Suddenly a great thrill shot through Philip, and for an instant he stood rigid. What was that he saw out in the gray gloom of Arctic desolation, creeping up, up, up, almost black at its beginning, and dying away like a ghostly winding-sheet? A gurgling cry rose in his throat, and he went on, panting now like a broken-winded beast in his excitement. It grew near, blacker, warmer. He fancied that he could feel its heat, which was the new fire of life blazing within him.
He went down between two great drifts into a pit which seemed bottomless. He crawled to the top of the second, using his pulseless hands like sticks in the snow, and at the top something rose from the other side of the drift to meet him.
It was a face, a fierce, bearded face, the gaunt starvation in it hidden by his own blindness. It seemed like the face of an ogre, terrible, threatening, and he knew that it was the face of William DeBar, the seventh brother.
He launched himself forward, and the other launched himself forward, and they met in a struggle which was pathetic in its weakness, and rolled together to the bottom of the drift. Yet the struggle was no less terrible because of that weakness. It was a struggle between two lingering sparks of human life and when these two sparks had flickered and blazed and died down, the two men lay gasping, an arm's reach from each other.
Philip's eyes went to the fire. It was a small fire, burning more brightly as he looked, and he longed to throw himself upon it so that the flames might eat into his flesh. He had mumbled something about police, arrest and murder during the struggle, but DeBar spoke for the first time now.
“You're cold,” he said.
“I'm freezing to death,” said Philip.
“And I'm—starving.”
DeBar rose to his feet. Philip drew himself together, as if expecting an attack, but in place of it DeBar held out a warmly mittened hand.
“You've got to get those clothes off—quick—or you'll die,” he said. “Here!”
Mechanically Philip reached up his hand, and DeBar took him to his sledge behind the fire and wrapped about him a thick blanket. Then he drew out a sheath knife and ripped the frozen legs of his trousers up and the sleeves of his coat down, cut the string of his shoe-packs and slit his heavy German socks, and after that he rubbed his feet and legs and arms until Philip began to feel a sting like the prickly bite of nettles.
“Ten minutes more and you'd been gone,” said DeBar.
He wrapped a second blanket around Philip, and dragged the sledge on which he was lying still nearer to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh armful of dry sticks and from a pocket of his coat drew forth something small and red and frozen, which was the carcass of a bird about the size of a robin. DeBar held it up between his forefinger and thumb, and looking at Philip, the flash of a smile passed for an instant over his grizzled face.
“Dinner,” he said, and Philip could not fail to catch the low chuckling note of humor in his voice. “It's a Whisky Jack, man, an' he's the first and last living thing I've seen in the way of fowl between here and Fond du Lac. He weighs four ounces if he weighs an ounce, and we'll feast on him shortly. I haven't had a full mouth of grub since day before yesterday morning, but you're welcome to a half of him, if you're hungry enough.”
“Where'd your chuck go?” asked Philip.
He was conscious of a new warmth and comfort in his veins, but it was not this that sent a heat into his face at the outlaw's offer. DeBar had saved his life, and now, when DeBar might have killed him, he was offering him food. The man was spitting the bird on the sharpened end of a stick, and when he had done this he pointed to the big Mackenzie hound, tied to the broken stub of a dead sapling.
“I brought enough bannock to carry me to Chippewayan, but he got into it the first night, and what he left was crumbs. You lost yours in the lake, eh?”
“Dogs and everything,” said Philip. “Even matches.”
“Those ice-traps are bad,” said DeBar companionably, slowly turning the bird. “You always want to test the lakes in this country. Most of 'em come from bog springs, and after they freeze, the water drops. Guess you'd had me pretty soon if it hadn't been for the lake, wouldn't you?”
He grinned, and to his own astonishment Philip grinned.
“I was tight after you, Bill.”
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed the outlaw. “That sounds good! I've gone by another name, of course, and that's the first time I've heard my own since—”
He stopped suddenly, and the laugh left his voice and face.
“It sounds—homelike,” he added more gently. “What's yours, pardner?”
“Steele—Philip Steele, of the R.N.W.M.P.,” said Philip.
“Used to know a Steele once,” went on DeBar. “That was back—where it happened. He was one of my friends.”
For a moment he turned his eyes on Philip. They were deep gray eyes, set well apart in a face that among a hundred others Philip would have picked out for its frankness and courage. He knew that the man before him was not much more than his own age, yet he appeared ten years older.
He sat up on his sledge as DeBar left his bird to thrust sticks into the snow, on the ends of which he hung Philip's frozen garments close to the fire. From the man Philip's eyes traveled to the dog. The hound yawned in the heat and he saw that one of his fangs was gone.
“If you're starving, why don't you kill the dog?” he asked.
DeBar turned quickly, his white teeth gleaming through his beard.
“Because he's the best friend I've got on earth, or next to the best,” he said warmly. “He's stuck to me through thick and thin for ten years. He starved with me, and fought with me, and half died with me, and he's going to live with me as long as I live. Would you eat the flesh of your brother, Steele? He's my brother—the last that your glorious law has left to me. Would you kill him if you were me?”
