CHAPTER XXVII

HELL BENT

The curt voice and the rifle report cracked out together as a unity. Kit felt his brother’s shoulder yield with the kick-back of the heavy discharge. He grabbed the rifle and shoved another cartridge under the bolt. Jerry was straining forward, breathless, staring.

“Hit!” Jerry’s cry rang jubilant, and then checked lamely. “No....”

Kitchener gawked at the snowy barrens. His throbbing, visionless eyes overtaxed themselves in feverish uncertainty. He desperately wanted to see, and he couldn’t.

“Yes!” The grimness of Jerry’s speech sent a shiver through Kit. “_Yes!_”

The racket along the river had choked off as abruptly as though unseen hands had gripped a score of wildly shrieking throats. The senseless outburst of firing dwindled, almost ceased. Kit was aware of a sudden lagging of footsteps up and down the line of advance.

“He stood against it for a few seconds,” explained Jerry. “I thought we’d missed.”

Jerry spoke in a casual, chatty tone. The tension had lifted. He was his carefree, natural self again. “But he buckled up finally, as though he had the gripes, and rooted his nose in the tundra. He’s lying out there like something that the dog fetched. The brother act was the hit of the piece.”

Kit at that moment was not sorry that his eyes were spared the need of seeing. He was not squeamish. But also he was without morbid curiosity. Jerry’s description did not sound pretty.

A few minutes ago Kit would have given his eyesight permanently for a fair shot at the man who had killed Inspector Bill Tearl. But now that it was over his wrath had simmered down and left him cold. His conscience did not disturb him. He knew that he would never feel the slightest twinge of remorse. It was as though he had merely helped to execute the decree of a higher judgment. The dead man had been one of the world’s ugly liabilities, and they had simply wiped him off the debit column. Kit was thankful only that Jerry shared the responsibility with him, fifty-fifty.

The quiet was a bit disconcerting after the recent hubbub. Evidently it was the white man who had incited the Yellow Knives to the pitch of daring that brought them out from their cover. But the white man was down, and Kit sensed the wavering in the line of attack. These Yellow Knives knew him. He had bluffed them once before....

With the Winchester at a menacing slant he planted his knee on the embankment and scrambled to the top. He stood boldly erect and faced the tribesmen. Two or three bullets, hastily fired, whanged past him.

“Come down, you idiot!” gasped Jerry.

Kit’s blinded gaze moved slowly, unflinching, across the invisible arc of the prairie. “Stop!” he shouted, and threw up his hand.

“Are you fools?” He queried them cheerfully in a voice only loud enough to reach across that narrow area of snow. “You know me! And my brother shoots straighter than I do. You’ve seen what happens. We’ll kill ten of you before you get here, and the few who live now will be hanged by the police later on.”

“You tell ’em, Cocky-bird!” he heard Jerry chuckling behind him. “Gad! They’re half wilting right now.”

“Tom Salmonfish!” Kitchener called. “And you, Athu! You needn’t hide behind the others. I see you’re there. Come forward a little way. I want to talk to you. You needn’t be afraid.” He spoke with disarming friendliness. “The man who shot one of us and made fools of you is dead. There can now be peace among us.”

No shots had been fired in the last minute or so. These men at least had accepted the truce long enough to hear what he had to say. He caught a creaking of snowshoes as somebody stirred restlessly off at his right. “We come get Oogly,” one of them announced, dispassionate and stubborn.

“Oogly!” Kit echoed the name with apparent amazement. “He’s not here. Didn’t you know? Oogly’s dead!”

There was quiet for a few seconds after that, a hushed and incredulous interval.

“I’m telling the truth!” Kit broke in sharply. He pointed southward with his finger. “Down the river, three or four miles from here--go look for a mound of snow and a spear sticking in it. Dig in that mound, and you’ll find Oogly.”

The silence of the next moment or two was nerve-racking. Kit was just able to distinguish a few blurred shapes confronting him in a gloomy, watchful immobility.

“Oogly’s not here I tell you!” Kitchener insisted earnestly. “Salmonfish and Athu--come and see for yourselves.” With a splendidly magnanimous gesture he tossed aside the rifle, which he was unable to aim anyhow, and exhibited his defenseless hands. “You two come on.” He smiled benignly. “You needn’t be afraid.

“Show yourself,” he said over his shoulder. “Let ’em see you’re unarmed.”

“Right behind you!” said Jerry.

