The Land of Frozen Suns Part 15

"By the great horn spoon," Montell stammered. "I-I oughto be kicked. By gosh, I thought that hammer was down. Darn me for a careless fool, runnin' round with a loaded gun and stumblin' over a little piece of wood. I'd no idee I was so blamed clumsy. I guess I'm gettin' old all right."

Barreau laughed, a cold-blooded unmirthful sound. He got up from his sitting posture, laid hold of the rifle, and stood it against the wall beside him. Then he sat down on his box, and felt with his fingers till he located the bullet hole. It was embedded in the log, on a level with his breast.

"Clumsy?" Barreau said, in a voice nearly devoid of inflection. "Well, yes; it was rather clumsy."

Montell was facing the light now. Barreau got up from his box again, and Montell took a step backward. Thus for a half-minute the two faced each other silently, gray eye pitting itself against cold, steel-blue.

Montell weakened under that direct contemptuous glare. His glance sought me in a furtive way, and the fat, pudgy hands of him began to fidget.

"Don't do it again, Montell," Barreau said slowly, and his tone was like a slap in the face.

Then he sat down upon the box and rolled himself another cigarette.

CHAPTER XVI-CLAWS UNSHEATHED

The heavy log walls must have m.u.f.fled the shot completely, for, contrary to my expectations, no inquiring faces came poking in the door. In pure defiance, I believe, Barreau kept his place by the fire, smoking placidly till it wore on to ten o'clock. Then Montell, pursing up his lips, put on his overcoat and left without a word. Shortly after that Cullen came in, followed by Ben Wise. They slept in the store, one at each end. At their entrance Barreau drew the _parka_ hood about his ears and we took our departure.

The fire was down to a single charred stick, but the chill had not yet laid hold of the air within, and we made ready for bed before the numbing fingers of the frost made free with our persons. I stretched myself on my bunk and wrapped the blankets and a rabbit-skin robe about me, but Barreau sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the candle flame as if he sought therein the answer to a riddle.

"If those Company men made the same proposition to Montell," he broke out suddenly, "that they made to me, it is ten to one that Montell stands ready to deliver the goods. That would account for the baldness of that play to-night."

"You think he did mean it, then?" I had so far given Montell the benefit of the doubt, despite a growing conviction that he had stumbled purposely.

"Why, of course; that's obvious, isn't it?" Barreau declared. "You know he did. Else why did you move that gun after he'd very artfully contrived to point it my way?"

"So you were watching him, after all?" said I.

"I always watch him," he answered drily.

"I feel sure that he sees-or thinks he sees-the way clear, once I'm attended to," Barreau continued. "I've been looking for this very thing.

It came to me that day we struck the pack-trail. You remember? I started to tell you, and changed my mind."

I nodded. The incident was quite fresh in my memory-my juvenile egotism had received a b.u.mp on that very occasion.

"It struck me with a sort of premonitory force, as I stood there looking at those mule tracks," he went on, "that if the Company offered him the same terms they did me he would jump at it. They offered me forty thousand dollars to get out of the game, to give them a bill of sale of my interest-_and they would take care of my partner_. You see? Now I'm satisfied they wouldn't incorporate that last clause in any offer to Montell. I'm not boasting when I say that from the beginning I've been the thorn in the Company's flesh. Every time they've locked horns with me, I've come out on top. They might offer him forty thousand, but he'd have to guarantee them against me. And I think that performance to-night is a sample of how he will try to clear the way."

"To put it baldly," I said. "You think he'll kill you out of hand-if he gets a chance to do it in a way that won't prove a boomerang?"

"Exactly," Barreau observed.

"Then," I suggested, and even as the words were on my tongue I stood amazed at the ruthless streak they seemed to uncover, "why not catch him at it-and do the killing yourself. There's no law here to restrain _him_, apparently. Be your own law-if you know you're _right_."

"I can't." Barreau muttered. "Not that my conscience would ever trouble me. He's protected in a way he doesn't dream of. And he's too wary of me to lay himself liable. If anything happens it will be an accident; you know how it would have been to-night. You, sitting right there, could not have declared it otherwise, no matter what your private opinion might have been. He has pretty well calculated the chances. No, Mr.

