The Flaming Forest Part 21

Instantly Concombre's face split into a wide grin. "MON DIEU, w'at if you was on'y brother to Concombre Bateese, m'sieu. T'ink of zat--you--me--FRERE D'ARMES! VENTRE SAINT GRIS, but we mak' all fightin' men in nort' countree run lak rabbits ahead of ze fox! OUI, we mak' gr-r-r-eat pair, m'sieu--you, w'at knock down Bateese--an'

Bateese, w'at keel polar bear wit hees naked hands, w'at pull down trees, w'at chew flint w'en hees tobacco gone."

His voice had risen, and suddenly there came a laugh from outside the door, and Concombre cut himself short and his mouth closed with a snap.

It was Joe Clamart who had laughed.

"I w'ip heem five time, an' now I w'ip heem seex!" hissed Bateese in an undertone. "Two time each year I w'ip zat gargon Joe Clamart so he understan' w'at good fightin' man ees. An' you will w'ip heem, eh, m'sieu? Oui? An' I will breeng odder good fightin' mans for you to w'ip--all w'at Concombre Bateese has w'ipped--ten, dozen, forty--an'

you w'ip se gran' bunch, m'sieu. Eh, shall we mak' ze bargain?"

"You are planning a pleasant time for me, Bateese," said Carrigan, "but I am afraid it will be impossible. You see, this captain of yours, Black Roger Audemard--"

"W'at!" Bateese jumped as if stung. "W'at you say, m'sieu?"

"I said that Roger Audemard, Black Roger, the man I thought was St.

Pierre Boulain--"

Carrigan said no more. What he had started to say was unimportant compared with the effect of Roger Audernard's name on Concombre Bateese. A deadly light glittered in the half-breed's eyes, and for the first time David realized that in the grotesque head of the riverman was a brain quick to grip at the significance of things. The fact was evident that Black Roger had not confided in Bateese as to the price of the wager and the confession of his ident.i.ty, and for a moment after the repet.i.tion of Audemard's name came from David's lips the half-breed stood as if something had stunned him. Then slowly, as if forcing the words in the face of a terrific desire that had transformed his body into a hulk of quivering steel, he said:

"M'sieu--I come with message--from St. Pierre. You see windows--closed.

Outside door--she locked. On bot' sides de bateau, all de time, we watch. You try get away, an' we keel you. Zat ees all. We shoot. We five mans on ze bateau, all ze day, TOUTE LA NUIT. You unnerstan'?"

He turned sullenly, waiting for no reply, and the door opened and closed after him--and again came the snap of the lock outside.

Steadily the bateau swept down the big river that day. There was no let-up in the steady creaking of the long sweep. Even in the swifter currents David could hear the working of it, and he knew he had seen the last of the more slowly moving raft. Near one of the partly open windows he heard two men talking just before the bateau shot into the Brule Point rapids. They were strange voices. He learned that Audemard's huge raft was made up of thirty-five cribs, seven abreast, and that nine times between the Point Brule and the Yellowknife the raft would be split up, so that each crib could be run through dangerous rapids by itself.

That would be a big job, David a.s.sured himself. It would be slow work as well as hazardous, and as his own life was in no immediate jeopardy, he would have ample time in which to formulate some plan of action for himself. At the present moment, it seemed, the one thing for him to do was to wait--and behave himself, according to the half-breed's instructions. There was, when he came to think about it, a saving element of humor about it all. He had always wanted to make a trip down the Three Rivers in a bateau. And now--he was making it!

At noon a guard brought in his dinner. He could not recall that he had ever seen this man before, a tall, lithe fellow built to run like a hound, and who wore a murderous-looking knife at his belt. As the door opened, David caught a glimpse of two others. They were business-like looking individuals, with muscles built for work or fight; one sitting cross-legged on the bateau deck with a rifle over his knees, and the other standing with a rifle in his hand. The man who brought his dinner wasted no time or words. He merely nodded, murmured a curt bonjour, and went out. And Carrigan, as he began to eat, did not have to tell himself twice that Audemard had been particular in his selection of the bateau's crew, and that the eyes of the men he had seen could be as keen as a hawk's when leveled over the tip of a rifle barrel. They meant business, and he felt no desire to smile in the face of them, as he had smiled at Concombre Bateese.

It was another man, and a stranger, who brought in his supper. And for two hours after that, until the sun went down and gloom began to fall, the bateau sped down the river. It had made forty miles that day, he figured.

