CHAPTER XV
FATHER JOSE PROBES
It was a startled community that awoke next morning at Fort Mowbray. The news was abroad at the earliest hour, and it reached Jessie Mowbray in the kitchen, as she made her appearance to superintend the preparation of breakfast. The Indian wench told her, with picturesque embellishments, such as are reserved for the native tongue. Jessie listened to the story of the descent of the Bell River Indians to the region of the Fort with feelings no less disturbed than those of the colored woman. They were no longer mistress and servant. They were just two women confronting a common danger.
But the news of the arrival of John Kars, wounded, swiftly overwhelmed all other considerations in Jessie's mind. Breakfast was left in the hands of the squaw while the girl hastened to her mother's room.
Ailsa Mowbray listened to the girl's story with no outward signs of fear. She had passed through the worst fires that could assail her a year ago. Nothing the warlike Indians could threaten now could reproduce the terror of that time.
The story of it came in a rush. But it was not until Jessie told of John Kars, and his wounded condition, that the real emotions of the moment were revealed. She implored her mother to permit her to go at once and minister to him, to learn the truth about his condition, to hear, first hand, of the catastrophe that had happened. Nor did she passively yield to her mother's kindly admonishment.
"Why, child," she said, in her steady smiling way, "this country's surely got right into your veins. You're like an unbroken colt. You're as wild as any of those kiddies you figger to teach over at the Mission. It's not for a child of mine to wait around on any man living. Not even John Kars. Guess he's got Dr. Bill and Father José, anyway. Maybe they'll get along over later."
The girl flushed scarlet.
"Oh, mother," she cried in distress, "don't—just don't think that way of me. I—love him, and wouldn't help it if I could. But he's sick. Maybe he's sick to death. Men—men can't fix sick folk. They can't—sure."
The mother looked into the girl's eyes with gentle tolerance, and a certain amusement.
"Not even Dr. Bill, who's had sick folk on his hands most all his life?" she demanded. "Not even José, who's nursed half the kiddies at the Mission one time or another?" She shook her head. "Besides, you only know the things Susan's handed you out of her fool head. And when Susan talks, truth isn't a circumstance. I wouldn't say but what John Kars hasn't got shot up at all—till I see him."
For all her easy manner she was troubled. And when Jessie had taken herself back to the kitchen the ominous lines, which had gathered in her face since her husband's murder, deepened. Distress looked out of the eyes which gazed back at her out of her mirror as she stood before it dressing her hair in the simple fashion of her life.
Bell River! She had learned to hate and fear its very name. Her whole destiny, the destiny of all belonging to her seemed to be bound up in that fateful secret which had been her husband's, and to which she had been only partially admitted. Somehow she felt that the day must come when she would have to assert her position to Murray, and once and for all break from under the evil spell of Bell River, which seemed to hang over her life.
But the shadow of it all lifted when later in the day John Kars and Dr. Bill presented themselves. Kars' wound was almost completely healed, and Jessie's delight knew no bounds. The mother reflected her daughter's happiness, and she found herself able to listen to the story of the adventures of these men without anything of the unease which had at first assailed her.
Their story was substantially that which had been told to Murray, and it was told with a matter-of-fact indifference, and made light of, in the strong tones of John Kars, on whom danger seemed to have so little effect. As Mrs. Mowbray listened she realized something of the strength of this man. The purpose in him. The absolute reliance with which he dealt with events as they confronted him. And so her thoughts passed on to the girl who loved him, and she wondered, and more than ever saw the hopelessness of Murray's aspirations.
The men took their departure, and, at Kars' invitation, Jessie went with them to inspect their outfit. The mother was left gazing after them from the open doorway. For all the aging since her husband's death, she was still a handsome woman in her simple morning gown of a bygone fashion.
She watched the three as they moved away in the direction of the woodland avenue, which, years ago, she had helped to clear. Her eyes and thoughts were on the man, and the girl at his side. Bill had far less place in them.
She was thinking, and wondering, and hoping, as, perhaps, only a mother can hope. And so engrossed was she that she did not observe the approach of Father José, who came from the Indian camp amongst the straight-limbed pine woods. It was only when the little man spoke that she bestirred herself.
"A swell pair, ma'am," he said, pausing beside the doorway, his keen face smiling as his eyes followed the rapid gait of the girl striving to keep pace with her companion's long strides.