Montell is not going to put himself in any position where I'd be clearly justified in snuffing him out."

For a minute or so he sat silent, frowning at the candle on the table between my bunk and his.

"How he would bait me," he went on presently, "if he knew that killing him is the one thing I desire to avoid, at any cost! I hope it doesn't come to that. It would be only just, but I have no wish to mete out justice to him. His miserable life is safe from me, for her sake-no, I'll be honest: for my own. I want him to live, till I can force him to tell her a few truths that she will never believe except from his own lips. I was a seven times fool for not doing that long before we reached Benton. I could have forestalled all this. But I didn't suspect he was tolling her on-for a purpose."

He stopped again. It was not the first time that Barreau had touched upon that theme, and always his tongue had been stricken with a semi-paralysis just short of complete revelation. In a general way it was plain enough to me, from the verbal collisions between himself and Montell on that same subject. And though I was humanly curious enough to want the particulars at first hand, I made no effort to draw forth his story. Hence I was surprised when he took up the thread of the conversation where he had left off.

"One reads of these peculiar situations in books," he rested his chin in the palms of his hands and stared abstractedly at me, "but they are seldom encountered in everyday living. I dare say the world is full of women, good women, beautiful, brilliant women, that I might have won.

Yet I must fall victim to an insane craving for an elfin-faced, hot-tempered sprite who will have none of me. Six or seven years ago she was a big-eyed school-girl, with a mop of unruly hair. Then all at once, she grew up, and-and I've been the captive of her bow and spear ever since. Love-the old, primal instinct to mate! It's a brutal force, Bob, when it focuses all a man's being on one particular woman. I never told her, but I'm sure she knew; I know she did. And she-well, a man never can tell what a woman thinks or feels or will do or say, or whether she means what she says when she says it. I don't know. But I've thought that she did care-only she wouldn't admit it until I made her. She's the type that wouldn't give herself to even the man she loved without a struggle. And I'm just savage enough to be glad of that. I've only been waiting till this spring and the end of this fur deal, so that we would have the wherewith to live, before I cornered her and fought it out.

"But I've waited too long, I'm afraid. You see, Montell has always been against me; that is, he has secretly been cutting the ground from under my feet since he learned that I wanted _her_. The old fool looks into his own heart and seeing perfect bliss in an alliance with 'blood' and 'money,' straightway determines that these two will insure her future happiness-oh, I can read him, like an open book. He'd move the heavens to bring about what he'd term 'a good match.'

"As it happens I can compare pedigrees with the best of them-Good Lord!"

he broke off and laughed ironically. "That's sickening; but I'm trying to make the thing clear. Naive recital this, I must say. Well, anyway, I measured up to the standard of breeding, but fell wofully short on the financial requirements. And, somehow, foxy Simon grew afraid that I was in a fair way to upset his cherished plans for Jess. This was after we'd gone in together on this fur business. He had always acted rather guardedly about Jessie and myself, but I had him there; so long as she went out, I could meet her socially, and he could not prevent. Then a year ago last summer the Hudson's Bay undertook to run me out of this country. That bred the trouble on High River, and after that I was really outlawed. I expect he began at once to figure how he could turn that to his advantage-regarding me as a dishtowel that he could wring dry and throw aside. He has nursed a direct, personal grudge since the first season. Naturally, he wanted to dominate everything, and I wouldn't let him. He thought himself the biggest toad in the puddle, and it angered him when he found himself outsplashed. He made mistakes. I corrected them, and held him down at every turn; I had to. It was a ticklish job, and I made him move according to my judgment. Which was a very bitter sort of medicine for a man of Montell's domineering stamp.

So he was not long in developing a rancorous dislike of me, which seems to have thrived on concealment.

"Where I made the grand mistake was in letting him keep her from knowing that we were partners in this business. Without giving the matter a second thought I had kept our business strictly to myself. He hinted that others might follow our lead, and at first we had visions of making terms with the Hudson's Bay and building up a permanent trade here.

After two or three years of this I didn't think it well to plunge into explanations last spring. I made a mistake there, however; the mistake, I should say. Jessie had gone out a good deal the last two winters, both in St. Louis and New Orleans, and she was becoming quite a belle. For all that, I think-oh, well, it doesn't matter what I think. To make a long story short, a day or two before the _Moon_ went upstream she told me that she was going as far as Benton with her father. I, of course had to rise to the occasion, be very properly surprised and inform her that I, too, contemplated a trip on that same steamer. And I straightway hunted Montell up and tried to have him dissuade her from the journey.

