CHAPTER XXI

HEADING NORTH

Kitchener felt a sickness and emptiness under his ribs. His comrade, one time a murderer, again had taken direful measures. He peered in consternation at the swarthy, round face that looked forth so genially from its ice-encrusted hood.

“Cross--Devon!” he accused furiously. “Drowned--you’ve killed them!”

A hurt, almost tearful look clouded Oogly’s soft, seal-brown eyes. “Noum!” he protested vehemently. “Sitting on ground along water middle. Can’ get off now.”

“What? They’re out there, and still alive?”

“You betchum!”

By stumbling speech and vivid gesture the Esquimau tried to explain just what had happened. In the center of the stream stood a long, narrow island, a pointed ridge of rock, like a backbone, humped up above the surface of the rapids. Ice cakes, broken from the tunnels upstream had piled up on the nose of this island, forming a big jam that reached from bank to bank.

The observant Oogly had noticed this place when they arrived at the police shack that morning. When he saw the handcuffs snapped on his friend’s wrists his fertile mind had immediately devised a plan to outwit the police.

He used poor little Uttaktuak for a bait. The constables responded humanely to his cry for help, followed at his heels across the ice to the island. While they were poking in the crevices, listening for wailing sounds of human distress, Oogly had crept under the head of the hanging floe.

As an experienced timber-driver is able by a sort of sixth sense to stick his peavy into the key-log of a log-jam, so the expert ice-man knew which block of ice it was that held back the crowding, straining mass behind it. Oogly simply and unerringly had found the critical wedge upon which the backed-up tons of ice were precariously suspended. He had chopped and pried for a minute with his spear head, and had jumped clear as the floe suddenly toppled and split apart, to go thundering and foaming downstream on both sides of the island.

So much he told in casual words, helped out by his lucid pantomime. That part of the story meant nothing to Oogly. He had made his way to the bank, leaping from one submerging ice-chunk to the next. The policemen had not been quick enough or sure-footed enough to escape as their shoreward bridge fell to pieces about them. Oogly gurgled with amusement at the huge joke he had played.

“Constables have a seat on middle rock,” he said.

Kit only wanted to be certain that this was true. He did not wish to have any drowned policemen on his conscience. Without waiting to hear more he ran out of the door and picked his way down to the embankment of the rapids.

In the welter of the falling snow he made out a smudgy shape that was just a little blacker than the darkness itself. It was the island--the tongue of rock, jutting high and dry in midstream. He heard the big cakes of ice washing by at his feet.

He raised his head and hailed the middle of the stream. “Hello! Devon? Cross?”

Yes, there was somebody. Voices--one of them shouted with rage. “Who the hell did that?”

Kitchener laughed and turned away. It was all right. The constables were unharmed, marooned in the middle of the creek. In his haste to the rescue Cross had grabbed a blanket instead of a rope. They could huddle up for warmth and there was no danger of their being swept away. In a day or so a new ice-bridge was sure to form, and then they could walk back to shore again.

Meanwhile Kit had no intention of waiting for the next freeze-up. While he didn’t precisely approve of Oogly’s methods, he at least saw no reason to be stupidly quixotic over fortune’s sending. The alternative was unthinkable. It meant a long prison term, or worse, if they took him south. The cards would all be stacked against him.

Oogly’s plan was to dash across the barrens for the Arctic Sea. The idea was inspired. The trails would be swept away by the time the constables got off their island. It was a ten to one shot that they would cast southward after their quarry. And Kit would be heading due north.

Queen Maud Sea! The chance to carry out Jerry’s unfulfilled mission. He could seek for the white man who wore a police badge under his artikis. That business could be settled, that ghost laid one way or another. Then, as Oogly suggested, the whale ship--around the point of Alaska, Frisco--New York! Nobody in this country knew who he was or where he came from. He’d be safe in New York.

