CHAPTER X

ALWAYS FIRE FIRST

The soft stirring of footsteps jarred Kitchener out of his hideous reverie. Diane Durand had stolen past him in the darkness, and with reaching hands she leaned forward to look out the window. He grabbed her and flung her backwards so violently that she cried aloud, clutching at the finger-marks on her wrist.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, amazed and angry.

“Keep away from that window!”

“What for?”

“There’s blood on it. It’s everywhere.”

He had switched off his light and was unable to see her face, but he heard her draw a shuddering breath and felt her dynamic glance fixed upon him. “It’s--what?” she said in a small, muted voice.

“It’s murder,” he said, wondering what made his own speech sound so strange. “That’s all. Just a nicely planned shooting in the back.”

“Who?” gasped the girl. “Who?”

“My--” Kit stopped so abruptly that he bit his tongue. “An old friend of mine. He was worn out and trying to get a little sleep. I guess he didn’t know that it happened. I--I hope he never knew.”

“You--what makes you so sure?” she asked in a chilled whisper.

“I’m as sure as though I’d seen it.” His short, ugly laugh did not have quite the ring of sanity. “His shirt with a bullet hole in the back, all smeared. The blankets he died in. The dripping across the floor--right there--right at your feet. A body lugged to the window. Overboard and into the creek. That’s how it was done. A pretty little job. A neat piece of work from behind. Your uncle Sim or Jim or whatever you call him. A straight-shooter--a straight-shooter-in-the-back! A nice, sweet boy he is!”

There was a dead silence for a space, and then a harsh, choking sound in the darkness. Then Diane Durand’s voice, icy and level and dangerously restrained: “I can’t believe I understood you. Will you say that again?”

Kitchener was so stunned by the tragedy that he was unable at present to think clearly or rationally. All that could matter to him was the aching certainty that Jerry was gone. Funny old Jerry! He had been done out of life and disposed of like a trapped, helpless animal. Stalked in his sleep and brutally killed! The numbing realization left Kit without any sense of discretion. He wasn’t caring about anything now, what he did or said or what happened next.

“I said that your uncle came in here and stood over him while he slept and put a bullet into his body.”

He felt the girl flinch, and he was conscious of her eyes staring at him. “That’s a lie!” she panted.

“Killed him with the old ivory-butted gun!” Kit laughed insanely. “Of course! The beautiful, engraved six-shooter that stood for law and order! How things work out! God, what a joke everything is!”

The girl turned on him in a flash of savagery. “What a beast you are! You don’t know. You make a wild and wicked guess, and accuse a man of murder. With nothing whatever to go on except your own crazy notions of what might be--of what you seem to want it to be. You policemen! No wonder people are afraid of you. That’s your idea: get somebody, no matter whom. It doesn’t matter whether he’s guilty or innocent. Get him! Frame him! Bring him in! Swear his life away! Get your man--any man--”

“Listen, baby!” Kit cut in fiercely. “I don’t need your advice--or criticism. That sort of talk isn’t helping any. I’ve seen what I’ve seen. That’s plenty. The waffle-mesh tracks we followed down the river. You know who those belong to. Stalking the two-bar shoes through the storm, right to this place. Don’t think I don’t know the ins and outs of this business. I know whom to look for, and I know he can’t be far from here right now--”

“You haven’t a shred of real evidence!” she interrupted passionately. “And to say what you’ve said, without being sure--it’s cruel, it’s criminal!”

“Yes?” he retorted. “Well, let me tell you--I’m going out and find the bloody prints. There’ll be tracks somewhere around here. And they’ll show the waffle marks. I’m just that sure of that. If they shouldn’t I’ll apologize. I’ll beg your pardon on my hands and knees. You can’t ask anything fairer than that.”

Kit swung around to face the open doorway. It was snowing heavily outside and the wind still moaned through the firs. In the black forest farther down stream the frightful cry of a giant owl quavered in the night--a hideous, hungering sound. He couldn’t forget the name of this place. Great Owl Run. His father had been finished here twelve years ago. And now his brother! A fateful spot for the Tearls. It wasn’t just coincidence--it was kismet. This place had haunted his imagination since childhood. Now he had found it for himself. And Bill was gone and Jerry was gone, and only Kitchener was left.