"You mean the men?"
There was no self-consciousness in Ailsa Mowbray. The priest shook his head.
"Jessie and Kars."
The woman's steady eyes regarded the priest for a moment.
"I—wonder what you're—guessing."
The priest's smile deepened.
"That you'd sooner it was he than—Murray McTavish."
The woman watched the departing figures as they passed out of view, vanishing behind the cutting where the trees stopped short.
"Is it to be—either of them?"
"Sure." The man's reply came definitely. "But Murray hasn't a chance. She'll marry Kars, or no one around this Mission."
The woman sighed.
"I promised Murray to—that his cause shouldn't suffer at my hands. Murray's a straight man. His interests are ours. Maybe—it would be a good thing."
"Then he asked you?"
The little priest's question came on the instant. And the glance accompanying it was anxious.
"Yes."
For some moments no word passed between them. The woman was looking back with regret at the time when Murray had appealed to her. Father José was searching his heart to fortify his purpose.
Finally he shook his white head.
"Ma'am," he said seriously, "it's not good for older folks to seek to fix these things for the young people who belong to them. Not even mothers." Then his manner changed, and a sly, upward, smiling glance was turned upon the woman's face above him. "I haven't a thing against Murray. Nor have you. But I'd hate to see him marry Jessie. So would you. I—I wonder why."
The mother's reply came at once. It came with that curious brusqueness which so many women use when forced to a reluctant admission.
"That's so," she said. "I should hate it, too. I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to admit it—even to myself. You've made me do both, and—you've no right to. Murray was Allan's trusted friend and partner. He's been our friend—my friend—right along. Why should I hate the thought of him for Jessie? Can you tell me?" She shook her head impatiently. "How could you? I couldn't tell myself."
The shadow had deepened in Ailsa Mowbray's eyes. She knew she was unjust. She knew she was going back on her given word. She despised the thought. It was treachery. Yet she knew that both had become definite in her mind from the moment when Jessie had involuntarily confided her secret to her.
Father José shook his head.
"No. I can't tell you those things, ma'am," he said. "But I'm glad of them. Very glad."
He drew a deep breath as his gaze, abstracted, far off, was turned in the direction where his Mission stood in all its pristine, makeshift simplicity. The mother turned on him sharply as his quiet reply reached her.
"Why?" she demanded. "Why are you glad?"
Her eyes were searching his clean-cut profile. She knew she was seeking this man's considered judgment. She knew she was seeking to probe the feeling and thought which prompted his approval, because of her faith in him.
"Because Jessie's worth a—better man."
"Better?"
"Surely."
For all his prompt reply Father José remained searching the confines of the woodland clearing in his curiously abstracted fashion.
"You see, ma'am," he went on presently, helping himself to a pinch of snuff, and shutting the box with a sharp slam, "goodness is just a matter of degree. That's goodness as we folk of the earth understand it. We see results. We don't see the motive. It's motive that counts in all goodness. The man who lives straight, who acts straight when temptation offers, may be no better than—than the man who falls for evil. I once knew a saint who was hanged by the neck because he murdered a man. He gave his life, and intended to give it, for a poor weak fellow creature who was being tortured out of her senses by a man who was no better than a hound of Hell. That man was made of the same stuff as John Kars, if I know him. I can't see Murray McTavish acting that way. Yet I could see him act like the other feller—if it suited him. Murray's good. Sure he's good. But John Kars is—better."
The mother sighed.
"I feel that way, too." Then in a moment her eyes lit with a subtle apprehension, as though the man's words had planted a poison in her heart that was rapidly spreading through her veins. "But there's nothing wrong with Murray? I mean like—like you said."
The little priest's smile was good to see.
"Not a thing, ma'am," he said earnestly. "Murray's gold, so far as we see. It's only that we see just what he wants us to see. Kars is gold, too, but—you can see clear through Kars. That's all."
The woman's apprehensions were allayed. But she knew that, where Jessie was concerned, the little Padre had only put into words those unspoken, almost unrealized feelings which had been hers all along.
She moved out of the doorway.
"Alec's up at the Fort. Maybe he's fretting I'm not up there to help." She smiled. "Say, the boy's changed since—since he's to get his vacation. He hasn't a word against Murray—now. And I'm glad. So glad."
The Padre had turned to go. He paused.
