CHAPTER XXIII

BROTHERS-IN-ARMS

Kitchener lost his shotgun as a wave of giddiness swept over him. His hands went up, incredulous, feebly groping, to cling to a pair of big, fleshly shoulders, to feel the warmth and vitality of solid human strength holding him on his feet.

“Jerry,” he said. “Jerry! My God! Jerry!”

“Who the hell did you think it was?” asked the bright, mocking voice that Kit would have known anywhere, anytime, in any world or state of existence. Jerry Tearl!

“I thought-- They killed you. I thought you were killed--Jerry!”

“Who killed me? Have you gone nuts or something? What’s the shootin’-- Hey--you damn fool--keep your head down!”

“Back in that cabin. The bloody old red blanket! And all over the floor and window sill. I thought they got you.”

“What cabin? What _are_ you talking about?”

“Back at Great Owl Run. Grandfather Tearl’s old Hudson’s Bay blanket with a bullet hole in it. I thought you’d been murdered--”

“Who, me?” Jerry broke in with his scornful laugh. “I wasn’t at Great Owl Run. I went down the Vermilion, straight to the sea coast. The blanket. Oho! I’m beginning to get you. I had the blanket strapped on the back of my sledge, and some of the duffel you’d traded me. It must have come loose and fallen off. I discovered it was gone late one night when I went into camp, several miles farther down the Vermilion than the Great Owl fork. Somebody picked it up. That’s all.”

Kit was laughing while tears ran from the corners of his inflamed eyelids. “Jerry! I don’t know what to _say_.” His fingers contracted in his brother’s bulging biceps with bruising force. “Why, you--you doggoned old scut!”

“Steady-on there, bird!” Kit felt a pair of fingers poking experimentally into his eye-sockets. “What’s wrong with you, Crow-eye?”

“Nothing. Just a little blind--snow-blind. The cursed sun--and the snow--”

Jerry made a queer sound with his lips. “You mean to say--you been carrying-on here--and can’t see?”

“Trying to.”

“What’s it all about--?”

A chunking hunk of lead slapped a metal brace of the sledge and burst into particles around their ears.

“Pardon me,” said Jerry, “may I cut-in?”

He stirred, then steadied, and five rifle-shots rattled spitefully over the river embankment. The clip tinkled and he shoved in a fresh round. “Slaveys--Yellow Knives? What’s the racket?”

“Yellow Knives,” said Kit. “It’s a long story.”

“If I could shoot like you used to,” remarked the sergeant, “I’d have got that baby with the red cap. But I’ll bet his ear’s burning. They’re not pushing in quite so fast.”

“It’s the ones behind,” said Kit. “Where are they now?”

Jerry was silent for a moment. “Yeh!” he observed at length. “Six of ’em--making way around to the west. The bunch in front are going to hold us until the others are in our rear. The second bunch are going to be the bananas. Well, we had lots of fun when we had it.”

Kit heard a scratching sound, and a savor of strong pipe-tobacco drifted into his nostrils. Then Jerry moved off a few paces along the river, and said something in thick, rasping syllables of speech that Kit was unable to understand.

A second voice answered in heavy gutturals. Kit threw up his head with a start, his facial muscles contorted in a straining effort to see through multicolored mists. Jerry had brought a companion with him, an Esquimau, judging by the talk.

“Who’s that?” Kit demanded.

“Just a friend,” said Jerry lightly. “He came down with me from the Arctic Circle.”

Kit sighed and shook his head. One more victim in the trap. On the other hand, if this newcomer was anything like Oogly, he’d be a stout comrade for a last-hour stand.

The sergeant was giving the man some sort of instruction in the Esquimau tongue. Feet moved down the slope, and then Jerry came back to Kit.

“I’ve got him planted on the river ice to guard our rear. He’s a good man, a crack shot, but there are too many of ’em for us, and they’ll get us all before sundown. Well-o, Cocky-bird, we’ll go out of this heathenish country together!”

The rattle of rifle-fire in front of them had died away to only an occasional report. Jerry’s recent burst of shots had taught caution to the crowd behind the sledges. They’d hold their real attack, of course, until the men in the rear were in position.

“Jerry! Who do you suppose was murdered in that cabin?”

“I don’t know. How do I know? Say, how’d you get in this jam, Kit? Who started it, and why?”

“Oh, there was some trouble about a man that the Yellow Knives wanted to kill--who was shot down last night by Hell Bent. Bent’s here now, keeping ’em ribbed-up. That business back at Great Owl Run--somebody was murdered there that night. Trail of the body dragged across the floor and dumped into the river.”

“No!” ejaculated Jerry. “Oh--that’s how! I _found_ him.”

“What?”

