Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"It's all right, Goatry," said Foyle. "This lady is, one of my family
from the East."
"Goin' on by stage?" Goatry said vaguely, as they shook hands.
She did not reply, for she was looking down the street, and presently she
started as she gazed. She laid a hand suddenly on Foyle's arm.
"See--he's come," she said in a whisper, and as though not realising
Goatry's presence. "He's come."
Goatry looked as well as Foyle. "Halbeck--the devil!" he said.
Foyle turned to him. "Stand by, Goatry. I want you to keep a shut mouth.
I've work to do."
Goatry held out his hand. "I'm with you. If you get him this time, clamp
him, clamp him like a tooth in a harrow."
Halbeck had stopped his horse at the post-office door. Dismounting he
looked quickly round, then drew the reins over the horse's head, letting
them trail, as is the custom of the West.
A few swift words passed between Goatry and Foyle. "I'll do this myself,
Jo," he whispered to the girl presently. "Go into another room. I'll
bring him here."
In another minute Goatry was leading the horse away from the post-office,
while Foyle stood waiting quietly at the door. The departing footsteps of
the horse brought Halbeck swiftly to the doorway, with a letter in his
hand.
"Hi, there, you damned sucker!" he called after Goatry, and then saw
Foyle waiting.
"What the hell--!" he said fiercely, his hand on something in his hip
pocket.
"Keep quiet, Dorl. I want to have a little talk with you. Take your hand
away from that gun--take it away," he added with a meaning not to be
misunderstood.
Halbeck knew that one shout would have the town on him, and he did not
know what card his brother was going to play. He let his arm drop to his
side. "What's your game? What do you want?" he asked surlily.
"Come over to the Happy Land Hotel," Foyle answered, and in the light of
what was in his mind his words had a grim irony.
With a snarl Halbeck stepped out. Goatry, who had handed the horse over
to the hostler, watched them coming.
"Why did I never notice the likeness before?" Goatry said to himself.
"But, gosh! what a difference in the men. Foyle's going to double cinch
him this time, I guess."
He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land. When they stepped
into the sitting-room, he stood at the door waiting. The hotel was
entirely empty, the roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the
idlers and spectators. The barman was nodding behind the bar, the
proprietor was moving about in the backyard inspecting a horse. There was
a cheerful warmth everywhere, the air was like an elixir, the pungent
smell of a pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament to the indrawn
breath. And to Billy Goat, who sometimes sang in the choir of a church
not a hundred miles away--for people agreed to forget his occasional
sprees--there came, he knew not why, the words of a hymn he had sung only
the preceding Sunday:
"As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase--"
The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to the conversation
inside the room--the partition was thin, the door thinner, and he heard
much. Foyle had asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and
await the issue of this final conference. He meant, however, to take a
hand in, if he thought he was needed, and he kept his ear glued to the
door. If he thought Foyle needed him--his fingers were on the handle of
the door.
"Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?" asked Halbeck of his brother.
"Take your time," said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he drew the blind
three-quarters down, so that they could not be seen from the street.
"I'm in a hurry, I tell you. I've got my plans. I'm going South. I've
only just time to catch the Canadian Pacific three days from now, riding
hard."
"You're not going South, Dorl."
"Where am I going, then?" was the sneering reply. "Not farther than the
Happy Land."
"What the devil's all this? You don't mean you're trying to arrest me
again, after letting me go?"
"You don't need to ask. You're my prisoner. You're my prisoner," he said
in a louder voice--"until you free yourself."
"I'll do that damn quick, then," said the other, his hand flying to his
hip.
"Sit down," was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was in his face before
he could draw his own weapon. "Put your gun on the table," Foyle said
quietly. Halbeck did so. There was no other way.
Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a motion to rise.
"Sit still, Dorl," came the warning voice.
White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy
angry lips looking like a debauched and villainous caricature of his
brother before him.
"Yes, I suppose you'd have potted me, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant.
"You'd have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley,
the ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife's
sister, when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your
child--giving her life for the child you brought into the world."
