“Ferme ta gueule!” he howled, raising his fist in menace, while the boat reeled drunkenly down-stream.
“No, I won’t keep still!” she retorted. “Looka here, ’Polyte! Even if you did make the shore in them striped clothes, what chance would you have? First woodsman you met he’d nail you. An’ without me—me to get grub to you up in our shack on Restigouche—”
He menaced her so savagely with upraised fist that she held a moment’s silence.
“Shut up an’ lemme t’ink, nom de Dieu!” he screamed at her with furious imprecations.
But she would not be denied her plea. She seized his hand.
“’Polyte,” she said, “you’ll go with me?”
“No, by God!”
“Then listen!”
“Huh?”
“See here! Give me them striped clothes. If you’re bound to try for it, give ’em to me, and take these here clothes o’ mine!”
“W’at?”
“Give me the stripes. Take the mackinaw an’ overalls. Maybe we can both make it. I’m with you, anyhow, to the finish. If we don’t get through, no matter. If we do, maybe if I’m in them stripes I can fool ’em for a while—help throw ’em off the track, so you can get clean away. If they shoot me, all right. Take my duds, anyhow take ’em, quick!”
Stupefied, with still uncomprehending eyes, he stared. With ratlike suspicion he snarled at her, his teeth bare.
“Huh! You tryin’ for play some trick on me now, sacré tonnerre?”
“’Polyte! Me—play a trick on you?”
“If I t’ink you try, I choke you wit’ dese two hands an’ t’row you in de rivière myself!”
Her arms went round his neck, and in a sudden abandon she kissed the pale, unshaven lips.
“Trust me, ’Polyte! Take my clothes—give me yourn! There may be some show yet, even now!”
He thrust her away, and for a moment stood considering, while the boat, with ever-accelerating speed, swung down the last long reach of the smooth and crawling swirl where the waters paused a moment, hesitant, before the last mad plunge.
Gnawing his nails, his face a terrible gray, eyes bestial, shoulders heavy and hulking, he stood there silent.
“I cal’late we won’t get through, ’Polyte,” said the girl calmly, as though she had been at home and had spoken of the weather. A serene joy vibrated in her deepening voice. “It don’t matter either way. We’ll be together, whether we do or don’t. Both of us together, ’Polyte—together at last an’ always!”
He did not even reply. Clutched on the rail of the lurching scow, he stared at the shore, gaging his chances.
As the boat was driving now he knew it promised to slide over to the northern side of the long reach that ended at Crag Point. If so, it might go down the Canadian rapids, where some few craft had been known to live. It might conceivably reach Kamouraska Whirlpool, where it would be either grounded or swung close to shore. There might still be hope—perhaps—who could say?
Savagely he whirled on the girl, and ripped his stripes, away with eager haste.
“Quick, damn you!” he shouted. “Your clo’es ! Vite! Vite!”
CHAPTER IV
As the scow slued into the oily pause above the rapids, into the black and bubbling smoothness, overhung by drifting vapors, through which the soul-shaking reverberation bellowed, ’Polyte clad now in overalls and mackinaw—cursed the big boat with exceeding bitterness.
“If I had a canoe, me—if I had a lumber-jack’s bateau—I make it, sure! But wit dis—”
The girl, in convict garb, broke his thought.
“Remember, I’m goin’ with you to the end! To the very end, no matter what happens!”
He deigned no answer save a growl, and turned from her to stare at the sickening downward slide of foam ahead, dim in the murk. Came a moment’s silence while the scow, drifting, turning, neared the slant where the dark waters, seeming to stretch out as though elastic, ran forward to the final plunge.
“One kiss, ’Polyte, an’ then—”
“Va chez l’ diab’! We’re goin’ now!”
Despite his rage, he could not shake her loose. She clung to him—not at all in fear, but in a kind of wondrous exaltation. Her breast was warm against him. Her white face burned with inward fire; and, though she made no sound, her lips were moving as the flat boat plunged.
And now he fought her off; he beat her down, away from him.
“Eh, quoi? You want to drown me?” he spat at her. “Va! Drown, you, if you lak’! I—I goin’ for live, me!”
