The Valley of Silent Men Part 22

He bowed his head, and she turned her face to him. On her upturned mouth he kissed her.

"More than any other man ever loved a woman I love you, Niska, little G.o.ddess," he cried.

The minutes and the hours of that day stood out ever afterward in Kent's life as unforgettable memories. There were times when they seemed illusory and unreal, as though he lived and breathed in an insubstantial world made up of gossamer things which must be the fabric of dream. These were moments when the black shadow of the tragedy from which they were fleeing pressed upon him, when the thought came to him that they were criminals racing with the law; that they were not on enchanted ground, but in deadly peril; that it was all a fools'

paradise from which some terrible shock would shortly awaken him. But these periods of apprehension were, in themselves, mere shadows thrown for a moment upon his happiness. Again and again the subconscious force within him pounded home to his physical brain the great truth, that it was all extraordinarily real.

It was Marette who made him doubt himself at times. He could not, quite yet, comprehend the fulness of that love which she had given him. More than ever, in the glory of this love that had come to them she was like a child to him. It seemed to him in the first hours of the morning that she had forgotten yesterday, and the day before, and ill the days before that. She was going home. She whispered that to him so often that it became a little song in his brain. Yet she told him nothing of that home, and he waited, knowing that the fulfilment of her promise was not far away. And there was no embarra.s.sment in the manner of her surrender when he held her in his arms, and she held her face up, so that he could kiss her mouth and look into her glowing, lovely eyes.

What he saw was the flush of a great happiness, the almost childish confession of it along with the woman's joy of possession. And he thought of Kedsty, and of the Law that was rousing itself into life back at Athabasca Landing.

And then she ran her fingers through his own and told him to wait, and ran into the cabin and came out a moment later with her brush; and after that she seated herself at the fulcrum of the big sweep and began to brush out her hair in the sun.

"I'm glad you love it, Jeems," she said.

She unbound the thick braid and let the silken strands of it run caressingly between her fingers. She smoothed it out, brushed it until it was more beautiful than he had ever seen it, in that glow of the sun. She held it up so that it rippled out in shimmering cascades about her--and then, suddenly, Kent saw the short tress from which had been clipped the rope of hair that he had taken from Kedsty's neck. And as his lips tightened, crushing fiercely the exclamation of his horror, there came a trembling happiness from Marette's lips, scarcely more than the whisper of a song, the low, thrilling melody of _Le Chaudiere_.

Her arms reached up, and she drew his head down to her, so that for a time his visions were blinded in that sweet smother of her hair.

The intimacy of that day was in itself like a dream. Hour after hour they drifted deeper into the great North. The sun shone. The forest-walled sh.o.r.es of the river grew mightier in their stillness and their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places brooded over the world. To Kent it was as if they were drifting through Paradise.

Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter current.

Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left farther and still farther behind them. Watching the sh.o.r.es, looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind--at times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness pa.s.sing swiftly away from between them.

They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the death of John Barkley. But Kent told of his days in the North, of his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses. And from that he went away back into dim and distant yesterdays, alive with mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on a farm. To all these things Marette listened with glowing eyes, with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own emotions.

She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to live there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself or her life in its more vital aspects; she said nothing of the home in the Valley of Silent Men, nothing of father or mother, sisters or brothers. There was no embarra.s.sment in her omissions. And Kent did not question. He knew that those were among the things she would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he would tell her they were safe.

There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour, when they should leave the river and take to the forests. He explained to Marette why they could not float on indefinitely. The river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all traffic to the far North. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they would be discovered. In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be safe. He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they pa.s.sed through the Death Chute. It would carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward through which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone ash.o.r.e now. He loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean swallows a ship, would they be beyond the peril that threatened them from the Landing.

Three or four times between sunrise and noon they saw life ash.o.r.e and on the stream; once a scow tied to a tree, then an Indian camp, and twice trappers' shacks built in the edge of little clearings. With the beginning of afternoon Kent felt growing within him something that was not altogether eagerness. It was, at times, a disturbing emotion, a foreshadowing of evil, a warning for him to be on his guard. He used the sweep more, to help their progress in the current, and he began to measure time and distance with painstaking care. He recognized many landmarks.

