The Sky Line of Spruce Part 16

BEN DARBY.

As the truth flashed home, Neilson's first thought was of his rifle. He was a wilderness man, trained to put his trust in the weapon of steel; and if it were only in his hands, there might yet be time to prevent the abduction. One well-aimed bullet over the water, shooting with all his old-time skill, might yet hurl the avenger to his death in the moment of his triumph. Just one keen, long gaze over the sights,--heaven or earth could not yield him a vision half so glorious as this! For all his terror he knew that he could shoot as he had never shot before, true as a light-ray. His remorseless eyes for once could see clear and sure. One shot--and then Beatrice could seize the paddle and save herself. And he cursed himself, more bitterly than he had ever cursed an enemy, when his empty hands showed him that he had left his rifle in his cabin.

His pistol, however, was at his belt, and his hand reached for it. But the range was already too far for any hope of accurate pistol fire. His hard eyes gazed along the short, black barrel. His steady finger pressed back against the trigger.

The first shot fell far short. The pistol was of large caliber but small velocity; and a hundred yards was its absolute limit of point-blank range. He lifted the gun higher and shot again. Again he shot low. But the third bullet fell just a few feet on the near side of the canoe.

He had the range now, and he shot again. It was like a dream, outside his consciousness, that Beatrice was screaming with fear and amazement.

She was already too far to give or receive a message: all hope lay in the pistol alone. The fifth shot splashed water beyond the craft.

Once more he fired, but the boat was farther distant now, and the bullet went wild. The pistol was empty. Like a moose leaping through a marsh he turned back to his cabin for his rifle.

But already he knew that he was lost. Before ever he could climb up the hundred yards to the cabin, and back again, the craft would be around the bend in the river. Heavy brush would hide it from then on. He hastened frantically up the narrow, winding trail.

XX

Ben was fully aware, as he pushed the canoe from landing, that the success of his scheme was not yet guaranteed. Long ago, in the hard school of the woods, he had found out life; and one of the things he had learned was that nothing on earth is infallible and no man's plans are sure. There are always coincidents of which the scheming brain has not conceived: the sudden interjection of unexpected circ.u.mstances. The unforeseen appearance of Beatrice's father on the landing had been a case in point.

Most of all he had been afraid that Beatrice herself would leap from the canoe and attempt to swim to safety. He had learned in his past conversations with her that she had at least an elementary knowledge of swimming. Had she not confessed at the same time fear of the water, his plan could have never been adopted. The northern girls have few opportunities to obtain real proficiency in swimming. Their rivers are icy cold, their villages do not afford heated natatoriums. Yet he realized that he must quiet her suspicions as long as possible.

"I've got the landing picked out," he told her as they started off.

"I've been all over the river this morning. It is quite a way down--around the bend--but it's perfectly safe. So don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid--with you. And how fast you paddle!"

It was true: in all her days by rivers she had never seen such perfect control of a canoe. He paddled as if without effort, but the streaming sh.o.r.e line showed that the boat moved at an astonishing rate. He was a master canoeist, and whatever fears she might have had vanished at once.

She talked gayly to him, scarcely aware that they were heading across and down the stream.

When her father had appeared on the bank, calling, she had not been in the least alarmed. Ben's gay shouts kept her from understanding exactly what he was saying. And when the old man had drawn his pistol and fired, and the bullet had splashed in the water some twenty yards toward sh.o.r.e, her mind had refused to accept the evidence of her senses.

The second shot followed the first, and the third the second, resulting in, for her part, only the impotence of bewilderment. Her first thought was that her father's fierce temper, long known to her, had engulfed him in murderous rage. Trusting Ben wholly, the real truth did not occur to her.

She screamed shrilly at the fourth shot; and Ben looked up to find her pale as the foam from his flashing paddle. "Turn around and go back,"

she cried to Ben. "He'll kill you if you don't! Oh, please--turn around--"

"And get in range of him so he _can_ kill me?" Ben replied savagely.

"Can't you see he's shooting at me?"

"Then throw up your hands--it's all some dreadful mistake. Can't you hear me--turn and go back."

The fifth and sixth shots were fired by now; and Neilson had gone to his cabin for his rifle. Ben smiled grimly into her white face.

"We'd better keep on going to our landing place," he advised. "There's no place to land above it--I went all over the sh.o.r.e this morning. That will give him time to cool down. I only want to get around this curve before he comes with his rifle."

She stared at him aghast, too confused and terrified to make rational answer. He was pale, too; but she had a swift feeling that the cold, rugged face was in some way exultant, too. The first chill of fear of him brushed her like a cold wind.

But they were around the bend by now, and Ben's breath caught as if in a triumphant gasp. Already all opportunity for the girl to swim to sh.o.r.e was irremediably past. While he could still control the canoe with comparative ease, the river was a swift-moving sheet of water that would carry any one but the strongest swimmer remorselessly into the rapids below. Ben smiled, like a man who has come into a great happiness, and rested on his paddle.

