CHAPTER XXII

OOGLY

Dazed as he was, half-blind, half-awake, Kit recognized his fate. Intuition was better than eyesight. This was no Indian. It was Hell Bent. He knew that. Everything was as good as ended. There’d be a flash, and then the obliterating shock, nothing worse than that. His mouth twisted sardonically.

“What are you waiting for? Go ahead and be damned!”

Funny the man didn’t fire. All these weeks, gunning for Bent and Bent for him--

The man whirled with a snarling sound in his throat. Something had stumbled up from behind the river embankment. Kit was vaguely aware of a broad shape and heavy feet crunching the snow.

“Oogly!” he yelled. “Back! Get down!”

The stocky figure swayed on outspread legs, a heavy, two-handed spear poised above his head.

A streak of flame reached above the snow. The sound of that one shot, out of all the pistol shots Kit had ever heard, lingered in his head with a reëchoing of horror.

The spear-thrower lurched forward violently, and his spear was gone.

A second shot and a third, point-blank; the stench of gas and powder-burnt fur; a squat body on staggering legs, that still would not fall; writhing sinews and muscles in Kit’s clutch and a fist trying to pound his face: everything was dreadfully mixed in his brain, events and their sequence of happening.

He remembered the feel of the hot steel in his hand, but how he got the gun he did not remember. Afterwards he found torn flesh under his nails; but at that moment he only knew that the butt had settled down in his fist and he was looking everywhere and softly crying because he could not see well enough to shoot.

Gliding snowshoes moved off hurriedly in the dusk. Everybody in the wilderness would have heard by this time that Kit was deadly with a six-shooter; nobody could have learned as yet that anything was wrong with his eyesight. The intruder had fled. To follow would be hopeless.

Kit groped behind him and his arms circled a stumbling, furry hulk--Oogly.

“He got you, didn’t he?” said Kit, and lowered the sagging body to the snow.

The Esquimau said nothing. He was fumbling at the front of his shirt. The tufts of fur were matted together, warm and wet. But it was not that that bothered Oogly. He was pulling at the bit of tin on his chest--his medal--trying with failing fingers to unbuckle the wrist-watch strap.

“Murderem once more,” muttered Oogly.

Kit felt something come into his throat to choke him. Oogly believed he had killed another man. He had flung his spear, and did not realize that the first pistol shot had spoiled his aim and stolen the force from his stroke. By breaking a promise he had forfeited his medal.

“No, Oogly.” Kit slipped off his mitten and stilled the uneasy hands. He saw no reason to disillusionize the man. Let him think that his last spear-thrust had been magnificently delivered. “It’s a good murder this time. You saved my life. The medal’s still yours to keep. You’ve won it twice over. This time it’s something for pride. It’s yours now forever.”

“Keep um?” whispered the Esquimau.

“Nobody can ever take it away from you.”

“Thanks--thanks you--” Oogly tried to sit up, tried to laugh. But the sound died choking, and the broad body grew slack and heavy, and slipped down from Kit’s arms to lie in the snow.

Kit touched the man’s pulse and his temple, and then he stood over the quiet, baggy shape in the snow. “White men!” It was a short and savage ejaculation. “I knew a better, Oogly. The best man I ever knew was not a white man!”

His voice broke and a sudden wetness soothed the dry stinging of his eyes. Oogly had no other funeral oration.

Kit stooped and scooped handfuls of snow over the motionless body. He patted the surface down and shaped out a clean, smooth grave-mound. Oogly’s destiny always had marked him for nothing less and nothing greater than a mound in the clean, cold snow.

The sun was gone and it was growing darker. How good the darkness felt in Kit’s swollen eyes! He picked up the captured six-shooter. Yes--this was it--carved ivory butt, engraving on a silver name-plate. It was the gun he had seen Hell Bent wearing, Inspector Bill Tearl’s old service revolver. Kit shoved the weapon into his empty holster. Well, it was back in the family now. The last Tearl had three more shots on his hip.

He left Oogly and went back to camp--trudged wearily up the frozen river until he came to the place where a sledge was parked and dogs bounded forward to greet him.

“Diane?” he said.

There was no reply.

“Queer!” Then louder: “Hello--Diane?”

The dogs leaped up, pawing at him, and he trod on their back toes to keep them down. There was nobody in camp. The sleeping bag was empty. And the red Hudson’s Bay blanket seemed to be missing. Further search discovered a sheet of paper pinned to the topmost duffle-bag on the sledge.

Evidently it was a note from Diane. She was gone. Probably she had escaped as soon as darkness fell. Kit’s jaw hardened. He might have expected it. Diane would be on her way back to Great Owl Run, looking for her uncle. He shrugged unpleasantly. Well, what of it? He couldn’t stop her now. Let her go.

Kit struck a match and frowned at the sheet of paper. There was writing, but the lines wabbled and ran together when he tried to read them. He flipped out the match and gave up the effort. It didn’t matter what she wrote. What did he care? He crumpled up the paper and threw it away.

