CHAPTER XIII

LAST-STAND OUTPOST

In the great North the lands of “big-sticks” and “little-sticks” and the treeless arctic prairies are not divided evenly by the lines of latitude. There are no definitely marked borders of forestation. For long stretches the timber country dwindles through graduations of stunted, failing growth across the frontiers of the open barrens. But there are other places where the forests send out the massed array of their mightiest giants, like shock-forces, to wage the endless, bitter fight with the polar winds.

Great Owl Run stood at the head of one of these last-stand outposts of the great forests. A broad, sheltered valley and an unusual fertility of soil gave the trees a chance to root and grow tall and thrust their dense ranks northward in a hundred-mile fringe. Huge spruces and firs and wild, dark underwoods crowded each other in a jungle-like wilderness that reached to the southern edge of the deep-cut creek.

On the opposite bank of the stream the ground rose abruptly into a high plateau that was exposed to the furious assaults of the arctic gales. Here the forest stopped as suddenly as though the line had been cut level with axes. For a mile or so farther on a few dwarfed, wind-tortured trees struggled to hold their own, and after that there was nothing but the bare, frozen tundras reaching in a vast, appalling emptiness to the polar seas.

Kitchener Tearl came westward along the thickly wooded side of Great Owl Run as the smoky dawn was beginning to break. He had traveled all night down the creek, skirting the Indian village on the tributary lake towards the southwest, hurrying on his way because of the fear that Hell Bent might return to the cabin and leave again before Kit could intercept him. Kit was hoping at any time to cross the trail of the waffle-web snowshoes.

It had stopped snowing during the night and the wind was dying. Before the darkness paled Kit had seen patches of starlight through the scattering clouds. The storm was blowing itself out, and there was a promise of clear, below-zero weather for the holidays.

He was walking through the alders that skirted the high embankment of the ice-bound creek, scanning the ground before him, watching the shadows changing from purple to misty, twilight grays. The clearing and the cabin and the owl-infested woods, he knew, could not be far beyond.

As he peered ahead, expecting at any minute to see the break among the trees, he heard a sudden snapping sound behind him, and as he whirled to look he saw a man’s muffled figure come out from behind a neighboring windfall.

Kitchener planted his feet apart and shifted his rifle for eventualities, and then his second glance reassured him. The newcomer was short and slight in build, in no wise resembling Bent. He shuffled forward into the open, and Kit recognized Giffard, the Runt.

The little trapper looked haggard in the early morning light, and as he drew nearer Kit noticed that he was limping slightly and that there was a streak of fresh blood across his left cheekbone.

“Hello!” remarked Kit. “What happened to you?”

“Who, me?” Giffard rubbed the back of his hand across his face, and then looked tentatively at his fingers. “Why, nothin’ much, if you ask me. I just got torn a little in a bramble thicket.”

To Kit the wound did not have the appearance of a thorn scratch, but he let the statement pass. “You live around here?” he inquired.

“My shack’s down that way, about two mile in from the creek.”

Kit eyed the man curiously. His back pack was thickly encrusted with snow, and it was apparent that he had not been home since he left _Saut Sauvage_ the night before.

“Where does Bruyas live?” asked Kit.

Giffard pointed with his mittened thumb. “North side of the creek. He hangs out mostly along the barrens.”

The little man moved closer, looked about him in a full circle, and lowered his voice confidentially. “Last night you wanted to know about an Indian murder, and I found out about one this morning. The Yellow Knives is more apt to talk to me than to a policeman. I run into a couple of ’em this A.M. and I asked ’em and they told me.”

“Yes?”

“One of their bucks was shoved into an ice-hole on Long Lake by an Esquimau.”

“I thought the Esquimaux had all gone back north by now,” said Kit.

“Yeah. That’s right. The bands come down in the summer to get wood for sleds and snowshoe frames, and they go back to the coast in the Winter for the seal hunting. But this man was taken sick an’ left behind. He’s been moochin’ around here ever since.”

“He murdered a Yellow Knife?”

“That’s the story. Picked him up by the heels and chucked him through a hole in the ice.”

