CHAPTER XVII

VANISHING FOOTPRINTS

Kitchener recognized the snowshoe tracks with a shock of surprise. A spear is not a white man’s weapon, and he had supposed of course that one of the disgruntled Yellow Knives had thrown it. It hadn’t occurred to him that his attacker might be Hell Bent.

For the first time Kit was brought to a full appreciation of his own danger. This Bent was a subtle and crafty man. He had outwitted the wily Jerry, and he had just missed his present attack by inches. It was an artful scheme. He must have been hanging on the outskirts of the clearing when Kit drove off the Indians. When Kit and Oogly left the cabin he probably trailed along close at their heels. He had obtained a native fishing spear somewhere, and he used it instead of a rifle. If he had spiked his victim to the tree the police would have hunted for a Yellow Knife, never suspecting that the killer might be a white man. Kit had escaped this time only by the merest good luck.

He realized that if he hoped to go on living he would have to move in the future with the utmost caution. Death might be lurking in ambush almost anywhere in the dark wilderness, at any moment.

The man had faded away into the gloom, but he could not escape from the betraying line of snowshoe tracks. Kit did not dare to use his lamp again, but by feeling the snow with his bare fingers it was easy enough to follow the departing prints. Patiently he groped his way along the trail, which curved out of the denser forest through clumps of snow-sheeted alders and willows, and ended finally at the top of the steep creek embankment.

The moon cast a cold, sickly radiance along the wooded shore opposite, but on this side a deep shadow hid the ice-bound stream. Bent must have dropped over the edge of the sheer embankment, but whether he had followed the ledges upstream or downstream, or was hiding below at the bottom of the slope, Kit had no means of knowing. This might be a trap.

As he hesitated he saw something rise up on the bank to blot out the face of the low-riding moon. A short, stumpy figure silhouetted boldly against the sky--Kit’s reflex towards his gun checked as he scrutinized the apparition. Nobody but Oogly could be shaped like that.

Watching, he saw the figure suddenly start up in an erect posture. Two hands grasping a spear flung themselves above the man’s head, and for twenty seconds he stood thus, stark and motionless, like the statue of some mythological figure posed in a battle scene. His glance was fixed rigidly on something in the brook course below him. Kit’s lips were gripped in his teeth. He expected any instant to see the spear go. But for some reason it never left the warrior’s hands.

Slowly the tense figure relaxed, the upraised arms dropped and lowered the weapon. Oogly turned his head and saw Kit. He looked hard for a moment, and then tucked the spear under his arm and sauntered back along the embankment to meet his companion.

“Did’n’ kill um,” he announced as Kit moved towards him.

“What?”

Oogly’s wrinkled smile was visible in the moonlight. “Man he come along down by me,” he explained. “No goin’ murderum anybody.” He inflated his chest on which proudly glinted the tin “murder medal.” “Let um going on past along the water.”

Kit regarded the Esquimau quizzically for a space, and then he returned Oogly’s grin. Evidently Bent had passed up the creek within spearing range of the Esquimau hunter, who for just that moment was tempted to let fly. Then he remembered his promise and restrained himself. He hadn’t wanted to lose his badge. So Hell Bent was still a living menace instead of a dead man with a spear in his ribs.

On the night of Jerry’s killing Kit would have shot Bent down at sight. But that hour of madness had passed. He wanted his man alive. Later he might exact the full measure for his brother’s death, but first he wanted the truth about that bloody day years ago. Bent probably was the only one left who could tell the story. If Kit got his hands on the man he would have it out of him. He’d wring him out like a sponge.

“You’ve done well,” he told Oogly. “No more murders.”

The Esquimau swelled visibly. He had been a good boy.

“Did he see you?” asked Kit.

Oogly shook his head and pointed upstream. Bent had hurried on his way without knowing how closely death had brushed him by.

The old cabin stood on the creek bank up that direction. The white man and the Esquimau went forward, hugging the line of alders. Not far ahead they struck a place along the embankment where the new snow had been disturbed. Man tracks ascending from the creek bottom. Waffle-webs had climbed out.

The trail turned through the creek brakes directly towards the clearing. They followed as carefully as cats in a burr patch. Across the clearing, among the stumps, straight to the cabin--the waffle-meshes had left their ominous marks before the closed door. The frozen moon gave just enough light to see by. Kit’s breathing had grown painfully sharp. It looked as though he had his man if he were able to take him.

It was dark inside, quiet. Kit spoke to Oogly. “Knock. Tell ’em you want to see Mayauk.” His voice was just audible.