Something stuck hard and fast in Philip's throat, and he made no reply. DeBar came toward him with the hot bird on the end of his stick. With his knife the outlaw cut the bird into two equal parts, and one of these parts he cut into quarters. One of the smaller pieces he tossed to the hound, who devoured it at a gulp. The half he stuck on the end of his knife and offered to his companion.
“No,” said Philip. “I can't.”
The eyes of the two men met, and DeBar, on his knees, slowly settled back, still gazing at the bird, said DeBar, after a moment, “don't be a fool, Steele. Let's forget, for a little while. God knows what's going to happen to both of us to-morrow or next day, and it'll be easier to die with company than alone, won't it? Let's forget that you're the Law and I'm the Man, and that I've killed one or two. We're both in the same boat, and we might as well be a little bit friendly for a few hours, and shake hands, and be at peace when the last minute comes. If we get out of this, and find grub, we'll fight fair and square, and the best man wins. Be square with me, old man, and I'll be square with you, s'elp me God!”
He reached out a hand, gnarled, knotted, covered with callouses and scars, and with a strange sound in his throat Philip caught it tightly in his own.
“I'll be square. Bill!” he cried. “I swear that I'll be square—on those conditions. If we find grub, and live, we'll fight it out—alone—and the best man wins. But I've had food today, and you're starving. Eat that and I'll still be in better condition than you. Eat it, and we'll smoke. Praise God I've got my pipe and tobacco!”
They settled back close in the lee of the drift, and the wind swirled white clouds of snow-mist over their heads, while DeBar ate his bird and Philip smoked. The food that went down DeBar's throat was only a morsel, but it put new life into him, and he gathered fresh armfuls of sticks and sapling boughs until the fire burned Philip's face and his drying clothes sent up clouds of steam. Once, a hundred yards out in the plain, Philip heard the outlaw burst into a snatch of wild forest song as he pulled down a dead stub.
“Seems good to have comp'ny,” he said, when he came back with his load. “My God, do you know I've never felt quite like this—so easy and happy like, since years and years? I wonder if it is because I know the end is near?”
“There's still hope,” replied Philip.
“Hope!” cried DeBar. “It's more than hope, man. It's a certainty for me—the end, I mean. Don't you see, Phil—” He came and sat down close to the other on the sledge, and spoke as if he had known him for years. “It's got to be the end for me, and I guess that's what makes me cheerful like. I'm going to tell you about it, if you don't mind.”
“I don't mind; I want to hear,” said Philip, and he edged a little nearer, until they sat shoulder to shoulder.
“It's got to be the end,” repeated DeBar, in a low voice. “If we get out of this, and fight, and you win, it'll be because I'm dead, Phil. D'ye understand? I'll be dead when the fight ends, if you win. That'll be one end.”
“But if you win, Bill.”
A flash of joy shot into DeBar's eyes.
“Then that'll be the other end,” he said more softly still. He pointed to the big Mackenzie hound. “I said he was next to my best friend an earth, Phil. The other—is a girl—who lived back there—when it happened, years and years ago. She's thirty now, and she's stuck to me, and prayed for me, and believed in me for—a'most since we were kids together, an' she's written to me—'Frank Symmonds'—once a month for ten years. God bless her heart! That is what's kept me alive, and in every letter she's begged me to let her come to me, wherever I was. But—I guess the devil didn't get quite all of me, for I couldn't, 'n' wouldn't. But I've give in now, and we've fixed it up between us. By this time she's on her way to my brothers in South America, and if I win—when we fight—I'm going where she is. And that's the other end, Phil, so you see why I'm happy. There's sure to be an end of it for me—soon.”
He bowed his wild, unshorn head in his mittened hands, and for a time there was silence between them.
Philip broke it, almost in a whisper.
“Why don't you kill me—here—now-while I'm sitting helpless beside you, and you've a knife in your belt?”
DeBar lifted his head slowly and looked with astonishment into his companion's face.
“I'm not a murderer!” he said.
“But you've killed other men,” persisted Philip.
“Three, besides those we hung,” replied DeBar calmly. “One at Moose Factory, when I tried to help John, and the other two up here. They were like you—hunting me down, and I killed 'em in fair fight. Was that murder? Should I stand by and be shot like an animal just because it's the law that's doing it? Would you?”
He rose without waiting for an answer and felt of the clothes beside the fire.
“Dry enough,” he said. “Put 'em on and we'll be hiking.”
Philip dressed, and looked at his compass.
“Still north?” he asked. “Chippewayan is south and west.”
“North,” said DeBar. “I know of a breed who lives on Red Porcupine Creek, which runs into the Slave. If we can find him we'll get grub, and if we don't—”
He laughed openly into the other's face.
“We won't fight,” said Philip, understanding him.
“No, we won't fight, but we'll wrap up in the same blankets, and die, with Woonga, there, keeping our backs warm until the last. Eh, Woonga, will you do that?”
He turned cheerily to the dog, and Woonga rose slowly and with unmistakable stiffness of limb, and was fastened in the sledge traces.
