The Law-bringers/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
"THE BARREN GROUNDS"
Up the stony beach and among the sparse, ragged timber many Esquimaux women were working: cutting deer flesh into long strips; pounding them flat, and hanging them over the poles that ran between forked sticks in the sun. Others were scraping the skins and stretching them on frames. On the left some men were making a kyak; sewing the skin across the ribs of the boat with the leg-tendons of the caribou. There were many dogs; fat and healthy-looking; and the brown smoked skin tepees seemed whole and prosperous. Tempest glanced side-ways at Dick. He knew the man's powers of deduction too well to doubt him.
"Where?" he asked.
"Slinking into one of those tepees. Can I go after him?"
There was an eager, almost wolf-like note in face and voice. Tempest recoiled from it, thinking of Ducane's wife. He looked up at the chief of the camp who was talking to Myers in surprisingly effective English.
"You have a white man here?" he said.
The Esquimaux nodded and smiled.
"Oh, so. Him Sleepy-face. Me Good-night." He patted his broad breast. "Dat my wife mak' deer-meat 'crost dere. She Sunshine. Dat Sleepy-face wife too be'ind. She sweet Muffin."
Dick turned to look at Sweet Muffin. She sat on the ground beside a great hunch of the deer-meat with her fur-wrapped legs under her and the loose fur skirt tucked up round her fat, swathed body. She was chewing a bit of the meat as she worked, and her bright eyes glanced in her flat, greasy face. Swiftly she cut off slice after slice, and flung it to the next woman who pounded it out on a stone. Then they laughed together; musically, happily. Dick unfolded his legs and stood up in his canoe.
"May I go after Ducane?" he asked, and his voice was dangerously quiet.
"Why, certainly," said Tempest. "And don't waste time. Every hour is valuable now. Do you want any help?"
"No, thanks," said Dick. "I'd rather go alone."
He walked up among the sniffing dogs and the roly-poly children with long, swift steps. He had no weapon with him, and he knew why he could use none to Jennifer's husband, no matter what the provocation might be. But he did not expect any fight from Ducane. He would have given almost anything he had if he could have expected it. But he knew the bed-rock cowardice of the man too well.
Past a large, well-shaped tepee with its chimney-fly smoked deep chocolate he reached the smaller, half-hidden one into which the big man had disappeared. He had not taken his eyes from that tepee since the man went in, and he knew that his chances of finding Ducane there were considerable. Ducane would not have expected even those hawk-eyes to search him out in that one instant of time.
He lifted the skin flap of the tepee; stooped, and walked in. It was dark and it smelt infinitely. Dick blew his nostrils out in disgust. Ducane had never been a dainty man; but this was worse than was necessary.
"Anyone here?" he asked.
There was no sound. He struck a match, and looked round. Under his feet lay strips of wood, caribou-bones, fishing-nets, long needles, and other litter. In the back of the tent furs were piled untidily. It might have been the flicker of the match, but Dick fancied that the skins moved—just once.
"Gone to earth on the chance," said his brain. Then he strode over and took up two great handfuls of the skins.
"You'd best come out of that, Ducane," he said. "I'm here, you know."
There was still no sound, no sight of life. Dick let the match drop; reefed up another armful of the softly-cured, odorous deer-skins, kicking at the same time. And then something rolled out on the earth at his feet; cursing, whimmering, clutching at him, mixing prayers and blasphemy like a man demented. Dick jerked himself free in a more virulent rage than had ever possessed him in his life. It was this thing—this thing that rolled on the earth and cried, which separated him from Jennifer.
"Get up," he said between his teeth. "Get up, you cur. Get up."
"Dick, you're malting a mistake," whimpered Ducane. "Robison was deeper dipped than me. On my soul he was. And he's dead. They must have turned him off long ago. Why can't you"
"In the devil's name—get up!" said Dick, and there was something in his voice which brought Ducane shaking and murmuring to his feet.
"You can't imprison me," he blustered. "I'll turn King's evidence. I've thought the whole thing out. There are others in it. I'll give you their names. But I won't go to prison. I won't put on that damned prison dress. It would kill me. Oh!—you! What did you come here for, you"
"That's better." Dick was taking his breath in long gulps. "Oh, Lord; if you'd only hit me!" he said.
