CHAPTER XVI

THE HONORABLE MURDERER

The promise of future punishment did not bother Oogly in the least. He lived happily in his immediate moments, and anything that happened to him at a later date was something not to be worried about until that time came. Any day after to-day was too remote even to be thought about.

He gazed up in rapt admiration at the man who had chased off the Yellow Knives and laughed at their departing backs. Oogly was a humorist himself, and loved to laugh as well as anybody. His grin of appreciation included his chin, the top of his forehead and both frost-bitten ears.

Suddenly he thought of something that had been overlooked on this joyful occasion. He ran to the bunk and came back with the baby in his arms. “Uttaktuak want kissum too,” he said.

“Being female,” remarked Kit, “she would.” He bent lightly and touched his lips to the funny little sleeping face that Oogly held up to him. Then he looked around at Diane with mocking eyes.

The girl was rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand. She flushed with annoyance for an instant, and then her mood changed and she smiled caustically. “You’ve certainly given us three women a glorious Christmas,” she remarked in biting irony.

As she observed Kit from under her thick, hazel eyelashes her face suddenly grew sober. “Did you mean that?” she demanded.

“I always mean it,” said Kitchener lightly. “Just ask any of the girls--”

She shook her head impatiently. “You know what I’m asking you. What you said about Oogly?”

“What did I say about him?”

“That you’re going to arrest him, and--”

“Hang him?” Kit supplied as the girl delicately hesitated. “I would if I could. That’s part of my job. He deserves it, but I don’t just really see how it can be done. Not right away, anyhow.”

Diane’s features brightened. “You really meant what you told the Yellow Knives?”

“I’m afraid I did. You can’t prove that a murder has been committed by the murderer’s unsupported testimony. Odd as it sounds, that’s the law. Oogly’s confession isn’t worth a darn without a substantiating witness and a dead body for an inquest. A man accused of a capital crime isn’t allowed to convict himself. A nice situation, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s fine,” said Diane.

“You think it’s fine to let an admitted murderer go scot-free?” Kit scowled at her. “Maybe that’s your idea of the way a world should be run, but it’s not mine. I’ve got to try and find the dead man’s body. Then maybe I can do something about it.”

“I hope you never find it,” said Diane.

“I go ’long when you go show you best places for looking,” put in the irrepressible Oogly.

Kitchener eyed the Esquimau in perplexity. While he wore the scarlet of the police and called himself by his dead brother’s name he was conscientiously determined to acquit himself in his borrowed rôle as sincerely and honestly as though he himself had taken the oath of service. The responsibilities that once had been Jerry’s had shifted to his own shoulders. And now his first police case left him in a decided quandary. He hadn’t the faintest notion what he ought to do.

In spite of himself he secretly felt the same sympathy and liking for Oogly that Diane Durand frankly expressed. By his own lights the little Esquimau was a good man. He loved his wife and baby. He would freeze for them and starve for them and die for them calmly if need be. Men who lived always so close to death as the people of the frozen seas, naturally would put the lightest valuation on human life. The loss of a few Yellow Knives to the world could not seem a very important matter to Oogly. But if his own life were forfeit for a simple killing, that wouldn’t be so dreadful either. He had showed clearly how he felt about it. If he had done wrong, he wasn’t afraid to pay the penalty.

Kit would have arrested the man if he had had any evidence on which to found a charge. But there was none. There can be no murder trial without a coroner’s inquest, and there can be no inquest unless the coroner’s jury has a victim’s body to sit upon. Legally he couldn’t do a thing about it.

On the other hand, it was out of the question to allow an unrepentant murderer to wander at large in the forest. Oogly might take it into his queer head some day that others of the Indians were praying against him.

As Kit studied the Esquimau with a baffled frown, an idea struck him. If Oogly could be impressed with the enormity of his offense he might try to be a better man. There was nothing criminal or wicked in his flat, round face. He was looking at Kit now with an eager, dog-like friendliness in his uptilted eyes. There could be no doubt of his anxiety to please the man who had saved him. Perhaps he might be shamed into future good-behavior.

Kit stared uncertainly around the foggy room, and his glance lit on a row of shelves in the corner. During his recent absence Diane had unpacked the provisions he had left for her on his sledge and stored them neatly away in their original bags and boxes and tins.

After a brief inspection of the shelves Kit picked out a small can which was labeled “baking powder.” He took off the tin top and laid it on the table. Using his heavy-bladed knife for a cutting edge and a billet of wood as a hammer, he cut around the rim, and broke out from the center a bright disc of metal.

The others grouped themselves behind him and watched with curiosity, but nobody asked any questions.