It was still light when the bateau was run ash.o.r.e and tied up, but tonight there were no singing voices or wild laughter of men whose hours of play-time and rest had come. To Carrigan, looking through his window, there was an oppressive menace about it all. The shadowy figures ash.o.r.e were more like a death-watch than a guard, and to dispel the gloom of it he lighted two of the lamps in the cabin, whistled, drummed a simple chord he knew on the piano, and finally settled down to smoking his pipe. He would have welcomed the company of Bateese, or Joe Clamart, or one of the guards, and as his loneliness grew upon him there was something of companions.h.i.+p even in the subdued voices he heard occasionally outside. He tried to read, but the printed words jumbled themselves and meant nothing.

It was ten o'clock, and clouds had darkened the night, when through his open windows he heard a shout coming from the river. Twice it came before it was answered from the bateau, and the second time Carrigan recognized it as the voice of Roger Audemard. A brief interval pa.s.sed between that and the sc.r.a.ping of a canoe alongside, and then there was a low conversation in which even Audemard's great voice was subdued, and after that the grating of a key in the lock, and the opening of the door, and Black Roger came in, bearing an Indian reed basket under his arm. Carrigan did not rise to meet him. It was not like the coming of the old St. Pierre, and on Black Roger's lips there was no twist of a smile, nor in his eyes the flash of good-natured greeting. His face was darkly stern, as if he had traveled far and hard on an unpleasant mission, but in it there was no shadow of menace, as there had been in that of Concombre Bateese. It was rather the face of a tired man, and yet David knew what he saw was not physical exhaustion. Black Roger guessed something of his thought, and his mouth for an instant repressed a smile.

"Yes, I have been having a rough time," he nodded, "This is for you!"

He placed the basket on the table. It held half a bushel, and was filled to the curve of the handle. What lay in it was hidden under a cloth securely tied about it.

"And you are responsible," he added, stretching himself in a chair with a gesture of weariness. "I should kill you, Carrigan. And instead of that I bring you good things to eat! Half the day she has been fussing with the things in the basket, and then insisted that I bring them to you. And I have brought them simply to tell you another thing. I am sorry for her. I think, M'sieu Carrigan, you will find as many tears in the basket as anything else, for her heart is crushed and sick because of the humiliation she brought upon herself this morning."

He was twisting his big, rough hands, and David's own heart went sick as he saw the furrowed lines that had deepened in the other's face.

Black Roger did not look at him as he went on.

"Of course, she told me. She tells me everything. And if she knew I was telling you this, I think she would kill herself. But I want you to understand. She is not what you might think she is. That kiss came from the lips of the best woman G.o.d ever made, M'sieu Carrigan!"

David, with the blood in him running like fire, heard himself answering, "I know it. She was excited, glad you had not stained your hands with my life--"

This time Audemard smiled, but it was the smile of a man ten years older than he had appeared yesterday. "Don't try to answer, m'sieu. I only want you to know she is as pure as the stars. It was unfortunate, but to follow the impulse of one's heart can not be a sin. Everything has been unfortunate since you came. But I blame no one, except--"

"Carmin Fanchet?"

Audemard nodded. "Yes. I have sent her away. Marie-Anne is in the cabin on the raft now. But even Carmin I can not blame very greatly, m'sieu, for it is impossible to hold anything against one you love. Tell me if I am right? You must know. You love my Marie-Anne. Do you hold anything against her?"

"It is unfair," protested David. "She is your wife, Audemard, is it possible you don't love her?"

"Yes, I love her."

"And Carmin Fanchet?"

"I love her, too. They are so different. Yet I love them both. Is it not possible for a big heart like mine to do that, m'sieu?"

With almost a snort David rose to his feet and stared through one of the windows into the darkness of the river. "Black Roger," he said without turning his head, "the evidence at Headquarters condemns you as one of the blackest-hearted murderers that ever lived. But that crime, to me, is less atrocious than the one you are committing against your own wife. I am not ashamed to confess I love her, because to deny it would be a lie. I love her so much that I would sacrifice myself--soul and body--if that sacrifice could give you back to her, clean and undefiled and with your hand unstained by the crime for which you must hang!"

He did not hear Roger Audemard as he rose from his chair. For a moment the riverman stared at the back of David's head, and in that moment he was fighting to keep back what wanted to come from his lips in words.

He turned before David faced him again, and did not pause until he stood at the cabin door with his hand at the latch. There he was partly in shadow.

"I shall not see you again until you reach the Yellowknife," he said.

"Not until then will you know--or will I know--what is going to happen.

I think you will understand strange things then, but that is for the hour to tell. Bateese has explained to you that you must not make an effort to escape. You would regret it, and so would I. If you have red blood in you, m'sieu--if you would understand all that you cannot understand now--wait as patiently as you can. Bonne nuit, M'sieu Carrigan!"