Perhaps Kitchener would go next in turn. That would be consistent. And he didn’t particularly care. Little Jane would carry on. It was queer how his thoughts kept going back to Jane now, and he could smile tenderly to himself, thinking of her. She was the best of the lot. It didn’t matter about himself. He wasn’t afraid of the owls or the mysterious forest or the red-handed murderer who undoubtedly was skulking somewhere in the neighborhood.

His pulse had slowed to a sober, steady beat, the fever of his blood had simmered down to an ominous coolness. There was something he had to do, and he was ruthless and reckless in the zest to see it through. Whatever happened, he asked only that it might be swift and decisive.

He started towards the door, but a hand reached in the darkness to grab his sleeve. “What are you going to do?” asked Diane Durand in sudden panic.

“Find him, and arrest him--if he doesn’t try to resist.”

“Oh, no!” The girl’s tone had changed. She was frightened and desperate. There was frantic appeal in her voice. “No! Wait! You’ve got to wait! Something terrible will happen! Don’t. Please don’t!”

“You seem to think he will resist.” Kitchener’s laugh sounded unfamiliar in his own ears. “Well, he probably will.”

He shook off her hand and started again to leave the cabin. But at the doorway he changed his mind and halted. He thought he caught a sound behind him--not where the girl stood, a little to the left--but straight back, over near the fireplace. He had thoroughly searched the room. Nothing was there. And yet--

Again he heard it. Unquestionably! A soft, whisking sound--higher up--near the roof--like snow sliding. He turned, and his pocket light again found its way into the hand. He didn’t touch the button, but was ready to shoot on the flash at an instant’s notice.

In his loosely gripped fist the butt of his pistol rested comfortably. The expert marksman gave no conscious thought to the weapon. It was as much a part of himself as the hand that held it. The safety slipped off with the reflex of the thumb. His whole attention was centered towards the ceiling beside the chimney, where he knew there was a wide hole opening through the roof.

It was too dark within and without to differentiate between the solid part of the roof and the open sky. But a prescience more astute, more sensitive than mere eyesight, appraised him that something was blocking the gap above, staring into the cabin.

All was still now, save the slow, gentle shifting of the rafters, but Kit was positive that somebody or something had climbed onto the roof--that a face was peering down.

He was waiting with every faculty straining to catch the least hint of sound or movement, when, as sudden as lightning, a white, blinding ray flashed downward to cut the darkness like a shining blade and hit the farther wall in a dazzling bullseye.

Kitchener’s reactions were as spontaneous as it is to live or to breathe or to fight back from a corner. He saw the hard, round spot of light at the upper end of the shaft--the focus point of the searching beam. The light was swinging his direction--reaching for him--

There was no volition on his part. It was as though his pistol lifted and sighted itself and went off on its own responsibility, regardless of his own will or intention.

Flame spurted, the butt kicked back in his fist, the log walls were jarred as though by a sledge-hammer blow. At the same instant the light winked out, and some broken, clinking object dropped and struck the hard clay floor below.

The room was still filled with the first explosion, when a fiery streak stabbed down at Kitchener from the darkness of the eaves. A chunk of lead hit the wall just behind his neck and plunged deep into one of the logs. The man on the roof had fired at the flash of Kit’s gun, and missed him by inches.

As the report of the return shot jarred in his ears, Kitchener side-stepped and ducked towards the floor. His bullet had shattered the lense of the intruder’s lamp. He was safe enough, as long as he kept his thumb off his own switch-button.

But Kit was not playing for safety. This blind-man’s work irritated him. On the roof crouched the man who had assassinated his brother Jerry, and who also must have had a hand in the ambushing of Inspector Tearl. Kitchener was troubled by no scruples of chivalry. He grinned dourly to himself in the darkness as he realized how he had met his first test in police uniform. He hadn’t even thought of the traditions of the service, but fired instinctively and beat his man to the shot. So Jerry undoubtedly would have done in his place. There was no sense in dealing politely with a dangerous criminal who knew no code.