With the point of his knife Kit began tracing printed letters across the shiny surface of tin. He worked painstakingly with his tongue in his cheek, and when he finished he had engraved the word “murderer” across the smooth-faced disc. He punched a slot in the rim of metal, removed the strap from his wrist-watch and threaded it through the hole. Then he stood up at soldierly attention and faced Oogly sternly.

“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.

The Esquimau nodded. “Yup. You oneguy shoot-like-hell.”

“I’m the police,” said Kitchener severely. He tapped his chest, and then swept out his arms in a gesture that was meant to take in a hundred thousand miles of territory. “When I say anything it is the law everywhere. It goes! You get that?”

Again Oogly nodded. He accepted the statement. He could readily believe all of that.

“Look at me!” thundered Kit. “Straight! This is awful! This is a terrible thing! I’m looking into the eyes of a murderer--a common murderer who ought to be hanged!”

The Esquimau seemed to understand this too. He was watching Kit with grave intensity, and by the pained screwing-up of his face he showed how sorry and remorseful he was beginning to feel. His underlip hung out tremulously, as though he were a little, penitent child who was suddenly overcome by its own fearful wickedness.

Kitchener hastened on with the arraignment. “I hate to do this to you, Oogly,” he said sadly. “But I’ve got to do it. You’re a pariah, an outcast, a no-good man. People must know you for what you are. When they meet you in the forest or on the barrens they’ll shrink from you, they’ll shun you, they’ll hurry the other direction. They’ll be afraid to speak to you, because they’ll know they’re looking at a scoundrel.

“Come here!” Kit crooked a relentless forefinger.

After an instant’s hesitation Oogly advanced a pace and waited uneasily.

Kitchener reached forward suddenly, and with the point of his knife cut two narrow slits in the Esquimau’s skin shirt. He thrust the wrist-watch strap through the opening and fastened the buckle. Then he stepped back and regarded the man with judicial severity.

“If you can read,” he said, “you will see that the word ‘murderer’ is written upon it. It is my order that you wear this all the time, whatever you are doing, wherever you go. So that all men may be warned and recognize you for what you are. It is the mark of crime, it is your badge of shame.”

Oogly bent his head to look. Gingerly he raised his hand to finger the dangling, mirror-like bit of tin. After a moment he looked up with shy, anxious eyes. “Fo’ me?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“For you, Oogly.”

“This make people umfraid?”

“It’ll make them afraid. They’ll be filled with horror at the very sight of you.”

“I keep um all time?”

“You’re never to take it off.”

Oogly turned to gaze at his wife, he glanced around towards the little bundle that he had just put back in the bunk, and then he revolved slowly to face Kit again. The look of respectful admiration that Kit had read in the man’s eyes a moment ago had mellowed into rapt, slavish devotion. Oogly’s head went up, the chest that wore the murderer’s medal expanded by inches, an expression of pride and sheer happiness overspread his wrinkled face.

“Thanks you!” he said fervidly.

“What?” Kitchener stared at the man with wilting features. “What do you mean?”

He heard a snickering sound behind him and turned sharply to see Diane Durand standing with a hand pressing against her ribs, almost doubled up by the effort to keep her laughter to herself.

“Keep quiet!” he snapped.

“Your psychology is great,” said the girl, and stopped for an instant to choke. “You had the right idea,” she finished, “only something went awfully wrong with the psychology.”

“Will you kindly keep out of this?” he commanded, and gave her an ugly look.

Instead of being dismayed Diane moved suddenly towards him, and before he could move his head aside she put up an audacious forefinger to touch his fiercely crooked eyebrow. “Hello, Cocky-bird!” she said demurely. “Honestly--I think it’s cute.”

Kit tried to erase the scowl, and found himself scowling worse than before. He was on the point of saying something disagreeable, but at that instant he caught sight of Oogly’s strutting figure and honest, beaming face. The ludicrousness of the affair struck him, and he was forced to clutch suddenly at his own ribs and turn his back on the Esquimau. Somehow his eyes encountered Diane’s elfish eyes, and before he quite knew what had happened he was grinning at her.

“My gosh!” he gasped. “What have I done?”

“You’ve given out a decoration,” she said--“‘_pour valeur_’.”

“The poor idiot couldn’t be any more pleased if the King had come from Windsor to pin him with the V.C.,” Kit groaned.

“You’d better do something about it,” said the girl seriously.

“Yes. I know.” Kitchener whirled abruptly to tower stiff and erect above the Esquimau.

“Listen to me, Oogly!” he said crisply. “I don’t want to have any misunderstanding. That medal is for only one murder. No more.”

The little Esquimau blinked and waited with flattering attentiveness.

“Do you get me?” demanded Kit. “If I hear of anybody else being killed--good-by medal. I’ll take it away from you!”

