The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK®

by Wildside Press

  Once he rose and started forward tentatively. Dugan had been smelling quite normally human, but as Cheechako drew near him he again smelled like something that is afraid. It puzzled Cheechako. He sniffed and would have gone nearer but first, of course, he looked at Holliday. And Holliday merely glanced at him and did not notice. Cheechako was used to such ignoring. He wagged his tail a little and went back outside the firelight. His master did not want him near.

  But later that night, when the two men lay rolled in their blankets in the smoke of the smudge fire, Cheechako went thoughtfully forward again. He began to nudge Dugan’s kit with his nose. There might be some of that sweet-tasting liquid.

  Holliday awoke and sat up with a start. The other man had not gone to sleep.

  “What the hell’s your dog doing in my kit?” he demanded hysterically.

  “We’ll see,” said Holliday. His voice had a curious edge to it.

  Cheechako sniffed about. There was something there that had a familiar odor. He drew in his breath in a long and luxurious smell. Then he began to scratch busily.

  “I’ll take a look at that,” said Holliday grimly.

  He went to where Cheechako scratched, while Dugan moved cautiously among his blankets. The firelight glinted momentarily on polished metal among the coverings. The metal thing was pointed at Holliday’s back, though it trembled slightly.

  Holliday looked up.

  “Your bacon,” he said, his tone altered. “Get out!” he ordered Cheechako.

  Cheechako went away after wagging his tail placatingly. Presently he curled up and slept fitfully, the odor he had sniffed permeating all his dreams. The odor was that of Carson, and Cheechako dreamed of times in the cabin when Dugan was there. Holliday, too, composed himself to slumber, but Dugan lay awake and shivered. Some of Carson’s possessions were in the kit Cheechako had nosed at, and though he had had his revolver on Holliday, Dugan was by no means sure he could have summoned the nerve to kill him. He had killed Carson in a fashion peculiarly his own which did not require that he discharge the weapon himself. But now he debated in a panicky fear if he had not better shoot Holliday sleeping. It would be dangerous down here, not like the hills at all. But it might be best. If that damned dog kept sniffing around—

  The next morning he cursed in a species of hysterical relief when he saw Cheechako trotting soberly away behind his master. Cheechako wagged his tail politely in parting. He did not understand why Dugan had feigned not to remember him. Now they were going to find another man, and Holliday would expect him to sniff that man’s legs and look up and wag his tail. It was a ceremony that was part of the scheme of things. Cheechako simply remembered Dugan as a man who had stayed a long time with Carson in the cabin up-river, and had fed him sweet liquid out of a bottle, and now smelled as if he were afraid.

  But Holliday, of course, did not know that. Otherwise he would have been burying Dugan by this time, with a grimly satisfied look upon his face.

  CHAPTER IV

  Far off in the wilderness where the cedars meditated beside a deserted cabin, a faint rumbling murmur set up again. Of course it might have been the wind in the trees, or a minor landslide in the hills not many miles away, or even a giant spruce tree crashing thunderously to the earth. But it lasted just a bit too long for such a simple explanation. To a fanciful hearer, it might have sounded as if the mill of the forest god were grinding its grist again.

  And just as such an idea would demand, many unrelated things began to happen which bore obscurely upon the murder of a man now buried deeply beneath a deeply-carved wooden cross.

  Holliday, for instance, received two letters. One was from the girl who loved him. One was from the dead man, stained and draggled with long journeying and much forwarding and months on its travels. The letter from the girl told him pitifully that she loved him and wanted to be near him, and offered to come and share any trial or hardship rather than endure the numbing pain of separation. Holliday, of course, knew better than to take her at her word.

  The other letter was very short:

  Dear Bob:

  I’m sending this down by a Chillicoot buck what stopped to ask for some matches. The claim is proving up kind of a bonanza because I already took out near twenty thousand in dust which makes a damn big poke for you with what you got me to keep for you. You better look out or I’ll steal it. Ha, ha.

