The Wilderness Trail Part 25

But even that had not convinced her, and she had risen with a firm purpose in her mind. Then, in the supreme renunciation of his life, he had told her everything; that he was a n.o.body, according to law; that her father was merely working out to a triumphal conclusion the revenge he had plotted so many years, and that there was but one way of cleaning the slate, which bore the writing of so many lives.

"When your father has done away with me I think he will be satisfied, for my father's heart will be broken and all the ambitions that have carried him to where he is will fall to ashes. I have a mother and a sister--ah, they would love you, my mother and sister!--and think what these revelations would mean to them. Disgrace and dishonor!

"Donald, what about me?" she had cried, weeping. "You haven't thought about me. You speak of your father and your mother and sister, but you haven't even mentioned me. Am I nothing to you?

Oh, forgive me! I don't mean that! But, Donald, if I lose you, I shall die, too. Don't you see I can't live without you? You found me a girl innocent and ignorant of life, and of men. You were a good man, and you gave me a good love. And I gave you my love, the love of a grown woman, suddenly on fire with things I had never suspected before. Love can't come to me again. Oh, can't you think of me? And yourself! Haven't you the desire to live life to its greatest fulfilment? Can you give me up this way?"

Utterly selfish was her grief. But it was the innocent, instinctive selfishness of the wild thing robbed of its due. Hers was a nature as strong in its renunciation as in its seeking, but she had not come to renunciation yet... She stroked his head, pushing back the fur cap that he wore.

"Oh, my lover, my boy, your hair is streaked with gray! Oh, my poor darling!"

He smiled wanly.

"That," he said faintly, "came after I had thought of you--and given you up!"

Then, the greater woman awakened in her, the woman that has drawn man's head upon her breast to comfort him since the world began; the woman that has borne the sons and daughters of the earth amid pain and fear and ingrat.i.tude; the woman that has ever stood aside, alike in right and wrong, that the man may achieve his destiny.

So, then, stood Jean Fitzpatrick in sight of the trimmed tree-limb that was soon to bear the body of him whom she knew to be hers.

Her weeping was stilled, and the eyes that looked into the eyes of Donald McTavish bore alike the pain and the glory of woman's eternal sacrifice. And to them both came the sense of peace that follows a bitter struggle won. They talked a while of intimate, tender things, and then she left him.

"Look at him, Timmins," whispered Buxton in an awed whisper. "Did you ever see a face with such glory in it all your life? He's seen something that you and I will never see, here or hereafter!"

Timmins looked... The light gradually died out before his eyes.

"What time is it, boys?" asked Donald.

"Four o'clock, Mac," answered Timmins, glancing with difficulty at the watch that shook in his fingers.

"Let me have my pencil and note-book, will you? I want to write a letter or two." The men hesitated, and the condemned man smiled.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid I'll try any funny business at this late date. I give you my word, and that's still good, isn't it?

"It sure is, Mac," said Buxton, and he brought him the articles required.

When the prisoner had begun to write awkwardly by the flickering light, the men engaged in a whispered conversation.

"Say, Mac--" Timmins began hesitatingly, and paused. Then, abruptly, he continued boldly: "I've got a proposition to make you."

"What is it?"

"Buxton and me have agreed it's the only fair thing to do. You take my revolver, and bang us both over the head with it, and make your get-away. We'll frame up a good story of a desperate struggle, and all that, to tell 'em when we come to. Then, n.o.body'll suffer, and we won't all have murder on our souls. But give us time to fix the story up beforehand," he concluded, whimsically. "You see, we mightn't be able to think alike afterward."

Donald actually laughed.

"It's no go, boys," he said gratefully; "but I'll always remember your--" He halted blankly, and Buxton cleared his throat viciously, and spat into the fire. The fact that "always" consisted for him of perhaps four hours, at most, occurred to the man about to die with something of surprise for a moment. Then, he went on writing.

He had just sealed a letter, and given it to Timmins, when he thought he detected a noise outside the cabin. Whether it was a step or a gruff whisper, he could not say. He listened curiously.

Who should be about at this hour? Surely, it was too early for the--

"I wonder, do they keep their grub in this shack?" came the whisper of a man, speaking to a companion.