“What’s his name?” asked Kit.

“Oogly,” said Giffard.

“Ugly?”

“Yeah. Only you spell it with an ‘O.’”

“Where is he now?”

“That’d be hard to tell. The Indians have been hunting him for a month and ain’t found him yet. He’s too good a hider.”

“Thanks, anyhow,” said Kit. “I’ll look into it.”

He started on his way again, and after a momentary hesitation Giffard decided that he might as well follow along. The trapper did not actually accompany Kit, but hovered aimlessly a few paces behind.

They reached the clearing in the nebulous light of daybreak. Kit halted at the edge of the alders to reconnoiter. Before him lay half an acre of stumpy ground, hemmed in on three sides by the deep forest, and flanked on the fourth side by the steep-banked creek. The cabin faced the west, and stood on the sheer brink beside the stream.

Kit had seen the place only in a pitch-black hour of horror two nights ago when he and Diane Durand had stumbled out of the woods into the blood-spattered room. His eyes had grown hard and grim as he paused under the alders, inspecting the lonely dwelling.

The cabin probably had been standing there, weathering and rotting these many seasons. The place was more forlorn and tumble-down even than he had supposed. Yet somebody had been making a few pathetic repairs. Since his visit a square of old tarpaulin had been tacked over the hole in the roof, the door was properly squared in its frame, and the broken window-panes had been replaced with rabbit pelts. A wisp of blue smoke issued from the crumbling chimney. Apparently there was somebody inside.

From the cabin Kit’s glance shifted across the dismal clearing. The snow was trampled every direction by a confusion of snowshoe prints. Perhaps they had been left there by Diane Durand, perhaps by others. He saw only that there were no waffle-web tracks. But this meant nothing. He knew now that Hell Bent was equipped with an extra, unidentified pair of raquettes. For all Kit could tell the man at this moment might be watching from one of the cabin windows.

There was nothing to do but accept the chance. Kit ventured into the open, but a hand reached after him to pluck at his sleeve.

“There’s somebody in there,” Giffard informed him in a husky whisper.

“Yes, I know. No doubt it’s the young woman I was telling the constables about.”

“There’s somebody else,” the trapper insisted. “A man. I saw his face at one of the window chinks.”

Kit looked around with a sobering expression. “Which window?”

“He ain’t there now,” said Giffard.

Kitchener faced the man with a narrowing scrutiny. “You mean you saw him a while ago? You’ve been here before?”

Giffard’s eyes dropped and he relapsed into a sullen silence.

“If you’ll take the advice of the police,” said Kit evenly, “you’ll keep away from this place in the future.” He turned on his heel and started across the clearing.

He advanced without a sound, a wary eye on the door and the window openings. So far he had passed unchallenged, but as he drew opposite the cabin the breathless quiet was assailed by a savage, barking chorus, and a pack of dogs came tearing around the corner of the building to fling themselves at the intruder.

They were Kit’s dogs. Buzz-saw, the big Chinook, charged in the fore and behind him came the tatterdemalions that Kit had purchased in the Chippewyan encampment. The four beasts caught the familiar scent at the same instant, recognized their man, and they sat down in a half circle to yowl beseechingly for breakfast.

It was too late to arrive unobtrusively as Kit had hoped to do. He strode to the door and flattened himself against the frame, to be out of range of the flanking windows. The latchstring had been pulled through its hole, and he found that the bar was down. He rapped heavily with his fist.

The answer was unexpectedly prompt. “If you don’t get away from here I’ll shoot you again, and this time you’ll get the full charge!” The voice came from behind the barred door--a woman’s voice, tingling with hostility. It was Diane Durand.

“I beg your pardon?” said Kitchener.

There was a short, uncertain interlude before the girl spoke again. “Who are you?” she asked.

“It’s Tearl.”

“Oh!” she said, and there was another pause.

“Who’d you think I was?”

“Another man,” she told him through the barrier.

“Giffard?”

“I don’t know his name. I don’t want to. A little, horrid, rat-faced thing.”

“That’s Giffard.”

“You tell him to keep away from here.”

“What did he do?” asked Kit.

