The Valley of Silent Men Part 23

She did not finish because of the sudden cry that came to his lips. He had almost forgotten the most vital of all things. There was not time to unlace his boots. With his knife he cut the laces in a single downward thrust. Swiftly he freed his own feet, and Marette's. Even in this hour of their peril it thrilled him to see how quickly Marette responded to the thoughts that moved him. She tore at her outer garments and slipped them off as he wriggled out of his heavy shirt. A slim, white-underskirted little thing, her glorious hair flying in the wind that came through the Chute, her throat and arms bare, her eyes shining at Kent, she came again close within his arms, and her lips framed softly his name. And a moment later she turned her face up, and cried quickly,

"Kiss me, Jeems--kiss me--"

Her warm lips clung to his, and her bare arms encircled his neck with the choking grip of a child's. He looked ahead and braced himself on his feet, and after that he buried one of his hands in the soft ma.s.s of her hair and pressed her face against his naked breast.

Ten seconds later the crash came. Squarely amidships the scow struck the Dragon's Tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but his attempt to hold his feet, with Marette in his arms, was futile. The bulwark saved them from crashing against the slippery face of the rock itself. Amid the roar of water that filled his ears he was conscious of the rending of timbers. The scow bulged up with the mighty force beneath, and for a second or two it seemed as though that force was going to overturn and submerge it. Then slowly it began to slip off the nose of the rock.

Holding to the rail with one hand and clinging to Marette with his other arm, Kent was gripped in the horror of what was happening. The scow was slipping _into the right hand channel_! In that channel there as no hope--only death.

Marette was squarely facing the thing ahead. In this hour when each second held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she understood. Yet she did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her hair and arms and shoulders were dripping with the splash of water. But she was not terrified as he had seen terror. When she turned her eyes to him, he was amazed by the quiet, calm look that was in them. Her lips trembled.

His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in another crash of timber as a jutting snag of the Tooth crumpled up the little cabin as if it had been pasteboard. He felt overwhelming him the surge of a thing mightier than the menace of the Chute. He could not lose! It was inconceivable. Impossible! With _her_ to fight for--this slim, wonderful creature who smiled at him even as she saw death.

And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the monsters of power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung free of the Dragon's Tooth, half-filled with water. Its cracked and broken carca.s.s was caught in the rock jaws of the eastern channel. It ceased to be a floating thing. It was inundation, dissolution, utter obliteration almost without shock. And Kent found himself in the thundering rush of waters, holding to Marette.

For a s.p.a.ce they were under. Black water and white froth fumed and exploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled Kent's nostrils. He thrust Marette upward and cried out to her. He heard her answer.

"I'm all right--Jeems!"

His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip. All his effort was to make of himself a barrier between Marette's soft body and the rocks. It was not the water itself that he feared, but the rocks.

There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mighty grinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length. He felt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not thinking of time or distance, but was fighting solely to keep himself between Marette and death. The first time he failed, a blind sort of rage burned in his brain.

He saw her white body strained over a slippery, deluge-worn rock. Her head was flung back, and he saw the long ma.s.ses of her hair streaming out in the white froth, and he thought for an instant that her fragile body had been broken. He fought still more fiercely after that. And she knew for what he was fighting. Only in an unreal sort of way was he conscious of shock and hurt. It gave him no physical pain. Yet he sensed the growing dizziness in his head, an increasing lack of strength in his arms and body.

They were halfway through the Chute when he shot against a rock with terrific force. The contact tore Marette from him. He plunged for her, missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging to the same rock. The babiche rope had saved her. Fastened about her waist and tied to his wrist, it still held them together--with the five feet of rock between them.

Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over that rock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began streaming from Kent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled at her as a few moments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with the pain of his hurts. He nodded back in the direction from which they had come.

"We're out of the worst of it," he tried to shout. "As soon as we've got our wind, I will climb over the rock to you. It won't take us longer than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the quiet water at the end of the channel."

She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her confidence.