They went on through the desolate gloom of afternoon, which in late winter is, above the sixtieth, all but night. Ahead of them there seemed to rise billow upon billow of snow-mountains, which dwarfed themselves into drifted dunes when they approached, and the heaven above them, and the horizon on all sides of them were shut out from their vision by a white mist which was intangible and without substance and yet which rose like a wall before their eyes. It was one chaos of white mingling with another chaos of white, a chaos of white earth smothered and torn by the Arctic wind under a chaos of white sky; and through it all, saplings that one might have twisted and broken over his knee were magnified into giants at a distance of half a hundred paces, and men and dog looked like huge specters moving with bowed heads through a world that was no longer a world of life, but of dead and silent things. And up out of this, after a time, rose DeBar's voice, chanting in tones filled with the savagery of the North, a wild song that was half breed and half French, which the forest men sing in their joy when coming very near to home.
They went on, hour after hour, until day gloom thickened into night, and night drifted upward to give place to gray dawn, plodding steadily north, resting now and then, fighting each mile of the way to the Red Porcupine against the stinging lashes of the Arctic wind. And through it all it was DeBar's voice that rose in encouragement to the dog limping behind him and to the man limping behind the dog—now in song, now in the wild shouting of the sledge-driver, his face thin and gaunt in its starved whiteness, but his eyes alive with a strange fire. And it was DeBar who lifted his mittened hands to the leaden chaos of sky when they came to the frozen streak that was the Red Porcupine, and said, in a voice through which there ran a strange thrill of something deep and mighty, “God in Heaven be praised, this is the end!”
He started into a trot now, and the dog trotted behind him, and behind the dog trotted Philip, wondering, as he had wondered a dozen times before that night, if DeBar were going mad. Five hundred yards down the stream DeBar stopped in his tracks, stared for a moment into the breaking gloom of the shore, and turned to Philip. He spoke in a voice low and trembling, as if overcome for the moment by some strong emotion.
“See—see there!” he whispered. “I've hit it, Philip Steele, and what does it mean? I've come over seventy miles of barren, through night an' storm, an' I've hit Pierre Thoreau's cabin as fair as a shot! Oh, man, man, I couldn't do it once in ten thousand times!” He gripped Philip's arm, and his voice rose in excited triumph. “I tell 'ee, it means that—that God—'r something—must be with me!”
“With us,” said Philip, staring hard.
“With me,” replied DeBar so fiercely that the other started involuntarily. “It's a miracle, an omen, and it means that I'm going to win!” His fingers gripped deeper, and he said more gently, “Phil, I've grown to like you, and if you believe in God as we believe in Him up here—if you believe He tells things in the stars, the winds and things like this, if you're afraid of death—take some grub and go back! I mean it, Phil, for if you stay, an' fight, there is going to be but one end. I will kill you!”
At DeBar's words the blood leaped swiftly through Philip's veins, and he laughed as he flung the outlaw's hand from his arm.
“I'm not afraid of death,” he cried angrily. “Don't take me for a child, William DeBar. How long since you found this God of yours?”
He spoke the words half tauntingly, and as soon regretted them, for in a voice that betrayed no anger at the slur DeBar said: “Ever since my mother taught me the first prayer, Phil. I've killed three men and I've helped to hang three others, and still I believe in a God, and I've halt a notion He believes a little bit in me, in spite of the laws made down in Ottawa.”
The cabin loomed up amid a shelter of spruce like a black shadow, and when they climbed up the bank to it they found the snow drifted high under the window and against the door.
“He's gone—Pierre, I mean,” said DeBar over his shoulder as he kicked the snow away. “He hasn't come back from New Year's at Fort Smith.”
The door had no lock or bolt, and they entered. It was yet too dark for them to see distinctly, and DeBar struck a match. On the table was a tin oil lamp, which he lighted. It revealed a neatly kept interior about a dozen feet square, with two bunks, several chairs, a table, and a sheet iron stove behind which was piled a supply of wood. DeBar pointed to a shelf on which were a number of tin boxes, their covers weighted down by chunks of wood.
“Grub!” he said.
And Philip, pointing to the wood, added, “Fire—fire and grub.”
There was something in his voice which the other could not fail to understand, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Philip put fuel into the stove and DeBar searched among the food cans.
“Here's bannock and cooked meat—frozen,” he said, “and beans.”
He placed tins of each on the stove and then sat down beside the roaring fire, which was already beginning to diffuse a heat. He held out his twisted and knotted hands, blue and shaking with cold, and looked up at Philip, who stood opposite him.
He spoke no words, and yet there was something in his eyes which made the latter cry out softly, and with a feeling which he tried to hide: “DeBar, I wish to God it was over!”
“So do I,” said DeBar.
He rubbed his hands and twisted them until the knuckles cracked.
“I'm not afraid and I know that you're not, Phil,” he went on, with his eyes on the top of the stove, “but I wish it was over, just the same. Somehow I'd a'most rather stay up here another year or two than—kill you.”
“Kill me!” exclaimed Philip, the old fire leaping back into his veins.
DeBar's quiet voice, his extraordinary self-confidence, sent a flush of anger into Philip's face.
“You're talking to me again as if I were a child, DeBar. My instructions were to bring you back, dead or alive—and I'm going to!”
“We won't quarrel about it, Phil,” replied the outlaw as quietly as before. “Only I wish it wasn't you I'm going to fight. I'd rather kill half-a-dozen like the others than you.”
“I see,” said Philip, with a perceptible sneer in his voice. “You're trying to work upon my sympathy so that I will follow your suggestion—and go back. Eh?”