"I didn't fathom the purport of it, even then-although I knew that he would welcome any chance to put me wrong in her eyes. It was too late, I felt, to volunteer any details concerning my part in her father's business up North. So I contented myself with his a.s.surance and her statement, that she would see him as far as Benton and then return on the _Moon_.

"You see, I could easily imagine what would be her opinion of me, if she learned all the unsavory details with which the Northwest has been pleased to embellish the record of Slowfoot George. She has such a profound scorn for anything verging on dishonesty, and according to the sources of her information I've got some very shady things laid at my door. I can't be anything but a moral degenerate, in her eyes. Oh, he engineered it skilfully. If I had only waited at Benton till the bull-train was ready to start!

"You know how her returning panned out. I believe now, that he intended from the first that she should go on to MacLeod. I'd come to the conclusion that he would knife me on the business end, and that was why I wanted Walt Sanders with me. But it didn't occur to me that his plans were so far-reaching. That unfortunate Police raid delivered me into his hands at the psychological moment I was like a cornered rat that day she came to the guardhouse and peered in on us through the cell door. I couldn't help las.h.i.+ng back when she was so frankly contemptuous. I could see so clearly how he had managed it. And having accomplished his purpose he saw to it that escape was made easy, for he still needed me up here. Mind you, it would have been pretty much the same if I had not been taken by the Police. He would have seen that she was well posted before she left MacLeod.

"The rest you have seen for yourself. She spoiled his plan a little, perhaps, by coming all the way once she had started. That wasn't his fault; he didn't want her to come here, especially after I picked up one of her combs that night we came to the camp, and threatened him if he didn't send her home. She _is_ wilful. And the only way he could have kept her from coming to the Sicannie would have been to go back himself.

"If our presence here has puzzled her you may be sure he has made satisfactory explanations. I am only biding my time. If I can hold him down and stand off the Hudson's Bay till the furs come in, I can win out so far as the money end is concerned. And if I am to lose her, by G.o.d he'll pay for it! She shall know the truth if I have to choke it out of him one word at a time."

"It looks like a big contract," I sympathized.

He made a gesture that might have meant anything, but did not reply.

Presently he reached for his tobacco. When his cigarette was lighted he blew out the candle. By the glowing red tip I could follow his movements as he settled himself and drew the bedding about him. "Oh, Bob," he addressed me after a long interval.

"What is it?" I answered.

"If that old hound and I should get mixed up, you keep out of it.

Somebody will have to see that Jess gets out of this G.o.d-forsaken country. You're woods-wise enough to manage that now."

"Why, of course I'd do that," I replied. It was a startling prospect he held forth. "But I hope nothing like that happens."

"Anything might happen," he returned. "We're sitting on a powder-keg. I can't guarantee that it won't blow up. Montell is a bull-headed brute, and so am I. If he should throw a slug into me, I'd probably live long enough to return the favor."

Then, after a pause: "I've been running on like an old woman. That rifle business to-night jarred me like the devil. Maybe a decent night's rest will scatter these pessimistic ideas. Here goes, Robert; good-night."

With which he turned his face to the wall, and did, I verily believe, go at once to sleep. And he was still asleep, his head resting on one doubled-up arm, when I got up and lighted the candle at seven in the morning. My slumbers had been beset by disturbing visions of violent deeds, the by-product of what I had seen and heard that evening; Barreau, by his cheerful aspect on arising, had banished his troubles while he slept.

The day dawned, clear and cold and very still. It pa.s.sed, and another followed, and still others, till I lost track of their number in the frost-ridden cycle of time. Montell's momentous stumble grew to be a dim incident of the past; sometimes I was constrained to wonder if, after all, he had done that with malice aforethought. Upon divers occasions I met and talked with Jessie, but I did not go to the house again, until Barreau hinted, one day, that unless I continued the intimacy I had accidentally begun, Montell would think I suspected him, that I was taking Barreau's side.

"There is no use in your making an enemy of him," he said.