The obedient Oogly thumped with his fur-mittened fist.

At first nobody answered, and then a voice in high-pitched alarm. “Who’s there?”

“Nobody, just Oogly. Coming see Mayauk please.”

“You, Oogly?” It was Diane Durand. She sounded somehow relieved. “It’s a funny time to want to see Mayauk. Wait a minute.” A soft footstep came to the entrance and the door was unwarily opened. “Come in if you must.”

Kit had flatted himself against the log wall. For that moment he was unseen. Diane showed herself for an instant in the moonlight, her slimness hidden under the dragging folds of a huge, crimson Hudson’s Bay blanket. “Come in, Oogly.”

Her voice sounded very sleepy. Kit saw her face in the softening moonlight, the eloquent dark eyes, the shadow of the drooping eyelashes. Queer that her beauty should affect him in those seconds with a pang of sadness. The seigniors of France who won this country had such women for their wives--the Durantayes, the Demonvilles, the Frontenacs--lovely, dauntless, gently bred women who went where their men went. What it must have meant to come home out of the night and the storm to find love and loyalty and sweetness waiting in the doorway! Diane might have been fit to be a pioneer’s wife. It was a pity. She might have been so fine.

The girl drew her crimson robe closer at her throat. It was Grandfather Tearl’s old four pointer. She was sensible not to have scruples. To-night was bitterly cold, and she had no other blanket. Yet Kit could not help wondering if it had been laundered since the other night. He thought of Jerry and Bill Tearl and Hell Bent and his heart was hardened.

Diane admitted Oogly, and then she disappeared after him, neglecting to bar the door. Kit pushed the door softly and slipped into the room. He heard voices talking by the still-smoldering fireplace--Diane and Oogly, and then Mayauk’s drowsy greeting. Somebody threw a pine log on the fire, and almost at once the bright, resinous flame blazed up.

Nobody had seen Kit come in. He shoved the door shut with his foot and edged along the wall. The firelight danced around three figures, the Esquimau man and wife, and Diane. But he saw nobody else.

Kitchener’s quick glance went around the room. There were no angles or ingle nooks where any one could hide. Only the bunk, and he knew the baby was sleeping there. He blotted himself in the shadow as he stole along the wall, ready at any instant for anything to happen.

The bunk was barely visible in the darkness. Kit approached breathlessly. Hell Bent was contemptible enough to ambush himself in bed with a baby and fight from behind an infant body. Kit reached the bunk and groped back into the gloom. He found only a wee shape under the fur robe. Cautiously he felt into the upper section, and then along the floor underneath. Nobody was there.

He stood up, realizing that he had made another false move. Bent was not in the cabin. He must have eluded his tracker by the same trick he had employed at the Yellow Knife encampment, switching snowshoes and mixing up his trail with a confusion of other prints. He had come only as far as the outer doorway, where the Indians had trampled the snow, and now he probably had followed them off into the woods, carrying the waffle-mesh raquettes on his back.

Unluckily Kit had disturbed the baby and the little thing began to whimper in the darkness. Diane turned and saw the shape by the bunk. She advanced a pace and stared.

“You!” she exclaimed. “How’d you get here?”

“Came in with Oogly. Didn’t you see me?” From previous experience Kit knew how useless it would be to question her. Bent may have spoken to her, or he may have hurried on without her knowing. It didn’t matter.

“What do you want?” Diane demanded.

Kitchener coolly circled the room and came back to the door. “Oogly forgot his toothbrush,” he told her without a smile. “Found it, Oogly? Well, let’s get on.”

The Esquimau lingered only to bid a second good-by to the baby, and then he followed Kit out of the cabin.

There was no use trying to unravel Bent’s trail. He had taken off his identifying snowshoes, and the tracks he left now would be indistinguishable from the dozen other sets of tracks that turned away from the cabin. Kit had begun to suspect that the man had reached some sort of understanding with the local Yellow Knives. If not he would be clever enough to win them over. They naturally would have only the bitterest feelings towards the policeman who had refused to give up Oogly to them. This was their own country. They knew the secret paths and byways of the wilderness, and they would have eyes and ears everywhere. With a shrewd and unscrupulous white man to stir them up their capacity for devilment had no limit.

Kit and Oogly went back to the Great Owl woods and re-built their night fire. Then they lugged their robes a hundred yards deeper into the timber, bedded-down under an uprooted hemlock, and slept fireless and shivering through the night.