The Snowshoe Trail Part 32

It was the end of the preliminaries. In that second the fight began in earnest. They were both powerful men, the breed and Harold; and Bill was like a wild beast--quick as a cougar, resistless as a grizzly--a fighting fury that in the darkness was terrible as death. Mighty muscles, stinging blows, striking fists and grasping arms; the rage and glory of battle was upon him as never before.

It was the death fight--in the darkness--and that meant it was a savage, nightmare thing that called forth those most deep and terrible instincts that in the first days of the earth were stored and implanted in the germ plasm. These were no longer men of the twentieth century.

They were simply beasts, fighting to the death in a cave. It was a familiar thing to be warring thus in the darkness: Neither Harold nor Pete missed the light now. They were carried back to no less furious battles, fought in dark caverns under the sea; murder flamed in their hearts and fire ran riot in their blood.

They were no longer conscious of time; already it was as if they had struggled thus through the long roll of the centuries. It was hard to remember what had been the cause of the fight. It didn't matter now, anyway; the only issue left was the life of their adversary. To kill, to tear their enemies' hearts from their warm b.r.e.a.s.t.s and their arteries from their throats,--this was all that any of the three could remember now. It was true that Bill kept his adversaries away from Virginia's corner as well as he could, but he did it by instinct rather than by conscious planning. He had not hated Harold in these months past, but had only regarded him with contempt; but hate came to him fast enough in those first moments of battle.

Once, reeling across the cabin, they encountered soft flesh that tried to escape from beneath their feet; at first Bill thought it was Joe, returned to consciousness. But in an instant he knew the truth. "Go back to your corner. Virginia," he commanded.

For some reason that he could not guess, she had seen fit to crawl forth from her shelter; whether or not she returned to it he couldn't tell.

There was no chance to warn her again. His foes were upon him.

This was not a silent fight, at first. So that they would not attack each other, Harold and Pete cried out often, to reveal their location and to signal a combined attack against Bill. In the instants that he was free from Bill's arms and he knew that his confederate was out of range, Harold fired blindly with his pistol. Their bodies crashed against the wall, broke the furniture into kindling at their feet; they snarled their hatred and their curses.

Bill fought like a giant, a might of battle upon him never known before.

He would hurl away one, then whirl to face the other; his fists would lash out, his mighty shoulders would wrench. More than once their combined attack hurled him to the floor, but always he was able to regain his feet. Once he seized Harold's wrist, and twisting it back forced him to drop the pistol. But Pete's interference prevented him from breaking his arm.

Steadily Harold and Pete were learning to work together. They were used to the darkness now; Pete obeyed the white man's shouts. Two against one was never a fair fight, and they knew that by concerted action they could break him down.

One lucky blow sent Pete spinning to the floor, and Bill's strong arms hurled Harold after him. Just for a fraction of an instant he stood braced and alone in the center of the cabin. For the instant a silence, deep and appalling past all words, fell over the room. But Harold's voice quickly shattered it.

"Up and at him Pete!" he cried, hoa.r.s.e with fury. They both sprang upon him again.

Both were fortunate in securing good holds, and as they came from opposite sides, Bill found it impossible to hurl them off. Both of his foes recognized their great chance; if they could retain their hold only for a moment they could break him and beat him down. Harold also knew that this was the moment of crisis. All three contestants seemed to sweep to the fray with added fury. Bill was drawing on his reserve strength--the battle could only last a few minutes longer.

They fought in silence now. They did not waste precious breath on shouts or curses. There were no pistol shots, no warnings; only the sound of troubled breathing against the shock of their bodies as they reeled against the walls. Bill was fighting with all his might to keep his feet.

But the tower that was his body fell at last. All three staggered, reeled, then crashed to the floor. Pete had managed to wiggle from underneath and, his hold yet unbroken, struggled at Bill's left side; Harold was on top. But for all that he lay p.r.o.ne, Bill was not conquered yet. With his flailing arms he knocked aside the vicious blows that Harold aimed at his face; he tore Pete's grasp from his throat. He fought with a final, incredible might. And now he was breaking their holds to climb once more upon his feet.

Then--above the sound of their writhing bodies--Virginia heard Pete exclaim. It was a savage, a murderous sound, and anew degree of terror swept through her. But she didn't cry out. She had her own plans.

"Hold him--just one instant!" Pete cried. The breed had remembered his knife. It was curious that he hadn't thought of it before.

He took it rather carefully from his holster. The two men were threshing on the floor by now, Harold in a desperate effort to keep his enemy down, and there was plenty of time. Pete's hand fumbled in his pocket. In his cunning and his savagery he realized that the supreme opportunity for victory was at hand; but he must take infinite pains.

He didn't want to run the risk of slaying his own confederate. His hand found a match; he raised his knife high. The match cracked, then flamed in the darkness.

But it was not to be that that murderous blow should go home. He had forgotten Bill's lone ally,--the girl that had seemed so crushed and helpless a few minutes before. She had not remained in the safe corner where Bill had thrust her, and she had had good reasons. The price that she paid was high, but it didn't matter now. She had crawled out to find her pistol that Joe's hand had let fall, and just before Pete had lighted his match her hand had encountered it on the floor.

It seemed to leap in her hand as the match flamed. It described a blue arc; then rested, utterly motionless, for a fraction of an instant. For that same little time all her nervous forces rallied to her aid; her eyes were remorseless and true over the sights.

The pistol shot rang in the silence. The knife dropped from Pete's hand. She had shot with amazing accuracy, straight for the little hollow in his back that his raised arm had made. He turned with a look of ghastly surprise.