“You'd be a coward if you did that,” retorted DeBar quickly. “How are we going to settle it, Phil?”
Philip drew his frozen revolver from its holster and held it over the stove.
“If I wasn't a crack shot, and couldn't center a two-inch bull's-eye three times out of four at thirty paces, I'd say pistols.”
“I can't do that,” said DeBar unhesitatingly, “but I have hit a wolf twice out of five shots. It'll be a quick, easy way, and we'll settle it with our revolvers. Going to shoot to kill?”
“No, if I can help it. In the excitement a shot may kill, but I want to take you back alive, so I'll wing you once or twice first.”
“I always shoot to kill,” replied DeBar, without lifting his head. “Any word you'd like to have sent home, Phil?”
In the other's silence DeBar looked up.
“I mean it,” he said, in a low earnest voice. “Even from your point of view it might happen, Phil, and you've got friends somewhere. It anything should happen to me you'll find a letter in my pocket. I want you to write to—to her—an' tell her I died in—an accident. Will you?”
“Yes,” replied Philip. “As for me, you'll find addresses in my pocket, too. Let's shake!”
Over the stove they gripped hands.
“My eyes hurt,” said DeBar. “It's the snow and wind, I guess. Do you mind a little sleep—after we eat? I haven't slept a wink in three days and nights.”
“Sleep until you're ready,” urged Philip. “I don't want to fight bad eyes.”
They ate, mostly in silence, and when the meal was done Philip carefully cleaned his revolver and oiled it with bear grease, which he found in a bottle on the shelf.
DeBar watched him as he wiped his weapon and saw that Philip lubricated each of the five cartridges which he put in the chamber.
Afterward they smoked.
Then DeBar stretched himself out in one of the two bunks, and his heavy breathing soon gave evidence that he was sleeping.
For a time Philip sat beside the stove, his eyes upon the inanimate form of the outlaw. Drowsiness overcame him then, and he rolled into the other bunk. He was awakened several hours later by DeBar, who was filling the stove with wood.
“How's the eyes?” he asked, sitting up.
“Good,” said the other. “Glad you're awake. The light will be bad inside of an hour.”
He was rubbing and warming his hands, and Philip came to the opposite side of the stove and rubbed and warmed his hands. For some reason he found it difficult to look at DeBar, and he knew that DeBar was not looking at him.
It was the outlaw who broke the suspense.
“I've been outside,” he said in a low voice. “There's an open in front of the cabin, just a hundred paces across. It wouldn't be a bad idea for us to stand at opposite sides of the open and at a given signal approach, firing as we want to.”
“Couldn't be better,” exclaimed Philip briskly, turning to pull his revolver from its holster.
DeBar watched him with tensely anxious eyes as he broke the breech, looked at the shining circle of cartridges, and closed it again.
Without a word he went to the door, opened it, and with his pistol arm trailing at his side, strode off to the right. For a moment Philip stood looking after him, a queer lump in his throat. He would have liked to shake hands, and yet at the same time he was glad that DeBar had gone in this way. He turned to the left—and saw at a glance that the outlaw had given him the best light. DeBar was facing him when he reached his ground.
“Are you ready?” he shouted.
“Ready!” cried Philip.
DeBar ran forward, shoulders hunched low, his pistol arm half extended, and Philip advanced to meet him. At seventy paces, without stopping in his half trot, the outlaw fired, and his bullet passed in a hissing warning three feet over Philip's head. The latter had planned to hold his fire until he was sure of hitting the outlaw in the arm or shoulder, but a second shot from him, which seemed to Philip almost to nip him in the face, stopped him short, and at fifty paces he returned the fire.
DeBar ducked low and Philip thought that he was hit.
Then with a fierce yell he darted forward, firing as he came.
Again, and still a third time Philip fired, and as DeBar advanced, unhurt, after each shot, a cry of amazement rose to his lips. At forty paces he could nip a four-inch bull's-eye three times out of five, and here he missed a man! At thirty he held an unbeaten record—and at thirty, here in the broad open, he still missed his man!
He had felt the breath of DeBar's fourth shot, and now with one cartridge each the men advanced foot by foot, until DeBar stopped and deliberately aimed at twenty paces. Their pistols rang out in one report, and, standing unhurt, a feeling of horror swept over Philip as he looked at the other. The outlaw's arms fell to his side. His empty pistol dropped to the snow, and for a moment he stood rigid, with his face half turned to the gloomy sky, while a low cry of grief burst from Philip's lips.
In that momentary posture of DeBar he saw, not the effect of a wound only, but the grim, terrible rigidity of death. He dropped his own weapon and ran forward, and in that instant DeBar leaped to meet him with the fierceness of a beast!
It was a terrible bit of play on DeBar's part, and for a moment took Philip off his guard. He stepped aside, and, with the cleverness of a trained boxer, he sent a straight cut to the outlaw's face as he closed in. But the blow lacked force, and he staggered back under the other's weight, boiling with rage at the advantage which DeBar had taken of him.
The outlaw's hands gripped at his throat and his fingers sank into his neck like cords of steel. With a choking gasp he clutched at DeBar's wrists, knowing that another minute—a half-minute of that death clutch would throttle him. He saw the triumph in DeBar's eyes, and with a last supreme effort drew back his arm and sent a terrific short-arm punch into the other's stomach.