“You needn’t worry about anything that happens afterwards,” Kit reassured the Yellow Knives. “You can go your way and everything will be forgotten.”

For a dozen seconds, perhaps, the issue hung in the balance. But from the hesitation of the tribesmen it was clear enough that Kit’s talk had made an impression. He had long since taught them a wholesome respect for his marksmanship. Although he had dropped his rifle, anybody could see an ivory pistol butt sticking out of his holster. There was no foreseeing how many of the tribesmen might go down before that deadly gun if hostilities were suddenly renewed. And at Kit’s back stood the hard-jowled Jerry, whose potentialities as a fighter still must be reckoned with. Probably also a few of the more reflective minds had begun to ponder dubiously about the white man’s law, which, in its own manner, at its own leisure, was capable of reaching a merciless arm even into the remotest wilderness.

Besides, they just wanted Oogly. They had no real quarrel with anybody else.

Kit suddenly was aware that two of the men had stepped out ahead of the line and were coming towards him warily.

He waited with apparent indifference. The advancing Indians finally ventured to the river’s edge, and he allowed them to look over the embankment.

“You see,” he said, “there were only three of us. My brother and I and--the man who was shot.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “What you do after we go away?” one of the Indians finally blurted out.

“Nothing,” said Kit. “The white man was to blame, not you. You killed our dogs, but we will forget that. If you leave now, nothing will ever be done to you. You have my promise.”

“Oogly dead?” temporized the tribal spokesman.

“I said so. You search where I told you and you’ll know that I’m telling the truth. Oogly is dead.”

“Good!” said the man heartily.

He said something in his harsh jargon to the nearest group of his comrades, and then flung up his arm to signal to those across the river. It seemed to be a pacific gesture.

Jerry had been watching suspiciously, with his left hand tucked under his parka. He relaxed with a twisted smile. “You’ve got ’em on the run, Crow-eye. They’re going to call it a day.”

The two Indians had turned on their heels to stalk away, but Kit motioned them to halt. “Just a minute,” he commanded. “Who was the man who told you you’d find Oogly here?”

“Bruyas,” one of the men informed him.

“Is that Bruyas lying off there by the sledges?”

“Yup!” said the Yellow Knife carelessly.

“All right. You may go now.”

Kitchener picked up his rifle and dropped down beside his brother. “Bruyas!” he mused. “I’m beginning to think that he was behind most of our troubles. Bruyas, and probably Giffard. I shouldn’t doubt if one of them was Durand’s assassin. And they guessed, of course, why I was hanging around the Great Owl forest. Figured I knew too much and thought they’d better put me out too. They wanted a clear field for Hell Bent when he arrived. The only thing I don’t understand is why he bothered to follow me into the barrens.”

“It’s quite likely,” Jerry suggested, “that they’d heard the same rumors we did about the mysterious white man at Queen Maud Sea, who might turn out to be the lost Inspector Tearl. You were posing around as Sergeant Tearl. When you suddenly struck north it would be natural for them to suppose that you were off to hunt for the old man. His return would be fatal to them. They grabbed the chance to stop you before you started by sicking a crowd of irresponsible smokies on you.”

Jerry was leaning against the terrace, eyeing the Indians. “It looks as though they’re leaving us,” he remarked. “They’re hitching in the dogs. As soon as they pull out we’ll be getting on ourselves.”

Kit faced his brother in startled recollection. “Say!” he exclaimed. “I’m under arrest--a fugitive from the police. I’d darned near forgotten. They spotted me a couple of days ago--impersonating an officer--”

“Who did?” interrupted the sergeant.

“Devon and Cross.” Kit grinned ruefully. “Murder too. They think I made away with you.”

“Really?” Jerry was amused by the notion. “Good! You’ll have to take good care of me if you want to clear yourself of the murder charge.” He laughed calmly. “I guess it’ll be all right. If Cross and Devon are like the usual run of the mounties they’ll be a couple of four-square chaps whom we can tell the truth to and trust to keep their mouths shut afterwards.”

The Yellow Knives were moving away. Kit heard the cracking whips and the shouts of the dog drivers. The tribesmen had started down the river to look for Oogly, to find out if the blood-debt were really paid.

As soon as the last of the creaking sledges had drawn off out of range Kit climbed the embankment again and walked out on the prairie. The Yellow Knives, with cynical unconcern, had left their white companion as he had fallen. It needed but a moment’s investigation to establish the fact of death. Here at least was one who never again would trouble the crown’s lawful forces.