"I'd be gladder if it was John Kars he was making the trail with," he said, in his direct fashion. Then he smiled. "And at this moment maybe Murray's risking his life for us."
"Yes."
The mother sighed. The disloyalty of their feelings seemed deplorable, and it was the priest who came to her rescue.
"But it can't be. That's all."
"No. It would affront Murray."
Father José nodded.
"Murray mustn't be affronted—with so much depending on him."
"No." Ailsa Mowbray's eyes lit with a shadow of a smile as she went on. "I feel like—like a plotter. It's terrible."
For answer Father José nodded. He had no word to offer to dispel the woman's unease, so he hurried away without further spoken word between them.
Ailsa Mowbray turned toward the path through the woods at the foot of the hill. As she made her way up towards the Fort her thoughts were painfully busy. What, she asked herself, again and again, was the thing that lay at the back of the little priest's mind? What—what was the curious, nebulous instinct that was busy at the back of her own?
CHAPTER XVI
A MAN AND A MAID
It was the second day after the arrival of John Kars and his outfit. The noon meal at Ailsa Mowbray's house had been shared by the visitors. The river was busy with the life of the post, mother and son had returned to the Fort to continue their long day's work, and the woodland paths approaching it were alive with a procession of those who had wares to trade. It was a busy scene. And one which gave no hint of any fear of the marauders whom Murray had gone to deal with.
Besides John Kars' outfit at the landing a number of canoes were moored along the river bank under the shadow of the gracious, dipping willows, which had survived years of the break up of the spring ice and the accompanying freshet. Indians and half-breeds lounged and smoked, squatting around regardless of the hours which had small enough meaning for them at any time. Just now contentment reigned in their savage hearts. Each hour of their lives contained only its own troubles.
It was the most pleasant time of the northern year. The spring dangers on the river were past. The chill nights had long since sealed up the summer wounds in the great glacier. As yet the summer heat of the earth still shed its beneficent influence on the temperature of the air. And, greatest blessing of all, the flies and mosquitoes were rapidly abating their attacks, and the gaps in their ranks were increasing with every frosty night that passed.
The fall tints in the woods were ablaze on every hand. The dark green of the pine woods kept the character of the northland weird. The vegetation of deciduous habit had assumed its clothing of russet and brown, whilst the scarlet of the dying maple lit up the darkening background with its splendid flare, so like the blaze of a setting sun.
Only the northland man can really appreciate the last weeks before the merciless northern winter shuts him in. The hope inspired by the turbulent spring speaks to him but of the delight of the season to come. Far too often do the summer storms weight down his spirit to make the height of the open season his time of festival. Those are the days of labor. Fierce labor, in preparation for the dark hours of winter. The days of early fall are the days in which he can look on labor accomplished, and forward, with confidence, to security under stress, and even a certain comfort.
Dr. Bill had been left at the landing with the canoes, and Peigan Charley, and the pack Indians. The girl and the man were wandering along the woodland bank, talking the talk of those whose years, for the greater part, lay still before them, and finding joy in the simple fact of the life which moved about them. No threat of the Indians which Murray had gone to encounter on their behalf could cast a shadow over their mood. They were full to the brim of strong young life, when the world is gold tinted, a reflection of their own virile youth.
They had come to a broad ditch which contained in its depths the narrow trickle of a miniature cascade, pouring down from some spring on the hillside, whereon the old Fort stood. It was absurdly wide for the trifling watercourse it now disgorged upon the river. But then, in spring the whole character of it was changed. In spring it was a rushing torrent, fed by the melting snows, and tearing out its banks in a wild, rebellious effort against all restraint.
Just now its marshy bed was beyond Jessie's powers to negotiate. They stood looking across it at the inviting shades of an avenue of heavy red willows, with its winding alley of tawny grass fringing the stately pine woods, whose depths suggested the chastened aisles of some mediaeval cathedral.
To the disappointed girl all further progress in that direction seemed hopeless, and Kars stood watching the play of her feelings in the expression of the mobile features he had learned to dream about on the long trail. His steady eyes were smiling happily. Even the roughnesses of his rugged face seemed to have softened under the influence of his new feelings. His heavy, thrusting jaw had lost something of the grim setting it wore upon the trail. His brows had lost their hard depression, and the smile in his eyes lit up the whole of his face with a transparent frankness and delight. Just now he was a perfect illustration of the man Father José beheld in him.