The grip at his throat relaxed. A second, a third, and a fourth blow, his arm traveling swiftly in and out, like a piston-rod, and the triumph in DeBar's eyes was replaced by a look of agony. The fingers at his throat loosened still more, and with a sudden movement Philip freed himself and sprang back a step to gather force for the final blow.
The move was fatal. Behind him his heel caught in a snow-smothered log and he pitched backward with DeBar on top of him.
Again the iron fingers burned at his throat. But this time he made no resistance, and after a moment the outlaw rose to his feet and stared down into the white, still face half buried in the snow. Then he gently lifted Philip's head in his arms. There was a crimson blotch in the snow and close to it the black edge of a hidden rock.
As quickly as possible DeBar carried Philip into the cabin and placed him on one of the cots. Then he gathered certain articles of food from Pierre's stock and put them in his pack. He had carried the pack half way to the door when he stopped, dropped his load gently to the floor, and thrust a hand inside his coat pocket. From it he drew forth a letter. It was a woman's letter—and he read it now with bowed lead, a letter of infinite faith, and hope, and love, and when once more he turned toward Philip his face was filled with the flush of a great happiness.
“Mebby you don't just understand, Phil,” he whispered, as if the other were listening to him. “I'm going to leave this.”
With the stub of a pencil he scribbled a few words at the bottom of the crumpled letter.
He wrote in a crude, awkward hand:
You'd won if it hadn't been for the rock. But I guess mebby that it was God who put the rock there, Phil. While you was asleep I took the bullets out of your cartridges and put in damp-paper, for I didn't want to see any harm done with the guns. I didn't shoot to hit you, and after all, I'm glad it was the rock that hurt you instead of me.
He leaned over the cot to assure himself that Philip's breath was coming steadier and stronger, and then laid the letter on the young man's breast.
Five minutes later he was plodding steadily ahead of his big Mackenzie hound into the peopleless barrens to the south and west.
And still later Philip opened his eyes and saw what DeBar had left for him. He struggled into a sitting posture and read the few lines which the outlaw had written.
“Here's to you, Mr. Felix MacGregor,” he chuckled feebly, balancing himself on the edge of the bunk. “You're right. It'll take two men to lay out Mr. William DeBar—if you ever get him at all!”
Three days later, still in the cabin, he raised a hand to his bandaged head with an odd grimace, half of pain, half of laughter.
“You're a good one, you are!” he said to himself, limping back and forth across the narrow space of the cabin. “You've got them all beaten to a rag when it comes to playing the chump, Phil Steele. Here you go up to Big Chief MacGregor, throw out your chest, and say to him, 'I can get that man,' and when the big chief says you can't, you call him a four-ply ignoramus in your mind, and get permission to go after him anyway—just because you're in love. You follow your man up here—four hundred miles or so—and what's the consequence? You lose all hope of finding her, and your 'man' does just what the big chief said he would do, and lays you out—though it wasn't your fault after all. Then you take possession of another man's shack when he isn't at home, eat his grub, nurse a broken head, and wonder why the devil you ever joined the glorious Royal Mounted when you've got money to burn. You're a wise one, you are, Phil Steele—but you've learned something new. You've learned there's never a man so good but there's a better one somewhere—even if he is a man-killer like Mr. William DeBar.”
He lighted his pipe and went to the door. For the first time in days the sun was shining in a cold blaze of fire over the southeastern edge of the barrens, which swept away in a limitless waste of snow-dune and rock and stunted scrub among which occasional Indian and half-breed trappers set their dead-falls and poison baits for the northern fox. Sixty miles to the west was Fort Smith. A hundred miles to the south lay the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Chippewayan; a hundred and fifty miles to the south and east was the post at Fond du Lac, and to the north—nothing. A thousand miles or so up there one would have struck the polar sea and the Eskimo, and it was with this thought of the lifelessness and mystery of a dead and empty world that Philip turned his eyes from the sun into the gray desolation that reached from Pierre Thoreau's door to the end of the earth. Far off to the north he saw a black speck moving in the chaos of white. It might have been a fox coming over a snow-dune a rifle-shot away, for distances are elusive where the sky and the earth seem to meet in a cold gray rim about one; or it might have been a musk-ox or a caribou at a greater distance, but the longer he looked the more convinced he became that it was none of these—but a man. It moved slowly, disappeared for a few minutes in one of the dips of the plain, and came into view again much nearer. This time he made out a man, and behind, a sledge and dogs.
“It's Pierre,” he shivered, closing the door and coming back to the stove. “I wonder what the deuce the breed will say when he finds a stranger here and his grub half gone.”
After a little he heard the shrill creaking of a sledge on the crust outside and then a man's voice. The sounds stopped close to the cabin and were followed by a knock at the door.
“Come in!” cried Philip, and in the same breath it flashed upon him that it could not be the breed, and that it must be a mighty particular and unusual personage to knock at all.