"Push into sh.o.r.e," the girl urged. "The home sh.o.r.e--if you can. Then I'll go and find him and try to quiet him. He'll kill you if you don't."

A short pause followed the girl's words. The man smiled coldly into her eyes.

"He'll kill me, will he?" he repeated.

The response to the simple question was simply unmitigated terror, swift and deadly, surging through the girl's frame. It caught and twisted her throat muscles like a cruel hand; and her childish eyes widened and darkened under his contemptuous gaze.

"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly. "What--are you going to do?"

"He won't kill me," Ben went on. "I may kill him--and I will if I can--but he won't kill me. See--we're going faster all the time."

It was true. Strokes of the paddle were no longer necessary to propel the craft at the breakneck pace. It sped like an arrow--straight toward the perilous cataracts below.

The girl watched him with transcending horror, and slowly the truth went home. The supplies in the boat, her father's desperate attempt to rescue her, even at the risk of her own life and the cost of Ben's, this white, exultant face before her, more terrible than that of the wolf between, the cold reptile eyes so full of some unhallowed emotion,--at last she saw their meaning and relation. Was it _death_--was _that_ what this mad man in the stern had for her? She remembered what she had told him the day before, her description of the cataracts that lay below. She struggled to shake off the trance that her terror had cast about her.

"Turn into the sh.o.r.e," she told him, half-whispering. There was no pleading in her tone: the hard eyes before her told her only too plainly how futile her pleas would be. "You still have time to steer into sh.o.r.e.

I'll jump overboard if you don't."

He shook his head. "Don't jump overboard, Beatrice," he answered, some of the harshness gone from his tones. "It isn't my purpose to kill you--and to jump over into this stream only means to die--'for any one except the most powerful swimmer. You'd be carried down in an instant."

The girl knew he spoke the truth. Only death dwelt in those cold and rushing waters. "What do you mean to do?" she asked.

Her tone was more quiet now, and he waited an instant before he answered. The canoe glided faster--ever faster down the stream. Somewhat afraid, but still trusting in the imperial mind of his master, the wolf raised his head to watch the racing sh.o.r.e line.

"It's just a little debt I owe your father--and his gang," Ben explained. "I'll tell you some time, in the days to come. It was a debt of blood--"

The girl's dark eyes charged with red fire. "And you, a coward, take your payment on a woman. Turn the canoe into the bank."

"The payment won't be taken from you," he explained soberly. "You'll be safe enough--even the fate that Neilson fears for you won't happen. I hate him too much to take _that_ payment from you. I'd die before I'd touch the flesh of his flesh to mine! Do you understand that?"

His fury had blazed up, for the instant, and she saw the deadly zeal of a fanatic in his gray eyes. A hatred beyond all naming, a bitterness and a rage such as she had never dreamed could blast a human heart was written in his brown, rugged face. Her woman's intuition gave her added vision, and she glimpsed something of the fire that smoldered and seared behind his eyes. They were of one blood, this man in the stern and the wolf on the duffle.

"Then why--"

"You're safe with me--the daughter of Jeff Neilson can't ever be anything but safe with me--as far as the thing you fear is concerned.

Don't be afraid for that. I'm simply paying an honest debt, and you're the unfortunate agent. Don't you know the things he's fearing now are more torment to him than anything I could do to his flesh? If we should be killed in these rapids that are coming, it will be fair enough too; he'll know what it is to lose the dearest thing on earth he has. For you and me it will only be a minute that won't greatly matter. For him it will be weeks--months! But that's only a part of it. I hope to bring you through. The main thing is--that sooner or later they'll come for you--into a country where I'll have every advantage. Where there won't be any escape or chance for them. Where I can watch the trails, and shatter them--every one--as slow or as fast as I like. Where they'll have to hunt for me, week on week and month on month, their fears eating into them. That's my game, Beatrice. There will be discomfort for you--and some danger--but I'll make it as light as I can. And in another moment--"

"You've still got time to turn back," the girl answered him, seemingly without feeling. "Glide into sh.o.r.e, and we'll try to catch an overhanging limb. It's my last warning."

It was true that a few seconds remained in which they might, with heroic effort, save themselves. But these were pa.s.sing: already they could see the gleaming whitecaps of the cataract below.

The roar of the wild waters was in their ears. Ahead they could see great rocks, emerging like fangs above the water, sharp-edged and wet with spray. The boat was shuddering; the water seemed to covet them, and a great force, like the hand of a river G.o.d, reached at them from beneath as if to crush them in a merciless grasp. A hundred yards farther the smooth, swift water fell into a seething, roaring cataract--such a manifestation of the mighty powers of nature as checks the breath and awes the heart--a death stream in which seemingly the canoe would be shattered to pieces in an instant.

Ben shook his head. The girl's white hand flashed to her side, then rose sure and steady, holding her pistol. "Turn quick, or I'll fire," she said.

He felt that, if such action were in her power, she told the truth. No mercy dwelt in her clear gaze. His eye fell to the box of cartridges, now fallen safely among the duffle. Presently he smiled into her eyes.