The Gun-Brand Part 19

"Look! Look!" cried the girl. "What is he doing?" And watched in horror as the big man charged among the Indians, smas.h.i.+ng, driving and kicking his way through the howling, rum-crazed horde. At every las.h.i.+ng blow of his fist, every kick of his high-laced boot, men went down. Others reeled drunkenly from his path screaming aloud in their fright; while across the open s.p.a.ce in the foreground four or five men could be seen das.h.i.+ng frantically for the protection of the timber.

MacNair ripped the gun from the hand of a reeling Indian and, throwing it to his shoulder, fired. Of those who ran, one dropped, rose to his knees, and sank backward. MacNair fired again, and another crashed forward, and rolled over and over upon the ground.

Lapierre watched with breathless interest while the others gained the shelter of the timber. He wondered whether one of the two men who fell was LeFroy.

"Oh!" cried Chloe in horror. "He's killing them!"

Lapierre made a swift sign to his paddlers, and the canoe shot behind a low sand-point where, in response to a tense command, the canoemen turned its bow southward; and, for the second time, Chloe Elliston found herself being driven by willing hands southward upon Snare Lake.

"He pounded--and kicked--and beat them!" sobbed the girl hysterically.

"And two of them he killed!"

Lapierre nodded. "Yes," he answered sadly, "and he will kill more of them. It seems that this time they got beyond even his control. For the destruction of his buildings and his goods, he will take his toll in lives and in the sufferings of his Indians."

While the canoe shot southward through the darkness, Chloe sat huddled upon her blankets. And as she watched the dull-red glow fade from the sky above MacNair's burning fort, her heart cried out for vengeance against this brute of the North.

One hour, two hours, the canoe plowed the black waters of the lake, and then, because men must rest, Lapierre reluctantly gave the order to camp, and the tired canoemen turned the bow sh.o.r.eward.

Hardly had they taken a dozen strokes when the canoe ground sharply against the thin, sh.o.r.e ice. There was the sound of ripping bark, where the knifelike edge of the ice tore through the side of the frail craft. Water gushed in, and Lapierre, stifling a curse that rose to his lips, seized a paddle, and leaning over the bow began to chop frantically at the ice. Two of the canoemen with their paddles held her head on, while the other two, with the help of Chloe and Big Lena endeavoured to stay the inrush of water with blankets and fragments of clothing.

Progress was slow. The ice thickened as they neared the sh.o.r.e, and Lapierre's paddle-blade, battered upon its point and edges to a soft, fibrous pulp, thudded softly upon the ice without breaking it. He threw the paddle overboard and seized another. A few more yards were won, but the sh.o.r.e loomed black and forbidding, and many yards away.

Despite the utmost efforts of the women and the two canoemen, the water gained rapidly. Lapierre redoubled his exertion, chopping and stabbing at the ever thickening sh.o.r.e-ice. And then suddenly his paddle crashed through, and with a short cry of relief he rose to his feet, and leaped into the black water, where he sank only to his middle. The canoemen followed. And the canoe, relieved of the bulk of its burden, floated more easily.

Slowly they pushed sh.o.r.eward through the shallow water, the men breaking the ice before them. And a few minutes later, wet and chilled to the bone, they stepped onto the gravel.

Within the shelter of a small thicket a fire was built, and while the men returned to examine the damaged canoe, the two women wrung out their dripping garments and, returning them wet, huddled close to the tiny blaze. The men returned to the fire, where a meal was prepared and eaten in silence. As he ate, Chloe noticed that Lapierre seemed ill at ease.

"Did you repair the canoe?" she asked. The man shook his head.

"No. It is damaged beyond any thought of repair. We removed the food and such of its contents as are necessary, and, loading it with rocks, sank it in the lake."

"Sank it in the lake!" cried the girl in amazement.

"Yes," answered Lapierre. "For even if it were not damaged, it would be of no further use to us. Tonight the lake will freeze."

"What are we going to do?" cried the girl.

"There is only one thing to do," answered Lapierre quickly. "Walk to the school. It is not such a long trail--a hundred miles or so. And you can take it easy. You have plenty of provisions."

"I!" cried the girl. "And what will you do?"

"It is necessary," answered the man, "that I should make a forced march."

"You are going to leave me?"

Lapierre smiled at the evident note of alarm in her voice. "I am going to take two of the canoemen and return in all haste to your school. Do you realize that MacNair, now that he has lost his winter provisions, will stop at nothing to obtain more?"

"He would not dare!" cried the girl, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

Lapierre laughed. "You do not know MacNair. You, personally, he would not venture to molest. He will doubtless try to buy supplies from you or from the Hudson Bay Company. But, in the meantime, while he is upon this errand, his Indians, with no one to hold them in check, and knowing that the supplies are in your storehouse, will swoop down upon it, and your own Indians, without a leader, will fall an easy prey to the hungry horde."

