The Rapids Part 14

It fell on a day that he was at the head of the old portage leading round the rapids. Here he had recently acquired an option on a considerable acreage, calculating that before long a new town would spring up in the shadow of the works, and, just as he pushed through the underbrush and came out on the gravel beach, he caught the flash of a paddle a mile away. He was hot and breathless and, lighting his big pipe, sat in the shade, his ruminative eye on the fast approaching canoe. Twenty minutes later it touched the sh.o.r.e, and Fisette, leaning forward on the thwarts, surveyed him with black and l.u.s.trous eyes.

Manson nodded. He did not speak at once. It was palpable that Fisette had been prospecting, and always in the north country the returning prospector brings with him a peculiar fascination. He is the herald of the hitherto unknown. It was also understood that Fisette was working for Clark.

The half breed brought the side of his canoe delicately against the sand and, stepping lightly out, began to unload, greeting Manson with a low-voiced "Good morning." Ax, paddles, dunnage bag, shed tent, these he laid neatly and, last of all, a small sack of samples, the weight of which, however he disguised it, swelled the veins in his temples. He was stooping to swing this on his shoulders when Manson spoke.

"Sit down a minute and have a smoke."

Fisette did not want to sit down. There was that in the sack and in his brain which he greatly desired to evacuate in the proper place and at the earliest possible moment. But a little reflection demonstrated that undue haste would be suspicious. Inwardly disturbed at the sight and manner of Manson, he laid the sack gently down. There came the slightest creak of metallic fragments.

"Had a good trip?" hazarded the big man carelessly.

"Pretty fair."

"Pretty rough country up there?" Manson waved his arm northwest.

Fisette grunted. "About the same over there."

He glanced into the northeast.

"Been rooting about for over a year now, haven't you?"

The halfbreed grinned. "Since I was so high." He indicated a stature of two feet.

"Come far this time?"

There was a little pause while Fisette sheared thin shavings of tobacco from a dog-eared plug. He rolled them into a ball between his tawny palms, thoughtfully unpicked the ball, re-rolled it more loosely, abstracted a match from the inside band of his tattered hat and began to suck wetly at a gurgling pipe. "What's that?" he said presently.

"I asked you did you come far?"

"Guess not so far as it seemed. Pretty bad bush."

Manson hesitated, then, in a flash, saw through the breed's a.s.sumption of indifference. Clark had been looking for iron for more than a year.

All St. Marys knew that. Now, glancing covertly at the angular projectings of the bulging sack, the constable jumped to his conclusion. Fisette had found it and was on his way to report and prove the discovery.

"I often wonder," he remarked casually, "what keeps you fellows going.

I never met a prospector yet who gave in that he was licked, and mighty few of them found anything. They always claim they would have had it if they could have stayed out a bit longer. Take iron, for instance.

Fellows have gone out after iron for years right from here and they all thought they had it, but they didn't. There was Joe Lalonde and Pete Nanoosh and the rest of them. Same story over again. There's no iron here anyway. The country rock is wrong--a mining engineer told me that."

Fisette did not move nor did his expression change. His insides seemed on fire. He would have given much to be on his way to Clark's office, but something in his Indian blood whispered warningly. Moments pa.s.sed.

Presently he got up a little stiffly.

"I guess I'll go now."

Manson yawned. "All right, I'm going that way myself."

Sudden irresolution appeared on the brown face. "Oh, well, I guess there's no hurry." He sat down and took out his last match.

The big man chuckled. "Look here, Fisette, I suppose you know I've been buying property around town?"

"So?"

"Yes, and the other day I bought a thousand-dollar mortgage. It's the one on your land. I guess you remember it?"

A sense of uncertainty fell over the half-breed. He knew that he owed a thousand dollars and had owed it for years. Every six months he paid thirty dollars to a lawyer and forgot all about it for the next six.

To his mind the doc.u.ment with the seals, beside one of which he had traced a painful signature, was a forbidding thing, typical of the authority of pale faces over brown. Then, quite suddenly, he remembered that next year he would have to pay off the whole thousand, and, moreover, pay it to Manson.

"Is that so? I guess you're quite a rich man?"

Manson smiled grimly. "No, not a rich man, but--" he paused, felt very deliberately in his coat and, taking out a fat pocketbook, slowly extracted a bill. It was for one hundred dollars. "I'll bet you this that there is no iron within seventy-five miles of St. Marys." He smoothed the bill on his broad knee.

The half breed gulped. Only once before had he seen so much money in one note, and that was after he had signed the mortgage. Clark gave him fifty dollars a month and his grub, and had promised more if he succeeded. He had found iron ore. It was good enough to win the bet, but was it good enough for Clark? and if it was not good enough for Clark the mortgage would have to be met out of nothing.