  I got me a new dog that I call Cheechako. He’s a pretty good dog and I got a feller to help me out until you come back an’ he’s taut the pup to drink molasses out of a bottle. You out to see it

  Well, no more until next time.

  Yrs,

  Sam.

  And the man who had come down the river trail and left Cheechako chained to starve these many long moons past; he found himself growing short of cash and lacking an easier way to recoup his fortunes, decided to do some placer work himself. When he worked with Sam Carson he had marked down a likely spot, but did not trouble to work it because he could attain to wealth so much more simply. Just a bullet that he need not even fire himself. He took canoe and went paddling up the river, having a winter’s supplies bundled up in the bow.

  Then the mill stopped again, and again for lack of grist to grind. Doubtless the forest god to whom it belonged went on about his other affairs.

  CHAPTER V

  Cheechako slept within the cabin that winter, stretched out before the fire and soaking the heat into his body with the luxurious enjoyment that only a dog can compass. There was no need for the discipline that before had made his chaining necessary. Holliday’s training had had better results than Carson’s. Cheechako was a well-mannered dog, now, who listened soberly when Holliday talked to him.

  And Holliday talked often. Loneliness in the wilds is quite different from loneliness anywhere else. With the snow piled in monster drifts about the cabin, so that there was an actual tunnel a good part of the way from the door to the wood-pile, he was utterly isolated from the world. He had to talk. He told Cheechako confidentially just what the girl Outside meant to him. He would not have said it to any living man, but the dog listened soberly. Sometimes Holliday grew morose. Sometimes he called himself a fool for not bringing her with him—and then gave thanks that he did not. And he had moments of passionate jealousy and doubt, wondering if she were waiting for him and believing in him through all the months when no word from either could reach the other.

  He read her last letter into tiny fragments, long after he could recite it word for word. He read strange meanings into it, as that she began to feel her loyalty wavering and in honesty wished to place it beyond recall. And then he read them out again and was bitterly ashamed that such things had entered his mind at all. All this was during the days of storm when he could not even build monster fires and thaw out gravel to be shifted where the first waters of spring would wash out its infinitesimal proportion of gold for him.

  But Dugan appeared at the cabin in December.

  He came on snowshoes and had conquered his first surprise before he shouted outside the cabin door, Dugan had come over in hopes of finding some stray reading-matter, anything to break the monotony of his own cabin some four miles or more away. The smoke warned him that someone was within and no more than a flicker of his eyelids expressed surprise that Holliday was the occupant.

  Holliday greeted him with a feverish cordiality, pressed tobacco upon him, bade him remain and eat, presented Cheechako and they talked interminably. Dugan was jollity itself. He was soon assured that Holliday had no suspicion of him. He had left no clue after the murder and Cheechako—who might have gamboled about him—had been trained by Holliday into the perfection of canine manners. Cheechako remembered, yes, but he did not associate Dugan with the death of his former master. And in any event he was a dog, and there was but one master in the world for him. Injuries done to a past owner would not arouse Cheech
ako now, though he would fight to the last drop of his blood for Holliday. Dugan had every reason in the world to feel secure.

  He was secure. In his gratitude for having someone to talk to, Holliday would have welcomed the devil himself. When Dugan finally left for his own cabin, Holliday was more nearly normal than for months.

  And it may be that Dugan’s presence kept Holliday sane that winter. He was surely used to loneliness, but no such loneliness as possessed him now. No man is lonely who can keep his brain busy with the things of the moment and the place he is in, but Holliday could not do that. A picture of the girl who waited for him was always at hand. His presence and his desperate work was due to her. He could not help thinking and dreaming of her, and that thinking and dreaming made the solitude into a corroding horror.

  Dugan changed all that. He was someone to talk to. Holliday even told him about the girl. He talked for hours about her, while Cheechako lay at one side of the cabin floor and watched gravely, his ears alert and his eyes somber. Often he watched Dugan, and vague memories crept disturbingly about his mind. Here, in this same cabin—

  Dugan knew about the murder, too, how Holliday had come joyously to the cabin—and found his best friend murdered and his happiness destroyed in the one instant. Sam Carson had been the keeper of most of Holliday’s possessions, and they had been stolen by the murderer.

