Northern Lights Part 25

"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life if you do it. I will promise--ah, yes, Gra.s.sette, but it shall be so!

Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"

"To go free--_altogether_?"

"Well, but if your life is saved, Gra.s.sette?"

The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its sullenness.

"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year! To do always what some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder! To have men like that over me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--to be treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while outside there is free life, and to go where you will at your own price--no! What do I care for life? What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I stayed here, I would kill again--I would kill--kill!"

"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the chance? We all have to die some time or other, Gra.s.sette, some sooner, some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to G.o.d in your hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten G.o.d, Gra.s.sette? We used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."

There was a moment's silence, in which Gra.s.sette's head was thrust forward, his eyes staring into s.p.a.ce. The old Seigneur had touched a vulnerable corner in his nature.

Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether!... What is his name? Who is he?"

"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked, in English, again.

"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.

The effect of these words upon Gra.s.sette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him.

"_Sang de Dieu_!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and rage.

Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried off Gra.s.sette's wife years ago. He stepped forward and was about to speak, but changed his mind. He would leave it all to Gra.s.sette; he would not let the Sheriff know the truth, unless Gra.s.sette himself disclosed the situation.

He looked at Gra.s.sette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined.

In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human suffering in his own breast to make him realize what Gra.s.sette was undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of the world and its happenings, and he had a natural human sympathy which had made many a man and woman eternally grateful to him.

What would Gra.s.sette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and the solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What would the man do?

"Well, what is all this, Gra.s.sette?" asked the Sheriff, brusquely. His official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would have roused Gra.s.sette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now it was met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Gra.s.sette kept his eyes fixed on the Governor.

"James Tarran Bignold!" Gra.s.sette said, harshly, with eyes that searched the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The Governor, then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and the man who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a stranger in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten.

"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.

"Yes, Bignold is his name, Gra.s.sette," said the Sheriff. "You took a life, and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor says, there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near _the day_, and this isn't a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground, and--"

The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There is no time to be lost, Gra.s.sette. He has been ten days in the mine."

Gra.s.sette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a pa.s.sionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then, and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by which Gra.s.sette was now faced had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and pa.s.sion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them.

"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.

"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector.

He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."

"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Gra.s.sette, with suppressed malice, under his breath.

"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Gra.s.sette, to do its work for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Gra.s.sette. It's your chance for life. Speak out quick."

The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had brought again to Gra.s.sette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Gra.s.sette's mind. This Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?

In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her?

And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man was there alive before him, what would he do?

Outside these prison walls--to be out there in the sun, where life would be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life, and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning, though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be, then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own!

What would he do?

The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.

"What will you do, Gra.s.sette?" he said, at last, in a low voice and with a step forward to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself and give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again."

Gra.s.sette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, every one would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each other--and all that would happen then.

Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew.

"_Bien_, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go alone--eh?"

The Sheriff shook his head. "No; two warders will go with you--and myself."

A strange look pa.s.sed over Gra.s.sette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he said again: "_Bon_, I will go."

"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.

"_Bon_!" said Gra.s.sette. "What time is it?"

"Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to open the door of the cell.

"By sundown!" Gra.s.sette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to leave the cell.

At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught his face.

Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the gra.s.s and the trees to the boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--shouts of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when he had left the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for a moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Gra.s.sette!

Save him, and we'll save you."

Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream--a long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him "Cheer up and do the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little while they dismounted from their horses and sat under the shade of a great ash-tree for a few moments and s.n.a.t.c.hed a mouthful of luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being pa.s.sed through a fiery crucible.

In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them--a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!--if she was still alive!

Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so well worth living! But since that was not to be, then he would see what he could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense, had injured him.

Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after; the sun and the clear, sweet air, the waving gra.s.s, the occasional clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated, unfamiliar, compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all the years that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man, waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly, and demoralizing--now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is Marcile?

It was four o'clock when they reached the pa.s.s which only Gra.s.sette knew, the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.

Here Gra.s.sette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the Sheriff called out: "h.e.l.lo, Bignold! h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo, Bignold! Are you there?--h.e.l.lo!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a silence--a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "h.e.l.lo!

h.e.l.lo-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"

They strained their ears. Gra.s.sette was flat on the ground, his ear to the earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.