Someday he could send a trusted agent to recover the sunken gold bags. He wouldn’t touch the stuff himself. But a pension fund for the R.C.M.P.--that was the idea. A memorial to Jerry. The Tearl memorial fund, sent by an anonymous donor. His heart was thumping, a thrill of excitement was in his blood, imagination ran riot. He was pulling up stakes, taking a new deal all round. He’d be on the march soon, heading north.

At the shack doorway Kitchener bumped into Oogly and his wife. Mayauk was scolding about something. As Kit came up the Esquimau turned aside to a deep snow embankment, plunged into the drift to his shoulders. Then he came up with a squirming, fur-clad bundle in his arms. It was Uttaktuak, making cheerful sounds and kicking her feet. Oogly must have dropped her there before he went out to the floe. Mayauk snatched the baby from her husband’s hands, and peace was restored.

Oogly followed Kitchener into the cabin.

“Finean’dandy!” grinned Kit, and shoved up his manacled wrists. “Can you get these things off?”

The Esquimau found an ax and indicated that his companion was to lay his hands on the doorsill. Kit complied dubiously. Unfortunately the key was on the island with the constables. To use a file was apt to prove an endless job. Kit held his right wristlet against the hammering block. Then he set his teeth and gave the word.

Oogly swung with his full strength. The butt of the ax crashed down squarely upon the arch of steel, cracking the brittle, highly-tempered metal as though it were glass. The band fell apart and Kit’s wrist was free.

He winced and looked at his hand, and then grinned up weakly at Oogly. The astonishing Esquimau had struck off the shackle without crushing the bone underneath, or even bruising the skin. More confidently this time Kit offered his other wrist, and a second blow rid him of his humiliating bonds.

He kicked the broken links aside. Diane Durand stood under the lamp, looking on uneasily.

Kit’s jawline reasserted itself as their eyes encountered. He didn’t propose to leave her behind to carry the tale of the sunken gold to her uncle. If he were unable to settle the long accounting with Hell Bent, at least he’d make sure that the man was done out of the loot.

“We’re going out by way of the Arctic Sea,” he informed the girl. “You too.”

He had expected fierce resistance. But Diane was too clever a girl to squander her courage and strength in a futile struggle. She was shaken and dazed by the turn of events, and she knew she was beaten. “After all that has happened,” she said wearily, “it doesn’t matter much where I go, or with whom, or what happens next.”

Kit and Oogly hurried their preparations for departure. The constables had Kit’s service revolver, but his rifle and Diane’s shotgun were on the sledge, and the Esquimau had kept his musket and hunting spear. They took a couple of blankets from the police store and helped themselves to such provisions as were needed to replace their own diminished supplies.

As they must travel fast, they cut their equipment down to the last possible ounce. And it was decided that Mayauk and Uttaktuak should remain behind under the protection of the police. Oogly promised to send for them when the tribes drifted south again with the coming of summer.

The three strangely-met _voyageurs_ set forth in the night and the storm, beginning a journey that appalled the imagination. They would bridge the creek at the first opportunity, and then strike due north across the vast stretch of the wind-swept barrens. Some day, by fortune’s leave, they might reach one of the isolated whaling settlements on the ice-bound sea. For the present Kit preferred not to let his thoughts dwell upon the uncertainties of the coming weeks.

They drove their dogs down the shadowy line of the creek, Oogly running ahead, on the look-out for a favorable crossing place. The night was half gone before he finally shouted and turned the team leader. Instead of hummocks and crevices and crawling floes, he at last had come to a naturally formed bridge that was solid enough and level enough for crossing by sledge. He turned and haled the trotting dog-team on behind him. And then he stopped and crouched and peered forward under his hood.

Buzz-saw, the team leader, checked himself at the Esquimau’s heels. He threw up his head, tested the air once with his nose, and let out a warning growl. An ugly chorus, snarling and barking, answered the challenge from across the frozen stream; then, an instant later, men’s voices hailing the darkness in alien gutturals.

Without a word Kit swung the “gee” pole, while Oogly turned at a lumbering trot to break trail downstream. No need to stop for questions. The party across the way had to be Yellow Knives--a hunting band, no doubt, coming back from the barrens.