A moment the outlaw thought perhaps the clumsy scow might breast the fury of the rapids and sluice down to safety in the whirlpool below. A moment, though it slung, reeling, over the steps and ledges of the roaring steep, it lived. Across it cold and creaming purges of water burst.
It staggered, half capsized, righted again as it leaped swiftly down.
Through the gloom shrilled the convict’s snarling cry:
“Drown, you, if you want! I goin’ for live!”
“’Polyte! For God’s sake, look—”
Transfixed on a fang of granite, the old hulk burst to fragments. Over it a sudden wall of water stormed—loud, icy, black. Only a second the shattered planks still swayed upon that rocky tooth. Then, all dissolving in a mad, wild flux, they slued away and vanished in the inky cataract.
Tumbled, tossed, battered, now submerged and strangling, now flung up to air again, now battling with foam that mocked him, with splintered planks that whirled, eluding him; now once more plunged among chill, swift deeps, ’Polyte lashed out against the flood.
Down, down he weltered—deaf, dumb, furious.
“I live! I live!” he realized; and that alone. “I live!”
A sudden spew of waters flung him round, behind a cragged spur of rock. And all at once, as he lurched onto the stone that tore his palms, up from the tumbling foam a white hand rose beside him—rose and clutched him—clutched and held.
“Her? Again?” he panted. “Bon Dieu! I cannot get away?”
Savagely he struck. But the hand-grip would not break.
“Let go! You drown me!” he howled, while over him a chilling tumble of wild waters broke to spray.
He struck again—struck a white, dumb face that for an instant yearned beside him. By the last gleam of light that wanly pierced a cloud-rift at the sky-line he saw the eyelids flutter.
One second the girl’s eyes looked at him. Then the bruised lips moved faintly, as though they would have smiled. The eyes closed. Back fell the head. The hand released its hold.
And the great rapids, clamoring with delight, swept the rock bare; while over it the chill, exultant torrent burst in thunderous jubilation.
CHAPTER V
At flaming break of day—day that blazed red across the mottled evergreen, the October chrome and crimson of the great North Woods—a man, naked and bruised, yet whole, sat on a gray, moss-bearded boulder in a sheltered cove by Kamouraska Whirlpool.
To right of him, a fern-spattered cliff. To left, a point densely shagged with spruce and tamarack. Gazing about him, the man smiled.
“Safe, moé!” he muttered. “Dey ain’t nevair find me here. I rest up one day. Hedgehog I catch easy, an’ eat. To-night, away for Saddleback! One day, two day t’rough Temiscouata woods—den let dem look! I laugh, me! I give dem all ha! ha!”
Beside him on the rock, where the first rays of the rising sun struck them, lay sodden clothes—faded blue overalls and a rough mackinaw.
“Dey dry soon,” said the man. “Now I swim. It will mak’ me strong again. If I only had tabac, one good smoke should fix me. But I have none. Bah! What matter? I live, I live!
“I said she was no good to me no more; but I was mistake, moé. Zut! Never can tell. She was some use, after all, hein? Her overall an’ mackinaw will help. Best of all, she is gone. Ah! It is all right. Bon Dieu, w’at fortune!”
He spoke in a bastard mixture of bad English and worse French, murmuring to hi
mself as he sat there naked in the comforting sunshine on the big rock by the backwater of the mighty whirlpool that circled endlessly beyond the point.
“Some cut, some bruise; it is not’ing,” said he, feeling of his body, looking himself over for damage. “My heel cut, my shoulder black an’ blue; one finger broke, I guess maybe. Eh, not’ing? Quelle chance! W’at luck!”
Suddenly he got to his feet, poised there on the rock a moment—a lithe, splendid figure of a man, fine drawn with fasting and labor so that every steel-band muscle ridged the smooth brown skin—and dived head first into the clear, green water.
Up in a burst of foam he rose. He struck out strongly and easily, his body sliding through the cove with supple grace. Into the air he blew spray, rolled over, dived again, lay on his back and floated; then wallowed lazily along, drawing life and strength again from the cold waters that had all his life been home to him.
Now resting, now snatching at a chance scarlet leaf that floated on the surface, he gradually worked down along the wooded point toward the billowing current of the great whirlpool itself. Refreshed, soothed by the invigorating exercise, he laughed aloud in very wantonness.
