Northern Lights Part 8

The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good while. Listen."

There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip, drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room.

"There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head toward the sound.

"You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.

"Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the Bend too," he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched valley in the early morning light of autumn.

"Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a gra.s.shopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They began to eat.

"How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet.

"Fire's all right at nights. He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend at night. The next camp's six miles north from here. He'd only come down the valley daytimes. I studied it all out, and it's a dead sure thing.

From daylight till dusk I'm on to him--I got the trail in my eye."

He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity.

Sinnet's eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer, and the long, scraggy hands and whipcord neck seemed to interest him greatly. He looked at his own slim, brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost as cruel as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too, a knowledge and an understanding which gave it humanity.

"You're sure he did it?" Sinnet asked, presently, after drinking a very small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?"

"My name's Buckmaster, ain't it--Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own name?

It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He told Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East. Bill didn't want to tell, but he said it was fair I should know, for my boy never did n.o.body any harm--an' Greevy's livin' on! But I'll git him. Right's right."

"Wouldn't it be better for the law to hang him if you've got the proof, Buck? A year or so in jail, an' a long time to think over what's going round his neck on the scaffold--wouldn't that suit you, if you've got the proof?"

A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster's face.

"I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure, not for _p'r'aps_! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when _she_ went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived together, him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went gold-was.h.i.+n' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an'

slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he was five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit to take the trail."

The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile--jest his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an' set up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it; but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used to laugh, sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o' Clint's, don't you?"

Sinnet's face was toward the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He took the pipe from his mouth slowly.

"I can hear it now," he answered, slowly. "I hear it often, Buck."

The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled--in so far as anything could startle any one who had lived a life of chance and danger and accident--and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move, and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively.

"You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet.

He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you? I ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his thinkin'. G.o.d! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead--dead!"

The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table, while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved tragedy and suffering--Laoc.o.o.n struggling with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which were strangling him.

"Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a thought, he peered out of the doorway toward Juniper Bend. "That hawk seen him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb." He had the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller.

The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed, Sinnet.

It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the minute comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of Clint, an'

missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on myself, an'

got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn't take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand as though to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the emotion which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily.

"It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak to in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me cuttin'

and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son."

Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into Buckmaster's face: "What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your boy tell Ricketts? I've heard, too, about it, and that's why I asked you if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know, and if he told Ricketts, that's pretty straight; but I'd like to know if what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it.

Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him--_plumb_."

Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he was, an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots to spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards, an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest lay there on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An'

Clint told Ricketts who it was."

"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.

"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her? She'll get married, an she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an'

everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way, an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em: What was the good of making things worse? They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster, his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her trouble."

Sinnet's face was turned toward Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable look.

"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it had a suggestive note.

"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."

There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke, and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling something that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said:

"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a man had put a bullet in him, an'--"

Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes south to spend the winter with his girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly.

"Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy quarrelled too."

"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster, roughly.

"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to get Greevy. I bin waitin' for him, an' I'll git him."

"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Rickett's story; I'll tell what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."

"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here."

With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice was not so even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on.

She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for her father."

"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."

He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.

The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigor which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and s.p.a.cious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ran past--a waiting, virgin world.

Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His eyes and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the wilderness.

As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. "Wait--you wait, Buck. You've got to hear all. You haven't heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you."