Two on the Trail Part 29

Rina, disdaining a saddle, scrambled on his back, and rode off. Garth waited, not without anxiety, to see what direction she would take. She presently reappeared, mounting the rise to the shack. Pausing briefly at the door, apparently to speak within, she continued her way up the slope behind; and, gaining the prairie, disappeared over the brow.

Garth instantly put himself in motion. He had his compunctions in thus moving against Rina while she was absent on an errand for Natalie; but he consoled himself with the thought that Rina, with all she could do, had still a heavy score to pay off. He told Natalie what he was about to do; and at her earnest pleading carried her out of the tent, and propped her partly upright at the edge of the lake where she would be able to see him. Then, looking to his gun, he set off a second time for the shack.

From the circ.u.mstance of Rina's pausing at the door, he was well a.s.sured that Mabyn was within. He had marked that the door stood open. On his way, he paused to examine the ancient dugout lying at the mouth of the watercourse; and found it in a sufficiently seaworthy condition to answer his purpose. A paddle lay in the bottom.

Garth ascended the gra.s.sy slope swiftly and noiselessly; and making a detour around the window, presented himself suddenly at the door. Mabyn was revealed to him sprawling on his blankets in the corner, plucking at his face, and scowling at the rafters, he, too, no doubt, plotting and scheming. When the armed shadow fell across the floor of his shack, he started to his elbow; his eyes widened, his flesh blanched and a visible trembling seized his limbs.

"What do you want?" he contrived to stammer.

Strong disgust seized Garth again; so despicable an adversary shamed his own manhood. He s.h.i.+fted his gun significantly.

"Get up!" he said.

Mabyn dragged himself to his hands and knees. It was some moments before he could control himself sufficiently to stand upright.

"What are you going to do with me?" he kept muttering.

Garth stepped backward. "Come outside!" he commanded.

Mabyn obeyed, making a circuit of the walls for support. His eyes were always riveted on the gun; and however slightly it was moved, he experienced a fresh spasm of fear.

"Face about!" ordered Garth; "and walk to the mouth of the creek!"

Mabyn became even paler. His skin was like white paper on which ashes have been rubbed, leaving streaks and patches of gray. "Would you shoot me in the back?" he said shrilly. "An unarmed man! I will not turn my back!"

"Then walk backward!" said Garth, with his laconic start of laughter.

Mabyn went like a crab down the rise, with his head over his shoulder, a ludicrous and deplorable figure. He was unable to drag his eyes from the gun, consequently he stumbled and lurched over every obstacle. Once he fell flat; and a sharp scream of fright was forced from him. Garth sickened at the sight, while he laughed. He had to give him a minute in which to recover himself.

Mabyn, scarcely coherent, ceaselessly begged for mercy. "Do not kill me!" he whimpered. "I _can't_ die! Oh, G.o.d! Not like this! I never had a chance! You kill Natalie if you kill me--the breed will fix her!--and my mother! You'll have three murders on your soul! I _can't_ die yet!"

"Get up!" commanded Garth.

Reaching the edge of the water, he ordered him into the dugout.

Mabyn fell on his knees on the stones. "Not in the water! Not in the water!" he shrilled. "Kill me here!"

"No one is going to kill you," said Garth with scornful patience. "Do what you're told, and you'll not be hurt!"

Mabyn darted a furtive look of hope and suspicion in Garth's face. He got up.

"What are you going to do with me?" he muttered.

"Put you on the island," said Garth coolly.

"I'll starve," he whined.

"Food will be brought you regularly, as long as you obey orders," said Garth.

Mabyn, his extreme terror subsiding, showed an inclination to temporize.

"Let me get a few things," he begged. His eyes wandered to the hill over which Rina had disappeared.

Garth was anxious on the same score. He fingered the trigger of his gun.

"In with you!" he said.

Mabyn jumped to obey.

Garth, sitting in the bow with his weapon in his arms, faced Mabyn; and forced him to wield the paddle. Mabyn, seeing that he did mean to put him on the island, realized there had been no occasion for his brutish terror; but instead of feeling any shame for the self-betrayal, he characteristically added it to his score against Garth. His gray eyes contracted in an agony of impotent hate. At that moment unspeakable atrocities committed on Garth's body would not have satisfied Mabyn's l.u.s.t to destroy his flesh. Any move on his part would have overturned the crazy dugout, but, s.h.i.+vering at the sight of the water, he was unable to take that way.

Garth, wary of the furtive gleam in the man's eye, sprang to his feet the instant they touched the island, and leaped out, careful never to turn his back. He forced Mabyn to retire a dozen paces, while he took the place he vacated in the stern; and then he ordered him to push off.

At the prospect of being left alone, Mabyn's flesh failed him again. He clung to the bow of the canoe, and gabbled anew for mercy. Garth, wearying of it all, suddenly sent a shot over his head. His weapon, silent and smokeless, had an effect of horrible deadliness. Mabyn, with a moan of fear, pushed the canoe off, and sank back on the gra.s.s of the islet.

Exchanging his gun for the paddle, Garth hastened back to the mouth of the creek, pausing only to wave his hat rea.s.suringly at Natalie, whom he could see reclining on her gra.s.sy couch. An essential part of his plan was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return.

Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel, and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the dugout. Reembarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina returning on the distant hill.

Garth carried Natalie into the tent again; and nerved himself to await the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door, search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water, she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she clambered on the horse again. Presently she came cras.h.i.+ng through the bush.

This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to any shade of skin.

"Where is he?" she cried--and without waiting for any answer, emptied the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was drowned in a flood of guttural Cree--she fished it up only to curse him.

Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as a man thinks of an interesting circ.u.mstance that does not concern him at all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.

Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then you want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She pa.s.sionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under her heel.

"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him on the island."

At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.

"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he can do no harm!"

"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop me!"

"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for him unless he stays where he is."

Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.

Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk to you plainly and honestly about us all."

"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come again--till some time you sleep--then I come and kill you!"

He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the way is made open for Mabyn to come to _her_!" he cried. "Where will you be then?--thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"

The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her at the moments when most she desired to secrete her heart. She lowered her head to hide her stricken eyes from him. Suddenly she turned and fled through the trees.

Garth was beginning to believe that Rina after all was not so different from her white sisters; if so, he thought she would come back. Natalie, who had overheard all that pa.s.sed, said so too. Garth wished to carry Natalie out of the tent, that she might help him work with the girl; but Natalie, with better wisdom, said no, that Rina would be more tractable if she were out of sight.

Meanwhile he set to work with an air of unconcern he was far from feeling--there were a hundred ways this plan of his might miscarry, and only one way it could succeed! He tied old Cy to his stake again; and carefully gathered up what remained of the herbs Rina had cast on the ground. He unloaded the seized supplies and made a temporary cache under a piece of sail-cloth.