“Safe me!” he cried, and laughed again, and splashed the waters in an abandon of joy. No more the cell, the silence, the dark, the long torment of confinement, bitterer than death to his free spirit. No more that living hell—no more the terror of captivity!
Life now, and the green woods—the camp-fire and the trail; the big, cold stars, unwinking in the frost-black sky; the blazing sunrise and the purple night; the waters and the wilderness; the blessed haven of the north!
“Quelle chance! Quelle chance!”
And so he neared the point. Then, of a sudden, he stopped swimming. A moment he stared at something, drifting there in the big vortex. A moment, wide-eyed and fearful, he peered. And his lax limbs, refusing their office, lay inert in the translucent flood.
Toward him the drifting object eddied, steadily, surely, with a kind of calm assurance. Fascinated, he could not retreat; but stared with terror-stricken eyes.
And so the thing won close to him; and now he saw it clearly—saw gray stripes and black, wide-floating hair that spread upon the waters—saw a white face, unseeing, calm, dead—
Inexorably the body floated toward him. He could not move, nor could he cry his terror. Then all at once, as it came close, his lips parted in a bubbling gasp of fear.
Choking, he thrust it from him, out into the current again. And with swift strokes, frantic and lashing, daring never look behind, he swam for the big rock again.
“Ah! Ah, mother of God! Have mercy!”
Just as the outlaw turned to flee this weltering terror something stirred in the thick and close-knit undergrowth of tamarack and moosewood. Off from the northward trail that skirted the Rivière St. Jean, from Pointe au Bouleau to the ferry, a man came pushing toward the river. An old man of the forest breed, with coonskin cap, high moccasins, and—in the crook of his right arm—a long squirrel-rifle.
“Huh? What now?” he muttered, listening acutely. “All-fired sing’lar, I must say!”
Through the thicket he broke, just below the big rock, and for a moment stood peering about him. Then all at once his plinking eye caught sight of the clothes laid there to dry.
He started forward, lips parted under the sweep of his grizzled mustache, eyes narrowed amid a pucker of myriad wrinkles. In a moment he had reached the clothes. His hand advanced to take them up—but touched them not. Instead, with a grunt of astonishment, the old man froze to motionless attention.
“Huh? What’s this? Hers?”
Dazed for a moment, he stared about him. He blinked, trying to understand.
“Her duds? My gal’s duds here?”
A splash, as of rapid swimming, struck his ear. With the instinct of the woodsman, he dropped silently to his knees, peered over the rough shoulder of the rock—and saw the head of a man in the pool—a close-shaven, bullet-shaped head, cutting a rapid V as it drew near the bank.
“Cuss me if I understand!” muttered the old ferryman, recoiling. “But it’s mighty cur’us. It’s wrong, some’res; all wrong. I—I gotta see what this here means, I cal’late!”
More silently than he had come, he slid back through the undergrowth and knelt there, watching. On a high branch above a chipmunk made oration as it threw down bits of bark, but the old man’s eyes held steady. And the long rifle, laid through a moosewood crotch, “covered” the rock with grim and deadly menace.
On, on swam the outlaw, his body gleaming with ivory flashes through the waters of the pool. Now he had reached the shelving bottom; now, clambering ashore, he was crawling up the boulder.
He gained its crest, and turned and stood there, wet and glistening in the first rays of the sun. A moment he peered, as though to see some object floating on the bosom of the whirlpool. Then all at once he laughed.
“Ha, ha! Fool me!” he exclaimed. “What for I be afraid of dat? It is gone—gone down de riviêre, forever! And I live. I live an’ I am free!”
On his splendid body, tall, lithe, muscular, the sun struck out prismatic color-glints from the crystal drops that trickled slowly down.
And as he stood there, he raised both sinewy arms on high, and laughed again—laughed toward the sky, the river and the forest, laughed toward the wilderness, laughed in the very joy of life untrammeled.
“Bon Dieu! he cried. “Free, free! Dey pas capab’ for keep me. She—she could not hold me! She say, in life I belong to dem, in eternity I belong to her. Ha, a lie! I have escape dem all. Dey have lose me—and she, she is gone. Liberté, liberté!”
Back in the thicket the old father cuddled the rifle to his leathery cheek, unshaven, wrinkled, wan. Lovingly he patted its stock; and as he sighted down the barrel he smiled.