"How did you know I was here?" Even in the close dark Dick knew that the man was wringing his hands and rocking like a woman in despair. "Jenny never told you. She was a good wife to me, Jenny was. She wouldn't tell you. Unless you made her! Did you make her? By Heaven, if you bullied Jenny"
Dick was interested. There was a spark of manhood in this creature yet, then. And it flamed at memory of the woman whom he had left to bear the weight of his disgrace while he lived in a skin tepee with Sweet Muffin.
"Suppose I did?" he said, and every muscle was twitching with longing to come to grips with this man who was Jennifer's husband.
But Ducane had slid back on the earth again; spurting into occasional imprecations and falling silent again in utter fear. He was like a damp fuse, and Dick had no time to wait for him to light up again.
"That's enough," he said. "Come on. You're camping with us to-night, Ducane, and the canoes are waiting outside. I guess you'll help carry them over the next portages. We're bound for Regina, Ducane, and you'll be very welcome there, I'm sure. Are you going to get up?"
There was neither bodily nor mental muscle left in the man. He had become obsessed with the dread of prison, and he prayed to Dick until Dick's very ears burnt with shame.
"Why can't you leave me alone? I'm not doing any harm up here. Robison's dead. He must be dead. And I'll give you the names of the company. There's John W. Harker, ofDick! Oh, my God! Dick!"
In lieu of a handcuff Dick had taken a piece of fishing-line from his pocket, whipped it round Ducane's wrist, and twisted it there with the strength of his own fingers. It did not hurt their iron-hard sinews; but it sank into Ducane's soft flesh like a string into cheese. Ducane sprang up with a yell and incoherent ravings. Dick laughed softly.
"Why," he said, "I'm not beginning to hurt yet. But a special patrol of Canada is being kept waiting for you, Ducane, and I don't consider it polite to let it wait any longer. Do you prefer to be led out like a puppy on a string?"
Ducane took a step. Then he halted. Dread of the dock with that mocking, lazy voice swearing away his liberty swept over him. He lurched sideways, smashing a heavy blow right into Dick's face. Dick carried the mark under his left eye for months, and he never ceased to regret that Ducane did not follow it up with another. He certainly gave Ducane a glad and cordial invitation; but the man backed away, muttering, "You want to kill me, do you?" and then he followed his captor out into the sunlight.
Half-way down the beach Dick stopped.
"You can go and say good-bye to your wife," he said.
For the first time he saw shame on Ducane's face.
"No," he said sullenly; and Dick shrugged his shoulders.
"As you like," he said indifferently, and led on down to the canoes.
Tempest made the necessary explanations to Good-night, and the uniforms did the rest. Good-night was troubled. Prestige left him with the passing of the white man. But he gave permission graciously, if reluctantly, and watched the canoes shoot round the grey bend of the river curiosity on his good-humoured face.
"Dat white man go straight to Sleepy-face like a wolf to de kill," he said. "Now, why?"
Tempest was heart-sick to see the utter letting-go of all traditions of manhood in Ducane, the man who had once been outwardly his equal. He kept away from him when ever occasion allowed. Myers and Depache did the same; very much as dogs who sniff suspiciously and from a distance at a stranger in the camp whom they have been forbidden to touch. But Dick seemed to find actual pleasure in this derelict thing which he had salvaged. Often Tempest caught him watching the other man in speculative interest, as a cat watches a mouse; and he was repelled and utterly disgusted, not understanding that Dick was learning this man through and through in order that he might be able to guard Jennifer against him at all points.
Except Ducane no man in the little patrol ever complained. But, according to Myers' often-asserted belief "that waster growls enough fer a 'ole bloomin' regimint. Why don't Inspector make 'im take 'is turn o' doin' the bloomin' canoes?"
This was to Dick after Dick had stood thigh-deep in icy water, hanging on to his canoe that it might not bang itself to pieces on the rocky landing before the others could load it up. Tempest had done the same for his, and the day before that duty had fallen on Myers and Depache. For all the earth was wild and barren and lonely now. Trees had gone with the Thelon River, and moss was far to seek and little to find after much labour. Dick laughed.
