Back to God's Country and Other Stories Part 22

"Peter G.o.d!"

It was she who leaned forward now, her eyes burning, her bosom rising and falling with the quickness of her breath.

"You must go to Peter G.o.d," she said. "You must take a letter to him--from me. And it will be for him--for Peter G.o.d--to say whether I am to be your wife. You are honorable. You will be fair with me. You will take the letter to him. And I will be fair with you. I will be your wife, I will try hard to care for you--if Peter G.o.d--says--"

Her voice broke. She covered her face, and for a moment, too stunned to speak, Philip looked at her while her slender form trembled with sobs.

She had bowed her head, and for the first time he reached out and laid his hand upon the soft glory of her hair. Its touch set aflame every fiber in him. Hope swept through him, crus.h.i.+ng his fears like a juggernaut. It would be a simple task to go to Peter G.o.d! He was tempted to take her in his arms. A moment more, and he would have caught her to him, but the weight of his hand on her head roused her, and she raised her face, and drew back. His arms were reaching out. She saw what was in his eyes.

"Not now," she said. "Not until you have gone to him. Nothing in the world will be too great a reward for you if you are fair with me, for you are taking a chance. In the end you may receive nothing. For if Peter G.o.d says that I cannot be your wife, I cannot. He must be the arbiter. On those conditions, will you go?"

"Yes, I will go," said Philip.

It was early in August when Philip reached Edmonton. From there he took the new line of rail to Athabasca Landing; it was September when he arrived at Fort McMurray and found Pierre Gravois, a half-breed, who was to accompany him by canoe up to Fort MacPherson. Before leaving this final outpost, whence the real journey into the North began, Philip sent a long letter to Josephine.

Two days after he and Pierre had started down the Mackenzie, a letter came to Fort McMurray for Philip. "Long" La Brie, a special messenger, brought it from Athabasca Landing. He was too late, and he had no instructions--and had not been paid--to go farther.

Day after day Philip continued steadily northward. He carried Josephine's letter to Peter G.o.d in his breast pocket, securely tied in a little waterproof bag. It was a thick letter, and time and again he held it in his hand, and wondered why it was that Josephine could have so much to say to the lonely fox-hunter up on the edge of the Barren.

One night, as he sat alone by their fire in the chill of September darkness, he took the letter from its sack and saw that the contents of the bulging envelope had sprung one end of the flap loose. Before he went to bed Pierre had set a pail of water on the coals. A cloud of steam was rising from it. Those two things--the steam and the loosened flap--sent a thrill through Philip. What was in the letter? What had Josephine McCloud written to Peter G.o.d?

He looked toward sleeping Pierre; the pail of water began to bubble and sing--he drew a tense breath, and rose to his feet. In thirty seconds the steam rising from the pail would free the rest of the flap. He could read the letter, and reseal it.

And then, like a shock, came the thought of the few notes Josephine had written to him. On each of them she had never failed to stamp her seal in a lavender-colored wax. He had observed that Colonel McCloud always used a seal, in bright red. On this letter to Peter G.o.d there was no seal! She trusted him. Her faith was implicit. And this was her proof of it. Under his breath he laughed, and his heart grew warm with new happiness and hope. "I have faith in you," she had said, at parting; and now, again, out of the letter her voice seemed to whisper to him, "I have faith in you."

He replaced the letter in its sack, and crawled between his blankets close to Pierre.

That night had seen the beginning of his struggle with himself. This year, autumn and winter came early in the North country. It was to be a winter of terrible cold, of deep snow, of famine and pestilence--the winter of 1910. The first oppressive gloom of it added to the fear and suspense that began to grow in Philip.

For days there was no sign of the sun. The clouds hung low. Bitter winds came out of the North, and nights these winds wailed desolately through the tops of the spruce under which they slept. And day after day and night after night the temptation came upon him more strongly to open the letter he was carrying to Peter G.o.d.

He was convinced now that the letter--and the letter alone--held his fate, and that he was acting blindly. Was this justice to himself? He wanted Josephine. He wanted her above all else in the world. Then why should he not fight for her--in his own way? And to do that he must read the letter. To know its contents would mean--Josephine. If there was nothing in it that would stand between them, he would have done no wrong, for he would still take it on to Peter G.o.d. So he argued. But if the letter jeopardized his chances of possessing her, his knowledge of what it contained would give him an opportunity to win in another way.

He could even answer it himself and take back to her false word from Peter G.o.d, for seven frost-biting years along the edge of the Barren had surely changed Peter G.o.d's handwriting. His treachery, if it could be called that, would never be discovered. And it would give him Josephine.

This was the temptation. The power that resisted it was the spirit of that big, clean, fighting North which makes men out of a beginning of flesh and bone. Ten years of that North had seeped into Philip's being.

He hung on. It was November when he reached Port MacPherson, and he had not opened the letter.

Deep snows fell, and fierce blizzards shot like gunblasts from out of the Arctic. Snow and wind were not what brought the deeper gloom and fear to Fort MacPherson. La mort rouge, smallpox,--the "red death,"--was galloping through the wilderness. Rumors were first verified by facts from the Dog Rib Indians. A quarter of them were down with the scourge of the Northland. From Hudson's Bay on the east to the Great Bear on the west, the fur posts were sending out their runners, and a hundred Paul Reveres of the forests were riding swiftly behind their dogs to spread the warning. On the afternoon of the day Philip left for the cabin of Peter G.o.d, a patrol of the Royal Mounted came in on snowshoes from the South, and voluntarily went into quarantine.