“The heart,” he muttered. “Nothin’ but the heart will do for me!” Then he cried: “’Polyte!”
Round swung the naked brute, magnificent in his virility, a sudden terror on his face. The rifle spat.
Blotched on the left breast, vivid on that gleaming skin, the wound blossomed.
No outcry made the felon, but crumpled silently forward, fell like an empty sack and slid down the grim flank of the rock. On his supple body, the ridges of the granite creased long lines. The old man, still kneeling in the thicket, heard the slither of the body as it vanished—then a sullen plash.
He stood up, as though arising from prayer, his face beatified; and once more thrust his way through to the boulder.
Already the undercurrent in the cove had borne the body off and away toward the larger swirling of the pools outside. It wallowed onward, onward, sank, rose, turned, and ever drifted toward the river.
The father, standing motionless on the rock beside the garments of his daughter, leaned crossed arms on the muzzle of the long rifle, and watched in perfect silence. Silence held the whole wood. Even the chipmunk, far aloft, was still.
Two minutes he looked, then three, and neither moved nor spoke.
All at once, as the body swung out, out by the wooded point where rippled the strong current of the whirlpool, he saw another form—a white, dead face—and black hair that weltered wide upon the foam.
A little eddy sucked the outlaw under for a moment. When he reappeared, he was close beside the body of the girl who had so loved him that life and death and the dark gates themselves had not prevailed against that love.
A minute, the two seemed hesitant. Then the whirlpool took them—took them, together; and, hidden by the wooded point, they vanished from the old man’s peering eyes.
He stood there yet a little space, his lips curved by a strange and silent smile. Then, kneeling by the clothes, he kissed the rifle with deep reverence.
And with his old, old face hidden in both hands that trembled only now when all their work was done, he knelt there on the rock in the fresh October sunlight of the coming day.
FIRE FIGHT FIRE
Originally published
in Munsey’s Magazine, Vol. 35 (1906).
I.
Hardly had Dr. Deane Miller landed at the Dorian Club’s boathouse to take on more supplies for the rest of his hunting-trip, when Merle, the pop-eyed negro boy, thrust into his hand a telegram marked Rush.
Dr. Miller ripped open the envelope with a large, well-tanned forefinger, and this message flashed into his brain: Come at once; stop for nothing; urgent operation; must have you. Benedict.
The doctor pursed his lips into a “Whee-e-ew!” of annoyed surprise, and shoved back his canvas hunting cap. His curly hair—he hated it—lay heavily clustered on his forehead; his eyes ached with the sunlight and the glare of the Lower Bay; he was dog-tired all over. Decidedly this message did not please him. He turned it over meditatively, as if he might find on the other side some solution to the difficulties of a twenty-mile train-ride and a delicate operation at the other end, without even so much as a change of raiment; but the blank yellow paper offered him no counsel.
“Hang this!” he grumbled, striking the paper with his big left hand. “Hang it! Can’t a fellow clear out for a couple of weeks to shoot ducks and try to forget a girl”—he groaned at certain memories—“without this sort of thing yanking him back to work again? If I was what she called me—a coward—I’d fake up some excuse, or say I never got the message; Merle, here, isn’t above money and without price—but no, guess I’ll have to cut for town.”
Out came his watch. Twelve minutes to train-time—no, the electrics couldn’t possibly do it.
“Here, Merle, you blackbird!” he commanded, weighing a half-dollar suggestively in his broad palm. “You bring me a telegraph-blank and rustle me up a cab the quickest you ever did in your life! While it’s coming, fix me a basket with sandwiches and a bottle of—no, I can’t even have that if I’m to operate! Well, make it, Pollinaris! Scoot, now, you calcined charcoal!”
II.
Dr. Miller’s entrance into the operating room of the Trail Hospital, clad in full khaki hunting-togs, with even his revolver and cartridges girded around his equator like the rings of Saturn, caused a flutter of consternation among the three prim nurses waiting beside the little glass and iron table. The Trail Hospital, private, sedate, conservative, maintained its dignity even in the face of life and death emergencies. Dr. Miller was, at times, a disturbing factor in its routine, though an absolutely indispensable one. The three nurses, not having been informed regarding the situation, exchanged scandalized glances.
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