"What in the name of hell--it's a lie!"
"Don't bluster. I know the truth."
"Who told you-the truth?"
"She did--to-day--an hour ago."
"She here--out here?" There was a new cowed note in the voice.
"She is in the next room."
"What did she come here for?"
"To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent
men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let
that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to
destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world."
"She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know
it."
There was a dangerous look in Foyle's eyes, and his jaw set hard. "There
would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I
haven't put myself outside the boundary as you have. You're my brother,
but you're the worst scoundrel in the country--the worst unhanged. Put on
the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars
belonging to your child. There's twenty-five hundred dollars more to be
accounted for."
The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the letter on the table.
"I'll pay the rest as soon as I can, if you'll stop this damned
tomfoolery," he said sullenly, for he saw that he was in a hole.
"You'll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from the C.P.R.
contractor's chest. No, I don't think that will do."
"You want me to go to prison, then?"
"I think not. The truth would come out at the trial--the whole truth--the
murder, and all. There's your child Bobby. You've done him enough wrong
already. Do you want him--but it doesn't matter whether you do or not--do
you want him to carry through life the fact that his father was a
jail-bird and a murderer, just as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made
when you threw her against the door?"
"What do you want with me, then?" The man sank slowly and heavily back
into the chair.
"There is a way--have you never thought of it? When you threatened others
as you did me, and life seemed such a little thing in others--can't you
think?"
Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In the silence which
followed Foyle's words his brain was struggling to see a way out. Foyle's
further words seemed to come from a great distance.
"It's not too late to do the decent thing. You'll never repent of all
you've done; you'll never do different."
The old reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both
courage and bravado, he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from
the net. He would not beg, he would struggle.
"I've lived as I meant to, and I'm not going to snivel or repent now.
It's all a rotten business, anyhow," he rejoined.
With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own pistol in his
pocket, then pushed Halbeck's pistol over towards him on the table.
Halbeck's eyes lighted eagerly, grew red with excitement, then a change
passed over them. They now settled on the pistol, and stayed. He heard
Foyle's voice. "It's with you to do what you ought to do. Of course you
can kill me. My pistol's in my pocket. But I don't think you will. You've
murdered one man. You won't load your soul up with another. Besides, if
you kill me, you will never get away from Kowatin alive. But it's with
you--take your choice. It's me or you."
Halbeck's fingers crept out and found the pistol. "Do your duty, Dorl,"
said the ex-sergeant as he turned his back on his brother.
The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped inside softly. He had
work to do, if need be, and his face showed it. Halbeck did not see him.
There was a demon in Halbeck's eyes, as his brother stood, his back
turned, taking his chances. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite
Halbeck. Goatry was watching Halbeck's face in the glass, and saw the
danger. He measured his distance.
All at once Halbeck caught Goatry's face in the mirror. The dark devilry
faded out of his eyes. His lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was
blocked.
With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to his head. It
cracked, and he fell back heavily in the chair. There was a red trickle
at the temple.
He had chosen the best way out.
"He had the pluck," said Goatry, as Foyle swung round with a face of
misery.
A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry kept them back.
"Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry
explained to them.
A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room.
"Come away-come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he
did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair.
Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with
Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where
Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.
THE WHISPERER
"And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground,
and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be
as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy
speech shall whisper out of the dust."
The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe nothing remained
of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the
yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.
Here, the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there,
by a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and
mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and
intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident
and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and
endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks
whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that
vitalised the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from
some far resort by eager sportsmen.
That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were
houses here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations.
Many of the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had
trees, and others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity,
everywhere the strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been
straining on the leash.
Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It
could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and
looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the
eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the
reedy lake at one end and out at, the other, a small, dilapidated house
half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising
ground. In front of the house, not far from the lake, a man was lying
asleep upon the ground, a rough felt hat drawn over his eyes.
Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed,
demoralised figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a
deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish
and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a
prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to
all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started,
or his body twitched, and a muttering came from beneath the hat.