  It was probably his own feigned sympathy and secret sardonic amusement that suggested a duplication of his former feat to Dugan. Dugan’s own claim was rich—how rich he could not tell until spring. But Holliday’s claim was little worse. Carson had skimmed the cream, but the rest was worth taking, if it could be done without risk.

  And Dugan, who had not nerve enough to shoot a man in cold blood, and was too cowardly to pick a fight, grinned obscurely to himself. He fingered his own pokes, which would be bulging when spring came. He thought of Holliday’s. And then he began to whittle out a little contrivance of wood and leathern thongs, which looked very much like a trap, but was much more deadly. It was a clever little idea of his own. Perfectly safe, and absolutely no risk. Suddenly, he stopped and listened. It seemed as if some noise to which his ears were unconsciously attuned had suddenly ceased.

  Maybe the mill had stopped again.

  CHAPTER VI

  And then spring came. From the trees came cracklings as their coatings of sleet and solidified snow were stripped off and fell melting to the earth below. From the river came minor rumblings as the thawed streams of the mountains poured their waters into it, and its surface ice, grown thinner, cracked across and spun downstream in crumbling icepans toward the sea. The rocks, from hooded things in dazzling cerements, peered out naked and glistening like newborn seals at the world that was stirring for its feverish growth of summer. The spruce buds swelled to bursting. Slowly dwindling patches of snow disclosed incongruously green grass prematurely sprouted. And the wild things seemed to awake. Bull caribou roared their challenges in the indefinite distance. Foxes moved about, keen and joyously savage, no longer hampered by the snow. Now and then the winter’s windrift above some hidden hollow stirred, and a peevish bear emerged from his long sleep, sleepily ferocious.

  And Holliday worked like a madman. All day long he shoveled his gravel and dirt into the cradle through which a small stream ran. After the first few days he sang. It might be that he would not have a sum that would satisfy him, but he would squander some of it and see the girl who loved him. He would see her and speak to her again! It was no wonder that he sang.

  And Dugan? He worked, too, and his eyes glistened at the size of his clean-ups. He filled one poke, then another, and still another as time went on. But Dugan would never be satisfied with what was his own. He went over to Holliday’s cabin now and then, and listened while Holliday told him excitedly of the miracle that would happen. He was going Outside! In a little while longer. He would see the girl.

  He told the whole course of his progress to the man who had murdered his friend, while Cheechako sat between his feet and regarded Dugan speculatively.

  Cheechako could not understand why Dugan so consistently ignored him. It seemed illogical to the dog, because he remembered that in this same cabin—

  And at last Holliday came back from the cradle, singing at the top of his voice.

  Cheechako had caught some of his festive spirit and danced clumsily about him. Dugan was sitting on the bench before the cabin and his eyelids flickered when Holliday came into view.

  “I’m through!” shouted Holliday, at sight of his visitor. “Dugan, I’m through! I’m going down-river in the morning with a fat poke in my pack to see the most wonderful girl in the world!”

  Dugan grinned. He had been at the cabin for some little time, and there was a surprise he had prepared for Holliday inside. It was the same surprise he had prepared for Carson.

  “I’m going down tomorrow myself,” he said. “Closed up my shack and quit my workings.”

  “We’ll celebrate,” said Holliday exuberantly. “Man! I’m going Outside to the most wonderful—”

  Cheechako sniffed the air in the cabin. Dugan did not smell normally human. He smelled as if he were afraid. And yet he was grinning and cracking jokes as if he shared in Holliday’s uproarious happiness.

  Cheechako continued to be puzzled and to grow more puzzled. Two or three times he cocked up his ears as if listening to a faint rumbling murmur far off in the wilds which might have been anything—even the mill of a forest god, grinding the grist of men’s destinies. But mostly he watched the two men.

