CHAPTER IX
BELA'S ANSWER
From time to time Bela glanced narrowly at Sam through her lashes. He presented a terrific problem to one of her inexperience. She found this friendly interchange delightful, but was it all?
She had no feeling of being a woman to him. She began to feel a great dissatisfaction. An imperious instinct urged her to sting him out of his comfortable disregard of her sex. Her opportunity came when Sam said:
"You have never told me what it was you wanted to talk to me about."
"All those men want marry me," she said off-hand.
It was instantly effective. Sam sat up abruptly and stared at her in astonishment. Was she, after all, the evil woman he had first thought? Had he been deceitfully lulled into security? She repeated her statement. His face hardened.
"So I gathered," he replied sarcastically.
Bela was secretly pleased by the effect. "What you think 'bout it?" she asked.
"I don't think anything about it," he answered with an angry flash.
"I not know what to tell them," said Bela. It had a faint theatrical ring, which might have suggested to a discriminating ear that she was not being altogether candid.
Sam obstinately closed his mouth.
"Which you lak best?" she asked presently, "the big one, the black one, the red one, yo'ng one?"
A great discomposure seized upon Sam. Anger pounded at his temples, and insane words pressed to his tongue. He put on the clamps. "What I think is neither here nor there," he said stiffly. "It's up to you to make your own choice. Why drag me into it?"
"You say you want be friend," explained Bela. "So I think you help me."
"Nobody can help you in a matter of this kind," said Sam. "Lord, you talk like a wooden man!" Something whispered to him while he said it.
"Why?" she asked with one of her sidelong looks.
Again his eyes flashed on her in angry pain. God! Was the woman trying to madden him?
"A girl must make her own choice," his tongue said primly.
"But you could tell me about them, which is the best man. How do I know?"
This on the face of it seemed like a reasonable request, but his breast still passionately rebelled.
"Well, I won't!" he snapped. "If that's all you want to talk about I'd better go."
"Is Big Jack a good man?" she persisted.
Sam got up.
"No, don't go!" she cried quickly. "I'll be good. I don't know why you always mad at me."
Neither did Sam himself know. He looked at her dumbly with eyes full of pain and confusion. He sat down again.
For a while she made light conversation about muskrats and beavers, but when she thought he was safely settled down, womanlike, she was obliged to return to the forbidden subject.
There was a pain in her breast as well as his. What was the matter with him that he treated her so despite-fully? How else could she find out what was in his heart but by making him lose his temper?
"Maybe I tak' Big Jack," she remarked casually.
"All right," returned Sam bitterly.
"He's the richest."
"A regular woman's reason," said Sam. "I wish you joy."
Would nothing move him? Bela felt as if she were beating with her hands on a rock. "What do you care?" she asked insolently. Both voices rang with bitterness now.
"I don't care."
She sneered.
"What you get mad for?"
Sam's endurance gave way. He sprang up.
"It's rotten!" he cried. "The whole business! That's what makes me mad! Have you no shame, setting a whole camp of men against each other like that? And coolly talking over which one you'll take! I tell you it'll likely end in murder. Maybe you'd like that. Give you quite a send-off, eh? Well, you can't drag me into it. I like a different kind of woman."
Bela was no tame spirit. Anger answered anger. She faced him pale and blazing-eyed.
"No woman want you, anyhow!" she cried. "You cook! You only half a man! You too scared to fight for a woman! You only talk! Go away from me! I tak' a man for my 'osban'!"
Sam, beside himself with rage, stepped forward and raised his clenched fist over her head. Bela laughed in his face. Suddenly he seemed to see himself from the outside, and was filled with blank horror.
Turning, he snatched up his coat and shirt, and crashed blindly away through the willows.
"Go and do your cookin'!" Bela cried after him.
Bela's cache was on the opposite side of the creek from the men's cabin. The only place where Sam could cross without getting another wetting was by the stepping-stones near the lake. He headed for the pines where the going was better and encircled the edge of the meadow.
A great turmoil was going on within him. He was aghast at the gust of passion that had drowned all his senses for a moment. He had not known he contained such possibilities. To come so near to striking a woman! Horrible!
Naturally, he did not fail to blame her. A devil – to provoke men to such a pitch of madness! Well, he was done with her. Anyhow, he had seen her now in her true colours. She was no good! There could be no further argument about that. If he ever had anything to do with her let him be called a soft-headed fool!
