Back to God's Country and Other Stories Part 23

He rose from his chair and stood swaying. He was not excited.

"In his office, with his dead body at my feet, I wrote a note to Josephine," he finished. "I told her what I had done, and again I swore my innocence. I wrote her that some day she might hear from me, but not under my right name, as the law would always be watching for me. It was ironic that on that human cobra's desk there lay an open Bible, open at the Book of Peter, and involuntarily I wrote the words to Josephine--PETER G.o.d. She has kept my secret, while the law has hunted for me. And this--"

He held the pages of the letter out to Philip.

"Take the letter--go outside--and read what she has written," he said.

"Come back in half an hour. I want to think."

Back of the cabin, where Peter G.o.d had piled his winter's fuel, Philip read the letter; and at times the soul within him seemed smothered, and at times it quivered with a strange and joyous emotion.

At last vindication had come for Peter G.o.d, and before he had read a page of the letter Philip understood why it was that Josephine had sent him with it into the North. For nearly seven years she had known of Peter G.o.d's innocence of the thing for which she had divorced him. The woman--the dead man's accomplice--had told her the whole story, as Peter G.o.d a few minutes before had told it to Curtis; and during those seven years she had traveled the world seeking for him--the man who bore the name of Peter G.o.d.

Each night she had prayed G.o.d that the next day she might find him, and now that her prayer had been answered, she begged that she might come to him, and share with him for all time a life away from the world they knew.

The woman breathed like life in the pages Philip read; yet with that wonderful message to Peter G.o.d she pilloried herself for those red and insane hours in which she had lost faith in him. She had no excuse for herself, except her great love; she crucified herself, even as she held out her arms to him across that thousand miles of desolation. Frankly she had written of the great price she was offering for this one chance of life and happiness. She told of Philip's love, and of the reward she had offered him should Peter G.o.d find that in his heart love had died for her. Which should it be?

Twice Philip read that wonderful message he had brought into the North, and he envied Peter G.o.d the outlaw.

The thirty minutes were gone when he entered the cabin. Peter G.o.d was waiting for him. He motioned him to a seat close to him.

"You have read it?" he asked.

Philip nodded. In these moments he did not trust himself to speak.

Peter G.o.d understood. The flush was deeper in his face; his eyes burned brighter with the fever; but of the two he was the calmer, and his voice was steady.

"I haven't much time, Curtis," he said, and he smiled faintly as he folded the pages of the letter, "My head is cracking. But I've thought it all out, and you've got to go back to her--and tell her that Peter G.o.d is dead."

A gasp broke from Philip's lips. It was his only answer.

"It's--best," continued Peter G.o.d, and he spoke more slowly, but firmly. "I love her, Curtis. G.o.d knows that it's been only my dreams of her that have kept me alive all these years. She wants to come to me, but it's impossible. I'm an outlaw. The law won't excuse my killing of the cobra. We'd have to hide. All our lives we'd have to hide.

And--some day--they might get me. There's just one thing to do. Go back to her. Tell her Peter G.o.d is dead. And--make her happy--if you can."

For the first time something rose and overwhelmed the love in Philip's breast.

"She wants to come to you," he cried, and he leaned toward Peter G.o.d, white-faced, clenching his hands. "She wants to come!" he repeated.

"And the law won't find you. It's been seven years--and G.o.d knows no word will ever go from me. It won't find you. And if it should, you can fight it together, you and Josephine."

Peter G.o.d held out his hands.

"Now I know I need have no fear in sending you back," he said huskily.

"You're a man. And you've got to go. She can't come to me, Curtis. It would kill her--this life. Think of a winter here--madness--the yapping of the foxes--"

He put a hand to his head, and swayed.

"You've got to go. Tell her Peter G.o.d is dead--"

Philip sprang forward as Peter G.o.d crumpled down on his bunk.

After that came the long dark hours of fever and delirium. They crawled along into days, and day and night Philip fought to keep life in the body of the man who had given the world to him, for as the fight continued he began more and more to accept Josephine as his own. He had come fairly. He had kept his pledge. And Peter G.o.d had spoken.