  Dugan produced a bottle, long hoarded, but Holliday would not touch it. He wanted to stay awake, he said, that no atom of his wonderful good luck should go untasted to the full. He would be starting downstream at daybreak. And Dugan grinned, and drank himself.

  Holliday began to cook a festive meal. The smells were savory and delicious, but Cheechako’s nose suddenly attracted him to an unusual spot. He went tentatively toward Holliday’s bunk. Being a well-mannered dog, he knew he should never climb upon his master’s bed, but something drew him there irresistibly. He sniffed, and Dugans’ smell was suddenly that of a thing in deadly fear. Cheechako turned his head and regarded him puzzledly. Dugan’s scent was on his master’s blankets, too, and Dugan had no business to be there. Cheechako sniffed, bewildered.

  This other odor—

  “There’s just one thing,” said Holliday with a sudden wistful gravity. “Old Sam’s dead. I told you how he was murdered. I wish—well, I wish he was going Outside with me.”

  The faint rumbling outside that sounded like millstones grinding grew suddenly loud and harsh, as if the stones were crumbling up the last stray grains that had been fed to them. Cheechako cocked his ears, but that was only a noise. There was a queer smell on his master’s bunk. He heaved up his forepaws to sniff it more nearly.

  “Cheechako!” snapped Dugan. Dugan had gone suddenly pale, and more than ever he had the smell of fear about him.

  Holliday lifted his head and a curious expression came upon his face. Dugan went over and took Cheechako by the collar.

  “Shedding fleas on your bunk,” he said to Holliday, grinning. “But he ought to share in the celebration, too. Got any molasses?”

  He knew, of course. He reached up and took down the bottle of syrup Holliday had saved as a supreme luxury.

  “Taught a dog to do this once,” grinned Dugan. “Here, you, Cheechako! Open your mouth!”

  Cheechako sniffed at his leg. Then he saw the bottle. His eyes danced. Dugan had remembered at last! He jumped up to lick eagerly.

  “Ho!” roared Dugan, as Cheechako struggled frantically to coax out the sticky sweet stuff faster than it would flow. “I knew you’d like it! Watch him, Holliday!”

  Holliday straightened up.

  “You’ve never heard me call that dog ‘Cheechako,’” he said qu
eerly. “I’ve always called him ‘Pup.’ The only other man who’d know his name would be Sam Carson and—” Holliday’s voice changed swiftly—“and the man who killed him! And that trick—By God, you’re Sam Carson’s murderer!”

  His revolver flashed out. Dugan gasped. The bottle fell to the floor and Cheechako lapped eagerly at its exuding contents.

  “You shot him from behind,” said Holliday savagely. “With your gun not a foot from his head! Get out that gun now, Dugan. I give you just two seconds!”

  Dugan’s teeth chattered. His eyes darted despairingly to the bunk. Holliday’s face was like stone. There was no faintest trace of mercy in it. With a sudden squeal like that of a cornered rat, Dugan rushed for him.

  And Holliday’s revolver was out and in his hand, but Dugan’s open-handed attack brought an instinctive response in kind. His free fist shot out in a terrific blow. It caught Dugan squarely between the eyes and hurled him backward. He staggered, and his foot crushed Cheechako’s paw. The dog leaped up with a yelp and bared teeth and his movement was enough to upset Dugan’s balance completely. He toppled backward and a sudden terrible scream filled all the cabin.

  He fell against the bunk and his arms clutched wildly, while his face showed only frozen horror. Then he crashed down on the blankets.

  And there was a bellowing roar and a burst of smoke from the bunk. Dugan did not even shudder. He lay quite still. Presently a sullen little “drip-drip-drip” sounded on the floor.

  Holliday bent over and pawed among the blankets. He brought out a curious little contrivance, very much like a trap. It was a board with a revolver tied to it and a thong so arranged that pressure on the thong would discharge the revolver into the source of the pressure.

  Cheechako sniffed at it. It was the source of the peculiar odor he had noted in his master’s bunk. He wagged his tail placatingly and looked up at Holliday.