The Esquimau’s enemies, of course, had long since familiarized themselves with the peculiarities of his only pair of snowshoes; also Kit’s. They’d pick up the trail as soon as they crossed the creek and identify the tracks. Then they’d come on like wolves running a caribou herd.

Oogly’s eyes had learned to see in the great Midnights, and he led the way now, picking the best ground unerringly, cruising as fast as an ordinary woodsman cares to travel in the full sunlight. He would know that his one slender chance was to stretch out his trail so far ahead of the Indians that the friendly snowstorm would have time to bury it.

The huskies caught the infection of alarm. Danger for men means danger for dogs. They jumped after Oogly, half-galloping, with the lightly laden sledge singing over the downy new snow. And in the rear, whooping yells broke out in a significant babel to reëcho down the hidden valley of the creek.

The Yellow-Knife village was pitched on the south bank of the stream, about midway between _Saut Sauvage_ and Great Owl Run. In the darkness the fugitives failed to make out the huddle of skin teepees and shanties until they suddenly found themselves in the midst of the sleeping encampment.

It was too late to detour. Two score of grave-like mounds in the snow exploded suddenly like bombs as buried huskies sprang to life and action. Bounding, yapping forms circled in from all directions, trying to get at Buzz-saw and his team-mates, raising a din that must arouse every comatose Indian for two miles around.

Kit closed up on the flanks of his team and beat off the charging beasts with a clubbed rifle barrel. For just a moment Oogly slackened pace. His snaky dog-whip licked out, right and left and behind him, popping like fire-crackers. The savage outcry changed suddenly to anguished yelping. Again the Esquimau plunged into his stride and went through the main street of the Yellow Knives, with Buzz-saw a jump behind him, and Kit and Diane racing for the “gee” pole.

In a moment they were out of the village, hugging the line of willows as they fled down the banks of the creek.

Bedlam had broken loose in their rear. Women shrieking, men yelling to one another and bedamning their frenzied dogs, rifles wantonly firing at nothing: the town had gone mad. It wouldn’t take the bucks long to find out who their passing visitors were, and then to hitch sledges and take the trail. Instead of a single hunting party, the fugitives in a few minutes would have half a village in pursuit.

Many weeks of snow-tramping had hardened both Kit and Diane for the physical ordeal they must face to-night. Oogly had trained with sledges on the wide Arctic tundras since the days of babyhood. In a long race he could outlast the best of the dogs. Any of the three probably was as trail-fit as the average starveling Yellow Knife. If the dogs only stood up for the night in the traces there was a chance of their wearing their way through.

Kit had kept a watchful eye on Diane, but apparently at this moment she had no desire to leave him. There was a blood-chilling savagery in the sounds behind them. For the present she had as much incentive to run as Oogly and Kit.

The events of the remaining night went by like the spinning of hazy dreams. Shadows fleeting along half-seen trails; snow and darkness and cold; the straining snap of harness thongs, the humming of sledge runners and the steady crunching of snowshoes, the _pat, pat, pat_ of furry feet digging along: they gained the Great Owl cabin clearing, and Kit shouted to Oogly to turn.

Away to the left swung the dogs, with their forerunner a stride ahead, among the stumps and headlong into the blackness of the “haunted” forest. The sounds of pursuit had dwindled to silence. But out of hearing did not necessarily mean out of striking range. There were teams and men running the plainly marked trail. The fleeing dogs knew it, and Kit and Oogly and Diane never lost the occult feeling of being pushed hard by danger behind them.

The owls were away from home, out foraging over the frozen prairies far to the north. It was deathly quiet under the trees. Oogly was familiar with every inch of the ground here, and he cut through the owl woods, dodging low, avoiding the great trunks by some uncanny method of perception. They struck the creek again several miles farther down, near the point where Kit and Diane had first come into this country from the south. Here they found an ice-bridge crossing. They worked over to the north bank, groped their way through the stunted, wind-torn thickets on the opposite shore, and turned their faces at last towards the Arctic Sea.