The door opened and a man came in. He was a little man, and was bundled in a great beaver overcoat and a huge beaver cap that concealed all of his face but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the frozen end of a beard which stuck out between the laps of his turned-up collar like a horn. For all the world he looked like a diminutive drum-major, and Philip rose speechless, his pipe still in his mouth, as his strange visitor closed the door behind him and approached.
“Beg pardon,” said the stranger in a smothered voice, walking as though he were ice to the marrow and afraid of breaking himself. “It's so beastly cold that I have taken the liberty of dropping in to get warm.”
“It is cold—beastly cold,” replied Philip, emphasizing the word. “It was down to sixty last night. Take off your things.”
“Devil of a country—this,” shivered the man, unbuttoning his coat. “I'd rather roast of the fever than freeze to death.” Philip limped forward to assist him, and the stranger eyed him sharply for a moment.
“Limp not natural,” he said quickly, his voice freeing itself at last from the depths of his coat collar. “Bandage a little red, eyes feverish, lips too pale. Sick, or hurt?”
Philip laughed as the little man hopped to the stove and began rubbing his hands.
“Hurt,” he said. “If you weren't four hundred miles from nowhere I'd say that you were a doctor.”
“So I am,” said the other. “Edward Wallace Boffin, M.D., 900 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago.”
For a full half minute after the other's words Philip stared in astonishment. Then, with a joyful shout, he suddenly reached out his hand across the stove.
“By thunder,” he cried, “you're from home!”
“Home!” exclaimed the other. There was a startled note in his voice. “You're—you're a Chicago man?” he asked, staring strangely at Philip and gripping his hand at the same time.
“Ever hear of Steele—Philip Egbert Steele? I'm his son.”
“Good Heavens!” drawled the doctor, gazing still harder at him and pinching the ice from his beard, “what are you doing up here?”
“Prodigal son,” grinned Philip. “Waiting for the calf to get good and fat. What are you doing?”
“Making a fool of myself,” replied the doctor, looking at the top of the stove and rubbing his hands until his fingers snapped.
At the North Pole, if they had met there, Philip would have known him for a professional man. His heavy woolen suit was tailor made. He wore a collar and a fashionable tie. A lodge signet dangled at his watch chain. He was clean-shaven and his blond Van Dyke beard was immaculately trimmed. Everything about him, from the top of his head to the bottom of his laced boots, shouted profession, even in the Arctic snow. He might have gone farther and guessed that he was a physician—a surgeon, perhaps—from his hands, and from the supple manner in which he twisted his long white fingers about one another over the stove. He was a man of about forty, with a thin sensitive face, strong rather than handsome, and remarkable eyes. They were not large, nor far apart, but were like twin dynamos, reflecting the life of the man within. They were the sort of eyes which Philip had always associated with great mental power.
The doctor had now finished rubbing his hands, and, unbuttoning his under coat, he drew a small silver cigarette case from his waistcoat pocket.
“They're not poison,” he smiled, opening it and offering the cigarettes to Philip. “I have them made especially for myself.” A sound outside the door made him pause with a lighted match between his fingers. “How about dogs and Indian?” he asked. “May they come in?”
Philip began hobbling toward the door.
“So exciting to meet a man from home that I forgot all about 'em,” he exclaimed.
With three or four quick steps the doctor overtook him and caught him by the arm.
“Just a moment,” he said quickly. “How far is Fort Smith from here?”
“About sixty miles.”
“Do you suppose I could get there without—his assistance?”
“If you're willing to bunk here for a few days—yes,” said Philip. “I'm going on to Fort Smith myself as soon as I am able to walk.”
An expression of deep relief came into the doctor's eyes.
“That's just what I want, Steele,” he exclaimed, unfeignedly delighted at Philip's suggestion. “I'm not well, and I require a little rest. Call him in.”
No sooner had the Indian entered than to Philip's astonishment the little doctor began talking rapidly to him in Cree. The guide's eyes lighted up intelligently, and at the end he replied with a single word, nodded, and grinned. Philip noticed that as he talked a slight flush gathered in the doctor's smooth cheeks, and that not only by his voice but by the use of his hands as well he seemed anxious to impress upon his listener the importance of what he was saying.
“He'll start back for Chippewayan this afternoon,” he explained to Philip a moment later. “The dogs and sledge are mine, and he says that he can make it easily on snow-shoes.” Then he lighted his cigarette and added suggestively, “He can't understand English.”
The Indian had caught a glimpse of Philip's belt and holster, and now muttered a few low words, as though he were grumbling at the stove. The doctor poised his cigarette midway to his lips and looked quickly across at Philip.
“Possibly you belong to the Northwest Mounted Police,” he suggested.
“Yes.”
“Heavens,” drawled the doctor again, “and you the son of a millionaire banker! What you doing it for?”
“Fun,” answered Philip, half laughing. “And I'm not getting it in sugar-coated pellet form either. Doctor. I came up here to get a man, found him, and was gloriously walloped for my trouble. I'm not particularly sorry, either. Rather glad he got away.”
“Why?” asked the doctor.
In spite of their short acquaintance Philip began to feel a sort of comradeship for the man opposite him.
“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “you see, he was one of those criminals who are made criminals. Some one else was responsible—a case of one man suffering because of another man's sins.”
If the doctor had received the thrust of a pin he could not have jumped from his chair with more startling suddenness than he did at Philip's words.