"Well?" came Manson's deep voice.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on the dusky forehead. A sinewy hand crept toward the sack, but just as he touched it there arose within him something very old and vibrant and compelling. Slowly he yielded to it. He saw Clark's gray eyes and heard his magnetic voice. He distinguished his own voice given in promise, Clark had always encouraged him, no matter how often he returned empty handed, and now, looking broodingly at Manson, the half breed perceived the type that for centuries had defrauded his ancestors with poor bargains and glittering worthlessness. All that was good in Fisette, all the savage honor of that vanishing race whose blood flowed in his veins, all the unquestioning fidelity of his half naked forebears, rose in violent protest. He might be sold out, but not by any means would he sell out.

"Go to h.e.l.l," he Said thickly.

Manson laughed awkwardly, slid the bill back into the fat pocketbook, and heaved up his great bulk.

"Come on, I haven't got a hundred dollars to throw away. I suppose you thought I was in earnest."

Fisette shook his head. Just at that moment he was harboring no suppositions, but had determined to go home without stopping at the works. He swung the sack over his shoulder.

"Go ahead."

Manson drew a long breath and stepped into the narrow trail. Behind him came the half breed, the neck of the sack drawn tight and its sharp contents drilling into his back. He was carrying two hundred pounds of freshly broken ore. He said nothing, but kept his black eyes fixed on the figure just in front of him. A little further on he stumbled over a root, recovered himself with a violent effort, and at that moment heard with dismay a ripping sound close behind his ear. In the next instant the load spilled on the soft earth.

Manson, twenty feet away, turned at the sound and stood staring until, his face lighting with a triumphant smile, he stepped back. He had recognized ore, and it looked like iron ore. Forgetting about Fisette, he moved nearer, his large dark eyes shining with excitement, and just then came a blinding slap. Fisette had swung the empty sack hard against his face.

"You don't come here. Stand still." The half-breed was crouching beside the ore like a bear on its hind legs.

"Won't I?" The constable smarted with pain and charged with sudden pa.s.sion. He came on, leaning a little forward, his great knotted hands twitching, his shoulders curved in a slow segment of power. When he was within six feet, Fisette screamed like a cat and darted at his throat.

They fought silently with bare hands. Manson, heavier than the breed by fifty pounds, was reputed one of the strongest men in the district, but he was matched with an adversary who had drawn into himself the endurance of the wilderness and the quick resiliency of the young spruce tree. Were it only a contest of sheer force, Manson had won outright. Now, as his veins swelled and his arms stiffened around Fisette's pliant body, the latter seemed to convert itself into a ma.s.s of steel springs that somehow evaded compression. With feet sinking in the soft soil, crashing through the under-growth with no words but only the heart breaking gasp of supreme effort, they fought on. Once Manson thought he had conquered as his hands, closing behind the breed's back, locked in a deadly grip, with great muscles contracted, but just as it seemed the breed's ribs must crack there came an eel-like wriggle. The constable's arms were empty and again he felt the lean brown fingers at his bull-like neck. Once more he strove for that crushing clasp and, as Fisette darted in, opened his arms wide, took the punishment of a savage blow in the face, and closing his embrace, enwrapped his enemy in a suffocating hug. It was to the death, for a brown thumb was digging into his thorax and he felt sick and giddy.

Seconds pa.s.sed. The violent expansion of Fisette's chest worked palpitating beneath the great arms, and, just ere endurance reached its limit and the trees began to swim before Manson's eyes, his little finger touched the haft of the sheath knife that hung at Fisette's back. The touch ran through Fisette's laboring frame like fire, for he had reached the point where the world seemed dipped in blood. Slowly Manson pushed down his hand, never relaxing his t.i.tanic embrace. But the instant his fingers closed on the knife the half breed's back curved like a mighty bow, the thick fingers creaked, cracked and yielded, the deadly grip was burst asunder, and Manson, sick and staggering, saw Fisette free and crouching in front of him, the knife in his hand and murder in his eyes. A moment later he looked up.

Fisette was sitting on his chest, and running his thumb along the razor edge of the blade. There was a little blood at the corner of his mouth and his cheek was scratched. Otherwise he was undisturbed.

"Well?" he grunted presently, staring through half-closed lids.

Manson was pumping air into a laboring breast.

"I'm licked," he panted after a while.

"Say that again." The breed's eyes opened wider.

Manson said it while his soul revolted within him, but he would get Fisette later on. Then there gleamed in the breed's dark eyes a flicker of Indian fury, and Manson breathed an inarticulate prayer as the knife approached his throat, until as though from a great distance he heard a voice.