And he had no intention of resting, for her position filled him with a terror which he fought to hide. The babiche rope, not half as large around as his little finger, had swung her to the downstream side of the rock. It was the slender thread of buckskin and his own weight that were holding her. If the buckskin should break--

He thanked G.o.d that it was the tough babiche that had been around his pack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the rock. The undertow behind the rock had flung a ma.s.s of Marette's long hair toward him, so that it was a foot or two nearer to him than her clinging hands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw that he could reach it more quickly than he could reach her. At the same time he had to keep his end of the babiche taut. It was, from the beginning, an almost superhuman task. The rock was slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shot down-stream, with the thought that it might be better to cast himself bodily into the water, and after that draw Marette to him by means of the babiche. What he saw convinced him that such action would be fatal.

He must have Marette in his arms. If he lost her--even for a few seconds--the life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewn maelstrom below.

And then, suddenly, the babiche cord about his wrist grew loose. The reaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry came from Marette. It all happened in an instant, in almost less time than his brain could seize upon the significance of it--the slipping of her hands from the rock, the shooting of her white body away from him in the still whiter spume of the rapids, The rock had cut the babiche, and she was gone! With a cry that was like the cry of a madman he plunged after her. The water engulfed him. He twisted himself up, freeing himself from the undertow. Twenty feet ahead of him--thirty--he caught a glimpse of a white arm and then of Marette's face, before she disappeared in a wall of froth.

Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded, groping wildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers caught the end of the babiche that was fastened about his own wrist, and he clutched it savagely, believing for a moment that he had found her. Thicker and more deadly the rocks of the lower pa.s.sage rose in his way. They seemed like living things, like devils filled with the desire to torture and destroy. They struck and beat at him. Their laughter was the roar of a Niagara. He no longer cried out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs were beating him--beating and breaking him into a formless thing. The rock-drifts of spume, lather-white, like the frosting of a monster cake, turned gray and then black.

He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night came.

The world was oblivion. And for a s.p.a.ce he ceased to live.

CHAPTER XXIII

An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back into existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened did not at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of awakening from a sleep that had been filled with pain and horror.

Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen roar of the stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light reflected from the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was on his knees, and all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--choking his senses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered to his feet, crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated him with its horror, deadening his tongue after that first cry, filling his throat with a moaning, sobbing agony. Marette was gone. She was lost. She was dead.

Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For a quarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between the chasm walls, darkening with the approach of night. He could hear more clearly the roar of the death-floods. But close to him was smooth water, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock and shale, upon which the current had flung him. In front of him was a rock wall.

Behind him was another. There was no footing except where he stood. And Marette was not with him.

Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But his physical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived, she must live! She was there--somewhere--along the sh.o.r.e--among the rocks--

The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. He shouted, and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to the boulder-strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther on was the opening of the Chute. He came out of this, his clothes torn from him, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman,--shouting her name more and more loudly. The glow of the setting sun struck him at last. He was out from between the chasm walls, and it lighted up the green world for him. Ahead of him the river widened and swept on in tranquil quiet.

And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the horrible, overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from him, and he sobbed--sobbed like a boy stricken by some great childish grief, as he searched along the edge of the sh.o.r.e. Over and over again he cried and whispered Marette's name.

But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She was gone from him forever. Yet he did not cease to search. The last of the sun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even in that darkness he continued to search for a mile below the Chute, calling her name more loudly now, and listening always for the answer which he knew would never come. The moon came out after a time, and hour after hour he kept up his hopeless quest. He did not know how badly the rocks had battered and hurt him, and he scarcely knew when it was that exhaustion dropped him like a dead man in his tracks. When dawn came, it found him wandering away from the river, and toward noon of that day, he was found by Andre Boileau, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped on Burntwood Creek. Andre was shocked at the sight of his wounds and half dragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the forest.

For six days thereafter Kent remained at old Andre's place, simply because he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. Andre wondered that there were no broken bones in him. But his head was terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three nights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life and death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed him venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked Andre, and said that he was ready to go.

Andre outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food and G.o.d's blessing. And Kent returned to the Chute, giving Andre to understand that his destination was Athabasca Landing.

Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He knew that it would have been better for him both in mind and body had he gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him the desire to fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of least resistance, and these led him back to the scene of the tragedy. His grief, when he returned, was no longer the heartbreaking agony of that first night. It was a deep-seated, consuming fire that had already burned him out, heart and soul. Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing, avoided nothing. Had the police boat been at the Chute, he would have revealed himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray of hope would have been precious medicine to him. But there was no hope.

