness.

Bull had no thought for anything but the purpose in his mind. So he reached out and caught the steel runners in his mitted hands and flung the vehicle aside.

Yes, it was there in the midst of a confusion of baggage and lying cheek by jowl with the mangled remains of the dogs. He cleared the debris, and dragged the dogs aside. Then he stood and gazed down at the figure that remained.

It was clad in a voluminous beaver coat. It was hooded, as was every man who faced the fierce Labrador trail. But--

The figure moved. It stirred, and deliberately sat up. Bull's hands had been on his guns at the first movement. But he released them, as the hood fell back from the face which was ghastly pale in the moonlight.

He flung himself on his knees, and tenderly supported the swaying figure.

"G.o.d in Heaven!" he cried. "Nancy! You?"

CHAPTER XX

ON THE HOME TRAIL

Nancy's eyes were desperately troubled as she gazed out across the great valley of the Beaver River. Somewhere behind her, in the shelter of the woods, a mid-day camp had been pitched, and the men who had captured her red-hand in the work of their enemies were preparing the, rough food of the trail. But she was beyond all such concern.

Far out on every hand lay the amazing panorama of the splendid valley, but she saw none of it. The mighty frozen waterway, the depths of virgin snow, the far-reaching woodlands its gaping lips embraced; they were things of frigid beauty for her eyes to gaze upon, but their meaning was lost upon a mind tortured with the vivid, hateful pictures it was powerless to escape.

From the moment of that dreadful night when she had witnessed the ruthless climax of the work to which she had given herself she had known no peace. It was no thought of her failure, her capture, that inspired her trouble. She could have been thankful enough for that. It was the only mercy, she felt, that had been vouchsafed to her.

No, long before her capture, a deep undermining of regret had set in.

She had been without realisation of it, perhaps. But it had been there.

In yielding to the demands of those she served, in her self-confidence she had forgotten the woman in her. She had forgotten everything but the crazy ambition which had blinded her to all consequences. Yes, even in the excitement of the work itself she had forgotten everything but the achievement she desired. But through it all, under it all, the woman in her had been slowly awakening, and an unadmitted regret at the destruction of work which meant the whole life of another had been stirring. Then, when the leading tongues of the guns had flashed out, and human life, even the life of dogs, had yielded to the demand of her cause, the last vestige of her dreaming had been swept away, and she told herself it was murder, _murder at her bidding_!

Now her soul was afire with the bitterness of repentance, with pa.s.sionate self-accusation. Murder had been done through her. Murder!

The horror of it all had driven her well-nigh demented when she gazed from the distance while the two men disposed of Arden Laval's body under the snow. The dogs? They had been left where they fell. The living had been cut loose from their trappings to roam the forests at their will, while the dead had remained to satisfy the fierce hunger of the savage forest creatures. Even the sled had been destroyed, and its wood used to make fire that the living might endure on those pitiless northern heights. The memory of it all was days old now, but its horror showed no abatement. The agony was still with her. She felt that never again could she know peace.

So she had moved away out from camp, as she had done at every stopping they had made on the long journey from the highlands down to Sachigo.

Somehow it seemed to her impossible to do otherwise. She felt she must hide herself from the sight of those others who were her captors, and who, in their hearts, she felt, must deeply abhor the presence of so vile a creature in their camp.

How long she had been standing there, while the men prepared the mid-day meal, she did not know. It was a matter of no sort of consequence to her anyway. Nothing really seemed of any consequence now. Her jaded mind was obsessed by a horror she could not shake off. There was nothing, nothing in the world to do but nurse the anguish driving her.

"You'll come right along and eat, Nancy?"

The girl almost jumped at the gentle tones of the man's voice, and glanced round at Bull Sternford in an agony of sudden terror.

"I--I--" she stammered. Then composure returned to her. "If you wish it," she said submissively. "But I don't need food."

Bull regarded the averted face for moments. Sympathy and love were in his clear gazing eyes. He understood something of the thing she was enduring, and the tone of his voice had been a real expression of his feelings. This girl, with the courage of twenty men, with her radiant beauty, and in her pitiful, heartbroken condition, was far more precious to him than any victory he had set himself to achieve. He knew that the world held nothing half so precious.

He came a step nearer.

"I wonder if you'll listen to me, Nancy," he said, with a hesitation and doubt utterly foreign, to him. "You know, for all that's happened, for all we're mixed up against each other in this war, I'm the same man you found me on the _Myra_ and in Quebec. I--"

"Don't."

The girl flung out her hands in a piteous appeal. And Bull recognised the hysteria lying behind the movement.

"I know," she cried. "Oh, I know. But--don't you understand? You must know what I am. It's my doing that Laval has gone to his death. I'm responsible, just as surely as if I'd fired the gun that robbed him of his life. Oh, why, why didn't I refuse the work? Why did they send me?

And those dogs. Those poor helpless dogs. They, too. I must have been mad--mad. How can you come near me? How can you stand there summoning me to eat food--with you? It's useless. It's--I who sent that man to his death--I who--"