“Nothing. He didn’t get a chance.”

“And you say you shot him?” demanded Kit incredulously.

“I certainly did.”

“In Heaven’s name--what for?”

“He came here and tried to give me a silver fox skin for a present. I told him I didn’t want any presents, and for him to keep out. He tried to force his way in, and I slammed the door in his face. Then he went to get an ax, saying he was going to smash down the door.”

Kit looked around at the furtive figure that still lurked at the edge of the clearing, and his left eyebrow slanted upward at an unpleasant angle. “I guessed right!” he muttered. “I thought so.”

“What?” asked the girl.

“You mean you really shot him?” Kit asked again.

“When he started back with his ax from the other side of the clearing I let him have it.”

“What with?”

“A shotgun. The one that was on your sledge.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Kit, realizing for the first time that the girl was telling the truth. There had been a double-barreled twelve-gauge among the effects that Jerry had traded him, and also a box of shells. He recalled Giffard’s limp and the furrowed streak over his cheekbone. Diane actually fired at the trapper, and a couple of the little missiles had found flesh.

“Well,” demanded the defiant voice from behind the door, “I suppose I’m not allowed to defend myself.”

Kit grinned maliciously at Giffard who, this time, was staying at a discreet distance. _Noondea_, the weasel, probably in the future would sell his silver fox pelts and not try to give them away to helpless-looking maidens in lonely cabins.

“Who’s in there with you?” Kit asked the girl.

There was a dead silence on the other side of the door.

“Hello!” he persisted. “Did you hear me? Are you alone?”

Again there was no answer. Kitchener’s half-smiling lips suddenly drew together in a set and rigid line. “Open that door!” he commanded.

“I’m not going to,” returned Diane. “This for the moment is my home, and I’m not going to let anybody in.”

Kitchener unslung his ax and leaned the handle against the door-frame. Then he shoved his pistol holster around to the front of his belt, and unfastened the flap. There was a stealthy movement behind the door crack and he thought he heard two people whispering.

The genial-featured Kit magically was gone, and in his place stood a hard-jawed, stern-eyed man, cool and nerveless and dangerous. There was somebody in that room with the girl, and his implacable instincts told him that that somebody must be Jerry Tearl’s murderer.

He caught up his ax, swung the blade, and drove the bit deep into the quivering door. A second crashing blow slashed a six inch chip out of the wood above the latch-hole. A gasping protest sounded from within, and as he lifted his ax a third time the bar rattled suddenly in its socket and the door was flung open.

Diane Durand confronted him in the dim opening, her head up, her eyes aflame, a shotgun gripped against her taut body.

“You keep out of here!” she warned the intruder.

Kit scarcely noticed her. Intuition told him that she would be too squeamish to fire at such close range. A more imminent peril awaited him in the gloom behind her.

He tried to peer into the thick, smoky atmosphere of the cabin, and was aware of a gliding movement on the farther side of the room. The girl was attempting recklessly to bar his way. He strode across the threshold and grabbed the barrel of the gun. A tug and a twist, and the gun was wrenched from her hands. He flung the weapon through the door, into the snow outside.

“You--” she tried to say, and stopped with a choking sound as his elbow jammed itself into her ribs. He shouldered her aside ruthlessly and strode past her.

In the dingy light he made out two upright figures standing stolid and motionless before him. Both were short and squat in build. Neither was Hell Bent. He needed only a glance to assure himself of that. With his pistol clenched for business his glance darted around the murky interior, and then checked in blinking wonderment as a squalling little human cry suddenly greeted him from the bunk.

“There!” broke in Diane Durand in a tense and furious voice. “You’ve done it! I knew it! You’ve gone and wakened him!”

Kit was staring weakly at a tiny, squirming bundle, tucked up in a blanket on the lower bunk. He was too flabbergasted to speak or to think. At that moment an enemy could have shot him dead without a flicker of resistance on his part.

Diane had rushed at him in an outburst of indignation. “You bully!” she exploded. “You brute! I told you to stay out. Oh, doggone it! After all the time we’ve had getting him asleep! You’ve waked the baby!”