At this moment Kit’s only regret was that he had shot too accurately. He had sighted for the man’s electric lamp and smashed it. If his bullet had only been a little off the line he might not be crouching in the darkness now, with a live murderer at the roof hole, ready to plug him the instant he revealed his whereabouts.

The sweetly pungent reek of picric acid was a familiar scent in Kit’s nostrils. It reminded him of the target gallery where he used to put in an hour every afternoon following the dismissal of the class on torts. In law a tort is an evil or injury done one man by another, and the professor had taught his students that the wronged party was entitled to complete redress. Kitchener was thankful to-night that he had learned something in college beyond the theories of books. If he caught a single glimpse of his man no court of law would ever need to settle this affair.

He turned his light-stick upward and pushed the button. A luminous streak splashed to the ceiling, limning brilliantly the jagged hole in the roof-shakes. In the opening he saw a bulky shoulder and an arm and a man’s big fist clenching a revolver. His own gun went up. Eyes and finger synchronized to their business, but in the fractional second required to make sure of his aim, a living, gasping weight landed on him from behind.

Kitchener had no warning of the attack. The shock sent him down on one knee and his flashlight was knocked out of his hand and went flying across the room in a twisting, white arc. He was unable to check the pressure of his forefinger in time. A jolt of sound hit his eardrums as his pistol exploded haphazard to send a bullet on a ricocheting course from the chimney to the side wall and across the splintering door-slabs.

His assailant was Diane Durand. He had forgotten her in those few seconds and had allowed her to get behind him. And now she had both arms around him, clutching his pistol-hand, clinging to him with an amazing strength.

Kit had often heard the phrase about female deadliness, but he never thought it really meant anything--not until now. Under their silken softness her muscles were almost as strong as his, and at that moment she seemed twice as agile. He regained his feet and tried to wrench his arm free, but small fingers and sharp nails were digging into his wrist with the force of desperation.

The girl was hanging on his back, and whichever way he turned he swung her with him. Her face was pressing his neck and he could feel the breath come and go harshly from her open mouth. “Let go!” he muttered, and tore furiously at her hands.

On the roof overhead he heard a slipping, sliding sound, followed by a heavy thump in the snow behind the cabin. The man outside evidently was dissatisfied with his peek hole, and had dropped to the ground. Either he had decided to run away or had started around for the cabin door.

Kit was in too tight a situation to hold any false punctilios in the distinction of sex. Courtesy towards women is a nice trait, but it was absurd to be gallant with his life at stake. The beautiful gestures of life are outmoded. There are no gentle disciples of Gautama left in the world to feed themselves to female tigers.

This girl was fighting him like a man. He locked his fingers under hers and wrenched backwards with his full strength. Her breath grew short and sharp and he felt her supple tendons cramp themselves convulsively. He was hurting her badly, but she still clung to him, trying to plow her nails deeper into his flesh. Fiercely he tore her grip away, and whirled to fling her from him.

But she was a shade the quicker. One slim, tenacious arm crooked itself around his neck and tightened under his chin to choke back his breathing. The second hand darted around to clutch him across the mouth, trying to twist his head off his shoulders.

“Drop that gun!” a voice sobbed in his ear. “I--I’ll make him quit if--if you’ll--quit!”

“Quit!” Kit laughed truculently against the warm hand that was stifling him. “Quit, Hell!” He jerked his head aside at the price of a furrow of skin gouged from his upper lip. Then, with a contortionist’s movement he dropped to one knee, taking the girl with him and attempting to fling her in front of him.

His pistol was in his fist and he did not dare to put it away or drop it. At any minute the expected footsteps might cross the threshold from without. He only had the use of one hand, and his attacker was as active and lithe and stubborn as a pouncing cat. He almost threw her by the unexpectedness of his ruse, but not quite. She recovered her advantage with a surprising shift of her wiry body, tumbled across his shoulders, twisted a rounded leg behind his knee, and wrapped both flexible arms in a tightening strangle-hold against his wind-pipe.