"Why, he takes his turn at eating the bannock, anyway," he said, and Myers departed in fervent profanity.
Very soon Tempest discovered that Ducane had neither the strength for the portages nor the physical courage for the rapids, and he was sick always when they put the sails up and charged into choppy water. And, because he did not work, the chill of his constantly-wetted clothes struck in to the marrow of him, until Tempest feared sometimes that a real sickness would force an indefinite halt on these Barren Grounds.
It was on the night following a long and dangerous day of shooting the rapids, where the river fell with sharp zigzags between tall, naked cliffs into Baker Lake, that Dick came to Tempest.
"Have you the dope-box handy?" he said. "Ducane has cramp in the stomach, and he doesn't appear to be liking it any."
Tempest caught up the little medicine-chest and went over to the tent which Ducane shared with Myers and Dick. He sent Myers across to sleep with Depache, and, with Dick, he did what he could for the suffering man. But Ducane was seized with the terrors of the damned. He believed that he was dying, and his agony of mind and body was a painful thing for Tempest to witness. It did not seem to trouble Dick. He did all that he could for the man where he rolled and screamed and cursed; but when he began to call on his wife's name Tempest saw a dangerous glitter in Dick's eyes for a moment. Ducane started up suddenly.
"Robison is dead?" he cried. "You told me Robison was dead."
"Why, yes," said Tempest soothingly. "But you're not going to die. I've seen men much worse than you, and they got over it. Take some more of this, Ducane."
"You've never seen men make more row about it," said Dick. "How are we to tell if it's pain or only fright?"
"Then—if Robison's dead." Ducane was writhing and jerking out his words brokenly. "All these months he's had no masses said for his soul—and I'm dying—and I promised—I swore that I'd go to hell if I broke my word"
"Be easy," said Dick. "I expect your word won't make so much difference as you think. And you don't mean to tell me that you have the elements of religion in you?"
He was kneeling by the mattress and his lean, dark face showed mockingly interested in the faint, blurring light of the candle-lantern. Ducane turned his head from it.
"I don't know," he moaned. "Robison had. I suppose a man needs some religion when he's going to die."
This was O'Hara's cry, and the repetition of it struck Dick unpleasantly.
"Tempest," cried Ducane. "Tempest! Come here. I'll tell you. I won't tell that. He'd give his word and break it before the breath was out of my body. Tempest!"
"All right All right." Tempest's quiet steady voice came into the following torrent of curses and cries. "I'm here. What is it you want to tell me, Ducane?"
He took Dick's place by the mattress, and Dick stood up, holding the weak light so that the two faces shone on the gloom for him: Ducane's, with ragged beard and staring eyes and white haggard face and a hand that fumbled incessantly at his trembling lips; Tempest's, with the well-poised head, the thick hair pushed back from the square forehead, the healthy-brown, finely-cut grave face. It seemed to him that he had never really seen Tempest's physical beauty until he saw it in contrast with Ducane. Then Ducane began to speak, and his words were broken with the sobbing of a child and the curses of a man.
"I didn't want to have his blood on my hands. But it was the price. If he got off and shut the mouth of the Quatre Fourches Indians—it was the price"
"He was to save your skin if you saved his soul," interpreted Dick.
"I didn't want" A spasm halted Ducane, and then he continued with the tears running down his face. "How could I get at a priest out here? How could I give him the paper? But I promised. There were to be masses for his soul—not as a murderer"
Tempest remembered afterwards how just then Dick's hand bore heavily down on his shoulder, and Dick said:
"Let me take your place. Let me hear what he has to say. This is my business—not yours."
Tempest shook him off.
"Be quiet," he said. "What is that, Ducane? Robison was a murderer, you remember. He murdered Ogilvie."
"No, he didn't. I don't want his blood—but how could I get at a priest out here"
Sharp and clear before his brain-sight Dick was seeing the face of Grange's Andree when he had asked her in Grange's back-parlour why she was crying. He interrupted again.