He pointed across the waterway.
"Kind of seems a pity," he said, with a tantalizing suggestion in his smiling eyes. "Git a peek under those shady willows. The grass, too. We don't get a heap of grass north of 'sixty.' Then the sun's getting in amongst those branches. An' we need to turn right around back. Seems a pity."
The girl withdrew her gaze from the scene. Her eyes smiled up into his. They were so softly gray. So full of trusting delight.
"What can we do?" she asked, a woman looking for guidance from the one man.
"Do?"
Kars laughed. He flung out a hand. He was not thinking of what he purposed. The magic of Jessie's personality held him. Her tall gracious figure. Its exquisite modeling. The full rounded shoulders, their contours unconcealed by the light jacket she was wearing. Her neck, soft with the gentle fulness of youth. The masses of ruddy brown hair coiled on her bare head without any of the artificiality of the women he encountered in Leaping Horse. The delicate complexion of her oval cheeks, untouched by the fierce climate in which she lived. To him she had become a perfect picture of womanhood.
The girl laid her small hand in his with all the confidence of a child. The warm pressure, as his fingers closed over it, thrilled her. Without a word of protest she submitted to his lead. They clambered down to the water's edge.
In a moment she was lifted off her feet. She felt herself borne high above the little gurgling cascade. Then she became aware of the splashing feet under her. Then of a sinking sensation, as the man waded almost knee-deep in mud. There were moments of alarmed suspense. Then she found herself standing on the opposite bank, with the man dripping at her side.
Of the two courses open to her she chose the better.
She laughed happily. Perhaps the choice was forced on her, for John Kars' eyes were so full of laughter that the infection became overwhelming.
"You—you should have told me," she exclaimed censoriously.
But the man shook his head.
"Guess you'd have—refused."
"I certainly should."
But the girl's eyes denied her words.
"Then we'd have gone around back, and you'd have been disappointed. I couldn't stand for your being disappointed. Say——" The man paused. His eyes were searching the sunlit avenue ahead, where the drooping willow branches hung like floral stalactites in a cavern of ripe foliage. "It's queer how folks'll cut out the things they're yearning for because other folks are yearning to hand 'em on to them."
"No girl likes to be picked up, and—and thrown around like some ball game, because a man's got the muscles of a giant," Jessie declared with spirit.
"No. It's kind of making out he's superior to her, when he isn't. Say, you don't figger I meant that way?"
There was anxiety in the final question for all the accompanying smile.
In a moment Jessie was all regret.
"I didn't have time to think," she said, "and anyway I wouldn't have figgered that way. And—and I'd hate a man who couldn't do things when it was up to him. You'd stand no sort of chance on the northern trail if you couldn't do things. You'd have been feeding the coyotes years back, else."
"Yes, and I'd hate to be feeding the coyotes on any trail."
They were moving down the winding woodland alley. They brushed their way through the delicate overhanging foliage. The dank scent of the place was seductive. It was intoxicating with an atmosphere such as lovers are powerless to resist. The murmur of the river came to them on the one hand, and the silence of the pine woods, on the other, lent a slumberous atmosphere to the whole place.
Jessie laughed. To her the thought seemed ridiculous.
"If the stories are true I guess it would be a mighty brave coyote would come near you—dead," she said. Then of a sudden the happy light died out of her eyes. "But—but—you nearly did—pass over. The Bell River neches nearly had your scalp."
It was the man's turn to laugh. He shook his head,
"Don't worry a thing that way," he said.
But the girl's smile did not so readily return. She eyed the ominous bandage which was still about his neck, and there was plain anxiety in her pretty eyes.
"How was it?" she demanded. "A—a chance shot?"
"A chance shot."
The man's reply came with a brevity that left Jessie wondering. It left her feeling that he had no desire to talk of his injury. And so it left her silent.
They wandered on, and finally it was Kars who broke the silence.
"Say, I guess you feel I ought to hand you the story of it," he said. "I don't mean you're asking out of curiosity. But we folks of the north feel we need to hold up no secrets which could help others to steer a safe course in a land of danger. But this thing don't need talking about—yet. I got this getting too near around Bell River. Well, I'm going to get nearer still." He smiled. "Guess I've been hit on one cheek, and I'm going to turn 'em the other. It'll be a dandy play seeing 'em try to hit that."