There was hope now that their pursuers had been shaken off, or at least held up for a while in front of the Great Owl woods. No Yellow Knife would venture into that unhallowed pit of darkness, unless the lust of the chase had keyed him up to a fine, high point of frenzy. Then he might go anywhere, dare anything. In any event the savages might circle the forest and strike the trail where it crossed farther downstream. But this would mean a clear gain for the fugitives of an hour or two or three.

Unfortunately the wind had whipped around into the southwest some time in the night, and the promise of heavy snow had failed. It had grown colder and calmer, and the great, soft flakes had turned to a misty sleet. Oogly, the weather-wise, had announced that they might see blue sky in the morning.

There was nothing to do but to keep going, to make all the distance they could while the dogs stood up. It is astonishing how much reserve vitality the ordinary human being holds on tap if the emergency call is great enough. Earlier in the night--hours and hours ago, it seemed to them now--the three fugitives had known the torture of overtaxed hearts and lungs, an unquenchable thirst, the dry taste of blood. Then they had caught their “second wind.” A pleasant numbness seemed to drug their physical sensibilities. Legs and bodies moved automatically, without effort. Breathing became easier. Indeed it seemed almost unnecessary to breathe. It was as though they had been running and could keep on running always.

Daylight caught them far out on the frozen prairies. As a mariner loses his landfall in the night, so they had lost sight of the peopled world. A dead-level sea of snow and ice surrounded them. There was not a tree nor shrub, not a speck of color within range of straining eyes. The clouds had blown clear, and the early gray of the sky changed gradually to the flawlessness of hard, blued-steel. The sun came up, and the white monotony of the barrens became an aching, dazzling glare.

Diane was drooping again, staggering now and then as she tried to hold the killing pace. Oogly’s face looked as drawn and bloodless as smoked moosemeat. Kit was beginning to suspect that in time he might reach the end of his “second wind.” The breathing of the dogs sounded like the rattle of broken skid-chains. They stopped by mutual consent, because nobody could go much farther.

Behind them the horizon line was a scintillating glaze. Landmarks all had vanished. The Great Owl forest had been left so far in the rear that not even a smudge of color showed against the field of snow. There were no specks or dots anywhere to betray the existence of beasts or men.

At the left the Vermilion River pursued its endless course northward, held between treeless snow banks so low that the dykes of the waterway, even at a short distance, could not be distinguished from the rest of the flat, sweeping landscape.

The travelers camped on the river ice, because at least there was some slight protection behind the low embankments.

Kit unpacked their alcohol stove and started coffee boiling. “Ready for breakfast?” he asked Diane.

“No, thanks. Not hungry. Sleep. I want to go to sleep.”

He unstrapped a fur bag and spread it in the lee of an ice hummock. The girl stayed awake only long enough to pull off her boots. Then she crawled into the warm pocket, and ten seconds later was asleep, with the sun beaming into her face.

Kit and Oogly dined on chunks of cold pemmican, washed down with scalding swigs of coffee. Then the Esquimau stumbled off behind the parked sledge, rolled up in his robes and started snoring. The dogs had dropped in their tracks the instant after they were fed. Kit alone stayed awake.

He turned, squinting, to gaze back over the glistening reaches of the open tundra. No sign as yet of pursuit. But his own trail, the ruthless thread of fatality, linked him with the horizon. At any moment he might see little, evil shapes moving in the shimmer of the sun.

Sighing, he picked up a blanket and tucked his rifle beneath his arm. He seemed to have been elected unanimously to the post of responsibility. Oogly was dead to the world, with his head wrapped in a robe. Diane lay on her side, a glinting, silky wing of hair tumbled over her eye, her mouth relaxed in a faint, unwitting smile.

For just a moment Kit’s gaunt features were robbed of their guarded sternness. His glance hovered wistfully as he half leaned over her, and then, with an inexorable shrug, he turned on his heel and trudged back to the southward.