"Tempest, will you let me"
"Will you hold your tongue?" said Tempest impatiently. "How do you know this, Ducane? Do you mean to say we've hung an innocent man? Who killed Ogilvie if it wasn't Robison?"
"Oh, my God!" said Dick, in nearer prayer than he had used in his life before. But he could not keep his eyes from that brown, bending face in the feeble light.
Ducane lifted himself on his elbow.
"I don't want Robison's blood on my hands," he said. "And after all, it was his business, wasn't it? Not mine. If he loved her enough—he said a girl shouldn't suffer that penalty."
"But you haven't told me who it was," said Tempest gently.
"Oh, haven't I?" said Ducane. "It was Grange's Andree."
Dick had expected that name. But he felt the chill run along his blood as he heard it. Tempest stared in utter maze.
"Andree?" he said slowly. Then his voice thickened. "Who dared invent that devilish lie? Was it you? By , if you did"
"No, no," screamed Ducane, frightened out of his pain. "I didn't. It's true. You'll see it all in the paper. Robison promised her at the time that he'd take the punishment if it was found out. But he wanted masses said for his soul. He wanted them said for a martyr, not a murderer. That's why he gave me the paper. And I don't want his blood"
The impish devil in Dick was laughing at the mockery of this. Robison's sacrifice had been epic, but it had failed in such a poor feeble way. Failed because of the man's vanity. He could not bear that some unknown priest should give his name to his gods as a murderer's name. And then he shuddered, seeing behind this something of the futility of human plans.
Tempest stood up.
"Where is that paper?" he asked.
Dick's ever-nimble mind was working instantly. While Tempest's voice held that tone he was not to be trusted with any paper of importance. For the moment Dick hardly considered the meaning of the paper. It was his natural instinct which led him to protect anything which could compromise anyone.
"It's in my black wallet—back pocket of my breeches."
Ducane did not know what he had done, for he had utterly forgotten Tempest's connection with Grange's Andree. But the feeling that he had given important information to these two men sustained him until he almost forgot his suffering. And he quite forgot that he was preparing for speedy death.
Before Tempest could move Dick had pounced on the wet garment where it hung over a box. He remembered those old riding-breeches in the days when he had first known Jennifer. They were torn and dirty now; but he fumbled with shaking fingers for the buttoned back pocket, drew out the silver-initialled clasped case that had once been so familiar to him, and thrust it into the breast of his tunic. Then Tempest was standing over him.
"Where is the paper?" he said again; and before that voice the ready lie halted on Dick's lips.
He picked the breeches up and shook them.
"Not here," he said. "Ducane must have put the wallet in his shirt or his artiki or something. Or it may have dropped on the ground. We'd never find it to-night in all this litter. And it's too confoundedly dark to see anything, anyway. Wait till morning, Tempest. It can't get lost by then."
He was talking without knowing what he said. Nothing seemed very real to him at that moment but the knowledge that he did not want to hear Tempest speak again. That curious, crushed tone sounding through the blackness of the tent was so hideously unlike Tempest. From the mattress Ducane called fretfully. The opiate which Tempest had given him was beginning to take effect, and the fear of instant death was no longer whipping him into frenzy.
"I'd be better now if I could get some rest," he said. "If you two would only shut up and let me sleep maybe I'll live after all."
"That's an inducement," said Dick, treading over the bundles and boxes to him. "Leave that wallet till the morning, Tempest. We'll look for it then." He thrust it further into his shirt. "I guess it's not very far off," he added.
Tempest did not speak again. He turned, groping for the flap, and went out. And after a moment Dick followed, dodging the moonlight that shone so baldly over the bareness without. For he did not intend that this man whom he and Fate were trying-out in such furnaces should put an end to his training at this juncture. Dick was feeling for Tempest, now, very keenly and anxiously; but mixed with the pity was a strong resentment, an impatience; even a savage kind of gladness that Tempest should know at last the full worth of this girl whom he had been squandering the treasure of his life upon.
"He must be sickened of her after this," he said. "He must be sickened of her. Gad! what is that girl made of, anyhow? And how is he going to stand up to it, I wonder."