The battered house, the absence of barn or stable or garden, or any token
of thrift or energy, marked the man as an excrescence in this theatre of
hope and fruitful toil. It all belonged to some degenerate land, some
exhausted civilisation, not to this field of vigour where life rang like
silver.
So the man lay for hour upon hour. He slept as though he had been upon a
long journey in which the body was worn to helplessness. Or was it that
sleep of the worn-out spirit which, tortured by remembrance and remorse,
at last sinks into the depths where the conscious vexes the
unconscious--a little of fire, a little of ice, and now and then the turn
of the screw?
The day marched nobly on towards evening, growing out of its blue and
silver into a pervasive golden gleam; the bare, greyish houses on the
prairie were transformed into miniature palaces of light. Presently a
girl came out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house with a
half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand a fishing rod which had
been telescoped till it was no bigger than a cane; in the other she
carried a small fishing basket. Her father's shooting and fishing camp
was a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this which she
approached. She had tired of the gay company in camp, brought up for
sport from beyond the American border where she also belonged, and she
had come to explore the river running into this reedy lake. She turned
from the house and came nearer to the lake, shaking her head, as though
compassionating the poor, folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her
hair was brown, going to tawny, but in this soft light which enwrapped
her, she was in a sort of topaz flame. As she came on, suddenly she
stopped as though transfixed. She saw the man--and saw also a tragedy
afoot.
The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he
did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself
in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralysed.
The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his
angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing rod
she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at
the head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was
sure, and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground
beside the man.
He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed,
stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonised dismay gave way to such
an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim
about to be given to the fire, or to the knife that flays. The place of
dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world
of peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at
his elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering in his ear.
He had been down in the abysses of life.
He glanced again at the girl, and realised what she had done: she had
saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question;
but he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him
had shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He
staggered to his feet.
"Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the
ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in his
youth he had been vain and ambitious and good-looking also.
He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one
who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the
first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood
was not a real world.
She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:
"I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a gesture. "I
had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on you--then."
She glanced at the snake significantly.
"You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still spoke
of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed gratitude. "I want to thank
you," he added. "You were brave. It would have turned on you if you had
missed. I know them. I've killed five." He spoke very slowly, huskily.
"Well, you are safe--that is the chief thing," she rejoined, making as
though to depart. But presently she turned back. "Why are you so
dreadfully poor--and everything?" she asked gently.
His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in
a dull, heavy tone: "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are
plenty to kick you farther."
"You weren't always poor as you are now--I mean long ago, when you were
young."
"I'm not so old," he rejoined sluggishly--"only thirty-four."
She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already
grey, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes.
"Yet it must seem long to you," she said with meaning. Now he laughed--a
laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his boyhood. Everything,
save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was dim in his
debilitated mind.
"Too far to go back," he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had
been strong in him once.
She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater
because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense,
for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his
household, and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not
of the labouring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if
abrupt and cheerless, was grammatical.
"If you cannot go back, you can go forwards," she said firmly. "Why
should you be the only man in this beautiful land who lives like this,
who is idle when there is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when
there is so much time to sleep at night?"
A faint flush came on the greyish, colourless face. "I don't sleep at
night," he returned moodily.
"Why don't you sleep?" she asked.
He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake with his foot. The
tail moved; he stamped upon the head with almost frenzied violence, out
of keeping with his sluggishness.
She turned away, yet looked back once more--she felt tragedy around her.
"It is never too late to mend," she said, and moved on, but stopped; for
a young man came running from the woods towards her.
"I've had a hunt--such a hunt for you," the young man said eagerly, then
stopped short when he saw to whom she had been talking. A look of disgust
came upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm.
"In Heaven's name, why did you talk to that man?" he said. "You ought not
to have trusted yourself near him."
"What has he done?" she asked. "Is he so bad?"
"I've heard about him. I inquired the other day. He was once in a better
position as a ranchman--ten years ago; but he came into some money one
day, and he changed at once. He never had a good character; even before
he got his money he used to gamble, and was getting a bad name.
