The Gun-Brand Part 29

When Bob MacNair, exasperated beyond all patience by Chloe Elliston's foolish accusation, stamped angrily from the cottage, after depositing the wounded Ripley upon the bed, he proceeded at once to the barracks, where he sought out Wee Johnnie Tamarack, who informed him that Lapierre was up on Snare Lake, at the head of a band of men who had already succeeded in dotting the snow of the barren grounds with the black dumps of many shafts. Whereupon he ordered Wee Johnnie Tamarack to a.s.semble the Indians at once at the storehouse.

No sooner had the old Indian departed upon his mission than the door of the barracks was pushed violently open and Big Lena entered, dragging by the arm the thoroughly cowed figure of LeFroy. At sight of the man who, under Lapierre's orders, had wrought the destruction of his post at Snare Lake, MacNair leaped forward with a snarl of anger. But before he could reach the trembling man the form of Big Lena interposed, and MacNair found himself swamped by a jargon of broken English that taxed to the utmost his power of comprehension.

"Ju yoost vait vun meenit. Ay tal ju som'ting gude. Dis d.a.m.n LeFroy, he bane bad man. He vork by Lapierre, and he tak' de vhiskey to jour Injuns, but he don't vork no more by Lapierre; he vork by me. Ay goin'

to marry him, and ju bet Ay keep him gude, or Ay bust de stove chunk 'crost his head. He vork by Mees Chloe now, and he lak ju gif him chance to show he ain't no bad man no more."

Big Lena shook the man roughly by way of emphasis, and MacNair smiled as he noted the foolish grin with which LeFroy submitted to the inevitable.

For years he had known LeFroy as a bad man, second only to Lapierre in cunning and brutal cruelty; and to see him now, cowering under the domination of his future spouse, was to MacNair the height of the ridiculous--but MacNair was unmarried.

"All right," he growled, and LeFroy's relief at the happy termination of the interview was plainly written upon his features, for this meeting had not been of his own seeking. The memory of the shots which had taken off two of his companions that night on Snare Lake, was still fresh, and in his desire to avoid a meeting with MacNair he had sought refuge in the kitchen. Whereupon Big Lena had taken matters into her own hands and literally dragged him into MacNair's presence, replying to his terrified protest that if MacNair was going to kill him, he was going to kill and he might as well have it over with.

Thus it was that the relieved LeFroy leaped with alacrity to obey when, a moment later, MacNair ordered him to the storehouse to break out the necessary provisions for a ten-days' journey for all his Indians. So well did the half-breed execute the order that upon MacNair's arrival at the store-house he found LeFroy not only supplying provisions with a lavish hand, but taking huge delight in pa.s.sing out to the waiting Indians Lapierre's Mauser rifles and ammunition.

When MacNair, with his Indians, reached Snare Lake, it was to find that Pierre Lapierre had taken himself and his outlaws to the Lac du Mort rendezvous. Whereupon he immediately despatched thirty Indians back to LeFroy for the supplies necessary to follow Lapierre to his stronghold.

Awaiting the return of the supply train, MacNair employed his remaining Indians in getting out logs for the rebuilding of his fort, and he smiled grimly as his eyes roved over the dumps--the rich dumps which represented two months' well-directed labour of a gang of a hundred men.

As Chloe Elliston sat in the little living-room and listened to the impa.s.sioned words of Lapierre, the man's chance of winning her was far better than at any time in the whole course of their acquaintance.

Without in the least realizing it, the girl had all along held a certain regard for MacNair--a regard that was hard to explain, and that the girl herself would have been the first to disavow. She hated him! And yet--she was forced to admit even to herself, the man fascinated her.

But never until the moment of the realization of his true character, as forced upon her by the action and words of the Louchoux girl, had she entertained the slightest suspicion that she loved him. And with the discovery had come a sense of shame and humiliation that had all but broken her spirit.

Her hatred for MacNair was real enough now. That hatred, the shame and humility, and the fact that Lapierre was pleading with her as he had never pled before, were going far to convince the girl that her previous estimate of the quarter-breed had been a mistaken estimate, and that he was in truth the fine, clean, educated man of the North which on the surface he appeared to be. A man whose aim it was to deal fairly and honourably with the Indians, and who in reality had the best interests of his people at heart.

No one but Chloe herself will ever know how near she came upon that afternoon to yielding to his pleading, and laying her soul bare to him.

But something interposed--fate? Destiny? The materialist smiles "supper." Be that as it may, had she yielded to Lapierre's plans, they would have stolen from the school that very night and proceeded to Fort Rae, to be married by the priest at the Mission. For Lapierre, fully alive to the danger of delay, had eloquently pleaded his cause.

