The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

The constable slapped his thigh. "Of course. That's the answer."

  Night fell, the fugitives still not in sight. The country was so rough that they might be within a mile or two and yet not be seen.

  "Better camp, I reckon," Morse suggested.

  "Yes. Here. We'll come up with them to-morrow."

  They were treated that evening to an indescribably brilliant pyrotechnic display in the heavens. An aurora flashed across the sky such as neither of them had ever seen before. The vault was aglow with waves of red, violet, and purple that danced and whirled, with fickle, inconstant flashes of gold and green and yellow bars. A radiant incandescence of great power lit the arch and flooded it with light that poured through the cathedral windows of the Most High.

  At daybreak they were up. Quickly they breakfasted and loaded. The trail they followed was before noon a rotten one, due to a sudden rise in the temperature, but it still bore south steadily.

  They reached the camp where West and his guide had spent the night. Another chapter of the long story of the trail was written here. The sled and the guide had gone on south, but West had not been with them. His webs went wandering off at an angle, hesitant and uncertain. Sometimes they doubled across the track he had already made.

  Beresford was breaking trail. His hand shot straight out. In the distance there was a tiny black speck in the waste of white. It moved.

  Even yet the men who had come to bring the law into the Lone Lands did not relax their vigilance. They knew West's crafty, cunning mind. This might be a ruse to trap them. When they left the sled and moved forward, it was with rules ready. The hunters stalked their prey as they would have done a musk ox. Slowly, noiselessly, they approached.

  The figure was that of a huge man. He sat huddled in the snow, his back to them. Despair was in the droop of the head and the set of the bowed shoulders.

  One of the dogs howled. The big torso straightened instantly. The shaggy head came up. Bully West was listening intently. He turned and looked straight at them, but he gave no sign of knowing they were there. The constable took a step and the hissing of the shoe-runner sounded.

  "I'm watchin' you, Stomak-o-sox," the heavy voice of the convict growled. "Can't fool me. I see every step you're takin'."

  It was an empty boast, almost pathetic in its futility. Morse and Beresford moved closer, still without speech.

  West broke into violent, impotent cursing. "You're there, you damned wood Cree! Think I don't know? Think I can't see you? Well, I can. Plain as you can see me. You come here an' get me, or I'll skin you alive like I done last week. Hear me?"

  The voice rose to a scream. It betrayed terror--the horrible deadly fear of being left alone to perish in the icy wastes of the North.

  Beresford crept close and waved a hand in front of the big man's eyes. West did not know it. He babbled vain and foolish threats at his guide.

  The convict had gone blind--snow-blind, and Stomak-o-sox had left him alone to make a push for his own life while there was still time.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  SNOW-BLIND

  West grinned up at the officer, his yellow canines showing like tusks. His matted face was an unlovely sight. In it stark, naked fear struggled with craftiness and cruelty.

  "Good you came back--good for you. I ain't blind. I been foolin' you all along. Wanted, to try you out. Now we'll mush. Straight for the big lake. North by west like we been going. Un'erstand, Stomak-o-sox? I'll not beat yore head off this time, but if you ever try any monkey tricks with Bully West again--" He let the threat die out in a sound of grinding teeth.

  Beresford spoke. His voice was gentle. Vile though this murderer was, there was something pitiable in his condition. One cannot see a Colossus of strength and energy stricken to helplessness without some sense of compassion.

  "It's not Stomak-o-sox. We're two of the North-West Mounted. You're under arrest for breaking prison and for killing Tim Kelly."

  The information stunned West. He stared up out of sightless eyes. So far as he had known, no member of the Mounted was within five hundred miles of him. Yet the law had stretched out its long arm to snatch him back from this Arctic waste after he had traveled nearly fifteen hundred miles. It was incredible that there could exist such a police force on earth.

  "Got me, did you?" he growled. He added the boast that he could not keep back. "Well, you'd never 'a' got me if I hadn't gone blind--never in this world. There ain't any two of yore damned spies could land Bully West when he's at himself."

  "Had breakfast?"

  He broke into a string of curses. "No, our grub's runnin' low. That wood Cree slipped away with all we had. Wish I'd killed him last week when I skinned him with the dog-whip."

  "How long have you been blind?"

  "It's been comin' on two-three days. This damned burnin' glare from the snow. Yesterday they give out completely. I tied myself by a line to the Injun. Knew I couldn't trust him. After all I done for him too."

  "Did you know he was traveling south with you--had been since yesterday afternoon?"

  "No, was he?" Again West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' slugs," he concluded savagely.

  "You're not likely to meet him again. We've come to take you back to prison."

  Morse brought the train up and the hungry man was fed. They treated his eyes with the simple remedies the North knows and bound them with a handkerchief to keep out the fierce light reflected from the snow.

  Afterward, they attached him by a line to the driver. He stumbled along behind. Sometimes he caught his foot or slipped and plunged down into the snow. Nobody had ever called him a patient man. Whenever any mishap occurred, he polluted the air with his vile speech.