Forcing his way blindly through the underbrush, stumbling over roots, and plunging into holes, he completed his detour around the meadow. As he came out beside the ford he heard his name called urgently.
"Sam! Sam!"
Notwithstanding his anger, and in the very act of the brave vows he was taking, the voice found his heart like a bullet. He stopped dead with hanging arms and looked strickenly in the direction whence it came.
Presently the dugout came flying around a bend in the creek above. She landed at the head of the little rapids, and ran toward him. He waited with sombre eyes.
She stopped at three paces distance, afraid to come closer. The savage had disappeared. Her face was all softened with emotion.
"Sam, I sorry I call names," she said very low. "That was my madness speaking out of my mouth. I not think those things in my heart. Please forget it."
His eyes bored her through and through.
"Another trick to get you going?" the voice inside him asked.
"Don' look at me lak that," she faltered.
"How do I know what to believe?" Sam said harshly. "You say so many things."
"I jus' foolin' 'bout those ot'er men," she said. "I not marry one of them. I sooner jump in the lak'."
A secret spring of gladness spurted up in Sam's breast. "Do you mean that?" he demanded.
"I mean it," she replied.
He gazed at her, strongly desiring to believe, but suspicious still. His slower nature could not credit such a rapid change of front.
"Don' look at me lak that," she said again. "W'at you want me do?"
"Go away," he said.
She looked at him, startled.
"If you're in earnest about not wanting to make trouble," he said harshly, "you've got to go without seeing any of them again."
Her eyes were full of trouble. "You tell me go away?" she whispered.
Sam winced. "I haven't got anything to do with it," he said. "It's up to you."
He was more than ever inexplicable to her.
"What you goin' do?" she asked.
"I?" he replied, nettled. "I'm going up to the head of the lake with the bunch, of course."
There was a painful silence, while Bela sought vainly in her mind for the explanation of his strange attitude. An instinct told her he loved her, but she could not make him say it.
"You think I bad girl, Sam," she murmured.
"How do I know what you are?" he asked harshly. "Here's your chance to prove to me that you're on the square."
"I got go 'way to mak' you think I all right?"
"Yes," he answered eagerly.
"You fonny man, I think," she murmured sadly.
"Can't you see it?" he cried.
"No," she said. "But I goin' do what you tell me. I go to-night."
"Ah, that's right!" he said with a curious look of gratitude in his pain-haunted eyes.
Bela waited for him to say more – but waited in vain. For herself she would quickly have told him she loved him, had not her tongue been tied by Musq'oosis's positive instructions. And so the unhappy silence continued between them.
"Maybe somebody come this way," said Bela at last. "Mak' trouble. Come up by my boat."
Sam shook his head. "I've got to go back to camp now."
"You not see me again. You got not'ing say to me?" asked Bela despairingly. Her hand sought his.
Sam's instincts sprang up in alarm. "What could I say?" he cried. "What good would it do? Good-bye!" Snatching his hand out of hers, he retreated over the stones, refusing to look back.
When Sam entered the shack Joe faced him, scowling. "Where you been?" he demanded.
Sam, in no humour to be meek, made the time-honoured rejoinder.
"I'll soon make it my business," retorted Joe. "With that, see?" showing a clenched fist. "Have you been with Bela?"
Sam, because of the threat, disdained to lie. "Yes," he said coolly.
Joe whirled about to the others. "Didn't I tell you?" he cried excitedly. "I heard her calling him. There's underhand work here. He's hid the guns on us."
"Do you know where she's hid?" demanded Big Jack.
Sam did not feel any necessity of returning a truthful answer to this. "No," he said. "She came on me when I was visiting my muskrat traps."
"You're lying!" cried Joe. "I'll smash you, anyhow, on the chance of it."
Big Jack stepped between them.
"I'm running this show," he said grimly. To Sam he said: "I strike no man without warning. I warn you now. This is a man's affair. We won't stand no interference from cooks. You keep out. If you don't, God help you, that's all!"
"And if he leaves you," added Joe, "I'll croak you myself with as little thought as I'd pinch a flea!"
"Get the supper," said Jack.
Sam clenched his teeth, and did not speak again.