With crafty softness he followed among the low rocks as the tall, black shadows bobbed among them where Tempest went down to the lake shore. He shivered in the keen air and the pallid moonlight. If Tempest chose to try to drown himself there was an unpleasant time coming for both. But Tempest seemed to have no such thought. He turned along the beach, and for an hour Dick watched him come and go; walking slow and steadily, with hands deep in his trouser-pockets and head up as though his eyes were looking away to the lonely stars that edged the far level rim of the earth. He was quite evidently thinking out some plan, and Dick began to breathe more freely. He could meet cunning with cunning; but he could not have known what to do with a man broken down by grief. He had borne his own share of heartaches, and knowledge of his endeavour to help Tempest was not the least of them. But at least he could face the world with bold eyes and a joke still, and if Tempest could not, he would feel that disgrace for Tempest as fully as any other.
Tempest had suffered in silence so far, and not even the most curious tongues and ears at Grey Wolf could know how he had taken his punishment. Dick did not know. But he felt desperately that he must know soon. He must smash down that barrier in Tempest before the hardening process had gone so deep that the man below was stultified. Whether he was competent to break it down did not occur to him. He meant to do it, and these things are not done by the men who doubt their own powers. Of Andree he was not thinking yet. He did not desire to think of her, nor of the use to which that paper might have to be put. But neither did he intend to give it up to Tempest. His determination there was quickened by that jealousy for Tempest's honour which possessed him more and more as he realised how far his own stood from it. Besides, with him as with many of us, the knowledge that there are some people walking their straight way in the world seems to accord to the rest the licence to do that evil which is a necessary part of the earth's make-up.
Dick wheeled at last and went back to the tent. He lit a match and stared at the sleeping Ducane until it burnt his fingers and went out. Then he flung himself down on his own pile of bedding and lay still. Until now he had accepted the fact that Ducane was alive and might outlive him. He had accepted it as mankind usually accepts the obvious things, and he had expended himself in trying to find a way round the edge of the obstruction. Now, with a shock of realisation, it had come to him this night that Ducane's life might not be worth much after all. He was a prematurely aged man; enfeebled by excesses; weakened by living in a way which few white men can stand for long, and with no stamina of brain or spirit to help him in a crisis. Lying there, the longing for this man's death swept over Dick like a torrent of fire; blotting out all but the remembrance that there was a hard journey yet before them, and that no law of men nor angels could make it necessary for him to smooth the trail before Ducane's feet. And if Ducane stumbled and fell and one day did not get up again, then, and only then, would Dick bring his thanksgiving to whichever altar pleased him best, and say, "Allah is good."
In the cold, pale dawn he was up and away down the beach to a little jutting bluff behind which he could read that paper of Robison's in safety. The empty canoes beached on the naked shore; the two little white tents sitting together on the stony desolation struck him anew with the paltry weakness of them. Like a flake of foam off the lake they marked the shore for a moment and passed, leaving all as it had been and would continue to be. Those stones and that grey tossing lake and these barren cliffs were the only things unswayed by passion, unbroken by life. There was a stateliness, a dignity in the slowness and the surety of their changes. To Dick there was an irrelevant mockery, an almost disgusting levity about the rapidity of the changes in man. The difference seemed to put him, with his few puny years, on a level with those frail canoes and the tents that stamped no impress on the stones below them.
Then he backed up from the wind round the corner of the bluff, lit his pipe, and opened the wallet to find out in what words Robison and Ducane had endeavoured to insure a future paradise for both.
There were a score of things in the wallet. Unpaid bills in plenty; a note from Jennifer—Dick knew her writing, and he thrust that sheet back hastily; some accounts; some memorandums; finally a dirty piece of paper folded very small.
"I fancy that looks like Robison's thumb-mark," said Dick, and he opened it, smothering an oath at seeing that it was written in smudged pencil.
Then, picking out the words in Ducane's crabbed handwriting with difficulty, he read it.