Not only was MacNair upon his trail--MacNair the relentless, the indomitable--but also the word had pa.s.sed in the North, and the men of the Mounted--those inscrutable sentinels of the silence whose watchword is "get the man"--were aroused to avenge a comrade. And Lapierre realized with a chill in his heart that he was "the man"! His one chance lay in a timely marriage with Chloe Elliston, and a quick dash for the States. If the dash succeeded, he had nothing to fear. Even if it failed, and he fell into the hands of the Mounted--with the Elliston millions behind him, he felt he could snap his fingers in the face of the law. Men of millions do not serve time.

For the men who awaited him in the Bastile du Mort, Lapierre gave no thought. He would stand by them as long as it furthered his own ends to stand by them. When they ceased to be a factor in his own safety, they could s.h.i.+ft for themselves, even as he, Lapierre, was s.h.i.+fting for himself. Someone has said every man has his price. It is certain that every man has his limit beyond which he may not go.

Lapierre, a man of consummate nerve, had put forth a final effort to save himself. Had put forth the best effort that was in him to induce Chloe Elliston to marry him. He had found the girl kinder, more receptive than he had dared hope. His spirits arose to a point they had never before attained. Success seemed within his grasp. Then, suddenly, just as his fingers were about to close upon the prize--the prize that meant to him life and plenty, instead of death--the Louchoux girl, a pa.s.sing folly of a bygone day, had suddenly risen up and confronted him--and he knew that his cause was lost.

Lapierre had reached his limit of control, and when he turned at the sound of the Indian girl's voice, his hand instinctively flew to his belt. In his rage at the sudden turn of events, he became for the instant a madman, whose one thought was to destroy her who had wrought the harm. The next instant the snarl died upon his lips and his hand dropped limply to his side. In two strides Big Lena was upon him and her thick fingers bit deep into his shoulder as she spun him to face her--to face the polished bit of the keen-edged ax which the huge woman flourished carelessly within an inch of his nose.

The fingers released their grip, Lapierre's gun was jerked from its holster, and a moment later thumped heavily upon the floor of the kitchen fifteen feet away, while the woman pointed grimly toward the overturned chair. Lapierre righted the chair, and as he sank into it, Chloe, who had stared dumbfounded upon the scene, saw that little beads of sweat stood out sharply against the pallor of his bloodless brow. As from a great distance the words of the Louchoux girl fell upon her ears. She was speaking rapidly, and the finger which she pointed at Lapierre trembled violently.

"You lied!" cried the girl. "You have always lied! You lied when you told me we were married. You lied when you said you would return! Since coming to this school I have learned much. Many things have I learned that I never knew before. When you said you would return, I believed you--even as my mother believed my father when he went away in the s.h.i.+p many years ago, and left me a babe in arms to live or to die among the teepees of the Louchoux, the people of my mother, who was the mother of his child. My mother has not been to the school, and she believes some day my father will return. For many years she has waited, has starved, and has suffered--always watching for my father's return. And the factors have laughed, and the rivermen taunted her with being the mother of a fatherless child! Ah, she has paid! Always the Indian women must pay! And I have paid also. All my life have I been hungry, and in the winter I have always been cold.

"Then you came with your laughing lips and your words of love and I went with you, and you took me to distant rivers. All through the summer there was plenty to eat in our teepee. I was happy, and for the first time in my life my heart was glad--for I loved you! And then came the winter, and the freezing up of the rivers, and the day you told me you must return to the southward--to the land of the white men--without me.

And I believed you even when they told me you would not return. I was brave--for that is the way of love, to believe, and to hope, and to be brave."

The girl's voice faltered, and the trembling hand gripped the back of the chair upon which she leaned heavily for support.

"All my life have I paid," she continued, bitterly. "Yet, it was not enough. Years, when the children of the trappers had at times plenty to eat I was always hungry and cold.

"When you came into my life I thought at last I had paid in full--that my mother and I both had paid for her belief in the white man's word. Ah, if I had known! I should have known, for well I remember, it was upon the day before--before I went away with you--that I told you of my father, and of how we always went North in the winter, knowing that again his s.h.i.+p would winter in the ice of the Bufort Sea. And you heard the story and laughed, and you said that my father would not return--that the white men never return. And when I grew afraid, you told me that you were part Indian. That your people were my people. I was a fool! I listened to your words!"

The girl dropped heavily into her chair and buried her face in her arms.

"And now I know," she sobbed, "that I have not even begun to pay!"

Suddenly she leaped to her feet and, das.h.i.+ng around the table placed herself between Lapierre and Chloe, who had listened white-lipped to her words. Once more the voice of the Louchoux girl rang through the room--high-pitched and thin with anger now--and the eyes that glared into the eyes of Lapierre blazed black with fury.

"You have lied to her! But you cannot harm her! With my own ears I heard your words! The same words I heard from your lips before, upon the banks of the far-off rivers, and the words are lies--lies--lies!"--the voice rose to a shriek--"the white woman is good! She is my friend! She has taught me much, and now, I will save her."