  They made slow progress, for the pace had to be regulated to suit the prisoner.

  Day succeeded day, each with its routine much the same as the one before. They made breakfast, broke camp, packed, and mushed. The swish of the runners sounded from morning till night fell. Food began to run scarce. Once they left the blind man at the camp while they hunted wood buffalo. It was a long, hard business. They came back empty-handed after a two-day chase, but less than a mile from camp they sighted a half-grown polar bear and dropped it before the animal had a chance to move.

  One happy hour they got through the Land of Little Sticks and struck the forests again.

  They had a blazing fire again for the first time in six weeks. Brush and sticks and logs went into it till it roared furiously.

  Morse turned from replenishing it to notice that West had removed the bandage from his eyes.

  "Better keep it on," the young man advised.

  "I was changin' it. Too tight. Gives me a headache," the convict answered sulkily.

  "Can you see anything at all yet?"

  "Not a thing. Looks to me like I never would."

  Tom turned his head for him, so that he faced the blaze squarely. "No light at all?"

  "Nope. Don't reckon I ever will see."

  "Maybe you will. I've known' cases of snow-blindness where they couldn't see for a month an' came out all right."

  "Hurts like blazes," growled the big fellow.

  "I know. But not as bad as it did, does it? That salve has helped some."

  The two young fellows took care of the man as though he had been a brother. They bathed his eyes, fed him, guided him, encouraged him. He was a bad lot--the worst that either of them had known. But he was in trouble and filled with self-pity. Never ill before, a giant of strength and energy, his condition now apparently filled him with despair.

  He would sit hunched down before the fire, head bowed in his hands, a mountain of dole and woe. Sometimes he talked, and he blamed every one but himself for his condition. He never had had a square deal. Every one was against him. It was a rotten world. Then he would fall to cursing God and man.

  In some ways he was less trouble than if he had been able to see. He was helpless and had to trust to them. His safety depended on
their safety. He could not strike at them without injuring himself. No matter how much he cringed at the thought of being dragged back to punishment, he shrank still more from the prospect of death in the snow wastes. The situation galled him. Every decent word he gave them came grudgingly, and he still snarled and complained and occasionally bullied as though he had the whip hand.

  "A nice specimen of ursus horribilis," Beresford murmured to his companion one day. "Thought he was game, anyhow, but he's a yellow quitter. Acts as though we were to blame for his blindness and for what's waiting for him at the end of the journey. I like a man to stand the gaff when it's prodding him."

  Morse nodded. "Look out for him. I've got a notion in the back o' my head that he's beginning to see again. He'd kill us in a holy minute if he dared. Only his blindness keeps him from it. What do you say? Shall we handcuff him nights?"

  "Not necessary," the constable said. "He can't see a thing. Watch him groping for that stick."

  "All his brains run to cunning. Don't forget that. Why should he have to feel so long for that stick? He laid it down himself a minute ago. Tryin' to slip one over on us maybe."

  The Canadian looked at the lean, brown face of his friend and grinned. "I've a notion our imaginations too are getting a bit jumpy. We've had one bully time on this trip--with the reverse English. It's all in the day's work to buck blizzards and starve and freeze, though I wouldn't be surprised if our systems were pretty well fed up with grief before we caught Mr. Bully West. Since then--well, you couldn't call him a cheerful traveling companion, could you? A dozen times a day I want to rip loose and tell him how much I don't think of him."

  "Still--"

  "We'll keep an eye on him. If necessary, it'll be the bracelets for him. I'd hate to have the Inspector send in a report to headquarters, 'Constable Beresford missing in the line of duty.' I've a prejudice against being shot in the back."

  "That's one of the reasons I'm here--to see you're not if I can help it."

  Beresford's boyish face lit up. He understood what his friend meant. "Say, Faraway isn't New York or London or even Toronto. But how'd you like to be sitting down to one of Jessie McRae's suppers? A bit of broiled venison done to a juicy turn, potatoes, turnips, hot biscuits spread with raspberry jam. By jove, it makes the mouth water."

  "And a slice of plum puddin' to top off with," suggested Morse, bringing his own memory into play. "Don't ask me how I'd like it. That's a justifiable excuse for murder. Get busy on that rubaboo. Our guest's howlin' for his dinner."

  The faint suspicions of Morse made the officers more wary. They watched their prisoner a little closer. Neither of them quite believed that he was recovering his sight. It was merely a possibility to be guarded against.

  But the guess of Morse had been true. It had been a week since flashes of light had first come to West faintly. He began to distinguish objects in a hazy way. Every day he could see better. Now he could tell Morse from Beresford, one dog from another. Give him a few more days and he would have as good vision as before he had gone blind.

  All this he hid cunningly, as a miser does his gold. For his warped, cruel brain was planning death to these two men. After that, another plunge into the North for life and freedom.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  THE WILD BEAST LEAPS

  Tom Morse was chopping wood. He knew how to handle an axe. His strokes fell sure and strong, with the full circling sweep of the expert.