In the middle of the night Sam awoke in the shack with a weight on his breast, and, sitting up in his blankets, looked about him. The dying embers of the fire cast a faint light on the figures of his three companions lying on the floor beside him. Husky still had the sole use of the bed.
The cabin roof rang with a grotesque chorus of snores. Sam's gorge rose. The air was tainted. He looked at the recumbent figures with a curling lip. Was it hate that had awakened him? He had put up in silence with so much at their hands!
An oblique ray of moonlight struck through the window over his head, luring him like a song. He softly got up, and, gathering up his bed, went outside.
The pines were like a regiment of gigantic soldiers standing at ease under the sky and whispering together while they awaited the word of command. Their fragrance was like a benediction on the air. The moon, low down in the south-east, peeped between the trunks.
At the mouth of the creek where the little rapids poured into a quiet pool there was a bank of sand. This was the general washing-place of the camp.
Sam, thinking of the sand as a promising bed, made his way in that direction by the path they had worn. As he passed around the house a shadow moved from behind a great pine and followed him, flitting noiselessly from tree to tree.
Sam sat down in the sand, nursing his knees. The mouth of the creek was the only spot along shore as yet wholly free of ice. He looked out over the lake through the opening. Under the light of the low moon the water was the colour of freshly cast iron.
Somewhere out upon it Bela was paddling, he thought, if she had not already reached home. His breast relaxed its guard against her a little. He believed she was a pretty fine sort, after all. Had he done the right thing to send her away? She was beautiful enough to make a man's arm ache for her now she had gone.
But on the whole he was glad she was gone. He did not realize it, but his hour had not quite struck. It was a wholesome instinct that made him fight against the overmastering emotions that attacked his heart.
He told himself he couldn't afford to look in that direction. He had work to do first. He had to get a toehold in this land. Some day maybe —
Drowsiness overcame him again. With a sigh he stretched out on the sand and rolled himself in his blankets. His breathing became deep and slow. By and by the coquettish moon peeped between the tree-trunks across the creek and touched his face and his fair hair with a silvery wand. Whereupon it was no longer a mere man; it was young Hermes sleeping beside the water. The shadow stole from among the trees above the sand-bank and crept down to his side. It knelt there with clasped hands. It showed a white face in the moonlight, on which glistened two diamonds.
By and by it rose with energetic action, and still moving noiselessly as a ghost, turned toward the lake, and clambering around the barrier of ice, dropped to the edge of the water on the other side.
Here a dugout was drawn up on the stones, well hidden from the view of any one on shore. She got in and, paddling around the ice, entered the mouth of the creek. Grounding her craft with infinite care on the sand, she groped for a moment in her baggage, then arose and stepped ashore, carrying several long, thin strips of moose-hide.
CHAPTER X
ON THE LAKE
The three men sleeping on the floor of the shack suddenly started up in their blankets.
"What was that?" they asked each other.
"A shout for help," said Jack.
Joe sprang up and opened the door. Some confused sounds from the direction of the creek reached his ears, but he had not enough woodcraft to distinguish them from the legitimate sounds of the night.
The fire was black now. Big Jack struck a match.
"Sam's gone!" he cried suddenly.
Shand felt around the floor with his hands. "His blankets, too!" he added.
"Treachery!" cried Joe with an oath. "You wouldn't believe me before. That's why he hid the guns. Come on, I heard something from the creek."
They pulled on their moccasins and, snatching coats, ran out. Husky remained on the bed, cursing. At the creek-mouth the sand-bank was empty. The last pallid rays of the moon revealed nothing.
They were accustomed to come there many times a day to wash or to draw water, and the welter of foot-prints in the sand gave no clue. Finally Joe, with a cry, pounced on a dark object at the water's edge and held it up. It was Sam's neck handkerchief.
"Here's the mark of a boat, too, in the sand," he cried. "I knew it! Gone together in her boat!"
"It was a man's voice I heard," objected Jack. "What for would he want to cry out?"
"Wanted to give us the laugh when he saw his get-a-way clear," said Joe bitterly. "Oh, damn him!"
"As soon as it's light – " muttered Shand, grinding his teeth.
"What'll you do then?" demanded Joe.
"I'll get him!" said the quiet man.
"We have no boat."
"Boat or no boat."
"Oh, you're going to do great things. He belongs to me."
Shand sneered. "Take it out on him with your tongue."