Then he went on his face, creeping like a legless thing toward the door.

With a mighty effort Bill rolled Harold beneath him.

The battle was short thereafter. Harold had never been a match for Bill, unaided. The latter's hard fists lashed into his face, blow after blow with grim reports in the silence. Harold's resistance ceased; his body quivered and lay still. Remembering Virginia Bill leaped to his feet.

But Harold was not quite unconscious. But one impulse was left,--to escape; and dumbly he crawled to the door. Pete had managed to open it; but he crawled past Pete's body, strangely huddled and still, just beyond the threshold. Then he paused in the snow for a last, savage expression of his hate.

But it was just words. No weapon remained in his hands. "I'll get you yet, you devil!" he screamed, almost incoherently. "I'll lay in wait and kill you--you can't get away! The wolves have got your grizzly meat--you can't go without food."

His voice was shrill and terrible in the silence of the winter night.

Even in the stress and inward tumult that was the reaction of the battle, Bill could not help but hear. He didn't doubt that the words were true: he realized in an instant what the loss of the grizzly flesh would mean. But his only wish was that he had killed the man when he had him helpless in his hands.

He remembered Joe then, and listened for any sound from him. He heard none, and like a man in a dream he felt his way to the lifeless form beside the wall. He seized the shoulders of the breed's coat, dragged him like a sack of straw, and as easily hurled his body through the doorway into the drifts. Two bodies lay there now. But only the coyotes, seekers of the dead, had interest in them.

He turned, then stood swaying slightly, in the doorway. No wind stirred over the desolate wastes without. The cabin was ominously silent. He could hear his own troubled breathing; but where there was no stir, no murmur from the corner where he had left Virginia. A ghastly terror, unknown in the whole stress of the battle, swept over him.

"Virginia," he called. "Where are you?"

From the dark, far end of the cabin he heard the answer,--a voice low and tremulous such as sometimes heard from the lips of a sick child.

"Here I am, Bill," she replied. "I'm hit with a stray shot--and I believe--they've killed me."

x.x.xII

Was this their destiny,--utter and hopeless defeat in the moment of victory? Was this the way of justice that, after all they had endured, they should yet go down to death? They had fought a mighty fight, they had waged a cruel war against cold and hardship, they had known the full terror and punishment of the snow wastes in their dreadful adventure of the past two days; and had it all come to nothing, after all? Was life no more than this,--a cruel master that tortured his slaves only to give them death? These thoughts brought their full bitterness in the instant that Bill groped his way to Virginia's side.

His hands told him she was lying huddled against the wall, a slight, pathetic figure that broke the heart within the man. "Here I am," she said again, her voice not racked with pain but only soft and tender. He knelt beside her, then groped for a match. But whether the injury was small or great he felt that the issue would be the same.

But before he struck the match he remembered his foe without; he would be quick to fire through the window if a light showed him his target.

Even now he might be crouched in the snow, his rifle in his arms, waiting for just this chance. Bill s.n.a.t.c.hed a blanket from the cot, shielded them with it, and lighted the match behind it. "He can't see the light through this," he told her. "If he does--I guess it doesn't much matter."

He groped for the fallen candle, lighted it, and held it close.

"You'll have to look and see yourself, Virginia," he told her. "You remember--of course----"

Yes, she remembered his blindness. She looked down at the little stain of red on her left shoulder. "I can't tell," she told him. "It went in right here--give me your hand."

She took his warm hand and rested it against the wound. Someway, it comforted her. "Close to the top of the shoulder, then," he commented.

Then he groped till his sensitive fingers told him he had found the egress of the bullet--on her arm just down from her shoulder. "But there's nothing I can do--it's not a wound I can dress. It's cleaner now than anything we've got to clean it with. The only thing is to lie still--so it won't bleed."

"Do you think I'll die?" she asked him quietly. There was no fear--only sorrow--in her tones. "Tell me frankly, Bill."

"I don't think the wound is serious in itself--if we could get you down to a doctor," he told her. "It isn't bleeding much now, because you are lying still, but it has been bleeding pretty freely. It's just a flesh wound, really. But you see----"

Her mind leaped at once to his thought. "You mean--it's the same, either way?" she questioned.

"It doesn't make much difference." The man spoke quietly, just as she might have expected him to speak in such a moment as this. "Oh, Virginia--we've fought so hard--it's bitter to lose now. You see, don't you--you couldn't walk with that wound--you don't know the way, so I could walk and pull you on the sled--and Harold is gone. He won't show us the way or help us now. We haven't any food here--the grizzly has been eaten by wolves. One of us blind and one of us wounded--you see--what chance we've got against the North. If we had the grizzly flesh, we could stay here till my sight returned--and still, perhaps, get you out in time to save you from the injury. If you knew the way to the settlements, I might haul you on the sled--you guiding me--and take a chance of running into some meat on the way down. But none of those things are true."

"Then what"--the girl spoke breathlessly--"does it mean?"

"It means death--that's all it means." There was no sentimentality, no tremor in his voice now. He was looking his fate in the face; he knew he could not spare the girl by keeping the truth from her. "Death as sure as we're here--from hunger and your wound--if Harold or the cold doesn't get us first. We've been cheated, Virginia. We've played with a crooked dealer. I don't care on my own account----"

"Then don't care on mine, either." All at once her hand went up and caressed his face. "Hold me, Bill, won't you?" she asked. "Hold me in your arms."

She asked it simply, like a little child. He shifted his position, then lifted her so that her breast was against his, his arms around her, her soft hair against his shoulder. The candle, dropped from his hand, was extinguished. The cold deepened outside the cabin. The white, icy moon rode in the sky.