  The young tree crashed down and he began to lop off its branches. Halfway up the trunk he stopped and raised his head to listen.

  No sound had come to him. None came now. But dear as a bell he heard the voice of Win Beresford calling.

  "Help! Help!"

  It was not a cry that had issued from his friend's throat. Tom knew that. But it was real. It had sprung out of his dire need from the heart, perhaps in the one instant of time left him, and it had leaped silently across space straight to the heart of his friend.

  Tom kicked into his snowshoes and began to run. He held the axe in his hand, gripped near the haft. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, lay between him and camp, which was just over the brow of a small hill. The bushes flew past as he swung to his stride. Never had he skimmed the crust faster, but his feet seemed to be weighted with lead. Then, as he topped the rise, he saw the disaster he had dreaded.

  The constable was crumpling to the ground, his body slack and inert, while the giant slashed at him with a dub of firewood he had snatched from the ground. The upraised arm of the soldier broke the force of the blow, but Morse guessed by the way the arm fell that the bone had snapped.

  At the sound of the scraping runners, West whirled. He lunged savagely. Even as Tom ducked, a sharp pain shot through his leg from the force of the glancing blow. The axe-head swung like a circle of steel. It struck the convict's fur cap. The fellow went down like an ox in a slaughter-house.

  Tom took one look at him and ran to his friend. Beresford was a sorry sight. He lay unconscious, head and face battered, the blood from his wounds staining the snow.

  The man-hunters had come into the wilderness prepared for emergencies. Jessie McRae had prepared a small medicine case as a present for the constable. Morse ran to the sled and found this. He unrolled bandages and after he had washed the wounds bound them. As he was about to examine the arm, he glanced up.

  For a fraction of a second West's wolfish eyes glared at him before they took on again the stare of blindness. The man had moved. He had hitched himself several yards nearer a rifle which stood propped against a balsam.

  The revolver of the deputy constable came to light. "Stop right where you're at. Don't take another step."

  The convict snarled rage, but he did not move. Some sure instinct warned him what the cold light in the eyes of his captor meant, that if he crept one inch farther toward the weapon he would die in his tracks.

  "He--he jumped me," the murderer said hoarsely.

  "Liar! You've been shammin' for a week to get a chance at us. I'd like to gun you now and be done with it."

  "Don't." West moistened dry lips. "Honest to God he jumped me. Got mad at somethin' I said. I wouldn't lie to you, Tom."

  Morse kept him covered, circled round him to the rifle, and from there to the sled. One eye still on the desperado, he searched for the steel handcuffs. They were gone. He knew instantly that some time within the past day or two West had got a chance to drop them in the snow.

  He found rawhide thongs.

  "Lie in the snow, face down," he ordered. "Hands behind you and crossed at the wrists."

  Presently the prisoner was securely tied. Morse fastened him to the sled and returned to Beresford.

  The arm was broken above the wrist, just as he had feared. He set it as best he could, binding it with splints.

  The young officer groaned and opened his eyes. He made a motion to rise.

  "Don't get up," said Morse. "You've been hurt."

  "Hurt?" Beresford's puzzled gaze wandered to the prisoner. A flash of understanding lit it. "He asked me--to light--his pipe--and when I--turned--he hit--me--with a club," the battered man whispered.

  "About how I figured it."

  "Afraid--I'm--done--in."

  "Not yet, old pal. We'll make a fight for it," the Montanan answered.

  "I'm sick." The soldier's head sank down. His eyes closed.

  All the splendid, lithe strength of his athletic youth had been beaten out of him. To Morse it looked as though he were done for. Was it possible for one to take such a terrific mauling and not succumb? If he were at a hospital, under the care of expert surgeons and nurses, with proper food and attention, he might have a chance in a hundred. But in this Arctic waste, many hundred miles from the nearest doctor, no food but the coarsest to eat, it would be a miracle if he survived.

  The bitter night was drawing in. Morse drove West in front of him to bring back the wood he had been cutting. He made the man prepare the rubaboo for their supper. After the convict had eaten, he bound his hands again
and let him lie down in his blankets beside the fire.

  Morse did not sleep. He sat beside his friend and watched the fever mount in him till he was wildly delirious. Such nursing as was possible he gave.

  The prisoner, like a chained wild beast, glowered at him hungrily. Tom knew that if West found a chance to kill, he would strike. No scruple would deter him. The fellow was without conscience, driven by the fear of the fate that drew nearer with every step southward. His safety and the desire of revenge marched together. Beresford was out of the way. It would be his companion's turn next.

  After a time the great hulk of a man fell asleep and snored stertorously. But Tom did not sleep. He dared not. He had to keep vigilant guard to save both his friend's life and his own. For though West's hands were tied, it would be the work of only a minute to burn away with a live coal the thongs that bound them.