Joe replied with a torrent of abuse.
Big Jack laughed a harsh note.
"You fools!" he said. "Both of you. What do you think you're going to do so big? She's given us an answer sooner than we expected, that's all. If she prefers a cook to a man, that's her affair. All we got to do is shut up. I'm going back to the shack."
They would not confess the reasonableness of Jack's words. "Go where you like," muttered Shand. "I'll stick by myself."
Jack strode back along the path. Joe followed him, merely because he was one of those natures who will choose an enemy's company sooner than face the prospect of being left with his own.
They left Shand to his own devices. Husky greeted them with eager questions. Joe cursed him, and Jack clenched his teeth upon the stem of his pipe in grim silence.
They revived the fire and sat in front of it. Each man was jealous of his own rage and pain and refused to share it. Joe and Husky bickered in a futile way. Big Jack, in spite of his philosophic protestations, kept the tail of an eye on the whitening window-pane. In the end he rose abruptly. Joe followed suit as a matter of course.
Jack turned on him, snarling. "Have I got to be followed by you like a dog everywhere I go?"
"What's the matter with you?" retorted Joe. "Do you own the whole out of doors?"
Jack halted outside the door. "You take one way; I'll go the other," he said grimly.
Jack returned to the creek, and crossing on the stepping-stones walked out on the point beyond and sat down on a boulder. From here he could see a long way down the lake shore.
At this season in the latitude of Caribou night is brief. The sun sinks but a little way below the horizon, and a faint glow hovers over his head all night, travelling around the northern horizon to the east, where it heralds his reappearance.
It was light in the east now and the lake was stepping into view. Big Jack searched its misty expanse with his keen little eyes.
By and by as the light strengthened, looking down-shore he saw a tiny, dark object steal beyond the next point and become silhouetted against the grey. There could be no doubt of what it was. The lust of pursuit flamed up in the man's heart. He forgot his prudent advice to his mates.
"Making for the foot of the lake," he thought. "And the wind's against them. It's rising. I could easy ride around the shore and cut them off."
He got up and made his way with energetic action back to the stable.
He had no sooner picked up a saddle than Joe came in. They looked each other over without speaking. Joe made for another saddle.
"You're free to go where you want," said Jack grimly. "I've only got to say I choose to ride alone."
"I don't care how you ride," retorted Joe. "Keep out of my business, that's all."
They saddled their horses in silence.
Joe said at last with a sneer: "Thought you told us to sit down and shut up."
Jack's face flamed suddenly.
"I promised him a beating if he interfered and, by God, I mean to give it to him before her eyes. That's what she's got to take if she picks a cook!"
He fixed Joe with blazing eyes. "And if any man comes between me and my promise, I'll take him first! As for the girl, she can go her way. I wouldn't take her for a gift!"
Joe laughed unpleasantly.
As Jack started to lead his horse out of the stable, he saw what he had not before noticed – several guns leaning in a corner of the stable. His eyes lighted up.
"Where did they come from?" he demanded, choosing his own.
"Shand found them under the sods of the stable roof," said Joe.
"Where is Shand?"
"He has already taken a horse and gone."
Sam was awakened by being violently rolled over on the sand. He felt human hands upon him, but he could not see his enemy. He struggled with a will, but his limbs were confined by the blanket. A heavy body knelt upon his back, and fetters were pulled around him, binding his arms and his legs inside the blanket.
It was then that he shouted lustily. It was cut short by a cotton gag in his mouth. He was ignominiously rolled down the sand to the water's edge. What with the darkness and the confusion of his faculties still, he could not see who had attacked him.
Inert as a log, he was lifted up, dragged away, and finally dropped in a boat. His captor stood away from him, panting. Sam rolled over on his back and saw – Bela.
For a moment he was paralyzed by astonishment – a woman to dare so! Without looking at him she quickly took her place in the stern and pushed off. Suffocating rage quickly succeeded his first blankness. Unable to move or to utter a sound, his heart nearly broke with it.
The black traitress! After all her professions of friendliness! After making her eyes so soft and her voice so sweet! She was worse than his ugliest suspicions had painted! He did not stop to guess why he had been attacked. She was his enemy. That was enough.
Sounds reached them from the direction of the shack, and Bela, lowering her head, paddled swiftly and silently for the point. Her face showed only a dim oval in the failing light. But there was grim resolution in its lines.