By four o'clock, or five at the latest, they would strike the head of the Chute. Ten minutes of its thrilling pa.s.sage and he would work the scow into the concealment he had in mind ash.o.r.e, and no longer would he fear the arm of the law that reached out from the Landing. As he planned, he listened. From noon on he never ceased to listen for that distant _putt, putt, putt_, that would give them a mile's warning of the approach of the patrol launch.

He did not keep his plans to himself. Marette sensed his growing uneasiness, and he made her a partner of his thoughts.

"If we hear the patrol before we reach the Chute, we'll still have time to run ash.o.r.e," he a.s.sured her. "And they won't catch us. We'll be harder to find than two needles in a haystack. But it's best to be prepared."

So he brought out his pack and Marette's smaller bundle, and laid his rifle and pistol holster across them.

It was three o'clock when the character of the river began to change, and Kent smiled happily. They were entering upon swifter waters. There were places where the channel narrowed, and they sped through rapids.

Only where unbroken straight waters stretched out ahead of them did Kent give his arms a rest at the sweep. And through most of the straight water he added to the speed of the scow. Marette helped him.

In him the exquisite thrill of watching her slender, glorious body as it worked with his own never grew old. She laughed at him over the big oar between them. The wind and sun played riot in her hair. Her parted lips were rose-red, her cheeks flushed, her eyes like sun-warmed rock violets. More than once, in the thrill of that afternoon flight, as he looked at the marvelous beauty of her, he asked himself if it could be anything but a dream. And more than once he laughed joyously, and paused in his swinging of the sweep, and proved that it was real and true. And Kent thanked G.o.d, and worked harder.

Once, a long time ago, Marette told him, she had been through the Chute. It had horrified her then. She remembered it as a sort of death monster, roaring for its victims. As they drew nearer to it, Kent told her more about it. Only now and then was a life lost there now, he said. At the mouth of the Chute there was a great, knife-like rock, like a dragon's tooth, that cut the Chute into two roaring channels. If a scow kept to the left-hand channel it was safe. There would be a mighty roaring and thundering as it swept on its pa.s.sage, but that roaring of the Chute, he told her, was like the barking of a harmless dog.

Only when a scow became unmanageable, or hit the Dragon's Tooth, or made the right-hand channel instead of the left, was there tragedy.

There was that delightful little note of laughter in Marette's throat when Kent told her that.

"You mean, Jeems, that if one of three possible things doesn't happen, we'll get through safely?"

"None of them is possible--with us," he corrected himself quickly.

"We've a tight little scow, we're not going to hit the rock, and we'll make the left-hand channel so smoothly you won't know when it happens."

He smiled at her with splendid confidence. "I've been through it a hundred times," he said.

He listened. Then, suddenly, he drew out his watch. It was a quarter of four. Marette's ears caught what he heard. In the air was a low, trembling murmur. It was growing slowly but steadily. He nodded when she looked at him, the question in her eyes.

"The rapids at the head of the Chute!" he cried, his voice vibrant with joy. "We've beat them out. _We're safe_!"

They swung around a bend, and the white spume of the rapids lay half a mile ahead of them. The current began to race with them now. Kent put his whole weight on the sweep to keep the scow in mid-channel.

"We're safe," he repeated. "Do you understand, Marette? _We're safe_!"

He was speaking the words for which she had waited, was telling her that at last the hour had come when she could keep her promise to him.

The words, as he gave them voice, thrilled him. He felt like shouting them. And then all at once he saw the change that had come into her face. Her wide, startled eyes were not looking at him, but beyond. She was looking back in the direction from which they had come, and even as he stared her face grew white.

"_Listen_!"

She was tense, rigid. He turned his head. And in that moment it came to him above the growing murmur of the river--the _putt, putt, putt_ of the Police patrol boat from Athabasca Landing!

A deep breath came from between his lips. When Marette took her eyes from the river and looked at him, his face was like carven rock. He was staring dead ahead.