Oogly was startled and worried. “Noum else?” he faltered.

“No. No one else. It’s only good for one. So please be careful. I wouldn’t want to tell you that you can’t wear it any more. But that’s what I’ll have to do if I hear of your killing another man. If you kill another person I’ll take the medal and throw it in the creek and I’ll never give you another one.”

Oogly’s mouth was twitching and for a moment it seemed almost as though he were on the verge of tears. He was slow to think things out, but as Kit waited uneasily he saw the bland, contented smile gradually reassert itself. “Oright,” Oogly suddenly agreed. He touched his badge with renewed satisfaction. “People see um an’ find out Oogly a good-murderer. Get umfraid an’ no more come aroun’ for bothering. Nobody hav’ be killed no more.”

“That’s exactly the idea,” agreed Kit, and breathed his relief. “But don’t forget--if you ever lay a hand on a Yellow Knife, or anybody else--you lose the medal.”

With a feeling that he had muddled through somehow, Kitchener dismissed Oogly from his immediate worries. He went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out through the clearing. The silvery reflection of the cold, wintry sun was beginning to lighten the sky above the gloom of the forest. There were no Indians in sight, no sign of Giffard; the owls had gone to roost.

Diane came to the door to observe the melancholy Christmas morning. “I wasn’t laughing at _you_,” she said.

“Laugh all you like.” Kit closed and barred the door, and smiled wearily. “If you can find anything funny in this heart-breaking hole, in Heaven’s name laugh!”

“I was laughing,” she told him, “just at the dum-foolness of things. I could have cried just as easily.

“If you want to know what I think,” she went on gravely, “I think you’re doggone clever. You pulled a couple of fast ones this morning.”

“Laugh or cry, and think what you please,” he said ungraciously. “We’re just where we started in the first place.”

“Mrs. Oogly and I,” said the girl, “wish to invite you to Christmas dinner.” She made him a mocking little bow. “We hope you accept.”

“Sure. Thanks. I’ve got to stay until dark, anyhow. If Oogly or I step out of here in the daylight, there’s an excellent chance of our being popped off. I suspect those Yellow Knives have only taken a little recess.”

The Esquimau family had arrived at the cabin well supplied with provisions, the fruits of Oogly’s prowess with his fishing hooks and iron-headed spear. They had brought with them a haunch of tender young caribou, a dozen brace of ptarmigan, lots of frozen salmon and whitefish, caught presumably during a lull in the Yellow-Knife praying, and quantities of blueberries, which Mayauk had dried and compressed into hard, black bricks.

By some necromancy of her own Mayauk persuaded the fireplace to stop smoking, and, with the white girl acting as cook’s assistant, she achieved a Christmas dinner which was palatable, although somewhat greasy, and plentiful enough for famishing men. Diane’s personal contribution was a great, soggy plum-pudding, made of white flour and sugar and raisins and blueberries and caribou suet.

When Kitchener was invited to take his place at the table he could not help wondering if anybody else in the world might be eating such an outlandish Christmas dinner to-day with such strangely found companions. He rather imagined that the championship for oddness went to this table.

He and Diane Durand called a truce for the afternoon. Kit tried to forget that his sole object in life at present was to hunt the girl’s criminal uncle, and she did her pathetic best to be amiable and cheerful and to hide the harried look of anxiety that always came back to haunt her restless eyes. Of the four Oogly and Mayauk alone joined with honest good-will and untroubled laughter in a festive occasion which, to these two pagans, was not really an occasion at all, but just another bounteous meal to eat and another day of contentment to live.

Several times during the course of the dinner Kit excused himself to saunter to the door and peek out across the sun-glistening clearing.

“As soon as it’s dark,” he remarked, “Oogly and I are going to make camp down woods in the owlery. I don’t think it likely that any Yellow Knife will go in there to look for us.”

“What about Mayauk and Uttaktuak?” asked Diane.

“Let ’em stay here with you. The Indians won’t bother them. They’re after Oogly, and nobody else. And he’ll be as safe living with the owls as he would be in jail.” Kit turned to the Esquimau. “You afraid to sleep where the night birds roost?” he asked.

Oogly shook his head scornfully. “Hellno!” he declared.

“You expecting to stay around here?” the girl asked in a tone that was almost too careless.

“Sure,” said Kit. “I’ve got to try to find the body of Oogly’s victim.”

Diane looked at him somberly. She knew perfectly well that his staying had nothing to do with the dead Yellow Knife. Her eyes measured him with a challenging hardness.

“I may not see you again,” she informed him. “If a chance comes along to get out of this country, I’m going. This place is getting on my nerves frightfully.”