"But surely," cried the girl, "LeFroy is capable----"

"Possibly, if he were at the school," interrupted Lapierre. "But unfortunately the day before we ourselves departed, I sent LeFroy upon an important mission to the eastward. I think you will agree with me upon the importance of the mission when I tell you that, as I swung out of the mouth of Slave River at the head of the canoe brigade, I saw a fast canoe slipping stealthily along the sh.o.r.e to the eastward. In that canoe, with the aid of my binoculars, I made out two men whom I have long suspected of being engaged in the nefarious and h.e.l.lish business of peddling whiskey among the Indians. I knew it was useless to try to overtake them with my heavily loaded canoe, and so upon my arrival at the school, as soon as we had concluded the outfitting of the trappers, I dispatched LeFroy to hunt these men down, to destroy any liquor found in their possession, and to deal with them as he saw fit."

He paused and gazed steadily into the girl's face. "This may seem to you a lawless and high-handed proceeding, Miss Elliston," he went on; "but you have just witnessed one exhibition of the tragedy that whiskey can work among my people. In my opinion, the end justifies the means."

The girl regarded him with s.h.i.+ning eyes. "Indeed it does!" she cried.

"Oh, there is nothing--no punishment--too severe for such brutes, such devils, as these! I--I hope LeFroy will catch them. I hope--almost--he will kill them."

Lapierre nodded. "Yes, Miss Elliston," he answered gravely, "one could sometimes almost wish so, but I have forbidden it. The taking of a human life is a serious matter; and in the North the exigencies of the moment all too frequently make this imperative. As a last resort only should we kill."

"You are right," echoed the girl. "Only after the scene we have just witnessed, it seemed that I myself could kill deliberately, and be glad I killed. Truly the North breeds savagery. For I, too, have killed on the spur of the moment!" The words fell rapidly from her lips, and she cried out as in physical pain. "And to think that I killed in defence of _him_! Oh, if I had let the Indian shoot that night, all this"--she waved her hand to the northward--"would never have happened."

"Very true, Miss Elliston," answered Lapierre softly. "But do not blame yourself. Under the circ.u.mstances, you could not have done otherwise."

As he talked, two of the canoemen made up light packs from the outfit of the wrecked canoe. Seeing that they had concluded, Lapierre arose, and taking Chloe's hand in both of his, looked straight into her eyes.

"Good-by," he said simply. "These Indians will conduct you in safety to your school." And, without waiting for a reply, turned and followed the two canoemen into the brush.

Chloe sat for a long time staring into the flames of the tiny fire before creeping between her damp blankets. Despite the utter body-weariness of her long canoe-trip, the girl slept but fitfully in her cold bed.

In the early grey of the morning she started up nervously. Surely a sound had awakened her. She heard it distinctly now, the sound of approaching footsteps. She strained to locate the sound, and instantly realized it was not the tread of moccasined feet. She threw off the frost-stiffened blankets and leaped to her feet, s.h.i.+vering in the keen air of the biting dawn.

The sounds of the footsteps grew louder, plainer, as though someone had turned suddenly from the sh.o.r.e and approached the thicket with long, heavy strides. With muscles tense and heart bounding wildly the girl waited. Then, scarce ten feet from her side, the thick scrub parted with a vicious swish, and a man, hatless, glaring, and white-faced, stood before her. The man was MacNair.

CHAPTER XV

"ARREST THAT MAN!"

Seconds pa.s.sed--tense, portentous seconds--as the two stood facing each other over the dead ashes of the little fire. Seconds in which the white drawn features of the man engraved themselves indelibly upon Chloe Elliston's brain. She noted the knotted muscles of the clenched hands and the glare of the sunken eyes. Noted, also, the cringing fear-stricken forms of the two Indians, who had awakened and lay cowering upon their blankets. And Big Lena, whose pale-blue, fishlike eyes stared first at one and then the other from out a face absolutely devoid of expression.

Suddenly a fierce, consuming anger welled into the girl's heart, and words fell from her lips in a veritable hiss of scorn: "Have you come to kill me, too?"

"By G.o.d, it would be a good thing for the North if I should kill you!"

"A good thing for MacNair, you mean!" taunted the girl. "Yes, I think it would. Well, there is nothing to hinder you. Of course, you would have to kill these, also." She indicated Big Lena and the Indians.

"But what are mere lives to you?"

"They are nothing to me when the fate of my people is at stake! And at this very moment their fate--their whole future--the future of their children and their children's children--is at stake, as it has never been at stake before. Many times in my life have I faced crises: but never such a crisis as this. And always I have won, regardless of cost--but the cost only _I_ have ever known."

His eyes glared, and he seemed a madman in his berserk rage. He drove a huge fist into his upturned palm and fairly shouted his words: "I am MacNair! And if there is a G.o.d in heaven, I will win! From this moment, it is my life or Lapierre's! Since last night's outrage there can be no truce--no quibbling--no parleying--no half-way measures! My friends are my friends, and his friends are my enemies! The war is on--and it will be a fight to the finish. A fight that may well disrupt the North!" He shook his clenched fist before the face of the girl. "I have taken the man-trail! I am MacNair! And at the end of that trail will lie a dead man--myself or Pierre Lapierre!"

"And at the beginning of the trail lie _two_ dead men," sneered Chloe.

"Those who started for the timber----"

"And, by G.o.d, if necessary, the trail will be _paved with dead men_!