Part 18

Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then, and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them.

"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.

"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector. He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."

"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, with suppressed malice, under his breath.

"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's your chance for life. Speak out quick."

The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?

In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her? And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man was there alive before him, what would he do?

Outside these prison walls--to be out there in the sun, where life would be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life, and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning, though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be, then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own! What would he do?

The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.

"What will you do, Grassette?" he said, at last, in a low voice and with a step forward to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself and give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again."

Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, every one would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each other--and all that would happen then.

Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew.

"_Bien_, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go alone--eh?"

The Sheriff shook his head. "No; two warders will go with you--and myself."

A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he said again: "_Bon_, I will go."

"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.

"_Bon_!" said Grassette. "What time is it?"

"Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to open the door of the cell.

"By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to leave the cell.

At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught his face. Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--shouts of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when he had left the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for a moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Grassette! Save him, and we'll save you."

Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream--a long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him "Cheer up and do the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little while they dismounted from their horses and sat under the shade of a great ash-tree for a few moments and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them--a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!--if she was still alive!

Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so well worth living! But since that was not to be, then he would see what he could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense, had injured him.

Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after; the sun and the clear, sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated, unfamiliar, compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all the years that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man, waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly, and demoralizing--now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is Marcile?

It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew, the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.

Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold! Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you there?--Hello!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a silence--a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "Hello! Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"

They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to the earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.

"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the Gulch. "Water--he is near it."

"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff--"not a sound."

"I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.

He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped them.

Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground. They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.

They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Grassette in agony and stark fear.

The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.

"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said, in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to Bignold.

"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched man gasped. "I'm dying!"

A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said.

The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while another poured brandy from a flask into the water.

Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the others drew away. They realized that these two men had an account to settle, and there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold was going fast.

"You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away.

Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast drawing its veil.

"Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.

The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now.

"Queeck--queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said, sharply. "Come back, Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"

He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled to be free.

"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his tongue refused its office.

"Where is she?--spik!" commanded Grassette, in a tone of pleading and agony now.

Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his pocket, then lay still.

Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from a hospital in New York, and was signed, "Nurse Marcile."

With a groan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the ravine.

"It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a free man," said the Sheriff.

Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to get to Marcile, when he was free.

He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.

A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY

I

Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this story--Athabasca, one of the most beautiful countries in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land in winter. Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the districts southwest of it, for the Chinook winds steal through from the Pacific and temper the fierceness of the frozen Rockies. Yet forty and fifty degrees below zero is cold, after all, and July strawberries in this wild Northland are hardly compensation for seven months of ice and snow, no matter how clear and blue the sky, how sweet the sun during its short journey in the day. Some days, too, the sun may not be seen even when there is no storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the air.

A day like this is called a _poudre_ day; and woe to the man who tempts it unthinkingly, because the light makes the delicate mist of frost shine like silver. For that powder bites the skin white in short order, and sometimes reckless men lose ears or noses or hands under its sharp caress. But when it really storms in that Far North, then neither man nor beast should be abroad--not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but from the ground--a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, and you are caught between.

He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad--he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gayety and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.

That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time.

William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to high-school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes _en route_ to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he had sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not to say that he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always succeeded; but he only did enough to pass and no more; and he did not wish to do more than pass. His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that he was either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were, by a mathematical calculation he had always done just enough to prevent him being plucked.

He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn to go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep afterward. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score in the biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the country; but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took his degree he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair and forced along in his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the function in the convocation-hall. He looked so fat and shiny, so balmy and sleepy, when he took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John Franklin, that the public laughed, and the college men in the gallery began singing--

"Bye O, my baby, Father will come to you soo-oon!"

He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he put his prize book under his arm through one of the holes in his gown, and in two minutes was back in his room, and in another five was fast asleep.

It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly, fat, yellow-haired, and twenty-four years old, was doomed to failure in life, in spite of the fact that he had a little income of a thousand dollars a year and had made a century in an important game of cricket. Great, therefore, was the surprise of the college, and afterward of the Province, when, at the farewell dinner of the graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as a missionary.

At first it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," as Holly called them later, when in a simple, honest, but indolent speech he said he had applied for ordination.

Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in holy orders, journeyed to Athabasca in the Far North.

On his long journey there was plenty of time to think. He was embarked on a career which must forever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed does a missionary of the North ever return to the crowded cities or take a permanent part in civilized life.

What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel, as for hours and hours he saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying north, _honking_ on their course; in the song of the half-breeds as they ran the rapids. Of course, he did not think these things quite as they are written here--all at once and all together; but in little pieces from time to time, feeling them rather than saying them to himself.

At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there was also something more, and it was to his credit.