Where Donald lay, with his ear almost against the logs, the voices were distinct through the c.h.i.n.ks, but did not reach the two guards at the door. He remained silent. There was a sound of breathing, and then stealthy steps, as the men pursued their investigations along the walls. What should he do? Who were they? If he spoke, he might precipitate some calamity of which he had no inkling. Thinking hard, he could reason out no situation in the camp that would call for men to be slinking about looking for food. Besides, every one knew that the little cabin was not a storehouse.

Knowing their man and sure of their own ability to cope with any situation that might arise, Timmins and Buxton had not been over-careful in making the door of the cabin fast. At best, the bar was only a piece of wood that turned on a peg, and its main use was to keep the door tightly closed on account of the cold draft that entered every crack. McTavish had been under guard since the morning of his arrest, and the watchers were grown careless.

Now, the piece of wood was not turned full across the edge of the entrance--in fact, it just managed to keep it shut. A good stiff pull would--

There was a jerk at the outside handle, a cracking and sc.r.a.ping of wood, an icy blast set the little fire roaring. An instant later, a long gun, with a m.u.f.fled face behind it, appeared and covered the three men.

"Here, you in the corner, get up, and let's see who you are?" said the man with the gun, and Donald, before that uncompromising barrel, stood.

"Well, by the great Lucifer," came the soft oath, "if it isn't McTavish!"

"What do you want?" demanded Donald; "and who are you?" He resented this intrusion. The time for letters was growing less and less.

"What, don't you recognize me?" The man thrust his head forward, and worked his face out of the _capote_ that covered the features.

It was Seguis.

"Well, this is luck," the half-breed was saying to himself. "All I have to do now is to take him out of here, and the coast is clear for my own operations."

He said a few words in Ojibway, and a couple of men appeared behind him in the doorway, as he stepped inside.

"Take off your snowshoes," he ordered Timmins, and the under-storekeeper obeyed with real joy. Had Seguis known it, the two men in front of him were much farther from resistance than was their prisoner.

Under command, McTavish donned the rackets, and followed his new captor out of doors. He was entirely prepared for traveling, even to gauntlets, for the temperature of the cabin had been but a few degrees higher than that of outdoors.

Seguis, with a few words to a couple of followers, gave Donald into their charge, bidding him accompany them. Timmins and Buxton, chuckling together, said nothing of the event that Seguis had interrupted, and even McTavish, in his exalted nervous state, was not fool enough to remark: "Don't take me away!--for I'm due to be hanged in the morning."

Seguis and his free-traders had found the approaches to the camp ridiculously easy. In fact, for the last few days sentries had been withdrawn, Fitzpatrick resting a.s.sured that the free-traders would not make an aggressive move. He had learned in a parley that all Seguis and his men asked was peace, and a chance to follow their own path. The factor was waiting for reinforcements from Fort Severn, which he had asked Braithwaite to secure, if possible, among the friendly trappers; and, until they should arrive, and the present matter of discipline be off his hands, he had no desire to make an attack. Consequently, Seguis's party had crept stealthily closer and closer to the camp, undetected. It was the time when sleep in the North country is almost a coma, and the quiet approach aroused no one. In the light of the aurora and the stars, two log cabins stood forth conspicuously. Knowing Fitzpatrick's love of ceremony and distinction, Seguis gathered that the larger and better one was his. If so, the other probably contained provisions.

During the time that he talked to McTavish and his guards, he had not realized the strange situation in which he found them. As he came nearer and nearer to Jean Fitzpatrick, his mind had grown more and more intense against McTavish. What had happened to the unfortunate Hudson Bay man, he only knew imperfectly. But that the former should be in constant communication with the girl was a spur to his jealous imagination. If he could but get his rival out of the way, for a while at least, things would be so much easier. The bird had fallen unexpectedly into his hand, and for a time he did nothing but congratulate himself. McTavish was now on his way to Sturgeon Lake temporarily, and was safely off the board... But, after a while, the strangeness of the situation in the cabin struck him, and he turned to Timmins.

"What was going on in this place when I came in?" he asked.

"We were guarding McTavish."

"What for?"

"He was to be hanged to-morrow for the murder of Indian Tom."

Seguis's jaw dropped, and his eyes bulged.

"d.a.m.nation, you idiot!" he said at last, wrathfully. "Why didn't you tell me? I wouldn't have interfered for the world."

CHAPTER XXI

A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER

Ten minutes later, a man approached Seguis.