"You're—you're going to Bell River—deliberately?"
The girl's tone was full of real alarm.
"Sure. Next year."
"But—oh, it's mad—it's craziness."
The terror of Bell River was deep in Jessie's heart. Hers was the terror of the helpless who have heard in the far distance but seen the results. Kars understood. He laughed easily.
"Sure it's—crazy. But," his smiling eyes were gazing down into the anxious depths the girl had turned up to him, "every feller who makes the northern trail needs to be crazy some way. Guess I'm no saner than the others. It's a craziness that sets me chasing down Nature's secrets till I locate 'em right. Sometimes they aren't just Nature's secrets. Anyway it don't figger a heap. Just now I'm curious to know why some feller, who hadn't a thing to do with Nature beyond his shape, fancied handing it me plumb in the neck. Maybe it'll take me all next summer finding it out. But I'm going to find it out—sure."
The easy confidence of the man robbed his intention of half its terror for the girl. Her anxiety melted, and she smiled at his manner of stating his case.
"I wonder how it comes you men-folk so love the trail," she said. "I don't suppose it's all for profit—anyway not with you. Is it adventure? No. It's not all adventure either. It's just dead hardship half the time. Yes—it's a sort of craziness. Say, how does it feel to be crazy that way?"
"Feel? That's some proposition." Kars' face lit with amusement as he pondered the question. "Say, ever skip out of school at the Mission, and make a camp in the woods?"
The girl shook her head.
"Ah, then that won't help us any," Kars demurred, his eyes dwelling on the ruddy brown of the girl's chestnut hair. "What about a swell party after three days of chores in the house, when a blizzard's blowing?"
"That doesn't seem like any craziness," the girl protested.
"No, I guess not."
Kars searched again for a fresh simile.
"Say, how'd you feel if you'd never seen a flower, or green grass, or woods, and rivers, and mountains?" he suddenly demanded. "How'd you feel if you'd lived in a prison most all your life, and never felt your lungs take in a big dose of God's pure air, or stretched the strong elastic of the muscles your parents gave you? How'd you feel if you'd read and read all about the wonderful things of Nature, and never seen them, and then, all of a sudden, you found yourself out in a world full of trees, and flowers, and mountains, and woods, and skitters, and neches, and air—God's pure air, and with muscles so strong you could take a ten foot jump, and all the wonderful things you'd read about going on around you, such as fighting, murdering, and bugs and things, and folks who figger they're every sort of fellers, and aren't, and—and all that? Say, wouldn't you feel crazy? Wouldn't you feel you wanted to take it all in your arms, and, and just love it to death?"
"Maybe—for a while."
The girl's eyes were smiling provocatively. She loved to hear him talk. The strong rich tones of his voice in the quiet of the woodland gave her a sense of possession of him.
She went on.
"After, I guess I'd be yearning for the big wood stove, and a rocker, with elegant cushions, and the sort of food you can't cook over a camp-fire."
Kars shook his head.
"Maybe you'd fancy feeling those things were behind you on the day your joints began aching, and your breath gets as short as a locomotive on an up grade. When the blood's running hot there's things on the trail get right into it. Maybe it's because of the things they set into a man when he first stubbed his toes kicking against this old earth; when they told him he'd need to git busy fixing himself a stone club a size bigger than the other feller's; and that if he didn't use it quicker, and harder, he'd likely get his head dinged so his brain box wouldn't work right and he wouldn't be able to rec'nize the coyotes when they came along to pick his bones clean. You can't explain a thing of the craziness in men's blood when they come up with the Nature they belong to. It's the thing that sets lambs skipping foolish on legs that don't ever look like getting sense. It's the same sets a kiddie dancing along a sidewalk coming out of the schoolhouse, and falling into dumps and getting its bow-tie mussed. It's the same sets a boy actin' foolish when a gal's sorrel top turns his way, even when she's all legs and sass. It's the same sets folks crazy to risk their lives on hilltops that a chamois 'ud hate to inspect. Guess it's a sort o' thanks offerin' to Providence it didn't see fit setting us crawling around without feet or hands, same as slugs and things that worry folks' cabbige patches. I allow I can't figger it else."
"You needn't to," Jessie declared, with a happy laugh. "Guess I know it all—now." Then her eyes sobered. "But I—I wish you'd cut Bell River right out."
