The Voice of the Pack Part 14

Encouraged by this amazing find, he turned up the trail toward Hildreth's cabin. It might be possible, he thought, that Hildreth had left some of his testimony--perhaps such rudely scrawled letters as Cranston had written him--in some forgotten drawer in his hut. It was but a short walk for Dan's hardened legs, and he made it before mid-afternoon.

The search itself was wholly without result. But because he had time to think as he climbed the ridge, because as he strode along beneath that wintry sky he had a chance to consider every detail of the case, he was able to start out on a new tack when, just before sunset, he returned to the body. This new train of thought had as its basis that Cranston's shot had not been deadly at once; that wounded, Hildreth had himself crawled into the thickets where Whisperfoot had found him. And that meant that he had to enlarge his search for such doc.u.ments as Hildreth had carried to include all the territory between the trail and the location of the body.

It was possibly a distance of forty feet, and getting down on his hands and knees, Dan looked for any break in the shrubbery that would indicate the path that the wounded Hildreth had taken. And it was ten minutes well rewarded, as far as clearing up certain details of the crime. His senses had been trained and sharpened by his months in the wilderness, and he was able to back-track the wounded man from the skeleton clear to the clearing on the trail where he had first fallen.

But as no clues presented themselves, he started to turn home.

He walked twelve feet, then turned back. Out of the corner of his eye it seemed to him that he had caught a flash of white, near the end of a great, dead log beside the path that the wounded Hildreth had taken. It was to the credit of his mountain training alone that his eye had been keen enough to detect it; that it had been so faithfully recorded on his consciousness; and that, knowing at last the importance of details, he had turned back. For a moment he searched in vain. Evidently a yellow leaf had deceived him. Once more he retraced his steps, trying to find the position from which his eye had caught the glimpse of white. Then he dived straight for the rotten end of the log.

Into a little hollow in the bark, on the underside of the log, some hand had thrust a small roll of papers. They were rain soaked now, and the ink had dimmed and blotted; but Dan realized their significance. They were the complete evidence that Hildreth had acc.u.mulated against the arson ring,--letters that had pa.s.sed back and forth between himself and Cranston, a threat of murder from the former if Hildreth turned State's evidence, and a signed statement of the arson activities of the ring by Hildreth himself. They were not only enough to break up the ring and send its members to prison; with the aid of the empty sh.e.l.l and other circ.u.mstantial evidence, they could in all probability convict Bert Cranston of murder.

For a long time he stood with the shadows of the pines lengthening about him, his gray eyes in curious shadow. For the moment a glimpse was given him into the deep wells of the human soul; and understanding came to him. Was there no balm for hatred even in the moment of death? Were men unable to forget the themes and motives of their lives, even when the shadows closed down upon them? Hildreth had known what hand had struck him down. And even on the frontier of death, his first thought was to hide his evidence where Cranston could not find it when he searched the body, but where later it might be found by the detectives that were sure to come. It was the old creed of a life for a life. He wanted his evidence to be preserved,--not that right should be wronged, but so that Cranston would be prosecuted and convicted and made to suffer. His hatred of Cranston that had made him turn State's evidence in the first place had been carried with him down into death.

As Dan stood wondering, he thought he heard a twig crack on the trail behind him, and he wondered what forest creature was still lingering on the ridges at the eve of the snows.

II

The snow began to fall in earnest at midnight,--great, white flakes that almost in an instant covered the leaves. It was the real beginning of winter, and all living creatures knew it. The wolf pack sang to it from the ridge,--a wild and plaintive song that made Bert Cranston, sleeping in a lean-to on the Umpqua side of the Divide, swear and mutter in his sleep. But he didn't really waken until Jim Gibbs, one of his gang, returned from his secret mission.

They wasted no words. Bert flung aside the blankets, lighted a candle, and placed it out of the reach of the night wind. It cast queer shadows in the lean-to and found a curious reflection in the steel points of his eyes. His face looked swarthy and deep-lined in its light.

"Well?" he demanded. "What did you find?"

"Nothin'," Jim Gibbs answered gutturally. "If you ask me what I found _out_, I might have somethin' to answer."

"Then--" and Bert, after the manner of his kind, breathed an oath--"what did you find out?"

His tone, except for an added note of savagery, remained the same. Yet his heart was thumping a great deal louder than he liked to have it. He wasn't amused by his a.s.sociate's play on words. Nor did he like the man's knowing tone and his air of importance. Realizing that the snows were at hand, he had sent Gibbs for a last search of the body, to find and recover the evidence that Hildreth had against him and which had not been revealed either on Hildreth's person or in his cabin. He had become increasingly apprehensive about those letters he had written Hildreth, and certain other doc.u.ments that had been in his possession. He didn't understand why they hadn't turned up. And now the snows had started, and Jim Gibbs had returned empty-handed, but evidently not empty-minded.

"I've found out that the body's been uncovered--and men are already searchin' for clues. And moreover--I think they've found them." He paused, weighing the effect of his words. His eyes glittered with cunning. Rat that he was, he was wondering whether the time had arrived to leave the ship. He had no intention of continuing to give his services to a man with a rope-noose closing about him. And Cranston, knowing this fact, hated him as he hated the buzzard that would claim him in the end and tried to hide his apprehension.

"Go on. Blat it out," Cranston ordered. "Or else go away and let me sleep."

It was a bluff; but it worked. If Gibbs had gone without speaking, Cranston would have known no sleep that night. But the man became more fawning.

"I'm tellin' you, fast as I can," he went on, almost whining. "I went to the cabin, just as you said. But I didn't get a chance to search it--"

"Why not?" Cranston thundered. His voice reechoed among the snow-wet pines.