The whole of the account was ill-constructed and full of repetition. It had evidently been drawn up on that night at Chipewyan when Ducane had decided to decamp and Robison had preferred to chance the possibility that Dick might have come on other business. First came Robison's promise to get Ducane smuggled away east towards Hudson Bay through the Quatre Fourches Indians, on condition that Ducane agreed to the following requirements. Robison's name was set in his big black hand to that. And then came the requirements; and before Dick had got through their tangled phraseology and their strange mixture of cant and bold courage and real faith, he was not feeling himself such a very much better man than this coarse, blunt-minded breed, who had gone to his death for love of a woman who did not love him, trusting to this paper to absolve him from purgatory.
Stripped of clogging words the details of the whole affair were bald; much more bald than Dick had hoped for. They told how Robison had gone to bring Andree back from the English Mission: how they had met Ogilvie in the trail; how the two men had quarrelled and Ogilvie had pulled out his knife. How Andree had snatched the knife and stabbed Ogilvie, and how Robison had dragged him off into the coulée and flung him down among the thick undergrowth and snow. The paper also told how he had intended to bury the bones as soon as the snow was gone, and how he had subdued Andree's alarm at what she had done by promising to shoulder the possible results. It desired any priest who should receive this paper to pray for the soul of Kesikak Robison, who had died to save the life of another, and added that Ducane would pay all the necessary charges.
Both men had signed this, and at the foot was set in full the oath by which Ducane swore to deliver the paper and pay the money. This Ducane had signed alone.
Dick folded the paper and put it back in the pocket-book. He was thinking first that Ducane had either money concealed about his rags, or that he was in communication with some person "outside." In the latter case there might be the chance of bail perhaps, or of influence set to work to free him. Dick made a mental note of that. Then he considered the other matter. It was probable that if Andree had pleaded manslaughter at the beginning she might have got off lightly. For Ogilvie was known to have been drunk, and had assuredly been impertinent. But she had Robison's death also on her shoulders now. Dick understood at last her cry to him in Grange's back-parlour on the day of the trial.
"If he want to die, why do it matter?" she had said; and he knew Andree sufficiently to deduce her reasoning. She did not want to die, and if Robison did, why should she not let him? Dick grinned over the simplicity of it. Andree's wits would not carry her further than that, and most assuredly her conscience would not. For there was in Andree a quality which belongs to a certain class of masculine minds; the quality which enables a person to accept the thing which has occurred as inevitable, and therefore not to be regretted or remembered. But there are few women who can look at life from that standpoint.
"She could never begin to appreciate that sacrifice," he said. "Little devil."
And then, horribly, vividly, the truth came back to him that Andree loved him; that he had taught her to love him. And after that he looked up at a step on the gravelly beach, and saw Tempest.
"I guessed you were here," said Tempest. "I have come for that paper, Heriot."
Tempest had always called him Heriot since Andree came between them. But to-day the name struck Dick's ears with sharpened force. It reminded him that this breaking of a friendship which would leave raw edges through the length of two men's lives would trouble Andree no more than the death of Robison, or of Ogilvie, or of that wild O'Hara who had died with her name in his mouth.
"I haven't got the paper," he said. "Couldn't you?"
Tempest shook his head slightly, like a stag when the midges are about him.
"It is true, then?" he asked. "It reads like truth? Tell me, Dick, for I have got to know it now."
"Why, yes." Dick tried to hide his nervousness by knocking out his pipe and thrusting it into his side-pocket. "Bound to be extenuating circumstances when the matter's gone into, though. Ducane's so much better this morning that I think we needn't delay at all. Did you come to call me for breakfast?"
"What do you intend to do with that paper?" asked Tempest.
"Keep it for the present, anyway."
"You will give it to me," said Tempest quietly.
"Not on your life." Dick buttoned up his tunic with a short laugh. "Don't talk that way," he said. "You know you don't expect me to give it."
The rare fury blazed into Tempest's face. Those careless words had knocked the skin off the unhealed sore below, and though the spirit had won out to a certain staying-point during the night, the natural reaction had left his temper less under control.
"Then I will have it taken from you by force," he said, and Dick saw with approval the quick tightening-up of the slim body. "I am your superior officer."
"If you do you're not the superior man," said Dick coolly. "Come and get it if you want it, for I assure you you won't have it any other way."
He did not know what reckless demon in him prompted the challenge. But Tempest answered to it before the words were off his lips, and the two men closed; knee locked in knee, arms gripped, and flushed faces near as they swayed.