"Just don't you worry a thing, little Jessie," Kars said, with prompt earnestness. He had no wish to distress her. "Bell River can't hand me anything I don't know. Anyway I'd need to thank it if it could. And when I get back maybe you won't need to lie awake o' nights guessing a coyote's howl is the whoop of a neche yearning for your scalp. Hello!"
Their wanderings had brought them to a break in the willows where the broad flow of the river came into full view, and the overhang of glacial ice thrust out on the top of the precipitous bank beyond. But it was none of this that had elicited the man's ejaculation, or had caused his abrupt halt, and sobered the smile in his keen eyes.
It was a pair of canoes moored close in to the bank. Two powerful canoes, which were larger and better built than those of trading Indians. Then there were two neches squatting on the bank crouching over a small fire smoking their red clay pipes in silent contemplation.
Jessie recognized the neches at a glance.
"Why, Murray must be back or——"
Kars turned abruptly.
"They're Murray's? Say——" He glanced up at the hill which stood over them. A well-beaten path led up through the pine woods.
Jessie understood the drift of his thought.
"That's a short way to the Fort," she said. "I wonder why he landed here. He doesn't generally."
But the man had no speculation to offer.
"We best get his news," he said indicating the path.
The moments of Jessie's delight had been swallowed up in the significance of Murray's return. She agreed eagerly. And her eagerness displayed the nearness to her heart of the terror of the marauding Indians.
John Kars led the way up the woodland path. It was the same path over which the two trading Indians had reached the Fort on the night of his arrival from Bell River. As he went he pondered the reason of the trader's avoidance of the usual landing.
Jessie watched his vigorous movements and found difficulty in keeping pace with him. She saw in his hurry the interest he had in the affairs of Bell River. She read in him something like confirmation of her own fears. So she labored on in his wake without protest.
Later, when they broke from the cover of the woods, she drew abreast of him. She was breathing hard, and Kars became aware of the pace at which he had come. In a moment he was all contrition.
"Say, little Jessie," he cried, in his kindly fashion, "I'm real sorry." Then he smiled as he slackened his gait. "It's my fool legs; they're worse than some tongues for getting away with me. We'll take it easy."
But the girl refused to become a hindrance, and urged him on. Her own desire was no less than his.
The frowning palisade of the old Fort was above them. It stood out staunch against the sky, yet not without some suggestion of the sinister. And for the first time in her years of association with it Jessie became aware of the impression.
The old blackened walls frowned down severely. They looked like the prison walls enclosing ages of secret doings which were never permitted the clear light of day. They suggested something of the picture conjured by the many fantastic folk stories which she had read in Father José's library. The ogres and giants. The decoy of beautiful girls luring their lovers to destruction within the walls of some dreadful monster's castle.
They passed in through the great gateway, with its massive doors flung wide to the trade of the river. And they sought Murray's office.
There they found Mrs. Mowbray and Alec. Murray, too, was at his desk.
On their entrance they were greeted at once by the mother. Her eyes were smiling and full of confidence. She looked into John Kars' face, and he read her news even before she spoke.
"The country's clear of them," she cried, and her relief and delight rang in every tone.
Jessie went at once to her side. But Kars turned to the squat figure which filled its chair to overflowing. His steady eyes regarded the smiling features of the trader.
"Did it come to a scrap?" he inquired easily.
Murray shook his head. His dark eyes were no less direct than the other's.
"Guess there were too many in my outfit," he said with a shrug. "It was a bunch of neches I'd have thought your outfit could have—eaten. A poor lot—sure."
He finished up with a deliberate laugh, and his intention was obvious.
Kars understood, and did not display the least resentment.
"I'm glad," he said seriously. "Real glad." Then he added: "I didn't guess you'd have a heap of trouble."
He turned to the women. And his attitude left the trader's purpose mean and small.
"Murray's got us all beaten anyhow," he said easily. "We think we're wise. We think we know it all. But we don't. Anyway I'm glad the danger's fixed. I guess it'll leave me free to quit for the outside right away."
Then he turned to Murray, and their eyes met, and held, and only the two men knew, and understood, the challenge which lay behind.
"Guess I can make Leaping Horse before the rivers freeze. But I'm getting back here with the thaw. I allow next year I'm taking no sort of chance. This hole in my neck," he went on, indicating the bandage about his throat, "has taught me a lot I didn't know before. The outfit I get around with next year will be big enough to eat up any proposition Bell River can hand me."