As soon as the dogs were fed, Kit went to bed. He was worn to utter exhaustion. His two or three hours sleep that afternoon meant nothing at all. If he expected to get on he could do with no less than eight or ten hours of solid, unbroken rest. Maybe his eyes would feel better by morning. If anybody came in the night it couldn’t be helped. He simply had to sleep.

But strangely he didn’t drop off in a delicious sense of forgetfulness. In fact, he couldn’t lie still. His bag didn’t fit him. One minute he felt too hot, and the next, too cold. Finally he went to the trouble of unlacing himself and crawling out of the flea-bag, a mean and undignified undertaking. He staggered around in his stocking feet, and finally found the wad of paper that he had thrown away. Then, with Diane’s note buttoned in his shirt pocket, he crept back into his fur pouch and went to sleep.

The pitiless morning sun appeared in a frosty-blue sky. For miles and miles around, the snow fields flashed and glinted and threw back the sun-rays with a blinding brilliancy. Far to the southward black figurines, no bigger than pencil strokes, moved in the undulations of light.

Kit had discovered the approaching specks the moment he awakened. He studied them briefly, and then made leisurely preparations for their reception.

In the first place he decided to stay where he was. His dogs were footsore, and, with the possible exception of Buzz-saw, none of them was fit for work. There’d be some fresh, first-rate teams in the gang that was coming across the tundra. They’d run him down in no time. And he might not find such a favorable place to dig-in farther along.

The river bank here bent at a sharp angle and rose up from the ice sheer as a breastwork. He hauled the sledge to the brink and banked up a shelf of snow on which he could stand shoulder-high and peer over the packed duffle. The niche in the river bank protected him in front and on two sides. They could circle and get him from behind. But the river was wide here and it was a long-range shot from the prairie on the other side. They’d have to burn up a lot of cartridges, perhaps.

He arranged his own shells in a neat row along the runner of the sledge--ninety-two for the Winchester and fourteen for the shotgun, which, for some reason, Diane had neglected to take with her. These were more than enough. If he lived to use half of them he wouldn’t complain.

A quart pot of strong coffee and the most extravagant breakfast his larder afforded: he fried his bacon just so and carefully browned his corn-cakes and used half the can of egg-powder and his last tin of ham to crisp a beautiful omelette. Into his coffee he dumped the entire jar of preserved cream that he had been saving for some purpose or another, he hadn’t quite known what until now. It was the best meal he had eaten in two months.

His eyes didn’t hurt much this morning. They looked inflamed in his pocket mirror and the lids were a bit puffy, but he could see what was going on. He threw a blanket over his head to shut out the light as long as he could.

But he could not long ignore the approaching figures. They were coming in a sweeping line, running up yesterday’s trail--Kit’s trail and Diane’s and Oogly’s. He didn’t bother to count. There were six dog teams and twenty or thirty men. All Yellow Knives, excepting, perhaps, the tall one who strode in the rear.

This last one was unrecognizable at such a distance. But he stood a full head above the others and he did not walk like an Indian. A white man--who else but Hell Bent? In all probability the savages had been of two minds about venturing out on the bleak barrens, until Bent returned last night and stirred them up again. Now he was showing his good generalship by letting the Indians rush into range ahead of him.

The foremost of the party caught sight of the sledge on the embankment. Kit heard the yells as the advance dozen fired a spattering volley and charged. Two or three bullets dusted the embankment, but the rest plopped short.

He slammed his rifle bolt. A .30-’06 soft nose. No caliber of bullet ever brought more woe into the world. Four-hundred and fifty yards, thereabouts. Allow for refraction. Allow for wind-drift. Two and a half from three, plus one--

This long range rifle practice was too much like surveying or dressmaking for his taste. Give him a six-inch pistol barrel and an offhand mark.

He felt the savage buck of the gunstock. One of the distant figures went down on its hands and knees, and tried to crawl, and couldn’t.

Somehow he didn’t hate these men because they were trying to kill him, but because they were forcing him to deal with such beastly arithmetic. He gritted his teeth with annoyance. Fortunately the others had stopped. No more for the present.

The devilish sun was mirrored into his face by the shining miles of snow. It was as though a billion white-burning lenses were turned full into his eyes. He tried to see across the blazing levels with his eyewinkers almost shut.

The advance squad had scattered and scrambled back for the sledges, leaving the fallen one, a blot upon the snow. Kit could see them talking, using their hands vehemently. The tall man came forward and seemed to have much to say.

For a half hour or more they held their council-of-war. Kit watched them as a basking seal watches at the edge of his diving hole, opening his eyes for five seconds and closing them for thirty. But the sun-rays seemed to bore through his naked eyelids.

The Indians at last decided what was to be done. The six sledges separated and were driven out in skirmish order, right and left from the center and fronting the river course. The dogs were unhitched and chased off into the background. Then a couple of Yellow Knives dropped prone behind each of the loaded sledges.