Dick and Tempest had wrestled many times in the days that were gone, and Tempest's lithe quickness had matched Dick's strength equally until Tempest learnt a throw for which Dick could not find the counter. He had found it since, in Chicago, and had seen a back broken by the application of it. Now he felt Tempest manœuvring for that throw, and a cruel laugh ran into his eyes. Tempest did not know what could come of it now—if Dick chose. He baulked it by a sudden feint, and again they bent and swayed, spurting the gravel out from under their struggling feet, and feeling the lust of fight generate with each hot, hard-breathing moment.
It seemed as though all the pain and bad blood and evil tempers of the last months had culminated at last, and both men gloried in the knowledge, and fought to ease themselves of the load. Inch by inch Tempest was feeling for the throw again, and this time Dick did not stop him. The fighting savage had been too fully roused in him, and he was mad with desire to prove himself the better man. He slacked his body slightly, letting Tempest get home to the side-swing that preceded the fall. Then, at the one instant when the other man's balance was unguarded, Dick crouched, shifted his grip quick as lightning, and flung Tempest over his shoulder.
Tempest fell with a thud on the stones of the beach. Being utterly unprepared he had made no resistance, and Dick staggered up and looked at him, breathing heavily through his nostrils. Tempest lay on his face with one arm under him and his body curled up. He did not move, and for a space Dick stared at him without emotion. Then terror smote him in such a blinding, tearing agony that it felt like death itself. He dropped on his knees by Tempest, but he dared not touch him. From somewhere he heard a voice saying:
"Have I broken his back? Have I broken his back? Have I broken his back?"
At first he did not know that voice for his own. Then he traced it to his moving lips and at once began to take a close and curious interest in the individuality of this "I." It did not seem to be really himself, any more than that still thing with the hidden face seemed to be really Tempest. Then why was he afraid? Why was he so sick afraid that his hands were numb and the little pebbles under his knee-bones burnt like fire? Part of his brain was searching for a reason, and presently out of the back of his mind there shaped the memory of a sketch of his pasted on the wall of the bunk-room at Grey Wolf. It was just an eye, gazing indifferently over the edge of the universe into space, and he had drawn it to illustrate the callousness of that Power which, men alleged, controlled creation and all things within it. Now he knew that he had drawn a true thing, only the Eye was not indifferent. It was watching him. It had been watching all the time, taking that close and curious interest in his individuality which he took himself.
In a spasm of uncontrollable fear he hid his face from it, but he knew that it was watching still. It was that Thing which Hindoo, and Buddhist, and Christian and Mahomedan each give their own name to and worship. It was the Thing he had jested about and made a mock of. And now it was making a mock and a jest of him.
He put his fingers out to touch Tempest and pulled them away again.
"If I knew he was dead," he heard his voice saying. "I could stand it if I knew he was dead. But it's such a ghastly thing to break a man's back. He could live quite a while with a broken back."
The sound of his voice steadied him somewhat. It seemed the only human thing in this cold, barren place where he knelt alone under his sin with that Eye watching.
"I must get help," he said, and stood up. For a minute he stood as if in thought, but he was not thinking. "Certainly I must get help," he said again, and turned down the beach and went back to the camp.
Among the little stones Myers was building a driftwood fire and putting on the kettle to boil. Depache, moving his long limbs slowly, rolled the bedding and strapped it, whistling a little song the while. Within the nearer tent Ducane was cursing. Dick rubbed his eyes, standing still beside the fire. These men did not seem real either. They looked like cut-out paper, pasted against the colourless background of cliffs, and it seemed such a silly thing to speak to paper men.
"Tempest," he said, and stopped, wondering if they could possibly hear him. And then he raised his voice. "The inspector is hurt," he said. "Bring a couple of paddles and a blanket. We must carry him in."
He believed that the men swore in amaze and asked questions. He believed that they hurried him along the beach, dragging the paddles and the scarlet Hudson Bay blanket with them. But he did not talk to them. The voice inside his head continued to repeat, "Have I broken his back? Have I broken his back?" and another voice, the one which he knew for the inevitable cynic devil in his blood, returned, "Well, you tried to. What are you making a fuss about? You tried to."