Philip traveled slowly. For three days and nights the air was filled with the "Arctic dust" snow that was hard as flint and stung like shot; and it was so cold that he paused frequently and built small fires, over which he filled his lungs with hot air and smoke. He knew what it meant to have the lungs "touched"--sloughing away in the spring, blood-spitting, and certain death.

On the fourth day the temperature began to rise; the fifth it was clear, and thirty degrees warmer. His thermometer had gone to sixty below zero. It was now thirty below.

It was the morning of the sixth day when he reached the thick fringe of stunted spruce that sheltered Peter G.o.d's cabin. He was half blinded.

The snow-filled blizzards cut his face until it was swollen and purple.

Twenty paces from Peter G.o.d's cabin he stopped, and stared, and rubbed his eyes--and rubbed them again--as though not quite sure his vision was not playing him a trick.

A cry broke from his lips then. Over Peter G.o.d's door there was nailed a slender sapling, and at the end of that sapling there floated a tattered, windbeaten red rag. It was the signal. It was the one voice common to all the wilderness--a warning to man, woman and child, white or red, that had come down through the centuries. Peter G.o.d was down with the smallpox!

For a few moments the discovery stunned him. Then he was filled with a chill, creeping horror. Peter G.o.d was sick with the scourge. Perhaps he was dying. It might be--that he was dead. In spite of the terror of the thing ahead of him, he thought of Josephine. If Peter G.o.d was dead--

Above the low moaning of the wind in the spruce tops he cursed himself.

He had thought a crime, and he clenched his mittened hands as he stared at the one window of the cabin. His eyes s.h.i.+fted upward. In the air was a filmy, floating gray. It was smoke coming from the chimney. Peter G.o.d was not dead.

Something kept him from shouting Peter G.o.d's name, that the trapper might come to the door. He went to the window, and looked in. For a few moments he could see nothing. And then, dimly, he made out the cot against the wall. And Peter G.o.d sat on the cot, hunched forward, his head in his hands. With a quick breath Philip turned to the door, opened it, and entered the cabin. Peter G.o.d staggered to his feet as the door opened. His eyes were wild and filled with fever.

"You--Curtis!" he cried huskily. "My G.o.d, didn't you see the flag?"

"Yes."

Philip's half-frozen features were smiling, and now he was holding out a hand from which he had drawn his mitten.

"Lucky I happened along just now, old man. You've got it, eh?"

Peter G.o.d shrank back from the other's outstretched hand.

"There's time," he cried, pointing to the door.

"Don't breathe this air. Get out. I'm not bad yet--but it's smallpox, Curtis!"

"I know it," said Philip, beginning to throw off his hood and coat.

"I'm not afraid of it. I had a touch of it three years ago over on the Gray Buzzard, so I guess I'm immune. Besides, I've come two thousand miles to see you, Peter G.o.d--two thousand miles to bring you a letter from Josephine McCloud."

For ten seconds Peter G.o.d stood tense and motionless. Then he swayed forward.

"A letter--for Peter G.o.d--from Josephine McCloud?" he gasped, and held out his hands.

An hour later they sat facing each other--Peter G.o.d and Curtis. The beginning of the scourge betrayed itself in the red flush of Peter G.o.d's face, and the fever in his eyes. But he was calm. For many minutes he had spoken in a quiet, even voice, and Philip Curtis sat with scarcely a breath and a heart that at times had risen in his throat to choke him. In his hand Peter G.o.d held the pages of the letter he had read.

Now he went on:

"So I'm going to tell it all to you, Curtis--because I know that you are a man. Josephine has left nothing out. She has told me of your love, and of the reward she has promised you--if Peter G.o.d sends back a certain word. She says frankly that she does not love you, but that she honors you above all men--except her father, and one other. That other, Curtis, is myself. Years ago the woman you love--was my wife."

Peter G.o.d put a hand to his head, as if to cool the fire that was beginning to burn him up.

"Her name wasn't Mrs. Peter G.o.d," he went on, and a smile fought grimly on his lips. "That's the one thing I won't tell you, Curtis--my name.

The story itself will be enough.

"Perhaps there were two other people in the world happier than we. I doubt it. I got into politics. I made an enemy, a deadly enemy. He was a blackmailer, a thief, the head of a political ring that lived on graft. Through my efforts he was exposed, And then he laid for me--and he got me.

"I must give him credit for doing it cleverly and completely. He set a trap for me, and a woman helped him. I won't go into details. The trap sprung, and it caught me. Even Josephine could not be made to believe in my innocence; so cleverly was the trap set that my best friends among the newspapers could find no excuse for me.

"I have never blamed Josephine for what she did after that. To all the world, and most of all to her, I was caught red-handed. I knew that she loved me even as she was divorcing me. On the day the divorce was given to her, my brain went bad. The world turned red, and then black, and then red again. And I--"

Peter G.o.d paused again, with a hand to his head.

"You came up here," said Philip, in a low voice.

"Not--until I had seen the man who ruined me," replied Peter G.o.d quietly. "We were alone in his office. I gave him a fair chance to redeem himself--to confess what he had done. He laughed at me, exulted over my fall, taunted me. And so--I killed him."