"Good night!" nodded David.

In the pale shadows he thought a mysterious light of gladness illumined Black Roger's face before the door opened and closed, leaving him alone again.

XXIV

With the going of Black Roger also went the oppressive loneliness which had gripped Carrigan, and as he stood listening to the low voices outside, the undeniable truth came to him that he did not hate this man as he wanted to hate him. He was a murderer, and a scoundrel in another way, but he felt irresistibly the impulse to like him and to feel sorry for him. He made an effort to shake off the feeling, but a small voice which he could not quiet persisted in telling him that more than one good man had committed what the law called murder, and that perhaps he didn't fully understand what he had seen through the cabin window on the raft. And yet, when unstirred by this impulse, he knew the evidence was d.a.m.ning.

But his loneliness was gone. With Audemard's visit had come an unexpected thrill, the revival of an almost feverish antic.i.p.ation, the promise of impending things that stirred his blood as he thought of them. "You will understand strange things then," Roger Audemard had said, and something in his voice had been like a key unlocking mysterious doors for the first time. And then, "Wait, as patiently as you can!" Out of the basket on the table seemed to come to him a whispering echo of that same word--wait! He laid his hands upon it, and a pulse of life came with the imagined whispering. It was from Marie-Anne. It seemed as though the warmth of her hands were still there, and as he removed the cloth the sweet breath of her came to him.

And then, in the next instant, he was trying to laugh at himself and trying equally hard to call himself a fool, for it was the breath of newly-baked things which her fingers had made.

Yet never had he felt the warmth of her presence more strangely in his heart. He did not try to explain to himself why Roger Audemard's visit had broken down things which had seemed insurmountable an hour ago.

a.n.a.lysis was impossible, because he knew the transformation within himself was without a shred of reason. But it had come, and with it his imprisonment took on another form. Where before there had been thought of escape and a scheming to jail Black Roger, there filled him now an intense desire to reach the Yellowknife and the Chateau Boulain.

It was after midnight when he went to bed, and he was up with the early dawn. With the first break of day the bateau men were preparing their breakfast. David was glad. He was eager for the day's work to begin, and in that eagerness he pounded on the door and called out to Joe Clamart that he was ready for his breakfast with the rest of them, but that he wanted only hot coffee to go with what Black Roger had brought to him in the basket.

That afternoon the bateau pa.s.sed Fort McMurray, and before the sun was well down in the west Carrigan saw the green slopes of Thickwood Hills and the rising peaks of Birch Mountains. He laughed outright as he thought of Corporal Anderson and Constable Frazer at Fort McMurray, whose chief duty was to watch the big waterway. How their eyes would pop if they could see through the padlocked door of his prison! But he had no inclination to be discovered now. He wanted to go on, and with a growing exultation he saw there was no intention on the part of the bateau's crew to loiter on the way. There was no stop at noon, and the tie-up did not come until the last glow of day was darkening into the gloom of night in the sky. For sixteen hours the bateau had traveled steadily, and it could not have made less than sixty miles as the river ran. The raft, David figured, had not traveled a third of the distance.

The fact that the bateau's progress would bring him to Chateau Boulain many days, and perhaps weeks, before Black Roger and Marie-Anne could arrive on the raft did not check his enthusiasm. It was this interval between their arrivals which held a great speculative promise for him.

In that time, if his efficiency had not entirely deserted him, he would surely make discoveries of importance.

Day after day the journey continued without rest. On the fourth day after leaving Fort McMurray it was Joe Clamart who brought in David's supper, and he grunted a protest at his long hours of muscle-breaking labor at the sweeps. When David questioned him he shrugged his shoulders, and his mouth closed tight as a clam. On the fifth, the bateau crossed the narrow western neck of Lake Athabasca, slipping past Chipewyan in the night, and on the sixth it entered the Slave River. It was the fourteenth day when the bateau entered Great Slave Lake, and the second night after that, as dusk gathered thickly between the forest walls of the Yellowknife, David knew that at last they had reached the mouth of the dark and mysterious stream which led to the still more mysterious domain of Black Roger Audemard.

That night the rejoicing of the bateau men ash.o.r.e was that of men who had come out from under a strain and were throwing off its tension for the first time in many days. A great fire was built, and the men sang and laughed and shouted as they piled wood upon it. In the flare of this fire a smaller one was built, and kettles and pans were soon bubbling and sizzling over it, and a great coffee pot that held two gallons sent out its steam laden with an aroma that mingled joyously with the balsam and cedar smells in the air. David could see the whole thing from his window, and when Joe Clamart came in with supper, he found the meat they were cooking over the fire was fresh moose steak.