“That's it!” he cried excitedly, beginning to pace back and forth across the cabin floor. “It's more than a theory—it's a truth—that people suffer more because of other people than on account of themselves. We're born to it and we keep it up, inflicting a thousand pricks and a thousand sorrows to gain one selfish end and it isn't once in a hundred times that the boomerang comes home and strikes the right one down. But when it does—when it does, sir—”
As suddenly as he had begun, the doctor stopped, and he laughed a little unnaturally. “Bosh!” he exclaimed. “Let's see that head of yours, Steele. Speaking of pains and pricks reminds me that, being a surgeon, I may be of some assistance to you.”
Philip knew that he had checked himself with an effort, and as his new acquaintance began to loosen the bandage he found himself wondering what mysterious mission could have sent a Chicago surgeon up to Fort Smith. The doctor interrupted his thoughts.
“Queer place for a blow,” he said briskly. “Nothing serious—slight abrasion—trifle feverish. We'll set you to rights immediately.” He bustled to his greatcoat and from one of the deep pockets drew forth a leather medicine case. “Queer place, queer place,” he chuckled, returning with a vial in his hand. “Were you running when it happened?”
Philip laughed with him, and by the time the doctor had finished he had given him an account of his affair with DeBar. Not until hours later, when the Cree had left on his return trip and they sat smoking before a roaring fire after supper, did it occur to him how confidential he had become. Seldom had Philip met a man who impressed him as did the little surgeon. He liked him immensely. He felt that he had known him for years instead of hours, and chatted freely of his adventures and asked a thousand questions about home. He found that the doctor was even better acquainted with his home city than himself, and that he knew many people whom he knew, and lived in a fashionable quarter. He was puzzled even as they talked and laughed and smoked their cigarettes and pipes. The doctor said nothing about himself or his personal affairs, and cleverly changed the conversation whenever it threatened to drift in that direction.
It was late when Philip rose from his chair, suggesting that they go to bed. He laughed frankly across into the other's face.
“Boffin—Boffin—Boffin,” he mused.
“Strange I've never heard of you down south, Doctor. Now what the deuce can you be doing up here?”
There was a point-blank challenge in his eyes. The doctor leaned a little toward him, as if about to speak, but caught himself. For several moments his keen eyes gazed squarely into Philip's, and when he broke the silence the same nervous flush that Philip had noticed before rose into his cheeks. “To go roughing it down in South America. I believe you're honest—on the square.”
Philip stared at him in amazement.
“If I didn't,” he went on, rubbing his hands again over the stove, “I'd follow your suggestion, and go to bed. As it is, I'm going to tell you why I'm up here, on your word of honor to maintain secrecy. I've got a selfish end in view, for you may be able to assist me. But nothing must go beyond yourself. What do you say to the condition?”
“I will not break your confidence—unless you have murdered some one,” laughed Philip, stooping to light a fresh pipe. “In that event you'd better keep quiet, as I'd have to haul you back to headquarters.”
He did not see the deepening of the flush in the other's face.
“Good,” said the doctor. “Sit down, Steele. I take it for granted that you will help me—if you can. First I suppose I ought to confess that my name is not Boffin, but McGill—Dudley McGill, professor of neurology and diseases of the brain—”
Philip almost dropped his pipe. “Great Scott, and it was you who wrote—” He stopped, staring in amazement.
“Yes, it was I who wrote Freda, if that's what you refer to,” finished the doctor. “It caused a little sensation, as you may know, and nearly got me ousted from the college. But it sold up to two hundred thousand copies, so it wasn't a bad turn,” he added.
“It was published while I was away,” said Philip. “I got a copy in Rio Janeiro, and it haunted me for weeks after I read it. Great Heaven, you can't believe—”
“I did,” interrupted the doctor sharply. “I believed everything that I wrote—and more. It was my theory of life.” He sprang from his chair and began walking back and forth in his quick, excited way. The flush had gone from his face now and was replaced by a strange paleness. His lips were tense, the fingers of his hands tightly clenched, his voice was quick, sharp, incisive when he spoke.
“It was my theory of life,” he repeated almost fiercely, “and that is the beginning of why I am up here. My theory was that there existed no such thing as 'the divine spark of love' between men and women not related by blood, no reaching out of one soul for another—no faith, no purity, no union between man and woman but that could be broken by low passions. My theory was that man and woman were but machines, and that passion, and not the love which we dream and read of, united these machines; and that every machine, whether it was a man or a woman, could be broken and destroyed in a moral sense by some other machine of the opposite sex—if conditions were right. Do you understand me? My theory was destructive of homes, of happiness, of moral purity. It was bad. I argued my point in medical journals, and I wrote a book based on it. But I lacked proof, the actual proof of experience. So I set out to experiment.”
He seemed to have forgotten now that Philip was in the room, and went on bitterly, as if arraigning himself for something which he had not yet disclosed.