"We can't make the Chute," he said, his voice sounding hard and unreal to her. "If we do, they'll be up with us before we can land at the other end. We must let this current drive us ash.o.r.e--_now_."

As he made his decision, he put the strength of his body into action.

He knew there was not the hundredth part of a second to lose. The outreaching suction of the rapids was already gripping the scow, and with mighty strokes he fought to work the head of his craft toward the westward sh.o.r.e. With swift understanding Marette saw the priceless value of a few seconds of time. If they were caught in the stronger swirl of the rapids before the sh.o.r.e was reached, they would be forced to run the Chute, and in that event the launch would be upon them before they could make a landing farther on. She sprang to Kent's side and added her own strength in the working of the sweep. Foot by foot and yard by yard the scow made precious westing, and Kent's face lighted up with triumph as he nodded ahead to a timbered point that thrust itself out like a stubby thumb into the river. Beyond that point the rapids were frothing white, and they could see the first black walls of rock that marked the beginning of the Chute.

"We'll make it," he smiled confidently. "We'll hit that timbered point close insh.o.r.e. I don't see where the launch can make a landing anywhere within a mile of the Chute. And once ash.o.r.e we'll make trail about five times as fast they can follow it." Marette's face was no longer pale, but flushed with excitement. He caught the white gleam of teeth between her parted lips. Her eyes shone gloriously, and he laughed.

"You beautiful little fighter," he cried exultantly. "You--you--"

His words were cut short by a snap that was like the report of a pistol close to his ears. He pitched forward and crashed to the bottom of the scow, Marette's slim body clutched in his arms as he fell. In a flash they were up, and mutely they stared where the sweep had been. The blade of it was gone. Kent was conscious of hearing a little cry from the girl at his side, and then her fingers were gripping tightly again about his thumb. No longer possessed of the power of guidance, the scow swung sideways. It swept past the wooded point. The white maelstrom of the lower rapids seized upon it. And Kent, looking ahead to the black maw of the death-trap that was waiting for them, drew Marette close in his arms and held her tight.

CHAPTER XXII

For a brief s.p.a.ce after the breaking of the scow-sweep Kent did not move. He felt Marette's arms closing tighter and tighter around his neck. He caught a flash of her upturned face, the flush of a few moments before replaced by a deathly pallor, and he knew that without explanation on his part she understood the almost hopeless situation they were in. He was glad of that. It gave him a sense of relief to know that she would not go into a panic, no matter what happened. He bowed his face to hers, so that he felt the velvety smoothness of her cheek. She turned her mouth to him, and they kissed. His embrace was crushing for a moment, fierce with his love for her, desperate with his determination to keep her from harm.

His brain was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in ten that the scow--rudderless and without human guidance--would sweep safely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the Chute. Even if the scow made this pa.s.sage, they would be in the power of the Police, unless some splendid whimsicality of Fate sent it ash.o.r.e before the launch came through.

On the other hand, if it was carried far enough through the lower rapids, they might swim. And--there was the rifle laying across the pack. That, after all, was his greatest hope--if the scow made the pa.s.sage of the Chute. The bulwarks of the scow would give them greater protection than the thinner walls of the launch would give to their pursuers. In his heart there raged suddenly a hatred for that Law of which he had been a part. It was running them to destruction, and he would fight. There would not be more than three men in the launch, and he would kill them, if killing became a necessity.

They were speeding like an unbridled race-horse through the boiling rapids now. The clumsy craft under their feet twisted and turned. The dripping tops of great rocks shot past a little out of their channel.

And Marette, with one arm still about his neck, was facing the peril ahead with him. They could see the Dragon's Tooth, black and grim, waiting squarely in their path. In another hundred and twenty seconds they would be upon it--or past it. There was no time for Kent to explain. He sprang to his pack, whipped a knife from his pocket, and cut the stout babiche rope that reenforced its straps. In another instant he was back at Marette's side, fastening the babiche about her waist. The other end he gave to her, and she tied it about his wrist.

She smiled as she finished the knot. It was a strange, tense little smile, but it told him that she was not afraid, that she had great faith in him, and knew what the babiche meant.

"I can swim, Jeems," she cried. "If we strike the rock."