Marette was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone, unfathomably and hopelessly alone.

And now, after he had reached the river again, something held him there. From the head of the Chute to a bend in the river two miles below, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he would make the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in which he caught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a crevice among the rocks at the foot of the Chute. At the end of a week the old Jim Kent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have recognized him with his s.h.a.ggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes, and the sunken cheeks which the beard failed to hide.

And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice there leaped up in him a sudden pa.s.sion demanding vengeance upon the accursed Law that was accountable for the death of Marette, but even this flame snuffed itself out quickly.

And then, on the eighth day, he saw the edge of a thing that was almost hidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was Marette's little pack, and for many minutes before he opened it Kent crushed the sodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-mad eyes down where he had found it, as if Marette must be there, too. Then he ran with it to an open s.p.a.ce, where the sun fell warmly on a great, flat rock that was level with the ground, and with sobbing breath he opened it. It was filled with the things she had picked up quickly in her room the night of their flight from Kedsty's bungalow, and as he drew them out one by one and placed them in the sun on the rock, a new and sudden rush of life swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced the river again, as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked down again upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms to them, he whispered,

"Marette--my little G.o.ddess--"

Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one who was dead brought a smile to his haggard and bearded face. For Marette, in filling her little pack on that night of hurried flight, had chosen strange things. On the sunlit rock, where he had placed them, were a pair of the little pumps which he had fallen on his knees to worship in her room, and with these she had crowded into the pack one of the billowing, sweet-smelling dresses which had made his heart stand still for a moment when he first looked into their hiding-place. It was no longer soft and cobwebby as it had been then, like down fluttering against his cheeks, but sodden and discolored, as it lay on the rock with little rivulets of water running from it.

With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities which Marette had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kent picked up and crushed close to his ragged breast--one of the two she had worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at Cardigan's place.

This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed to him that a message had come to him from Marette herself, that the spirit of her had returned to him and was with him now, stirring strange things in his soul and warming his blood with a new heat. She was gone forever, and yet she had come back to him, and the truth grew upon him that this spirit of her would never leave him again as long as he lived. He felt her nearness. Unconsciously he reached out his arms, and a strange happiness entered Into him to battle with grief and loneliness. His eyes shone with a new glow as they looked at her little belongings on the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood of her, a part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith in him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew that she was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to fight for.

That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between the rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting circle of his arms as he slept.

The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after he left the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a half-breed for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a cooking outfit.

After that he had no hesitation in burying himself still deeper into the forests.

A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time crack man of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered with no other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther away from the river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a half-breed. Each night, though the weather was very warm, he made himself a small camp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with the fire-light about him, that he felt Marette was very near. It was then that he took out one by one the precious things that were in Marette's little pack. He worshipped these things. The dress and each of the little shoes he had wrapped in the velvety inner bark of the birch tree. He protected them from wet and storm. Had emergency called for it, he would have fought for them. They became, after a time, more precious than his own life, and in a vague sort of way at first he began to thank G.o.d that the river had not robbed him of everything.

Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress that chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette became more a part of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was always at his side, nestling close in the shelter of his arms at night, walking with her hand in his during the day. And in this belief his grief was softened by the sweet and merciful comfort of a possession of which neither man nor fate could rob him--a beloved Presence always with him.

It was this Presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up his head again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more straight in the face. It was both inspiration and courage to him and grew nearer and dearer to him as time pa.s.sed. Early Autumn found him in the Fond du Lac country, two hundred miles east of Fort Chippewyan. That Winter he joined a Frenchman, and until February they trapped along the edges of the lower fingers of the Barrens.

He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he revealed nothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that was growing in him. And as the Winter lengthened this desire became a deep and abiding yearning. It was with him night and day. He dreamed of it when he slept, and it was never out of his thoughts when awake. He wanted to go HOME. And when he thought of home, it was not of the Landing, and not of the country south. For him home meant only one place in the world now--the place where Marette had lived. Somewhere, hidden in the mountains far north and west, was that mysterious Valley of Silent Men where they had been going when her body died. And the spirit of her wanted him to go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him, urging him to go, to live there always where she had lived. He began to plan, and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would find her home, her people, the valley that was to have been their paradise.