CHAPTER XVII
A NIGHT IN LEAPING HORSE
Leaping Horse was a beacon which reflected its ruddy light upon the night sky, a sign, a lure to the yearning hearts at distant points, toiling for the wage with which to pay for sharing in its wild excesses. It was the Gorgon of the northland, alluring, destructive, irresistible. It was a temple dedicated to the worship of the Gods of the Wilderness. Light, luxury and vice. Such was the summing up of Dr. Bill, and the few who paused in the mad riot for a moment's sober thought. Furthermore Dr. Bill's estimate of the blatant gold city was by no means a self-righteous belief. He had known the place from its birth. He had treated its every ailment at the height of its burning youth. Now, in its maturity, it fell to him to learn much of the inner secrets of its accruing mental disease. He hated it and loved it, almost one and the same emotion. He cried aloud its shame to listening ears. In secret he wept over its iniquities, with all the pity of a warm-hearted man gazing upon a wanton.
But Leaping Horse was indifferent. It spread its shabby tendrils over hundreds of acres of territory, feeding its wanton heart upon the squalor which gathered about its fringe as well as upon the substance of those upon whom it had showered its fortune.
At night its one main street radiated a light and life such as could be found in no city in the world. The wide, unpaved thoroughfare, with its shabby sidewalks buried to a depth of many feet of snow in winter, and mud in the early open season, gave no indication of the tide of wealth which flowed in this main artery. Only at night, when a merciful dark strove to conceal, did the glittering tide light up. Then indeed the hideous blatancy of the city's life flared out in all its painful vulgarity.
In the heart of the Main Street the Elysian Fields Hotel, and theatre, and dance hall stood out a glittering star of the first magnitude, dimming the lesser constellations with which it was surrounded. A hundred arc lamps flung out their challenge to all roysterers and vice-seeking souls. Thousands of small globular lights, like ropes of luminous pearls, outlined its angles, its windows, its cornices, its copings. All its white and gold shoddy was rendered almost magnificent in the night. Only in the light of day was its true worth made apparent. But who, in Leaping Horse, wanted the day? No one. Leaping Horse was the northern Mecca of the night pleasure seeker.
The buildings adjacent basked in its radiance. Their own eyes were almost blinded. Their mixed forms were painfully revealed. Frame hutches, split log cabins rubbed shoulders with buildings of steel frame and stone fronts. Thousand dollar apartments gazed disdainfully down upon hovels scarcely fit to shelter swine. Their noses were proudly lifted high above the fetid atmosphere which rose from the offal-laden causeway below. They had no heed for that breeding ground of the germs of every disease known to the human body.
Then the roystering throng. The Elysian Fields. It was the beach about which the tide ebbed and flowed. It was a rough rock-bound beach upon which the waters of life beat themselves into a fury of excess. Its lights were the beacons of the wreckers set up for the destruction of the human soul.
Chief amongst the wreckers was Pap Shaunbaum, a Hebrew of doubtful nationality, and without scruple. He prided himself that he was a caterer for the needs of the people. His thesis was that the northland battle needed alleviation in the narrow lap of luxury where vice ruled supreme. He had spent his life in searching the best means of personal profit out of the broad field of human weakness, and discovered the Elysian Fields.
He had labored with care and infinite thought. He had built on a credit from the vast bank of experience, and owned in the Elysian Fields the finest machine in the world for wrecking the soul and pocket of the human race.
Every attraction lay to hand. The dance hall was aglitter, the floor perfect, and the stage equipped to foster all that appealed to the senses. The hotel with its splendid accommodation, its bars, its gaming rooms, its dining hall, its supper rooms, its bustle of elaborate service. There was nothing forgotten that ingenuity could devise to loosen the bank rolls of its clientele, and direct the flow of gold into the proprietor's coffers—not even women. As Dr. Bill declared in one of his infrequent outbursts of passionate protest: "The place is one darnation public brothel; a scandal to the northland, a shame on humanity."
It was here, gazing down on the crowded dance hall, from one of the curtained boxes adjacent to the stage, on which a vaudeville programme was being performed, that two men sat screened from the chance glance of the throng below them.