Kitchener regarded her skeptically. She wasn’t likely to leave until she could get into touch with her uncle, and the two of them had recovered the hidden gold-sledge. That’s what she was here for. And Kit had seen enough of her inflexible will to feel certain that she would not run away and leave her errand unaccomplished. He would meet her again, undoubtedly, and their next encounter was not apt to be so agreeable for either of them.

He shrugged his shoulders. “If you need me for anything in the meantime you’ll know where to find me.”

“If I ever want anything from you,” she told him stiffly, “it’ll be on account of Mayauk or the baby.”

“Send if you want me,” he repeated.

The short-lived December day reached its noontide and waned as the pallid, heatless sun crossed the short arc and set beneath the white-topped forest. There followed the brief, breathless moments of the gloaming; then the stars broke with electric brilliancy through the frozen night, a thin, wan moon sailed into the sky, and savage, prowling life began to awaken among the dark coverts and underwoods.

Kit and Oogly made back packs of the few belongings that necessity advised them to take, they said good-by to the women, and quietly left the cabin.

The forest was full of noises, ice-stiff branches cracking of their own weight, the babble of the brook between the rifts of ice, the groan and strain of floes piling up under pressure, the long-drawn howl of a distant wolf, the horribly plaintive cries of owls arousing themselves after heavy sleep. There were other sounds, small, furtive stirrings, not so easily identified, that might have meant anything. For all Kit knew there might be twenty Yellow Knives hidden around the clearing.

He kept close to the brook, and Oogly followed in the silence of his fur boots. In a few seconds the two men reached the woods. No hostile shadows rose up to intercept them. They plunged into the nearest thicket and worked their way into the deepest tangles of the Great Owl woods.

Along the creek and at the edges of the clearing the glimmering of the moon touched the great columns of the firs, but in the denser woods not a ray of light penetrated the interlacing of snow-sheeted branches. But they did not need the power of sight to know when they stood under the roosting places of the owls. The dead, rank air about them pulsated with soft, feathery movements, and without seeing they knew that seeing eyes were looking down at them.

In a hollow of ground between two enormous tree stubs they dropped their meager equipment and made preparations for the night. It promised to turn extremely cold before morning, and they would need a fire. Kit didn’t think there was a chance in the world that any Indian would venture into this owl-haunted pit in the darkness, or even in the daytime for that matter. Oogly gathered a few sticks of down-wood and some dry twigs for kindling. Kitchener struck a match and applied the light.

He was on his knees as the fire ignited and leaped into flame. Shadows and shapes emerged in the gloom and wavered drunkenly around the dancing firelight. One of the owls scooped past his head so close that he felt the rustle of pinions, and was gone again as mysteriously as though it had dissolved in the air. Kit was about to stand up and stretch his tired muscles to the warmth, and then he changed his mind.

There was a sound behind him like a hatchet driven into a block of wood. He looked around slowly, and then tumbled and rolled away on all fours in his haste to get outside the range of the firelight. A two-pronged fishing-head spear was sticking in the tree behind the fire, quivering there in arrested flight.

Kitchener bumped into Oogly and carried the Esquimau with him, tumbling through the brush and into a hole where an uprooted tree had once stood. It was a good crater to hide in, and they crouched together and peered back towards the mounting fire.

Somebody had hurled the fishing spear at Kit. He could see the double prongs buried almost to the haft in the trunk of the old fir. The shaft was pointed towards the brook. It must have come from that direction. Thrown with greater strength and ill-will than accuracy. A few inches lower and Kit would have been pinned to the tree like a beetle to a cork.

The intended assassin had moved as quietly as the owls. Kit had had no inkling of another presence in the jungle of trees. And now, if he hadn’t seen the spear, he never would have dreamed that anybody was hidden near by.

He reacted with anger. “You go that way, Oogly,” he whispered and pointed towards the brook. “I’ll circle around. We’ll get him.”

Oogly had said himself that he was a good man in an affray. Kit could have asked none better. The Esquimau was not flurried, and he was not afraid. He owned a trade gun, but for close-in work he preferred his short, heavy hunting spear. He reached the weapon and drifted away as unobtrusively as the smoke from the fire.

Kit slipped behind the nearest tree and stole around from the opposite direction. He moved with utmost stealth, down through the alders that lined the edge of the brook. And then he stopped. The snow had been shaken off the branches near his head and a furrow was piled up underfoot. Somebody had crept through the underwood at this point. For a moment he waited. There was nobody in sight now, no alarming sound.

He pulled off his mitten and blew his breath on his chilly fingers. Then he screwed up his courage and snapped the button of his flash lamp. There was a snowshoe trail in the fresh snow. Instantly he doused the light. He had seen enough to drop him crouching, with every nerve at quivering tension. The raquette prints were waffle-webbed.