THE CORPORAL SETS OUT

It would have been easy to shoot Strangeways at that time, and he must have known it; yet, he was so much a gentleman that he accepted the risk, and had the decency to turn his back when circumstances compelled him to give a man the lie. Granger wondered whether courtesy was the motive; or whether he was only testing him out of curiosity, to see of what fresh vulgarity of deceit he was capable.

As he stood in the doorway, his gaze wandered from the broad shoulders of Corporal Strangeways, late stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, to the treacherous eyes of the gaunt grey beast before him which, by reason of its unusual markings and untimely appearance, had once and forever thrown Spurling's game away. There was something Satanic and suggestive of evil about those green and jasper eyes, and the manner in which they blinked out upon him from the furious yellow head. Were they prompting him to crime, saying, "Why don't you fire? He can't defend himself; see, his back is turned?" No, not that. He half-believed that the brute was endowed with human intelligence, and had betrayed his late master of set purpose—perhaps, in revenge for the many beatings he had received on the trail from Selkirk to Murder Point. There was a vileness in the creature's look that was degrading and stirred up hatred—and surely, the lowest kind of enmity which can be entertained by man is toward a unit of the dumb creation. That he should feel so, humiliated and angered Granger. Was there not enough of ignominy for him to endure without that? He drew his revolver, took aim at this yellow devil—but could not fire. The beast did not cringe and run away, zigzagging to avoid the bullets, stooping low on its legs, as is the habit of huskies when firearms are pointed at them; it sat there patiently blinking, a little in advance of its four grey comrades, with a mingled expression of amusement and boredom in its attitude, like a sleepy old bachelor uncle at a Christmas entertainment when Clown and Harlequin commence their threadbare jests and fooleries. He might have been yawning and saying to himself, "Hang it all! Why do I stay? I know the confounded rubbish by heart—all that these fellows will do and say."

Granger's hand dropped to his side; this wolf-dog looked so far from ignorant—so much wiser than himself. Could it be that he also was playing in the game? Was it possible that he also was intent on helping Spurling? Well, then, he should have his chance.

For himself the season for deception was at an end; he had lied to gain time for the fugitive, now let him see what truth could effect. He waded through the snow to Strangeways, tapped him on the shoulder, and was made painfully aware of the opinion held of him by the way in which the corporal screwed his shoulder aside.

"I suppose I seem to you a pretty mean kind of a beast?"

"I suppose you do."

"I seem so to myself; but I have an excuse to make—that this man once saved my life."

"So you're a hero in disguise?"

"No, but I couldn't go back on a man who had done that."

"I fail to see that that is a reason why you should have lied."

"I called it an excuse."

"In this case the words mean the same."

"Well, then, I had a reason: if the person whom Spurling murdered is the person whom I . . ."

"Indeed! So you knew that much, did you?" At mention of the word "murdered," Strangeways had swung fiercely round and confronted Granger.

"Yes, I know that much. And if the man whom Spurling murdered is the man whom I suspect him to be, I had intended to dispense with law and to exact the penalty slowly, up here whence there is no escape, myself."

"Then you'll be sorry to hear that you've lied to no purpose. The person whom Spurling murdered was not a man, you damned scoundrel."

Strangeways turned sharply away from him, and, moving as briskly on his snowshoes as the unpacked state of the snow would allow, commenced methodically to go about the store in ever widening circles. He evidently suspected that the fugitive was still in hiding there, or had been at the time of his arrival, and had since escaped, in which case the snow would bear traces of his flight. When he had searched the mound in vain, he turned his attention to the river-bed where his team of dogs was stationed. Granger, watching him from above, saw that he had halted suddenly and was bending down. Then he heard him calling his dogs together and saw him harnessing them quickly into his sledge. Panic seized him lest Strangeways should drive away without telling him the name of this thing, which was not a man, which Spurling had murdered, and whether the deed had been done in the Klondike. Also he was curious to see for himself what it was that he had found in the snow down there, which made him so eager to set out. He ploughed his way down the hillside, breaking through the surface and slipping as he ran, till he arrived out of breath at the river-bank. Then he saw the meaning of this haste; approaching the Point from the northward was a muffled track, partially obliterated by the snow which had since fallen, which, on reaching Murder Point, doubled back, returning northward whence the traveller had come. It meant to Granger that, while he and Strangeways had been seated together recalling old times in the store, Spurling had come back. For what reason? No man would fight his way through a blizzard without good purpose; he would lie down where he was till the storm had spent itself, lest he should wander from his trail. This man had everything to lose by turning back. Then he discovered that the snow was speckled with dots of black, and, stooping down, discerned that they were drops of blood. Some of the blood-marks were fresh; the tracks themselves had been made, perhaps, within the last three hours. Spurling must have met with an accident, and, returning to the Point for help, had seen the stranger's dogs and sledge, and turning northwards again had fled. So thought Granger.

