The Valley of Silent Men Part 25

After a little Kent realized that McTrigger was talking, that a hand was on his shoulder, that the voice was both joyous and insistent. He rose to his feet, still holding Marette, her arms clinging to him. Her breath was sobbing and broken. And it was impossible for Kent to speak.

He seemed to stumble over the distance between them and the lights, with McTrigger on the other side of Marette. It was McTrigger who opened a door, and they came into a glow of lamplight. It was a great, strange-looking room they entered. And over the threshold Marette's hands dropped from Kent, and Kent stepped back, so that in the light they faced each other, and in that moment came the marvelous readjustment from shock and disbelief to a glorious certainty.

Again Kent's brain was as clear as the day he faced death at the head of the Chute. And swift as a hot barb a fear leaped into him as his eyes met the eyes of the girl. She was terribly changed. Her face was white with a whiteness that startled him. It was thin. Her eyes were great, slumbering pools of violet, almost black in the lamp glow, and her hair--piled high on her head as he had seen it that first day at Cardigan's--added to the telltale pallor in her cheeks. A hand trembled at her throat, and its thinness frightened him. For a s.p.a.ce--a flash of seconds--she looked at him as if possessed of the subconscious fear that he was not Jim Kent, and then slowly her arms opened, and she reached them out to him. She did not smile, she did not cry out, she did not speak his name now; but her arms went round his neck as he took her to him, and her face dropped on his breast. He looked at McTrigger.

A woman was standing beside him, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, and she had laid a hand on McTrigger's arm, Kent, looking at them, understood.

The woman came to him. "I had better take her now, m'sieu," she said.

"Malcolm--will tell you. And a little later,--you may see her again."

Her voice was low and soft. At the sound of it Marette raised her head, and her two hands stole to Kent's cheeks in their old sweet way, and she whispered,

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

CHAPTER XXVI

A little later, clasping hands in the lamp glow, Kent and Sandy McTrigger stood alone in the big room. In their handclasp was the warm thrill of strong men met in an immutable brotherhood. Each had faced death for the other. Yet this thought, subconsciously and forever a part of them, expressed itself only in the grip of their fingers and in the understanding that lay deep in their eyes.

In Kent's face the great question was of Marette. McTrigger saw the fear of it, and slowly he smiled, a glad and yet an anxious smile, as he looked toward the door through which Marette and the older woman had gone.

"Thank G.o.d you have come in time!" he said, still holding Kent's hand.

"She thought you were dead. And I know, Kent, that it was killing her.

We had to watch her at night. Sometimes she would wander out into the valley. She said she was looking for you. It was that way tonight."

Kent gulped hard. "I understand now," he said. "It was the living soul of her that was pulling me here. I--"

He took his pack with its precious contents from his shoulders, listening to McTrigger. They sat down. What McTrigger was saying seemed of trifling consequence beside the fact that Marette was somewhere beyond the other door, alive, and that he would see her again very soon. He did not see why McTrigger should tell him that the older woman was his wife. Even the fact that a splendid chance had thrown Marette upon a log wedged between two rocks in the Chute, and that this log, breaking away, had carried her to the opposite side of the river miles below, was trivial with the thought that only a door separated them now. But he listened. He heard McTrigger tell how Marette had searched for him those days when he was lost in fever at Andre Boileau's cabin, how she had given him up for dead, and how in those same days Laselle's brigade had floated down, and she had come north with it. Later he would marvel over these things, but now he listened, and his eyes turned toward the door. It was then that McTrigger drove something home. It was like a shot piercing Kent's brain. McTrigger was speaking quietly of O'Connor. He said:

"But you probably came by way of Fort Simpson, Kent, and O'Connor has told you all this. It was he who brought Marette back home through the Sulphur Country."

"O'Connor!"

Kent sprang to his feet. It took McTrigger but a moment to read the truth in his face.

"Good G.o.d, do you mean to tell me you don't know, Kent?" he whispered tensely, rising in front of the other. "Haven't you seen O'Connor?

Haven't you come in touch with the Police anywhere within the last year? Don't you know--?"

"I know nothing," breathed Kent.