With a swift movement she caught the carving-knife from the table and sprang toward the defenceless Lapierre. "I will cut your heart in little bits and feed it to the dogs!"

Once more the hand of Big Lena wrenched the knife from the girl's grasp.

And once more the huge Swedish woman fixed Lapierre with her vacuous stare. Then slowly she raised her arm and pointed toward the door: "Ju git! And never ju don't come back no more. Ay don't lat ju go 'cause Ay lak' ju, but Ay bane 'fraid dis leetle girl she cut ju up and feed ju to de dogs, and Ay no lak' for git dem dogs poison!"

And Lapierre tarried not for further orders. Pausing only to recover his hat from its peg on the wall, he opened the outer door and with one sidewise malevolent glance toward the little group at the table, slunk hurriedly from the room.

Hardly had the door closed behind him than Chloe, who had sat as one stunned during the girl's accusation and her later outburst of fury, leaped to her feet and seized her arm in a convulsive grip. "Tell me!"

she cried; "what do you mean? Speak! Speak, can't you? What is this you have said? What is it all about?"

"Why it is he, Pierre Lapierre. He is the free-trader of whom I told you. The man who--who deceived me into believing I was his wife."

"But," cried Chloe, staring at her in astonishment. "I thought--I thought MacNair was the man!"

"No! No! No!" cried the girl. "Not MacNair! Pierre Lapierre, he is the man! He who sat in that chair, and whose heart I would cut into tiny bits that you shall not be made to pay, even as I have paid, for listening to the words of his lips."

"But," faltered Chloe, "I don't--I don't understand. Surely, you, fear MacNair. Surely, that night when he came into the room, carrying the wounded policeman, you fled from him in terror."

"MacNair is a white man----"

"But why should you fear him?"

"I fear him," she answered, "because among the Indians--among the Louchoux--the people of my mother, and among the Eskimoes, he is called 'The Bad Man of the North.' I hated him because Lapierre taught me to hate him. I do not hate him now, nor do I fear him. But among the Indians and among the free-traders he is both hated and feared. He chases the free-traders from the rivers, and he kills them and destroys their whiskey. For he has said, like the men of the soldier-police, that the red man shall drink no whiskey. But the red men like the whiskey.

Their life is hard and they do not have much happiness, and the whiskey of the white man makes them happy. And in the days before MacNair they could get much whiskey, but now the free-traders fear him, and only sometimes do they dare to bring whiskey to the land of the far-off rivers.

"At the posts my people may trade for food and for guns and for clothing, but they may not buy whiskey. But the free-traders sell whiskey. Also they will trade for the women. But MacNair has said they shall not trade for the women. At times, when men think he is far away, he comes swooping through the North with his Snare Lake Indians at his heels, and they chase the free-traders from the rivers. And on the sh.o.r.es of the frozen sea he chases the whalemen from the Eskimo villages even to their s.h.i.+ps which lie far out from the coast, locked in the grip of the ice-pack.

"For these things I have hated and feared him. Since I have been here at the school I have learned much. Both from your teachings, and from talking with the women of MacNair's Indians. I know now that MacNair is good, and that the factors and the soldier-police and the priest spoke words of truth, and that Lapierre and the free-traders lied!"

As the Indian girl poured forth her story, Chloe Elliston listened as one in a dream. What was this she was saying, that it was Lapierre who sold whiskey to the Indians, and MacNair who stood firm, and struck mighty blows for the right of things? Surely, this girl's mind was unhinged--or, had something gone wrong with her own brain? Was it possible she had heard aright?

Suddenly she remembered the words of Corporal Ripley, when he asked her to withdraw the charge of murder against MacNair: "In the North we know something of MacNair's work." And again: "We know the North needs men like MacNair."

Could it be possible that after all--with the thought there flashed into the girl's mind the scene on Snare Lake. Had she not seen with her own eyes the evidence of this man's work among the Indians! With a gesture of appeal she turned to Big Lena.

"Surely, Lena, you remember that night on Snare Lake? You saw MacNair's Indians, drunk as fiends--and the buildings all on fire? You saw MacNair kicking and knocking them about? And you saw him fire the shots that killed two men? Speak, can't you? Did you see these things? Did I see them? Was I dreaming? Or am I dreaming now?"

Big Lena s.h.i.+fted her weight ponderously, and the stare of the china-blue eyes met steadily the half-startled eyes of the girl. "Yah, Ay seen das all right. Dem Injuns dey awful drunk das night and MacNair he come 'long and schlap dem and kick dem 'round. But das gude for dem. Dey got it comin'. Dey should not ought to drink Lapierre's vhiskey."

"Lapierre's whiskey!" cried the girl. "Are you crazy?"

"Naw, Ay tank Ay ain't so crazy. Lapierre he fool ju long tam'."