A nerve in Kit’s left eyeball had begun to jump and quiver, and he couldn’t control it. Yet he still was able to make out what was happening. A party of a half dozen braves detached themselves from the line and started off in a wide circle across the sun. These obviously intended to strike the river farther south and to swing back along the opposite shore to attack Kit’s ambuscade from the rear. It would take this bunch an hour or so to work into position, and for the present he dismissed them from his worries.

The real menace now was the sledges in front. He stared at them for a moment, and was under the impression that they were moving towards him. He blinked and passed his hand before his face, and looked again. Surely! Each sledge was gliding forward, propelled by the unseen men who wriggled flat in the snow behind it.

Kit now understood his enemies’ strategy, but it had been a costly business finding out. The Yellow Knives could approach with their backs to the sun that streamed like molten silver into Kit’s squinting, tortured face. The snow field was beginning to dance before him in garish colors. He dared not even think the word, but he knew what was happening to him. Trying to make out things in a quicksilver flood, with his eyes boggling in his head--

Rifle firing! Sullen thuds of sound at his left and in front of him--he listened for bullets in the air. Some of them plunged into the snow, not very close. One went above him, turning end over end, buzzing like a June-bug. Rotten rifling that wouldn’t spin a bullet properly. Something hit the sledge resoundingly a dozen inches from his nose, and one of the deck supports was sheared in two, neatly as the slicing stroke of a sharp ax.

They weren’t all using trade guns. Somebody else was doing a problem in long-distance arithmetic.

Kit tried to locate the sharp-shooter. That crisp, whip-like report meant high-power and meticulous rifling. Puffs of black powder smoke drifted above the sledges--all but one. That one stood farthest back and in the center of the line. By an exertion of will Kit forced his eyes to stay wide open long enough to concentrate his pupils on the midmost sledge. No smoke there. Anyhow, maybe not. His vision had cleared for a few seconds, and now the red and gold clouds were beginning to roll back in front of him. The middle sledge had seemed to be farther away than the others. Probably Hell Bent was sprawled behind that one. He’d be the one to have smokeless powder cartridges.

A bullet tore through the six fat duffle-bags lashed in a row on Kit’s sledge. He picked up the distant object again--a vague smudge in a spectrum of fiery colors that wouldn’t stay still. No trajectory tables or micrometer calculations were possible; just shove the butt to the shoulder, and guess, and pull the trigger. He couldn’t even see the sights.

What was the use? Damn his eyes! And the sun and the frightful, glaring snow! A trickle of syrup was running out of a punctured can over his bare right hand. He wiped his hand in disgust on the back of his shirt. His four dogs were crouching at his feet, and he absently scratched a rough, uplifted head.

“That you, Buzz-saw?” He laughed crazily. “What you sticking around here for? Why’nt you beat it?”

The firing seemed to be getting in closer. Banging explosions not only in front and to the left, but off on the right now. The bullets were dropping around him. They sounded like skate-blades cutting into crusty ice. Buzz-saw’s hot tongue was licking the rest of the sticky mess off his fingers.

He started to fire at the echo of the guns, and then changed his mind. If he missed a few times running they’d guess what was wrong with him, and jump up and come on headlong. Let ’em crawl up, thinking he was deliberately holding his fire. It would take them longer to get here, anyhow.

Not that it mattered when they came.

There was a spot in back of his nose that seemed to be the core of his troubles, a swirling and flashing, as nerve-racking as fireworks in his head. The eyesight--what a sensitive, perishable gift! Maltreat it for a few minutes, and it is gone. He couldn’t see a thing. There were nothing but shrinking nerves and agonizing colors swimming around in the places where his eyes ought to be. He was blind. He was snow-blind.

The rifle was of no more use to him than a dictionary. He chucked it away and groped for the shotgun. This was the tool for a blind man. Fourteen shells. Some held bird-shot and some buck-shot. It said which was which on the wads, if he could read them. No difference. He’d try to get them all in at the last minutes when everybody was jammed around him so close he couldn’t miss.

He tried the safety and broke the breech and snapped it shut again. A slug hit the ground by his face and spattered with the noise of an ice-pick chipping ice. Another knocked a welt of fur off his hood and ricocheted across the frozen river in two clanging jumps. He must have stuck his head up too far without knowing it. Blind and blundering!

Buzz-saw let out a terrific growl. Kit dropped his hand to feel the dog crouching with every muscle tense and his back ridge abristle. The keen, snarling muzzle was pointing north, down the river-course.

“What? What it is, boy?”

Kit suddenly flung up his gun and turned in sightless staring. Something--crunching, gliding in the hard snow below the river bank--coming towards him. He thumbed off the catch, finger crooked, sighting for the sound.

“Hello!” said a voice. “Hold it! What do you think you’re doing?”

The blood seemed to drain out of Kit’s brain. A swaying weakness overmastered him. The gun barrels wavered and sagged in his hands--too heavy to hold. He couldn’t move, or think, or speak.

Somebody strode up to him, and a big, strong, rough-sleeved arm suddenly wrapped itself about his head and squeezed his ears.

“Hello, Kit,” said the astounding voice. “Hello, Cocky-bird!”