“Body in the river. About fifty miles north of here--on our way back. A tall, raw-boned chap with a bullet in his back. Drifted out from an ice hole and washed up on the bank. Poor devil! Must have floated all the way down under the ice--Great Owl Run into the Vermilion River. Funny thing about him--”

“Hell Bent killed him,” interrupted Kitchener. “And I thought it was you!” He blinked and dug the back of his fist into his eyes. The pain came and went in waves. But if he forced his bare eyeballs to endure the daylight he could still see something of his blurred surroundings. Jerry sat on the snow-shelf with his knee locked in his fingers and a pipe in his teeth.

“Bent’s square-meshed tracks went to the cabin,” Kit ruminated. “Why did he shoot this chap? Who do you suppose he was?”

“Keep ’em shut, Kit,” advised Jerry. “Not that it’ll do any good now, but they won’t hurt so much. The only thing that’ll cure snow-blindness is a long stretch of total darkness.” He laughed grimly. “Well, I guess we’re going to have that soon--a long, long stretch.”

“Who do you think he could be?” Kit persisted doggedly.

“The dead man? I went through him, and he didn’t have an identifying mark on him. But I’ll tell you something that he did have--in an old wallet, buttoned up with a big bunch of money. A stack of old express company and postal money order receipts for five thousand dollars each--dated in January for twelve consecutive years. In whose favor do you suppose they’d been made out, Kit?”

“I don’t know. How’d I--” Kitchener’s chin lifted sharply. “You don’t--you don’t mean--”

“Yes. The slips were all made out in the name of Mrs. William Tearl, New York City. The source of the mysterious annuity. That man, whoever he was, was the chap who has sent five thousand dollars to our family around the first of every year. He could have told us a lot of things, I guess, if we’d got to him in time. And now he’s dead.”

“But who--why?” Kit faced his brother blankly.

“Don’t know. Any guess you’d make would be only a wild shot. Maybe Dad did something for him some time, or he did something to Dad, and he’s been squaring accounts with his conscience ever since. And for some reason wanted to remain incognito. Funny he should be at the Great Owl place the night Hell Bent got there--and is murdered by him.”

“Here it is!” said Kit tensely. “This chap must have been mixed up some way in Dad’s disappearance. Maybe he felt responsible somehow for what happened. Tried to make it up to Mother the best way he could--by sending money. When Bent is released from prison this chap goes to the old cabin and waits, figuring Bent’ll come some day. Sounds as though there was an old score between them that had to be reckoned up. And Bent came and settled it for keeps by killing this other chap when he was asleep.”

“Maybe,” agreed Jerry. “But anyway you fit it together it’s guesswork.” He touched his brother’s sleeve. “By the way, I didn’t introduce you to my friend.”

“Who?”

“The man who came down with me from Queen Maud Sea.”

“Your trip up there turned out to be a bust, didn’t it? I never did pin any hope in that business.”

“My friend didn’t want to come,” pursued Jerry. “But I made him believe that I wouldn’t be able to make the return trip unless I had a good hunter with me, and I finally persuaded him to see me down as far as the police post.”

Jerry spoke to the man on the river ice. “I want you to know my brother,” he said. “I’m Jerry Tearl. This is Kit Tearl.” He stressed the name with a peculiar emphasis.

There was a momentary silence. Jerry seemed to be waiting for something. Kit at length heard him fill his lungs deeply. “His name is Kablunak,” said Jerry. “He belongs to the Ahiagmuit tribe.”

“Yes?” said Kit, and stopped with a sudden, queer breathlessness. “Kablunak! Why--that was the name--wasn’t it? You said-- Kablunak! Why--why, that means ‘white man,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” The fingers on Kitchener’s sleeve gripped a little tighter. “This man only talks Esquimau, but he is not an Esquimau. His own language--he’s forgotten it. He’s lost his language, his identity--everything. Everything is completely gone.”

“You--what do you mean?” gasped Kit. His blinded eyes were turned wildly towards the tall, straight-formed figure of the stranger, whom he saw as in a blurring fog.

“He was frightfully wounded a number of years ago,” said Jerry in a slow, curiously strained voice. “A bullet in his head. You could see the scar if you were able to see. That bullet snapped something in his brain--what do they call it?--aphasia--forgetfulness. He doesn’t remember a thing. He doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from or what he had been.”

Kit was breathing hard, staring tragically through the mists. “My God!” he whispered.

“A party of Esquimaux found him in the snow in the forest down yonder, apparently dying. Twelve years back. They bundled him on a sledge and took him north with them, and nursed his body back to health, but not--not his brain.”

“Who is he?” whispered Kit in agonized suspense.

“He became one of the Ahiagmuit,” stated Jerry. “In the years that he lived with them they came to accept him as their chief hunter, their leader--”

“Who?” Kit demanded hoarsely.

Jerry’s hand was a vice, clutching his brother’s arm. “He’s a lean, tall man with a white mustache and a shock of snow-white hair, a hawk’s face, and a pair of steel eyes that glow sometimes with a strange inward flame. And under his artikis he wears the badge of the royal police.”