Between them the three men carried Tempest back to the tent, and rubbed him, and put heated stones to his feet and cloths wrung out of hot water over his heart. It was Depache who commanded here, with his soft eyes gleaming, and Dick who obeyed, enraged at the futile imbecility of it all. Could any reasonable man suppose that hot stones and fomentations were of use when the Power represented by that watching Eye was alone able to control the issue?
"We should ask It," he began to say stupidly, once or twice. "We are no good, you know. We should ask It."
But his words were brushed aside, and he was bidden plunge his hands into the scalding water to wring those hot cloths which could not bring the colour of life back to Tempest's skin. Depache was making little broken prayers as he worked, and Dick looked at him with angry eyes.
"Why didn't you do that before?" he said; and then Depache straightened, with his melancholy, womanish face lighted exultantly.
"But it is that he will live," he cried. "See the blood come back under the skin? He will live."
Dick looked on the reddened flesh where the cloths were lifted. He saw the dark eyelashes quiver just a little, and he stood up and went to the door, feeling physically sick.
"For he doesn't know yet that his back is probably broken," he told himself. "He doesn't know that."
Behind him he heard Depache speak as one speaks to a man who yet belongs to the ordinary life of men, and that uncontrollable fear seized him again, chasing him out along the beach with hasty, unsteady feet. He could not face the consequences of this. He could not face that which Tempest might be facing now.
The scent of wood smoke drifted to him along the barren beach; the smell of rain was sweet and heavy in the air; lake and hills and sky lay colourless and softly tender where seabirds drifted over, sending down thin cries.
Dick did not know if it were mid-day or evening or early morning still. A strange, detached feeling of separation from all the natural things possessed him. There did not seem anything to do or anywhere to go. He was helpless; helpless to avert the consequences of his own passion; helpless in the hands of that omnipotent Life which flushes the veins of men for a little space, and then withdraws to fulfil itself in other forms.
Because Dick had never loved anyone as he loved Tempest he had never known grief before. He had never known the need of a God before. He had never known utter fear. He knew them all now, and he staggered under the weight of them. In a little while he would have to go back to Tempest. He would have to go, and the horror of that thought plucked all the defiant unbelief out of him for the time.
"God," he said with stammering lips. "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
And then he walked on, and walked back again, still keeping the edge of the bluff where he and Tempest had fought between him and the camp. And at last, not knowing why he returned any more than he knew why he had gone out, he passed the bluff towards the camp again.
The tents were struck, and on the beach men moved, loading up the canoes. Dick stared, rubbing both his eyes. Was Tempest dead, or was he on his feet again; or, knowing the end in store for him, did he want to go nearer the haunts of men to die? There were three men only moving on the beach, and not any of those three were Tempest. Dick shut his eyes; standing still, and struggling fiercely for control over himself. He must go and see. He must go. Suddenly he laughed a little. That Power which he had made a jest of was having its money's worth out of him now. Then he set his teeth and walked straight through the dismantled camp and up to the canoe which held Tempest.
Tempest was lying quite flat in the bottom, and the lines on his face showed physical pain. But he looked up, smiling.
"You nearly arranged for me to go home feet first," he said. "Where did you learn that counter, you beggar?"
"Is your back broken?" demanded Dick.
"No." Tempest smiled again. "You've given me a pretty nasty rick, though. I won't be much use for some days. You'll have to make Ducane work now, Dick. I guess I won't be the only one to suffer over this."
Dick had heard the first word only. Against his will, against his knowledge, sobs were shaking his body and his eyes burnt with hot tears. He turned away sharply, and went up the beach, seeking mechanically for some of the freight to carry to the canoe. Here he stumbled against Ducane, and Ducane caught hold of his tunic, complaining fretfully.
"This is a nice thing," he said. "Does Tempest expect that I'm going to take his place, I'd like to know? I'm not fit. How can I"
For the first time this morning nature offered some relief to Dick.
"Oh, go to hell," he said savagely. And then he laughed in sudden exultation. For he himself had just come out of it.