Afterwards he began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever.
Presently his money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had
fastened on him, and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working
for a month, sometimes idle for months. There's something sinister about
him, there's some mystery; for poverty or drink even--and he doesn't
drink much now--couldn't make him what he is. He doesn't seek company,
and he walks sometimes endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as
he can. How did you come to speak to him, Grace?"
She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her voice, for she was
thinking of the man from a standpoint which her companion could not
realise. She was also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten years
ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch behind them had been a
different man; and there had shot into her mind the face of a ranchman
she had seen with her father, the railway king, one evening when his
"special" had stopped at a railway station on his tour through
Montana--ten years ago. Why did the face of the ranchman which had fixed
itself on her memory then, because he had come on the evening of her
birthday and had spoiled it for her, having taken her father away from
her for an hour--why did his face come to her now? What had it to do with
the face of this outcast she had just left?
"What is his name?" she asked at last.
"Roger Lygon," he answered.
"Roger Lygon," she repeated mechanically. Something in the man chained
her thought--his face that moment when her hand saved him and the awful
fear left him, and a glimmer of light came into his eyes.
But her lover beside her broke into song. He was happy with her.
Everything was before him, her beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not
dwell upon dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp sweet evening
air:
"'Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses
That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?'
'I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes,
That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.'
'O come, let us camp in the North Trail together,
With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'"
Left alone, the man by the reedy lake stood watching them until they were
out of view. The song came back to him, echoing across the waters:
"O come, let us camp on the North Trail together,
With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down."
The sunset glow, the girl's presence, had given him a moment's illusion,
had absorbed him for a moment, acting on his deadened nature like a
narcotic at once soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a
forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilisation, towers,
temples, and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands
abashed and vaguely wondering, having neither reason to understand, nor
feeling to enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood. He had lived
the last three years so much alone, had been cut off so completely from
his kind--had lived so much alone. Yet to-night, at last, he would not be
alone.
Some one was coming to-night, some one whom he had not seen for a long
time. Letters had passed, the object of the visit had been defined, and
he had spent the intervening days since the last letter had arrived, now
agitated, now apathetic and sullen, now struggling with some invisible
being that kept whispering in his ear, saying to him, "It was the price
of fire, and blood, and shame. You did it--you--you--you! You are down,
and you will never get up. You can only go lower still--fire, and blood,
and shame!"
Criminal as he was he had never become hardened, he had only become
degraded. Crime was not his vocation. He had no gift for it; still the
crime he had committed had never been discovered--the crime that he did
with others. There were himself and Dupont and another. Dupont was coming
to-night--Dupont who had profited by the crime, and had not spent his
profits, but had built upon them to further profit; for Dupont was
avaricious and prudent, and a born criminal. Dupont had never had any
compunctions or remorse, had never lost a night's sleep because of what
they two had done, instigated thereto by the other, who had paid them so
well for the dark thing.
The other was Henderley, the financier. He was worse perhaps than Dupont,
for he was in a different sphere of life, was rich beyond counting, and
had been early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings. The spirit of
ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate and cruel finance had
seized him, mastered him; so that, under the cloak of power--as a
toreador hides the blade under the red cloth before his enemy the
toro--he held a sword of capital which did cruel and vicious things, at
last becoming criminal also. Henderley had incited and paid; the others,
Dupont and Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had no remorse,
none at any rate that weighed upon him; for he had got used to ruining
rivals, and seeing strong men go down, and those who had fought him come
to beg or borrow of him in the end. He had seen more than one commit
suicide, and those they loved go down and farther down, and he had helped
these up a little, but not enough to put them near his own plane again;
and he could not see--it never occurred to him--that he had done any evil
to them. Dupont thought upon his crimes now and then, and his heart
hardened, for he had no moral feeling; Henderley did not think at all. It
was left to the man of the reedy lake to pay the penalty of apprehension,
to suffer the effects of crime upon a nature not naturally criminal.