For a s.p.a.ce McTrigger stared at him in amazement

"I have been in hiding," said Kent. "All this time I have been keeping away from the Police."

McTrigger drew a deep breath. Again his hands gripped Kent's, and his voice was incredulous, filled with a great wonder. "And you have come to her, to her old home, believing that Marette killed Kedsty! It is hard to believe. And yet--" Into his face came suddenly a look of grief, almost of pain, and Kent, following his eyes, saw that he was looking at a big stone fireplace in the end of the room.

"It was O'Connor who worked the thing out last Winter," he said, speaking with, an effort. "I must tell you before you see her again.

You must understand everything. It will not do to have her tell you.

See--"

Kent followed him to the fireplace. From the shelf over the stonework McTrigger took a picture and gave it to him. It was a snapshot, the picture of a bare-headed man standing in the open with the sun shining on him.

A low cry broke from Kent's lips. It was the great, gray ghost of a man he had seen in the lightning flare that night from the window of his hiding-place in Kedsty's bungalow.

"My brother," said McTrigger chokingly. "I loved him. For forty years we were comrades. And Marette belonged to us, half and half. It was he--who killed--John Barkley." And then, after a moment in which McTrigger fought to speak steadily, he added, "And it was he--my brother--who also killed Inspector Kedsty."

For a matter of seconds there was a dead silence between them.

McTrigger looked into the fireplace instead of at Kent. Then he said:

"He killed those men, but he didn't murder them, Kent. It couldn't be called that. It was justice, single-man justice, without going to law.

If it wasn't for Marette, I wouldn't tell you about it--not the horrible part of it. I don't like to bring it up in my memory. ... It happened years ago. I was not married then, but my brother was ten years older than I and had a wife. I think that Marette loves you as Marie loved Donald. And Donald's love was more than that. It was worship. We came into the new mountain country, the three of us, even before the big strikes at Dawson and Bonanza. It was a wild country, a savage country, and there were few women in it, but Marie came with Donald. She was beautiful, with hair and eyes like Marette's. That was the tragedy of it.

"I won't tell you the details. They were terrible. It happened while Donald and I were out on a hunt. Three men--white men--remember that, Kent; WHITE MEN--came out of the North and stopped at the cabin. When we returned, what we found there drove us mad. Marie died in Donald's arms. And leaving her there, alone, we set out after the white-skinned brutes who had destroyed her. Only a blizzard saved them, Kent. Their trail was fresh when the storm came. Had it held off another two hours, I, too, would have killed.

"From that day Donald and I became man-hunters. We traced the back trail of the three fiends and discovered who they were. Two years later Donald found one of the three on the Yukon, and before he killed him he made him verify the names of the other two. It was a long search after that, Kent. It has covered thirty years. Donald grew old faster than I, and I knew, after a time, that he was strangely mad. He would be gone for months at a time, always searching for the two men. Ten years pa.s.sed, and then, one day, in the deep of Winter, we came on a cabin home that had been stricken with the plague--the smallpox. It was the home of Pierre Radisson and his wife Andrea. Both were dead. But there was a little child still living, almost a babe in arms. We took her, Donald and I. The child was--Marette."

McTrigger had spoken almost in a monotone. He had not raised his eyes from the ash of the fireplace. But now he looked up suddenly at Kent.

"We worshipped her from the beginning," he said, his voice a bit husky.

"I hoped that love for her would save Donald. It did, in a way. But it did not cure his madness, his desire for vengeance. We came farther east. We found this marvelous valley, and gold in the mountains, untouched by other men. We built here, and I hoped even more that the glory of this new world we had discovered would help Donald to forget.

I married, and my wife loved Marette. We had a child, and then another, and both died. We loved Marette more than ever after that. Anne, my wife, was the daughter of a missioner and capable of educating Marette up to a certain point. You will find this place filled with all kinds of books, and reading, and music. But the time came when we thought we must send Marette to Montreal. It broke her heart. And then--a long time after--"

McTrigger paused a moment, looking into Kent's eyes. "And then--one day Donald came in from Dawson City, terrible in his madness, and told us that he had found his men. One of them was John Barkley, the rich timber man, and the other was Kedsty, Inspector of Police at Athabasca Landing."

