Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"I bin waitin' a durn while," the mountain-man added, and got to his feet
slowly, drawing himself out to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The
shoulders were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust
forwards with an eager, watchful look--a habit become a physical
characteristic.
Presently he caught sight of a hawk sailing southward along the peaks of
the white icebound mountains above, on which the sun shone with such
sharp insistence, making sky and mountain of a piece in deep purity and
serene stillness.
"That hawk's seen him, mebbe," he said, after a moment. "I bet it went up
higher when it got him in its eye. Ef it'd only speak and tell me where
he is--ef he's a day, or two days, or ten days north."
Suddenly his eyes blazed and his mouth opened in superstitious amazement,
for the hawk stopped almost directly overhead at a great height, and
swept round in a circle many times, waveringly, uncertainly. At last it
resumed its flight southward, sliding down the mountains like a winged
star.
The mountaineer watched it with a dazed expression for a moment longer,
then both hands clutched the rifle and half swung it to position
involuntarily.
"It's seen him, and it stopped to say so. It's seen him, I tell you, an'
I'll git him. Ef it's an hour, or a day, or a week, it's all the same.
I'm here watchin', waitin' dead on to him, the poison skunk!"
The person to whom he had been speaking now rose from the pile of cedar
boughs where he had been sitting, stretched his arms up, then shook
himself into place, as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute
looking at the mountaineer with a reflective, yet a furtively sardonic,
look. He was not above five feet nine inches in height, and he was slim
and neat; and though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even
frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated
force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their
heads in doubt afterwards--a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as
perfect control as the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great
artist. It was the face of a man without purpose in life beyond the
moment--watchful, careful, remorselessly determined, an adventurer's
asset, the dial-plate of a hidden machinery.
Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from his mouth, from which he
had been puffing smoke slowly, and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, "How
long you been waitin', Buck?"
"A month. He's overdue near that. He always comes down to winter at Fort
o' Comfort, with his string of half-breeds, an' Injuns, an' the dogs."
"No chance to get him at the Fort?"
"It ain't so certain. They'd guess what I was doin' there. It's surer
here. He's got to come down the trail, an' when I spot him by the Juniper
clump"--he jerked an arm towards a spot almost a mile farther up the
valley--"I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and git him--plumb. I could
do it from here, sure, but I don't want no mistake. Once only, jest one
shot, that's all I want, Sinnet."
He bit off a small piece of tobacco from a black plug Sinnet offered him,
and chewed it with nervous fierceness, his eyebrows working, as he looked
at the other eagerly. Deadly as his purpose was, and grim and unvarying
as his vigil had been, the loneliness had told on him, and he had grown
hungry for a human face and human companionship. Why Sinnet had come he
had not thought to inquire. Why Sinnet should be going north instead of
south had not occurred to him. He only realised that Sinnet was not the
man he was waiting for with murder in his heart; and all that mattered to
him in life was the coming of his victim down the trail. He had welcomed
Sinnet with a sullen eagerness, and had told him in short, detached
sentences the dark story of a wrong and a waiting revenge, which brought
a slight flush to Sinnet's pale face and awakened a curious light in his
eyes.
"Is that your shack--that where you shake down?" Sinnet said, pointing
towards a lean-to in the fir trees to the right.
"That's it. I sleep there. It's straight on to the Juniper clump, the
front door is." He laughed viciously, grimly. "Outside or inside, I'm on
to the Juniper clump. Walk into the parlour?" he added, and drew open a
rough-made door, so covered with green cedar boughs that it seemed of a
piece with the surrounding underbrush and trees. Indeed, the little but
was so constructed that it could not be distinguished from the woods even
a short distance away.
"Can't have a fire, I suppose?" Sinnet asked.
"Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the
mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell."
"Water?" asked Sinnet, as though interested in the surroundings, while
all the time he was eyeing the mountaineer furtively--as it were, prying
to the inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted
a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the
middle of the room, and leaned on his elbows, watching.
The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen,"
he said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good
while. Listen."
There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip,
drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room.
"There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head towards the sound.
"You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which
hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging
under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.
"Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well
at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the
Bend too," he nodded towards the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched
valley in the early morning light of autumn.
"Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the
springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call
myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high
to a grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put
it on the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he
brought out a small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They
began to eat.
"How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet. "Fire's all right at nights.
He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend at night. The next camp's
six miles north from here. He'd only come down the valley daytimes. I
studied it 'all out, and it's a dead sure thing. From daylight till dusk
I'm on to him. I got the trail in my eye."
He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There
was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity.
Sinnet's eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer, and the long,
scraggy hands and whipcord neck seemed to interest him greatly. He looked
at his own slim brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost as cruel
as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too, a knowledge and an
understanding which gave it humanity.
"You're sure he did it?" Sinnet asked presently, after drinking a very
small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after
it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?"
"My name's Buckmaster, ain't it--Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own
name? It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying.
He told Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East. Bill
didn't want to tell, but he said it was fair I should know, for my boy
never did nobody any harm--an' Greevy's livin' on. But I'll git him.
Right's right."
"Wouldn't it be better for the law to hang him, if you've got the proof,
Buck? A year or so in jail, an' a long time to think over what's going
round his neck on the scaffold--wouldn't that suit you, if you've got the
proof?"
A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster's face.
"I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure,
not for p'r'aps! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like
boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when she
went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived together,
him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went
gold-washin' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an'
slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he
was five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit
to take the trail."
The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips
twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest
little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile-o-jest
his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that
cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years
flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the
same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at
Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an'
set up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his
gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of
that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it;
but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used
to laugh sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o'
Clint's, don't you?"
Sinnet's face was towards the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly
turned his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut
eyes. He took the pipe from his mouth slowly.
"I can hear it now," he answered slowly. "I hear it often, Buck."
The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled,--in so
far as anything could startle anyone who had lived a life of chance and
danger and accident, and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not
move, and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively.
"You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet.
He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did.
It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life
git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you!
I ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his
thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead--dead."
The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table,
while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It
was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved
tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and
hatred which were strangling him.
"Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table
quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a
thought, he peered out of the doorway towards Juniper Bend. "That hawk
seen him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb."
He had the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller.
The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it
almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed,
Sinnet. It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the
minute comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of Clint,
an' missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on myself,
an' got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy
wouldn't take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand
as though to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the
emotion which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily.
"It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak to
in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me cuttin'
and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son."
Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating
what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into
Buckmaster's face. "What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your
boy tell Ricketts? I've heard, too, about it, and that's why I asked you
if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know,
and if he told Ricketts, that's pretty straight; but I'd like to know if
what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd
ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble
about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for
Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm
feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed
Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it.
Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him--plumb."
Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of
cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy
wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was
right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for
Greevy robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he
was, an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots
to spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a
quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over
cards, an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in
the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest
lay there on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey
found him. An' Clint told Ricketts who it was."
"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.
"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of
Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her! She'll get married,
an she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint
had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he
couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an'
everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way,
an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em--what was the good of
making things worse! They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim
Buckmaster, his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her
trouble."
Sinnet's face was turned towards Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed,
as it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable
look.
"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it
had a suggestive note.
"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."
There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke,
and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling of
something that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a
battle from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing
near, Sinnet said:
"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know
it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he
didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that
Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of
the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a
man had put a bullet in him, an'--"
Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and
continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been
drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't
stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He
always gets drunk when he first comes South to spend the winter with his
girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly.
"Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any
way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody
Greevy quarrelled too."
"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster roughly.
"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to git Greevy. I bin waitin' for him,
an' I'll git him."
"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but
I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Ricketts's story; I'll tell
what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there
is that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."
"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here." With no apparent coherence
and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice was not so even as before.
"Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She was changeable. First it
was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem to be able to fix her
mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on. She wasn't changeable,
though, about her father. She was to him what your boy was to you. There
she was like you, ready to give everything up for her father."
"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to
his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll
git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest
twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."
He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and
turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.
The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigour which a touch of
frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to
the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant,
and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born
world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for
him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the
squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the
woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as
a wood-hen ran past--a waiting, virgin world.
Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His
eyes and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with
the ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the
wilderness.
As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as
from a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet.
