The Valley of Silent Men Part 26

"Marette is much better," she said in her soft voice. "She is waiting to see you, M'sieu Kent. Will you come now?"

Like one in a dream Kent went toward her. He picked up his pack, for with its precious contents it had become to him like his own flesh and blood. And as the woman led the way and Kent followed her, McTrigger did not move from the fireplace. In a little while Anne McTrigger came back into the room. Her beautiful eyes were aglow. She was smiling softly, and putting her arms about the shoulders of the man at the fireplace, she whispered:

"I have looked at the night through the window, Malcolm. I think that the stars are bigger and brighter than they have been in a long time.

And the Watcher seems like a living G.o.d up in the sky. Come, please."

She took his hand, and Malcolm went with her. Over their heads burned a glory of stars. The wind came gently up the valley, cool with the freshness of the mountain-tops, sweet with the smell of meadow and flowers. And when the woman pointed through the glow, Malcolm McTrigger looked up at the Watcher, and for an instant he fancied that he saw what she had seen--something that was life instead of death, a glow of understanding and of triumph in the mighty face of stone above the lace mists of the clouds. For a long time they walked on, and deep in the heart of the woman a voice cried out again and again that the Watcher knew, and that it was a living joy she saw up there, for up to that unmoving and voiceless G.o.d of the mountains she had cried and laughed and sung--and even prayed; and with her Marette had also done these things, until at last the pulse and beat of women's souls had given a spirit to a form of rock.

Back in the chateau which Malcolm McTrigger and his brother Donald had built of logs, in a room whose windows faced the Watcher himself, Marette was unveiling the last of mystery for Jim Kent. And this, too, was her hour of triumph. Her lips were red and warm with the flush brought there by Kent's love.

Her face was like the wild roses he had crushed under his feet all that day. For in this hour the world had come to her, and had prostrated itself at her feet. The sacred contents of the pack were in her lap as she leaned back in the great blanketed and pillowed chair that had been her invalid's nest for many days. But it was an invalid's nest no longer. The floods of life were pounding through her body again, and in that hour when Malcolm McTrigger and his wife were gone, Kent looked upon the miracle of its change. And now Marette gave to him a little packet, and while Kent opened it she raised both hands to her head and unbound her hair so that it fell about her in shining and glorious confusion.

Kent, unwrapping a last bit of tissue-paper, found in his hands a long tress of hair.

"See, Jeems, it has grown fast since I cut it that night."

She leaned a little toward him, parting her hair with slim, white fingers so that he saw again where the hair had been clipped the night of Kedsty's death.

And then she said: "You may keep it always if you want to, Jeems, for I cut it from my head when I left you in the room below, and when you--almost--believed I had killed Kedsty. It was this--"

She gave him another packet, and her lips tightened a little as Kent unwrapped it, and another tress of hair shimmered in the lamp glow.

"That was father Donald's," she whispered.

"It--it was all he had left of Marie, his wife. And that night--when Kedsty died--"

"I understand," cried Kent, stopping her. "He choked Kedsty with it until he was dead. And when I found it around Kedsty's neck--you--you let me think it was yours--to save father Donald!"

She nodded. "Yes, Jeems. If the police had come, they would have thought I was guilty. I planned to let them think so until father Donald was safe. But all the time I had here in my breast this other tress, which would prove that I was innocent--when the time came. And now, Jeems--"

She smiled at him again and reached out her hands. "Oh, I feel so strong! And I want to take you out now--and show you my valley--Jeems--our valley--yours and mine--in the starlight. Not tomorrow, Jeems. But tonight. Now."

A little later the Watcher looked down on them, even as it had looked down on another man and another woman who had preceded them. But the stars were bigger and brighter, and the white cap of snow that rested on the Watcher's head like a crown caught the faint gleam of a far-away light; and after that, slowly and wonderfully, other snow-crested mountain-tops caught that greeting radiance of the moon. But it was the Watcher who stood out like a mighty G.o.d among them all, and when they came to the elbow in the plain, Marette drew Kent down beside her on a great flat rock and laughed softly as she held his hand tightly in her lap.

"Always, from a little child, I have sat and played on this rock, with the Watcher looking, like that," she said in a low voice. "I have grown to love him, Jeems. And I have always believed that he was gazing off there, night and day, into the east, watching for something that was coming to me. Now I know. It was you, Jeems. And, Jeems, when I was away--down there in the big city--"

Her fingers gripped his thumb in their old way, and Kent waited.

"It was the Watcher that made me want to come home most of all," she went on, a bit of tremble in her voice. "Oh, I grew lonely for him, and I could see him in my dreams at night, watching, watching, watching, and sometimes even calling me. Jeems, do you see that hump on his left shoulder, like a great epaulet?"

"Yes, I see," said Kent.

"Beyond that, on a straight line from here--hundreds of miles away--are Dawson City, the Yukon, the big gold country, men, women, civilization.

Father Malcolm and father Donald have never found but one trail to this side of the mountains, and I have been over it three times--to Dawson.

But the Watcher's back is on those things. Sometimes I imagine it was he who built those great ramparts through which few men come. He wants this valley alone. And so do I. Alone--with you, and with my people."

Kent drew her close in his arms. "When you are stronger," he whispered, "we will go over that hidden trail together, past the Watcher, toward Dawson. For it must be that over there--we will find--a missioner--" He paused.

"Please go on, Jeems."

"And you will be--my wife."

"Yes, yes, Jeems--forever and ever. But, Jeems"--her arms crept up about his neck--"very soon it will be the first of August."

"Yes--?"

"And in that month there come through the mountains, each year, a man and a woman to visit us--mother Anne's father and mother. And mother Anne's father--"

"Yes--?"

"Is a missioner, Jeems."

And Kent, looking up in this hour of his triumph and joy, believed that in the Watcher's face he caught for an instant the pa.s.sing radiance of a smile.

THE END