Strangeways, in the meanwhile, was examining the feet of his leader. Presently he stood erect, and asked in a low voice, "Did you do that?"

"What?"

"Look for yourself."

Granger looked, and saw that the balls of the leader's forefeet had been gashed several times with a knife.

"How should I have done it?" he replied. "I've been in your company every minute since you arrived."

"Who did it, then?"

"You know as well as I."

"And what do you think of a man who could do that?"

"That he was very desperate."

"I should call him a Gadarene swine."

Strangeways stood in angry thought for a few seconds; then he jerked up his head, and asked, "Can you lend me another team of huskies? Be careful when you answer that you tell me the truth this time."

Granger smiled at the childishness of such threatening.

"You will gain nothing by speaking like that," he said. "Unfortunately for you, unlike Spurling, I am not afraid of death—I should welcome it. Yet, while I live, I am curious; therefore I will promise you help on one condition, that you tell me who has been murdered, and where."

Strangeways lifted his eyes and surveyed Granger, asking himself, "And is this statement also a lie?" But, when he spoke there were the beginnings of a new respect in his voice. "So you are not afraid of death?" he said. "Well, then, I owe you an apology for what I have called you, for I am; I am horribly afraid. I am afraid that I shall die before I have avenged this death."

"Tell me, who was it that was killed?" cried Granger, impatiently. "Was it a girl? There was a girl whom I loved in the Klondike; you don't know how you make me suffer."

"Don't I?" replied Strangeways, grimly; and then with affected indifference, "There are a good many girls in the Klondike; the body of this one was found washed ashore near Forty-Mile."

"What's her name?"

"That's what I'm here to find out."

"Did Spurling know that she was a woman when he shot her?"

"So you know that also—that he shot her? Whether he knew, I don't care; the fact remains that she is dead and that he is suspected."

"Only suspected?"

"Well, . . ."

"By God!" cried Granger, bringing down his fist in Strangeways' face, "but you shall tell me! Was her name Mordaunt, and was she his partner, and did she wear a man's disguise?"

Strangeways turned his head and dodged aside so that the blow fell lightly; drawing his revolver, he covered his opponent. Granger advanced close up, until the barrel of the revolver touched his face; then he halted and waited.

Strangeways watched him; looked into his eyes amazed; then lowered his weapon and laughed nervously. "Oh," he said, "I remember, you are not afraid of death."

"But I am of madness and suspense."

Strangeways did not reply at once. Perhaps a sudden understanding had dawned on him, pity and a vision of what it meant to live through the eternal Now at Murder Point. He may have been asking himself, "For the lack of one small untruth, shall I thrust this man into Hell?" At any rate, when he answered he spoke gently. "No," he said, "she wore a woman's dress; be sure of it, your girl-friend is safe up there."

Granger looked at him steadily, wondering why he should have lied; than he took his hand and pressed it in the English manner, "I believe you," he said. Yet, at the back of his mind a voice was persistently questioning, "Do I believe him? But can I believe that?"

He was interrupted in his thoughts by Strangeways saying, "It's a pity that that poor brute should suffer; he's certain to die."

The corporal went near, levelled his revolver and shot the leader between the eyes. The bullet did its work; the dog shivered, and tottered, rolled over on its side, tried to rise again, then stretched itself out wearily as if for sleep at the end of a hard day's travel.

"You can do that for a mere husky," said Granger bitterly; "but you refuse to do it for a man."

"The husky had a harsh time of it in this world and has no other life."

"If that's so, he's to be congratulated; but there was the more reason why he should have been allowed to live his one life out. We wretched men are never done with life; if I were sure that there was only one existence and no reproaches in a future world, I could be brave to the end. It's this repetition of mortality, which men call immortality, that staggers my intellect, making me afraid—afraid lest there is no death."