Kent made no effort to speak. His amazement, as McTrigger had gone on, was beyond the expression of words. The night held for him a c.u.mulative shock--the discovery that Marette was not dead, but alive, and now the discovery that he, Jim Kent, was no longer a hunted man, and that it was O'Connor, his old comrade, who had run the truth down. With dry lips he simply nodded, urging McTrigger to continue.

"I knew what would happen if Donald went after Barkley and Kedsty,"

said the older man. "And it was impossible to hold him back. He was mad, clean mad. There was just one thing for me to do. I left here first, with the intention of warning the two brutes who had killed Donald's wife. I knew, with the evidence in our hands, they could do nothing but make a getaway. No matter how rich or powerful they were, our evidence was complete, and through many years we had kept track of the movements of our witnesses. I tried to explain to Donald that we could send them to prison, but there was but one thought in his poor sick mind--to kill. I was younger and beat him south. And after that I made my fatal mistake. I thought I was far enough ahead of him to get down to the line of rail and back before he arrived. You see, I figured his love for Marette would take him to Montreal first, and I had made up my mind to tell her everything so that she might understand the necessity of holding him if he went to her. I wrote everything to her and told her to remain in Montreal. How she did that, you know. She set out for the North as soon as she received my letter."

McTrigger's shoulders hunched lower. "Well, you know what happened, Kent. Donald got ahead of me, after all. I came the day after Barkley was killed. I took it as a kind fate that the day preceding the killing I shot a grouse for my dinner, and as the bird was only wounded when I picked it up, I got blood on the sleeves of my coat. I was arrested.

Kedsty, every one, was sure they had the real man. And I kept quiet, except to maintain my innocence. I could say nothing that would turn the law on Donald's trail.

"After that, things happened quickly. You, my friend, made your false confession to save one who had done you a poor service years ago.

Almost simultaneously with that, Marette had come. She came quietly, in the night, and went straight to Kedsty. She told him everything, showed him the written evidence, telling him this evidence was in the hands of others and would be used if anything happened to her. Her power over him was complete. As the price of her secrecy she demanded my release, and in that black hour your confession gave Kedsty his opportunity.

"He knew you were lying. He knew it was Donald who had killed Barkley.

Yet he was willing to sacrifice you to save himself. And Marette remained in his house, waiting and watching for Donald, while I searched for him on the trails. That is why she secretly lived in Kedsty's house. She knew that Donald would come there sooner or later, if I did not find him and get him away. And she was plotting how to save you.

"She loved you, Kent--from that first hour she came to you in the hospital. And she tried to exact your freedom also as an added price for her secrecy. But Kedsty had become like a cornered tiger. If he freed you, he saw his whole world crumbling under his feet. He, too, went a little mad, I think. He told Marette that he would not free you, that he would go to the hangman first. Then, Kent, came the night of your freedom, and a little later--Donald came to Kedsty's home. It was he whom you saw that night out in the storm. He entered and killed Kedsty.

"Something dragged Marette down to the room that night. She found Kedsty in his chair--dead. Donald was gone. It was then that you found her there. Kent, she loved you--and you will never know how her heart bled when she let you think she had killed Kedsty. She has told me everything. It was her fear for Donald, her desire to keep all possible suspicion from him until he was safe, that compelled her not to confide even in you. Later, when she knew that Donald must be safe, she was going to tell you. And then--you were separated at the Chute."

McTrigger paused, and Kent saw him choke back a grief that was still like the fresh cut of a knife in his heart.

"And O'Connor found out all this?"

McTrigger nodded. "Yes. He defied Kedsty's command to go to Fort Simpson and was on his way back to Athabasca Landing when he found my brother. It is strange how all things happened, Kent. But I guess G.o.d must have meant it that way. Donald was dying. And in dying, for a s.p.a.ce, his old reason returned to him. It was from him, before he died, that O'Connor learned everything. The story is known everywhere now. It is marvelous that you did not hear--"

There came an interruption, the opening of a door. Anne McTrigger stood looking at them where a little time before she had disappeared with Marette. There was a glad smile in her face. Her dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness. First they rested on McTrigger's face, and then on Kent's.