At that moment Kit’s stinging eyes saw as much as he cared to have them see. The broad, bearded face, with the missing front teeth--the man undeniably was Bruyas. Kit lingered only to unlace the upturned snowshoes, and he carried them under his arm back to Jerry.

“Jim Durand’s square-webbed snowshoes!” he remarked. “We guessed right. It was Bruyas who killed him and dumped him out of the cabin window, who found use for the snowshoes, who helped himself to Dad’s old service gun. Bruyas--who tracked me into the barrens, and shot Oogly--

“It’s funny,” he puzzled after an interval of silence. “Durand evidently timed his return to this country to coincide with Hell Bent’s release from prison. His idea must have been the same as yours. He must have expected Bent to come back after the hidden gold sledge, just as you were sure that he would. Like you, I gather that he intended to ambush himself in the Great Owl woods so that he might catch Bent red-handed when he tried to recover his loot.”

“It would seem so,” agreed Jerry. “And this Durand would have even a blacker account to settle with Bent than you and I. We thought that Bent had something to do with Dad’s disappearance. But Durand knew! He was an eye-witness. He’d seen his sister shot down. You can guess what he meant to do!”

“The woman.” Kit’s half-seeing eyes turned broodingly towards the south. “If she was Durand’s sister and Diane his niece, then she either was Diane’s aunt or her mother.”

Jerry tilted his head sidewise to regard his brother searchingly. “You call her ‘Diane’ now, do you?”

Kitchener wasn’t listening. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought out a fragment of paper that had been crumpled and then carefully smoothed afterwards. “Here’s a note she wrote when she left me yesterday. I haven’t been able to read it.”

Without comment Jerry took the sheet and spread it open in his left palm. In a faintly mocking tone he read aloud:

Dear Cocky-bird:

I don’t know any other name for you, and I guess maybe it’s better that I don’t. I’m leaving you because I don’t want to go north, and anyhow I’d be a hindrance to you. You and Oogly’ll travel faster without me. You may believe me--I’ll never hint to the police which direction you went.

You remember the bad thought I had, that gave birth to Shedim, the owl? And I couldn’t tell you what it was. But now that we’ll never see each other again I think I’d be not quite so unhappy in the years to come if I knew you knew.

From the very first I guessed that you were no policeman. I don’t quite know how you fit into the horrible crimes at Great Owl Run, but I know that you do, somewhere, somehow. When I see you and talk with you it’s something that is utterly impossible to believe. But I’ve had to force myself to believe it.

I ought to hate you, and I don’t and can’t. And my bad thought is simply this: that it is filled, days and nights, with nothing in the world but you. Good-by. I’m praying that I’ll never see you again.

Diane.

Jerry folded up the paper and bent a brotherly grin at Kitchener. “A demon with the girls!” he remarked. “How do you do it, Oakheart?”

Kit took the note back and tucked it into his pocket and buttoned the flap.

“I can see where she might mistake you for an old crow,” remarked Jerry, “but an owl--”

“Shut up!” Kit broke in fiercely.

“It’s turned out to be the craziest mess that anybody ever heard of,” ruminated Jerry in a sobering voice. “Everybody ramming and bulling around at cross-purposes. We picked Durand out for Hell Bent. And you thought Diane was a crook, and she thinks you’re one.”

“Diane has gone back to Great Owl Run to wait for Durand,” said Kit, and softly shook his head. “And he’ll never come.”

“It’s odd,” reflected Jerry, “the way everybody’s scuttling all over the place waiting for this Bent bird to get out of prison. He’s been out now for two or three months, and none of us has seen him or heard a thing of him yet.” His forehead creased perplexedly. “What I’d like to know is where the deuce is Hell Bent?”

“How do I know--” Kit started to say, and then stopped with his mouth open.

“There was a man at the police post the other night!” he burst out. “A big, ugly-looking cuss with a scarred face. His excuse for being in the woods in mid-winter sounded phony to me. But I didn’t give it much thought until this minute--

“He heard me say I’d moved the gold bags, and that Diane knows where I hid them.” Kit’s face looked ghastly in the dying sunlight. “Diane is alone at the Great Owl cabin, and this man is loose in the woods.

“Jerry!” It was a stricken cry. “He must be Bent. I know it! As sure as the devil it’s Hell Bent!”