Strangeways shrugged his shoulders and scowled. He did not like the subject—it caused him discomfort; there was so much left for him in life. He planned, when he had captured Spurling and seen him safely hanged, to buy himself out of the Mounted Police, return to England, and there live pleasantly at his club in London and as squire on his estate. He would marry, he told himself; and though not the girl whom he had most desired, for he believed her to be dead, yet, like a sensible man, some other girl, who would be his friend, and bear his children, and make him happy. If once he could get out of Keewatin, having performed his duty honourably, he would do all that—when Spurling had been captured alive or dead.

Therefore he broke in on Granger roughly, inquiring, "Where are those huskies which you are going to lend me?"

"They are Spurling's huskies which he left behind when I lent him mine."

"How long ago was that?—If they're Spurling's, they must be pretty well played out."

"They are. They've rested for thirty hours more or less; but I don't think you'll manage to catch him up with them."

"Perhaps not, but I'll try; he can't be more than three hours ahead."

"Three hours with a fresh team is as good as three days."

"You forget the difference between the two men."

"No, I don't, for the one has the memory of his crime."

"It's the memory of his crime that'll wear him out, and that same memory that'll give me strength."

"Why? What makes you hate him so? Supposing he did kill a woman, it may have been an accident. She may even have felt grateful for the bullet, as I should have done just now had you shot me dead. It's horrible to kill anyone, but then the poor devil's fleeing for his life and he's suffering a thousand times more pain than he inflicted."

"Is he? Does he suffer the pain of the man who follows behind? Supposing a certain man had loved that woman and had lost her, and had planned all his life on the off-chance of meeting her again, dreaming of her day and night, and then had suddenly learnt that she was brutally dead by Spurling's hand on some God-forsaken Yukon River, where the ground was hard like iron so that no grave could be dug by the murderer, and her body froze to marble and lay exposed all winter through the long dark days, with the bullet wound red in her forehead, and her grey face looking up toward the frosty sky, till the spring came and the water washed her body under and threw it up in a creek near Forty-Mile, where a year later it was discovered mutilated and defiled, do you think that her lover would be glad of that? Do you think that he would pity the black-guard who could do such a scoundrelly deed as that?"

Strangeways was speaking wildly, his voice was trembling and his face was haggard and lined; he was crying like a child. "The man who could do a deed like that," he shouted, menacing the stars with his clenched hand, "the man who could do a deed like that is so corrupt that even God would search for good in him in vain. It's the duty of every clean man to hound him off the earth. While we allow him to live, we each one share his taint. I'll pray God every day of my life that Spurling may be damned throughout the ages—eternally and pitilessly damned."

When Granger could make his voice heard, "You don't mean that she was Mordaunt?" he cried. All this talk about a woman who had been lost and loved paralleled his own case—he took it as applied to himself.

Strangeways recovered himself with an effort, "No, no," he said huskily. "Mordaunt, you have told me, was a man. I was only supposing all that."

"But Mordaunt was not a man, but a woman in man's clothing."

Strangeways closed his lips tightly together, refusing to take notice, pretending that he had not heard. Granger spoke again. "Mordaunt was not a man," he said.

"In that case," answered Strangeways, "you know what the man suffers who is following behind. I will tell you no more than that."

"You've told me enough and I will help you; only pledge me once more on your sacred word that this body was found in a woman's dress."

Strangeways hesitated; then his eyes caught again the bleakness of the land and his imagination pictured the awful loneliness of life up there. Looking full on Granger he said, "On my most sacred word as a brother-gentleman, the body that was found was clothed in a woman's dress."

"Then, thank God, she was not Mordaunt!" said Granger; "but because he knew her to be a woman at the time when he killed her, I will help you none the less."

Having called together Spurling's huskies, they found them to be too weak for travel, with the exception of the leader, therefore they harnessed in the corporal's remaining four dogs, putting the yellow-faced stranger at their head. No sooner had they turned their backs and gone inside the store to bring out the necessary provisions, than the four old dogs, jealous of their new leader, hurled themselves upon him, burying their fangs in his shaggy hair, intent on tearing him to death—an old-timer husky can stand a good deal of that. He strained on the traces, exposing to them only his hindquarters, running well ahead, and keeping his throat safe. Not until the two men had clubbed them nearly senseless did they subside into sullen quietness; and then only so long as they were watched. Once a back was turned, the four hind dogs piled on to their leader and the fight recommenced.