For two or three miles he walked the down trail. Then he picked a defensible spot behind the river bank, where he spread his blanket and stretched out on his stomach to watch over the line of northbound footprints.

If his enemies came out on the barrens the trail would lead them past the ambush point. He could take them on the flank, and by surprise. They wouldn’t get him for a long while. He was loaded down with cartridges, and he was covered on three sides. Oogly and Diane would hear the shots. They’d have time to run for it again. Kit was confident that he could hold the Yellow Knives long enough to give his companions a safe start. Better one than three.

All of that morning Kit lay on his blanket, keeping vigil.

The sun had come up in the southeast, and it was from that direction that his pursuers must come. He lay on his diaphragm and stared into the sun.

An endless morning. He had nothing to do but to gaze across the flat wastes and try to keep his eyelids open. It was a wearying, painful prospect, snow and ice stretching everywhere, shadowless, colorless, a vast mirror reflecting the sunlight.

A merciless sun. A silvery, frigid incandescence pouring balefully upon the world. The snow remained as hard as crystal, and flashed and sparkled like the dancing of flame.

An appalling silence. Even the wind is without noise when there is nothing to interfere with its blowing. The tick of Kit’s wrist watch, the thud of his pulse, were mighty sounds in ears attuned to an absolute vacancy. He could hear the friction of his toes when he wiggled them for warmth in his ribbed-wool socks.

A forlorn panorama. Sometimes he saw with an astonishing clarity, seemingly for miles and miles, but there was nothing to look at. The boundaries of earth and sky were so much alike that he could not tell surely where one left off and the other began.

The waves of cold on the snow-fields sometimes waver visibly like heat waves on the desert. In the flickering daylight he later began to see things. Men and dogs and sledges and shifting herds of musk-ox moved distantly before his widening gaze; then a black, bumping object, like a locomotive laboring over a rough road-bed. By that time he knew something was wrong. He studied his finger tip for a minute to bring his pupils back in focus, and when his glance ranged the far tundras again there was nothing whatever in sight.

If the Yellow Knives were coming he wished they’d come.

The queer mirages formed and faded for a while, and then a dullness stole over his vision. When he took off his mitten again to concentrate on his forefinger, the finger somehow looked bigger than it should and a trifle vague in outline. The heatless sun, strangely, felt as though it were beginning to burn his eyeballs. The muscles of his eyelids started to twitch, and he could not hold them still. And he began to notice a pin-prick of pain in the nerves behind the bridge of his nose.

For relief he allowed his eyes to close against the glaring sunlight. And he went to sleep, to awaken suddenly in a sweat of terror. He had dozed off. He had failed his companions, when he was supposed to be on watch. Nothing had happened. The silence was as intense as ever, and there were no shadows beneath the coldly blazing sun. That was nothing to his credit. He had slept.

He looked at his watch, and had no idea of the time of day. The watch dial and the hands and numerals fluttered in a kaleidoscope of changing colors. He gazed across the tundra and the colors swam off ahead of him into the horizon.

His eyes felt as though something had blown into them. Sticks or cinders. He rubbed them with the back of his hand, and then stopped because of the smarting. If the Yellow Knives were coming, please let them come while he still could see them.

In the meantime he could not endure the agony of the snowlight and the sunlight. He let his eyes close again--for just a second. His chin was propped on his forearm and his face stared insensibly across the white barrens. And the second lengthened into minutes and the minutes into hours.

What aroused him he did not know. The movement behind him was so stealthy that a man in his full waking senses might not have noticed, nor had reason to look around. But Kit sprang to his feet as suddenly as though an alarm clock had banged off by his head.

A towering, muffled shape stood over him. Twilight and cold--the sharp, calm, bitter cold of the arctic evening. His eyes were all wrong. It was as though he were trying to look through fuzz. There really was something, though--an erect figure on two feet--a face and a body and a rigid arm, and a pistol muzzle pointing at his head.