"Wait--you wait, Buck. You've got to hear all. You haven't heard my story
yet. Wait, I tell you." His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed,
that Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back into the room.
"What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of
that gal. What's she to me?"
"Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her."
The mountaineer stood like one petrified.
"What's that--what's that you say? It's a damn lie!"
"It wasn't cards--the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint
kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That
was the quarrel."
A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I
git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the
door again. "But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear--" He was
interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he saw Buckmaster's rifle
clutched as a hunter, stooping, clutches his gun to fire on his prey.
"Quick, the spy-glass!" he flung back at Sinnet. "It's him--but I'll make
sure."
Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it hung, and looked out
towards Juniper Bend. "It's Greevy--and his girl, and the half-breeds,"
he said, with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation, and yet
few had ever seen Sinnet agitated. "Em'ly must have gone up the trail in
the night."
"It's my turn now," the mountaineer said hoarsely, and, stooping, slid
away quickly into the undergrowth. Sinnet followed, keeping near him,
neither speaking. For a half mile they hastened on, and now and then
Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked up the valley, to keep
Greevy and his bois brulees in his eye. Just so had he and his son and
Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along these mountains; but
this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with none of the joy of
the sport which had been his since a lad; only the malice of the avenger.
The lust of a mountain feud was on him; he was pursuing the price of
blood.
At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail.
Greevy would pass below, within three hundred yards of his rifle. He
turned to Sinnet with cold and savage eyes. "You go back," he said. "It's
my business. I don't want you to see. You don't want to see, then you
won't know, and you won't need to lie. You said that the man that killed
Clint ought to die. He's going to die, but it's none o' your business. I
want to be alone. In a minute he'll be where I kin git him--plumb. You
go, Sinnet-right off. It's my business."
There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet's face; it was as hard as
stone, but his eyes had a light of battle in them.
"It's my business right enough, Buck," he said, "and you're not going to
kill Greevy. That girl of his has lost her lover, your boy. It's broke
her heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't
stand it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone--you hear me, let
up!" He stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the
mountaineer was to take aim.
There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face. He raised his
single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the
moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might
not have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly.
"Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git
away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute."
Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster snatch at a great
clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a
grip like a vice.
"Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone
mad, and did not grasp the meaning of the words. He twined his left arm
round the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting to free
Sinnet's hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet's neck. He did not realise
what he was doing. He only knew that this man stood between him and the
murderer of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism were alive
in him. Little by little they drew to the edge of the rock, from which
there was a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther
for safety, but no sane man's strength could withstand the demoniacal
energy that bent and crushed him. Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then
he said in a hoarse whisper, "Greevy didn't kill him. I killed him,
and--"
At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and
an instant after the knife went home.
Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed
and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet
had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "Greevy didn't kill him; I
killed him!"
He gave a low cry and turned back towards Sinnet, who lay in a pool of
blood.
Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over him. "Em'ly threw me over
for Clint," the voice said huskily, "and I followed to have it out with
Clint. So did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them meet. I was hid. I
saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I fired. I was off my head--I'd
never cared for any woman before, and Greevy was her father. Clint was
off his head too. He had called me names that day--a cardsharp, and a
liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called me, and I hated him just then.
Greevy fired twice wide. He didn't know but what he killed Clint, but he
didn't. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck--"
Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he opened his eyes again
and whispered, "I didn't want to die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and
it's too soon; but it had to be. Don't look that way, Buck. You got the
man that killed him--plumb. But Em'ly didn't play fair with me--made a
fool of me, the only time in my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave
Greevy alone, Buck, and tell Em'ly for me I wouldn't let you kill her
father."
"You--Sinnet--you, you done it! Why, he'd have fought for you. You--done
it--to him--to Clint!" Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a
great change came over the mountaineer. He had done his work, and the
thirst for vengeance was gone. Greevy he had hated, but this man had been
with him in many a winter's hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the
tragedy--it had all been too sudden.
Suddenly he stooped down. "Sinnet," he said, "ef there was a woman in it,
that makes all the difference. Sinnet, of--"
But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable
wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and
his girl were below.
"When there's a woman in it--!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and
misery, and watched Em'ly till she disappeared from view. Then he turned,
and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the
deeper woods.