Both were panting in the darkness, and Kit could taste a warm salty trickle on his lips. He was furious. It stung him to the depths of his masculine complacency to realize that this slender, boyish-built girl was quite as able-bodied as he. At that moment, if his thumbs had been able to reach her pretty throat, he could have throttled her cheerfully.

But she was like a leech, a fierce little incubus, hag--riding his back. He set his teeth and, with a sudden effort of exasperation, he heaved himself erect, wrenched his shoulder around and threw back his head.

His skull hit something soft and yielding with an impact sufficient to hurt through the hardness of his cranium. He heard a broken little cry behind him, and the girl’s tense body relaxed a trifle, and for an instant her arms loosened their clutch. She tried to grab him again, but this time he evaded her hands and tore himself free.

He did not linger to find out what had happened. He felt the draught of the open doorway, and turned leftward to plunge out into the snowy night. Groping blindly, he sprang through the door, stumbled over something that yelped and snapped at his leg. He tumbled sprawling into the middle of a shrieking, struggling heap of dogs.

His team of huskies had been sitting in an uneasy circle at the cabin entrance. It was too dark to see, and he had completely forgotten them. The reminder was so sudden that he did not quite know what had happened until he found himself flat on his stomach in the snow, the center of the writhing, howling pack. A wet, furry body fell backwards and sat on his head. A second shape bounded across him, tangling him in the sledge traces. One of the beasts snarled in fright, and something slashed his pants and nipped the flesh of his calf.

Fighting with both hands, he warded off the milling shadows, and managed to lift himself to his knees. A set of sharp teeth clicked in his face, and as he threw out his arm to protect himself his pistol slipped from his grasp and went spinning away into a snow drift. He righted himself somehow, and scrambled to his feet. Kicking the dogs away, he disentangled himself from the twisted harness lines and stooped forward to plunge his arm shoulder deep into the nearest snow bank.

Frantically he groped about with his bare, chilled fingers, and gasped with relief as his hand closed over the icy butt of his lost gun. This was sheer good luck. He might have spent an hour in futile search for the weapon. He examined the gun critically to make sure that the action was not clogged, and then stole around the cabin, closely hugging the walls.

There was nobody in sight. He wedged himself into the angle of the chimney and waited with every sense keyed to hair-trigger alertness. The dogs were raising such bedlam in front of the shack it was impossible to hear any other sound. He gaped right and left in the darkness. The man on the roof had jumped down on this side, but there was nobody here now. Perhaps he was ambushed in the neighboring timber; perhaps he had fled.

Kit ventured out of his sheltering nook and pushed around to the side of the cabin overlooking the high embankment of the brook. Still he saw nothing, heard nothing except the gurgle of water and the raving of the dogs around in front. He retraced his steps, waded through the animals, and looked in at the doorway. His electric lamp was still blazing in the corner of the room where it had fallen. All the rest of the interior was shrouded in darkness. He did not see the girl and did not stop to search for her. In three strides he crossed the room, snatched up his lamp, and again ran out of doors.

His light cast strange, ghostly patterns among the sheeted stumps and along the ragged, white fringe of the forest. The higher plumes of the firs swayed and moaned in the wind, but everything was deathly still in the underwoods below. He made his way around the cabin, boring the darkness in all directions with his flashlight, steeling himself for the crashing shock of a bullet.

He reached the rear of the cabin, and nothing interrupted his wary advance. The lamp was brought to bear, and he paused to read the story in the snow. Here were a pair of big boot prints. The intruder had removed his snowshoes at this spot and climbed to the roof. The eaves were only hands’-reach high, and he had boosted himself upward from a convenient windowsill. Farther out were two deeper bootmarks. This was where he had jumped off the roof. There was a circle of scuffled tracks at this point. He had donned his snowshoes here.