“It made me a—a—almost a criminal,” he continued. “I had no good thoughts for humanity, beyond my small endeavors in my little field of science. I was a machine myself, cold, passionless, caring little for women—thus proving, if I had stopped to consider myself, the unreasonableness of my own theory. Coolly and without a thought of the consequences, I set out to prove myself right. When I think of it now my action appalls me. It was heinous, for the mere proving of my theory meant misery and unhappiness for those who were to prove it to me. I was not cramped for money. So I determined to experiment with six machines—three young men and three young women. I planned that each person should be unconscious of the part he or she was playing, and that each pair should be thrown constantly together—not in society, mind you, for my theory was that conditions must be right. Through a trusted and highly paid agent I hired my people—the men. Through another, who was a woman, I hired those of the opposite sex. One of the young women was sent to an obscure little place a hundred miles back from the Brazilian coast, ostensibly to act as governess for the children of an American family which did not exist. To this same place, through the other agent, was sent a man, whose duty was to get information about the country for a party of capitalists. Do you begin to understand?”
“Yes, I begin to understand,” said Philip.
“This place to which they went was made up of a dozen or so hovels,” continued the doctor, resuming his nervous walk. “There was no one there who could talk or understand their language but these two. The consequence—conditions were right. They would be constantly together. They would either prove or disprove my theory that men and women were but machines of passion. I knew that they would stay at this place during the three months I had allotted for my experiment, for I paid them a high price. The girl, when she found no American family, was told to wait until they arrived. The man, of course, had plenty of supposed work to keep him there.”
“I understand,” repeated Philip.
“The second couple,” continued the doctor, forcing himself into a chair opposite Philip, “were in a similar way sent up here—to an obscure northern post which I have reason for not naming. And the third couple went to a feverish district down in Central America.”
He rose from his chair again, and Philip was silent while the doctor went to his great-coat and from somewhere within its depths brought out fresh cigarettes. His hand trembled slightly as he lighted one and the flare of the match, playing for an instant on his face, emphasized the nervous tension which he was under.
“I suppose you think it all very strange—and idiotic,” he said, after a few moments. “But we frequently do strange things, and apparently senseless ones, in scientific work. Madmen have made the world's greatness. Our most wonderful inventors, our greatest men of all ages, have in a way been insane—for they have been abnormal, and what is that but a certain form of insanity?”
He looked at Philip through his cigarette smoke as if expecting a reply, but Philip only wet his lips, and remained silent.
“I got six months' leave of absence,” he resumed, “and set out to see the results of my experiments. First I went to Rio, and from there to the place where the first couple had gone. As a consequence, five weeks passed between the date of the last letters of my experimenters and the day I joined them. Heavens, man! When I made it known that I wanted them, where do you think they took me?”
He dropped his half-burned cigarette and his voice was husky as he turned on Philip. “Where—where do you think they took me?” he demanded.
“God knows!” exclaimed Philip, tremulously. “Where?”
“To two freshly made graves just outside the village,” groaned the doctor. “I learned their story after a little. The girl, finding herself useless there, had begun to teach the little children. I'm—I'm—going to skip quickly over this.” His voice broke to a whisper. “She was an angel. The poor half-naked women told me that through my interpreter. The children cried for her when she died. The men had brought flowering trees from miles away to shade her grave—and the other. They had met, as I had planned—the man and the girl, but it didn't turn out—my way. It was a beautiful love, I believe, as pure and sweet as any in the whole world. They say that they made the whole village happy, and that each Sunday the girl and the man would sing to them beautiful songs which they could not understand, but which made even the sick smile with happiness. It was a low, villainous place for a village, half encircled by a swampy river, and the terrible heat of the summer sun brought with it a strange sickness. It was a deadly, fatal sickness, and many died, and always there were the man and the girl, working and singing and striving to do good through all the hours of day and night. What need is there of saying more?” the doctor cried, his voice choking him. “What need to say more—except that the man went first, and that the girl died a week later, and that they were buried side by side under the mangum trees? What need—unless it is to say that I am their murderer?”
“There have been many mistakes made in the name of science,” said Philip, clearing his throat. “This was one. Your theory was wrong.”
“Yes, it was wrong,” said the doctor, more gently. “I saved myself by killing them. My theory died with them, and as fast as I could travel I hurried to that other place in Central America.”
A soft glow entered into his eyes now, and he came around the stove and took one of Philip's hands between his own, and looked steadily down into his face, while there came a curious twitching about the muscles of his throat.
“Nothing had happened,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I found her, and I thank God for that I loved her, and my theory was doubly shattered, a thousand times cursed. She is my wife, and I am the happiest of men—except for these haunting memories. Before I married her I told her all, and together we have tried to make restitution for my crime, for I shall always deem it such. I found that the man who died was supporting a mother, and that the girl's parents lived on a little mortgaged farm in Michigan. We sent the mother ten thousand dollars, and the parents the same. We have built a little church in the village where they died. The third couple,” finished the doctor, dropping Philip's hand, “came up here. When I got back from the south I found that several of my checks had been returned. I wrote letter after letter, but could find no trace of these last of my experimenters. I sent an agent into the North and he returned without news of them. They had never appeared at Fort Smith. And now—I have come up to hunt for them myself. Perhaps, in your future wanderings, you may be of some assistance to me. That is why I have told you this—with the hope that you will help me, if you can.”
With a flash of his old, quick coolness the doctor turned to one of Pierre Thoreau's bunks.
“Now,” he said, with a strained laugh, “I'll follow your suggestion and go to bed. Goodnight.”