Only once did she open her lips. Sam was frantically twisting in his bonds, though owing to his position on the keel of the dugout he did not much threaten her stability.
Bela whispered: "If you turn us over you drown quick."
Angry as he was, the suggestion of being plunged into the lake bound hand and foot reached him with no little force. Thereafter he lay still, glaring at her.
They had no more than rounded the point when they heard the men come running down to the creek. Bela continued to hug the shore. They were soon swallowed in the murk. The moon went down.
By and by the first rays of light began to spread up the sky from the eastern horizon, and the earth seemed to wake very softly and look in that direction.
With the light came a breath from the east, cool as a hand on the brow of fever. Twittering of sleepy chickadees were heard among the pines, and out in the lake a loon laughed.
Day came with a swoop up the lake. The zephyr became a breeze, the breeze half a gale. The leaden sheet of water was torn into white tatters, and the waves began to crash on the ice-rimmed shore, sending sheets of spray into the trees, and making it impossible for Bela to land had she wished to.
This was a hard stroke of luck against her. She would have been out of sight of the point by the time it was fully light, had it not been for the head wind.
The dugout leaped and rolled like an insane thing. Having a well-turned hull, she kept on top, and only spray came over the bow. To Sam, who could see only the sky, the mad motion was inexplicable.
His anger gave place to an honest terror. If anything happened, what chance did he stand? Bela's set, sullen face told him nothing. Her eyes were undeviatingly fixed on a point a few feet ahead and to the right of the bow. Twisting her paddle this way and that, she snaked the dugout over the crests.
Though she seemed to pay no attention to him, she must have guessed what was passing in Sam's mind. Without taking her eyes from that point ahead where the waves came from, she felt in a bundle before her and drew out a knife. Watching her chance, she swiftly leaned forward and cut the bonds around his legs. When another lull came she cut his arms free.
"Move careful," she said, without looking at him.
Sam did not need the warning. The icy quality of the spray in his face filled him with a wholesome respect for the lake. He cautiously worked his arms free of the blanket, and, raising himself on his elbows, looked over the gunwale. He saw the waves come tumbling clumsily toward them and gasped.
It seemed like a miracle the little craft had survived so long. One glance at the shore showed him why they could not land. He fell back, and his hands flew to the knot behind his head. He tore off the gag and threw it overboard. Bela looked at him for the fraction of a second.
"Well, what's your game?" he bitterly demanded. "It's pretty near ended for both of us. I hope you're satisfied. You savage!"
Bela's eyes did not swerve again from that point ahead. In one respect she was a savage; that was the extraordinary stolidity she could assume. For all the attention she gave him he might have been the wind whistling.
At first it fanned his anger outrageously. He searched his mind for cruel taunts to move her. It was all wasted. She paddled ahead like a piece of the boat itself, now pausing a second, now driving hard, as those fixed, wary eyes telegraphed automatically to her arms.
One cannot continue to rail at a wooden woman. Her impassivity finally wore him out. He fell silent, and covered his face with an arm that he might not have to look at her. Besides, he felt seasick.
East of Nine-Mile Point the lake shore makes in sharply, forming the wide, deep bay which stretches all the way to the foot of the lake where Musquasepi, the little river, takes its rise. The stony, ice-clad shores, backed by pines, continued for a mile or so, then gave place to wide, bare mud-flats reaching far inland.
On the flats the ice did not pile up, but lay in great cakes where the receding waters stranded it. This ice was practically all melted now, and the view across the flats was unimpeded. It was nine miles from the point to the intake of the river by water and fifteen miles by land. The trail skirted inside the flats.
Bela kept to the shore until the increasing light made further concealment useless. She then headed boldly across for the river. It was at this time that the wind began to blow its hardest.
She could not tell, of course, if she had yet been discovered from the point. Not knowing the ways of white men, she could not guess if they were likely to pursue.
Under ordinary circumstances with a little start, she could easily have beaten a horse to the river, but the head wind reversed the chances. She might have landed on the flats, but there was not a particle of cover there, and they would have offered a fair mark to any one following by the trail. Moreover, Sam would have run away.
It was too rough for her to hope to escape across the lake in the trough of the sea. So there was nothing for her but to continue to struggle toward the river. A bank of heavy clouds was rising in the east. It was to be a grey day.