A table stood between them, and an uncorked bottle of wine and two glasses were placed to their hand. But the wine stood untouched, and was rapidly becoming flat. It had been ordered as a custom of the place. But neither had the least desire for its artificial stimulation.
They had been talking in a desultory fashion. Talking in the pleasant intimate fashion of men who know each other through and through. Of men who look upon life with a vision adjusted to a single focus.
They were watching the comings and goings of familiar faces in the glittering overdressed throng below. The women, splendid creatures in gowns whose cost ran into hundreds of dollars, and bejeweled almost at any price. Beautiful faces, many of them already displaying the ravages of a life that moved at the swiftest gait. Others again bloated and aging long before the years asserted their claims, and still others, fresh with all the beauty of extreme youth and a life only at the beginning of the downward course.
The men, too, were no less interesting to the student of psychology. Here was every type from the illiterate human mechanism whose muscles dominated his whole process of life, to the cultured son of civilization who had never known before the meaning of life beyond the portals of the temples of refinement. Here they were all on the same highway of pleasure. Here they were all full to the brim of a wonderful joy of life. Care was for the daylight, when the secrets of their bank roll would be revealed, and the draft on the exchequer of health would have to be met.
There was displayed no element of the soil from which these people drew their wealth, except for the talk. They had long since risen from the moleskin and top-boot stage in Leaping Horse. The Elysian Fields demanded outward signs of respectability in the habiliments of its customers, and the garish display of the women was there to enforce it. Broadcloth alone was the mode, and conformity with this rule drew forth many delights for the observing eye.
But the people thus disguised remained the same. Every type was gathered, from the sound, reasonable accumulator of wealth to the "hold-up," the gambler, the fugitive from the law. It was said of Leaping Horse that it only required the "dust" to buy any crime known to the penal code. And here, here at the Elysian Fields, on any night in the week, could be found the man or woman to perpetrate it at a moment's notice.
Dr. Bill laughed without mirth.
"Gee, it leaves the Bell River outfit saints beside them," he said.
Kars' contemplative eyes were following the movements of a handsome blond woman with red-gold hair, which was aglitter with a half circle band of jewels supporting an aigrette, which must have cost five thousand dollars. She was obviously young, extremely young. To his mind she could not have been more than twenty—if that. Her eyes were deep blue, with unusually large pupils. Her lips were ripe with a freshness which owed nothing to any salve. Her nose was almost patrician, and her cheeks were tinted with the bloom of exquisite fruit. Her gown was extremely décolleté, revealing shoulders and arms of perfect ivory beauty. She was dancing a waltz with a man in elaborate evening dress, who had discarded orthodox sobriety for crude embellishments. The string band in the orchestra was playing with seductive skill.
"Who's that dame with the guy who guesses he's a parakeet?" he demanded, without reply to the other's statement.
"You mean the feller with the sky blue lapels to his swallow-tails?"
"Sure. That's the guy."
"Maude. Chesapeake Maude. She's Pap Shaunbaum's piece. Quite a girl. She's only been along since we quit here last spring. Pap's crazy on her. Folks say he dopes out thousands a week on her. He brought her from the East on a specially chartered vessel he had fitted up to suit her fancy. They figger he's raised his pool here by fifty per cent since she came."
"She plays the old game for him right here?"
"Sure."
Both men were absorbed in the girl's perfect grace of movement, as she and her partner glided in and out through the dancing crowd. Her attraction was immense even to these men, who were only onlookers of the Leaping Horse riot.
Bill touched his friend's arm. He indicated the bar at the far end of the hall.
"There's Pap. He's watching her. Gee, he's watching her."
A slim iron gray man, with a dark, keen face was standing beside one of the pillars which supported the gallery above. He was dressed in evening clothes of perfect cut, which displayed a clean-cut figure. He was a handsome man of perhaps forty, without a sign of the dissipation about his dark face that was to be seen in dozens of younger men about him. As Dr. Bill once said of him, "One of hell's gentle-folk."
A better description of him could not have been found. Under a well-nigh perfect exterior he concealed a depth of infamy beyond description. A confidential police report to the authorities in the East once contained this paragraph:
"Pap Shaunbaum has set up a big hotel in Leaping Horse. It will be necessary to keep a 'special' at work watching him. We should like authority to develop this further from time to time. His record both here, and confidential from the States, leaves him more than undesirable. Half the toughs in Leaping Horse are in his pay."