"You won't go far with them," said Granger. He did not notice the look of reawakened suspicion which flickered in Strangeways' eyes. "You won't go far with them; the moment you camp and that yellow-faced beast gets his chance, he'll chew your four dogs to pieces. That's what he's there for, it's my belief—he's playing Spurling's game. He'll take you fifty or a hundred miles from Murder Point, and there leave you stranded."

"What would you advise?" This was spoken in a quiet voice.

"I would advise you to wait here till the summer has come, and then to proceed by water."

"But on snow I can follow his trail, whereas travel by water leaves no traces."

"What does that matter? Instead of following him, let him return to you, as he did to-night. You've driven him up a blind alley on this Last Chance River; he can only go to the blank wall of the Bay, and then come back."

"He can reach the House of the Crooked Creek."

"And if he does, what of that? He'll be touching the blank wall then. They won't want him. The first question that they'll ask him will be, 'And what have you come here for?' If he can't give a satisfactory account of himself, they'll place him under arrest. When you get news of that, you can go up there and fetch him."

"And if he doesn't get so far as that?"

"You can set out by canoe and drive him back, and back, till you come to the Bay, and he can go no further."

"He might hide, and I might pass him on the way—what then?"

"In that case he'd double back and come past Murder Point, trying to get out."

"In the meanwhile I should be a hundred, two hundred miles to the northwards, travelling towards the Bay on my fool's errand, and who would be here to capture him?"

"Why, I should."

"Precisely."

Granger started; the way in which that last word had been spoken had made Strangeways' meaning manifest. He blushed like a girl at the shame of it. "Surely you don't still distrust me? You don't think me such a sneak that, having got you out of the way, I'd let him slip by and out?"

"It looks like it."

"But, man, don't you realise that our interests are the same?"

"Since when?"

"Since you told me of a woman who was done to death on a Yukon river, and lay unburied all winter till the thaw came, and her body was washed down to a creek near Forty-Mile, where it lay through the summer naked, gazed upon, uncovered, and defiled."

"I fancy you knew all that when you helped Spurling to escape."

"Yes, but I didn't know that it was a woman, and I didn't know her name."

"And you don't know her name now."

"I do; it was Jervis Mordaunt who wore a man's disguise."

"I told you that she wore a woman's dress."

"I know. I know."

"Then do you mean to tell me that I lied?"

"Perhaps, but not to accuse you. You said it out of kindness, and that was partly true which you said. You meant that the body was naked when it was found."

"If you dare to speak of her like that again, I'll choke you, and run the risk of getting hanged myself. The land has debased you, as the Yukon debased your friend. I can read you; you're still half-minded to play his game, and that's why you want to turn me back."

"Yes, I want to turn you back. Spurling's a hard-pressed man and he's dangerous. You can judge of what he is capable by what has just happened. He's cunning and, in his way, he's brave; he wouldn't scruple to take your life. Your best policy is to wait—either here or at God's Voice, as you think best. The ice will soon be unsafe to travel; already a mile from here, where the river flows rapidly round from the south-west, the part on the inside bend is rotten. I had to guide Spurling round that. At first, before I saw you and knew who you were, I was tempted not to warn you, to let you take your own chance and go on by yourself, and, perhaps, get drowned; but now, after I have seen you and after what you have told me, I can't do that."

"So you were tempted to let me drown myself, and now you are repentant?"

Granger bowed his head.

"Then I tell you that if the ice were as rotten as your soul or Spurling's, I would still follow him, though I had to follow him to Hell. If I've got to die, I'll die game—and you shan't turn me back."

Granger ran out after him, calling him to stay, offering to guide him round the danger spot in his trail. But suspicion and untruthfulness had done their work. Only once did he turn his head, when at the crack of the whip the yellow-faced leader leapt forward in his traces. Then he answered him and cried, "He killed the woman I loved, and he shall pay the price though I follow him to Hell."

So far as is known, these were the last words which Strangeways ever said.