Kit flashed his light outward and saw a line of webbed tracks, heading across the clearing to the forest. Great, long strides--almost running. The murderer evidently hadn’t cared for his enemy’s marksmanship and decided that he had had enough.

There was nothing else that Kitchener needed to see. He switched off his light and returned to the cabin doorway.

“Hello!” he said to the darkness.

There was no response.

“You there, Diane?” he demanded. “You might as well know it. The waffle-mesh snowshoes. Your lovely uncle! He was here and took a crack at me, and beat it, and left you to the wolves.”

“You fired first!” an unsteady voice spoke out from the shadows. “And nobody left me. He didn’t know I was here. I was careful that he shouldn’t. If he had he’d have come in and got me. You may not know it, but I saved you--”

“Or him,” interrupted Kit. His sore lip yielded to a battered grin. Somehow he bore no malice towards the girl. Nobody could blame her for fighting for her own. That was the sort of blind, unreasoning loyalty that he himself understood only too well. He turned on his lamp again and switched the light around until he found the slight figure standing lonely in the middle of the room. She faced him unflinchingly, and apparently was trying to check her labored breathing.

As he looked at her he felt a queer catch in his breath. Her shirt was torn at the collar, her ruddy hair was flying at wild ends, a bruised, bare arm emerged from a sleeve ripped to the shoulder. But her pert nose was the worst. It looked a couple of sizes larger than he remembered it, and was frankly bloodied.

“Ah, gee!” he exclaimed contritely. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Is it bad?” she asked, and crooked her arm across her face.

Kit hastily dug a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her. “Gosh!” he muttered. “I never hurt a girl before in my life.”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she assured him through the crumpled handkerchief. “What did I do to you?”

“You skinned my wrist and half ripped off my lip, that’s all.”

“Well, that’s something, anyhow!” Her dark eyes brightened with satisfaction. “That makes us quits, doesn’t it?”

Kit drew a deep breath of relief. It was wonderful of her to take it that way. “You’re a good sport!” he ejaculated. “Darned if you aren’t! The Dianes! Hellcats, maybe. But that’s all right. I hope I always have a Diane for an enemy.”

“You will,” she returned evenly.

He cast a sharp glance at her, started to say something, but changed his mind and turned away. From his pocket he produced a match and ignited the litter in the fireplace. “Might as well make it comfortable here,” he said as a cheerful blaze crackled up in the darkness. “I hate to leave you alone, but there’s no way out of it.”

“You--where are you going?” she faltered.

Kit did not answer. His thoughts were out in the dark forest, pursuing the trail of the waffle-webbed snowshoes. In a few minutes he would be on the march again. The other man would be very tired too. Wherever he went fresh his trail would be easily followed. He couldn’t stay on his feet forever. Kit could keep going as long as the other man did, and he had no intention of being shaken off now.

“I’m going with you,” the girl announced.

“You!” he countered. “What chance would you stand? I’m traveling to-night. I’d leave you miles behind.”

She started towards him, tottered uncertainly, and caught at the table. “I’m all in!” she said piteously.

“Of course you are,” he assured her. “You stay here and get some sleep and rest. I’ll come back for you when I can.”

Kit went outside, unharnessed and fed the dogs and turned them loose to find their own sleeping places. An ax, two blankets, matches and a few packages of provisions were strapped together into a small back-pack. The remainder of his equipment he carried into the cabin. He dragged in several armloads of down-wood and stacked it in a pile by the fireplace. Then he drew the old ax out of the cabin sill, spiked the door back on its hinges and refastened the shutters over the broken windows.

The girl had watched him in gloomy silence, knowing it would be useless to try to dissuade him from his plans.

“I’ve fixed you up as well as I can,” he said. He shouldered his pack-sack and picked up his rifle. “Good night, Diane.”

The girl was standing by the fireplace, dejectedly. “I hope--” she began, and stopped.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said drearily. “Good-by.”

Without a backward glance Kit passed out of the cabin and strode off alone into the blustering night.