"You must go. You must tell her Peter G.o.d is dead."

And Philip began to accept this, not altogether as his joy, but as his duty. He could not argue with Peter G.o.d when he rose from his sick bed.

He would go back to Josephine.

For many days he and Peter G.o.d fought with the "red death" in the little cabin. It was a fight which he could never forget. One afternoon--to strengthen himself for the terrible night that was coming--he walked several miles back into the stunted spruce on his snowshoes. It was mid-afternoon when he returned with a haunch of caribou meat on his shoulder. Three hundred yards from the cabin something stopped him like a shot. He listened. From ahead of him came the whining and snarling of dogs, the crack of a whip, a shout which he could not understand. He dropped his burden of meat and sped on. At the southward edge of a level open he stopped again. Straight ahead of him was the cabin. A hundred yards to the right of him was a dog team and a driver. Between the team and the cabin a hooded and coated figure was running in the direction of the danger signal on the sapling pole.

With a cry of warning Philip darted in pursuit. He overtook the figure at the cabin door. His hand caught it by the arm. It turned--and he stared into the white, terror-stricken face of Josephine McCloud!

"Good G.o.d!" he cried, and that was all.

She gripped him with both hands. He had never heard her voice as it was now. She answered the amazement and horror in his face.

"I sent you a letter," she cried pantingly, "and it didn't overtake you. As soon as you were gone, I knew that I must come--that I must follow--that I must speak with my own lips what I had written. I tried to catch you. But you traveled faster. Will you forgive me--you will forgive me--"

She turned to the door. He held her.

"It is the smallpox," he said, and his voice was dead.

"I know," she panted. "The man over there--told me what the little flag means. And I'm glad--glad I came in time to go in to him--as he is. And you--you--must forgive!"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed herself free from his grasp. The door opened. It closed behind her. A moment later he heard through the sapling door a strange cry--a woman's cry--a man's cry--and he turned and walked heavily back into the spruce forest.

THE MOUSE

"Why, you ornery little cuss," said Falkner, pausing with a forkful of beans half way to his mouth. "Where in G.o.d A'mighty's name did YOU come from?"

It was against all of Jim's crude but honest ethics of the big wilderness to take the Lord's name in vain, and the words he uttered were filled more with the softness of a prayer than the harshness of profanity. He was big, and his hands were hard and knotted, and his face was covered with a coa.r.s.e red scrub of beard. But his hair was blond, and his eyes were blue, and just now they were filled with unbounded amazement. Slowly the fork loaded with beans descended to his plate, and he said again, barely above a whisper:

"Where in G.o.d A'mighty's name DID you come from?"

There was nothing human in the one room of his wilderness cabin to speak of. At the first glance there was nothing alive in the room, with the exception of Jim Falkner himself. There was not even a dog, for Jim had lost his one dog weeks before. And yet he spoke, and his eyes glistened, and for a full minute after that he sat as motionless as a rock. Then something moved--at the farther end of the rough board table. It was a mouse--a soft, brown, bright-eyed little mouse, not as large as his thumb. It was not like the mice Jim had been accustomed to see in the North woods, the larger, sharp-nosed, rat-like creatures which sprung his traps now and then, and he gave a sort of gasp through his beard.

"I'm as crazy as a loon if it isn't a sure-enough down-home mouse, just like we used to catch in the kitchen down in Ohio," he told himself.

And for the third time he asked. "Now where in G.o.d A'mighty's name DID YOU come from?"

The mouse made no answer. It had humped itself up into a little ball, and was eyeing Jim with the keenest of suspicion.

"You're a thousand miles from home, old man," Falkner addressed it, still without a movement. "You're a clean thousand miles straight north of the kind o' civilization you was born in, and I want to know how you got here. By George--is it possible--you got mixed up in that box of stuff SHE sent up? Did you come from HER?"

He made a sudden movement, as if he expected an answer, and in a flash the mouse had scurried off the table and had disappeared under his bunk.

"The little cuss!" said Falkner. "He's sure got his nerve!"