"I'll tell you why! Because some one else--evidently a cop--was already searchin' it. Both of us know there's nothin' there anyway. We've gone over it too many times. After a while he went away--but I didn't turn back yet. That wouldn't be Jim Gibbs. I shadowed him, just as you'd want me to. And he went straight back to the body."

"Yes?" Cranston had hard work curbing his impatience. Again Gibbs' eyes were full of ominous speculations.

"He stopped at the body, and it was plain he'd been there before. He went crawling through the thickets, lookin' for clues. He done what you and me never thought to do--lookin' all the way between the trail and the body. He'd already found the bra.s.s sh.e.l.l you told me to get. At least, it wasn't there when I looked, after he'd gone. You should've thought of it before. But he found somethin' else a whole lot more important--a roll of papers that Hildreth had chucked into an old pine stump when he was dyin'. It was your fault, Cranston, for not gettin'

them that night. You needn't 've been afraid of any one hearin' the shot and catching you red-handed. This detective stood and read 'em on the trail. And you know--just as well as I do--what they were."

"d.a.m.n you, I went back the next morning, as soon as I could see. And the mountain lion had already been there. I went back lots of times since.

And that sh.e.l.l ain't nothing--but all the time I supposed I put it in my pocket. You know how it is--a fellow throws his empty sh.e.l.l out by habit."

Gibbs' eyes grew more intent. What was this thing? Cranston's tone, instead of commanding, was almost pleading. But the leader caught himself at once.

"I don't see why I need to explain any of that to you. What I want to know is this: why you didn't shoot and get those papers away from him?"

For an instant their eyes battled. But Gibbs had never the strength of his leader. If he had, it would have been a.s.serted long since. He sucked in his breath, and his gaze fell away. It rested on Cranston's rifle, that in some manner had been pulled up across his knees. And at once he was cowed. He was never so fast with a gun as Cranston.

"Blood on my hands, eh--same as on yours?" he mumbled, looking down.

"What do you think I want, a rope around my neck? These hills are big, but the arm of the law has reached up before, and it might again. You might as well know first as last I'm not goin' to do any killin's to cover up your murders."

"That comes of not going myself. You fool--if he gets that evidence down to the courts, you're broken the same as me."

"But I wouldn't get more'n a year or so, at most--and that's a heap different from the gallows. I did aim at him--"

"But you just lacked the guts to pull the trigger!"

"I did, and I ain't ashamed of it. But besides--the snows are here now, and he won't be able to even get word down to the valleys in six months. If you want him killed so bad, do it yourself."

This was a thought indeed. On the other hand, another murder might not be necessary. Months would pa.s.s before the road would be opened, and in the meantime Cranston could have a thousand chances to steal back the accusing letters. Perhaps they would be guarded closely at first, but by the late winter months they would be an old story, and a single raid on the house might turn the trick. He didn't believe for an instant that the man Gibbs had seen a detective. He had kept too close watch over the roads for that.

"A tall chap, in outing clothes--dark-haired and clean-shaven?"

"Yes?"

"Wears a tan hat?"

"That's the man."

"I know him--and I wish you'd punctured him. Why, you could've taken those papers away from him and slapped his face, and he wouldn't have put up his arms. And now he'll hide 'em somewhere--afraid to carry 'em for fear he meets me. That's Failing--the tenderfoot that's been staying at Lennox's. He's a lunger."

"He didn't look like no lunger to me."

"But no matter about that--it's just as I thought. And I'll get 'em back--mark my little words."

In the meantime the best thing to do was to move at once to his winter trapping grounds,--a certain neglected region on the lower levels of the North Fork. If at any time within the next few weeks, Dan should attempt to carry word down to the settlements, he would be certain to pa.s.s within view of this camp. But he knew that the chance of Dan starting upon any such journey before the snow had melted was not one in a thousand. To be caught in the Divide in the winter means to be snowed in as completely as the Innuits of upper Greenland. No word could pa.s.s except by a man on snowshoes. Really there was no urgency about this matter of the evidence.

Yet if the chance did come, if the house should be left unguarded, it might play Cranston to make an immediate search. Dan would have no reason for supposing that Cranston suspected his possession of the letters; he would not be particularly watchful, and would probably pigeonhole them until spring in Lennox's desk.

And the truth was that Cranston had reasoned out the situation almost perfectly. When Dan wakened in the morning, and the snow lay already a foot deep over the wilderness world, he knew that he would have no chance to act upon the Cranston case until the snows melted in the spring. So he pushed all thought of it out of his mind and turned his attention to more pleasant subjects. It was true that he read the doc.u.ments over twice as he lay in bed. Then he tied them into a neat packet and put them away where they would be quickly available. Then he thrust his head out of the window and let the great snowflakes sift down upon his face. It was winter at last, the season that he loved.

He didn't stir from the house, that first day of the storm. s...o...b..rd and he found plenty of pleasant things to do and talk about before the roaring fire that he built in the grate. He was glad of the great pile of wood that lay outside the door. It meant life itself, in this season.

Then s...o...b..rd led him to the windows, and they watched the white drifts pile up over the low underbrush.

When finally the snowstorm ceased, five days later, the whole face of the wilderness was changed. The buckbrush was mostly covered, the fences were out of sight; the forest seemed a clear, clean sweep of white, broken only by an occasional tall thicket and by the great, snow-covered trees.

When the clouds blew away, and the air grew clear, the temperature began to fall. Dan had no way of knowing how low it went. Thermometers were not considered essential at the Lennox home. But when his eyelids congealed with the frost, and his mittens froze to the logs of firewood that he carried through the door, and the pine trees exploded and cracked in the darkness, he was correct in his belief that it was very, very cold.

But he loved the cold, and the silence and austerity that went with it.