After a while Sam looked over the edge again. The dugout seemed scarcely to have moved. They were still but half-way across the wide bay. On the lake side they were passing a wooded island out in the middle. The wind was still increasing. It came roaring up the lake in successive gusts. It was like a giant playing with them in cruel glee before administering the coup de grâce. Bela could no longer keep the crests of the waves out. Sam was drenched and chilled.
He stole another look in her face. The imminence of the danger threatening both forced his anger into the background for the moment. She never changed her attitude except occasionally to swing the paddle to the other side of the boat.
At the impact of each gust she lowered her head a little and set her teeth. Her face had become a little haggard and grey under the long continued strain. Sam chafed under his enforced inaction.
"You have another paddle," he said. "Let me help."
"Lie down," she muttered without looking at him. "You don' know how. You turn us over."
He lay in water impotently grinding his teeth. He could not but admire her indomitable courage, and he hated her for being forced to admire her. To be obliged to lie still and let a woman command was a bitter draft to his pride.
A wave leaped over the bow, falling in the dugout like a barrowful of stones. Sam sprang to a sitting position. He thought the end had come. The dugout staggered drunkenly under the additional load. But Bela's face was still unmoved.
"Lean over," she commanded, nodding toward the little pile of baggage between them. "Under the blankets, in the top of the grub-box, my tea-pail."
He found it, and set to work with a will to bail. As fast as he emptied the water, more came in over the bow. The foot of the lake and safety seemed to recede before them. Surely it was not possible a woman could hold out long enough to reach it, he thought, glancing at her.
"Why don't you turn about and run before the wind?" he asked.
"Can't turn now," she muttered. "Wave hit her side, turn over quick."
Sam looked ashore again. For upwards of a furlong off the edge of the flats the breakers were ruling their parallel lines of white. Above all the other noises of the storm the continuous roaring of these waters reached their ears.
"You could land there," he suggested. "What if we did get turned out? It's shallow."
She was not going to tell him the real reason she could not land. "I lose my boat," she muttered.
"Better lose the boat than lose yourself," he muttered sullenly.
Bela did not answer this. She paddled doggedly, and Sam bailed. He saw her glance from time to time toward a certain point inland. Seeing her face change, he followed the direction of her eyes, and presently distinguished, far across the flats, three tiny horses with riders appearing from among the trees.
They were proceeding in single file around the bay. Even at the distance one could guess they were galloping. So that was why she would not land!
Sam did not need to be told who the three riders were. His sensations on perceiving them were mixed. It was not difficult for him to figure what had happened when his absence had been discovered, and he was not at all sure that he wished to escape from his mysterious captor only to fall into those hands.
This line of thought suddenly suggested a possible reason why he had been carried off – but it was too humiliating to credit. He looked at her with a kind of shamed horror. Her face gave nothing away.
By and by Sam realized with a blessed lightening of the heart that the storm had reached its maximum. The gusts were no longer increasing in strength; less water was coming over the bow. Not until he felt the relief was he aware of how frightened he had been.
Bela's face lightened, too. Progress under the cruel handicap was still painfully slow. The wind was like a hand thrusting them back; but every gain brought them a little more under the lee of the land. If Bela's arms held out! He looked at her wonderingly. There was no sign of any slackening yet.
"We not sink now," she said coolly.
"Good!" cried Sam.
In their mutual relief they could almost be friendly.
Bela was heading for the intake of the river. Along the tortuous course of that stream she knew a hundred hiding-places. The land trail followed the general direction of the river, but touched it only at one or two places.
The question was, could she reach the river before the horsemen? Sam watched them, trying to gauge their rate of progress. The horses had at least four miles to cover, while the dugout was now within a mile – but the horses were running.
Sam knew that the trail crossed the river by a ford near the intake from the lake, because he had come that way. If the horsemen cut off Bela at the ford what would she do? he wondered. The outlook was bad for him in either event. He must escape from both parties.
The horsemen passing around the bay became mere specks in the distance. Reaching the foot of the lake they had to cover a straight stretch of a mile and a half to the river. The trail lay behind willows here, and they disappeared from view. It was anybody's race.
Bela, the extraordinary girl, still had a reserve of strength to draw on. As they gradually came under the influence of the windward shore the water calmed down and the dugout leaped ahead.