CHAPTER XX
It was that hour when, with clear skies, the gray northern dawn wouldhave been breaking faintly over the eastern forests. Kent found thedarkness more fog-like; about him was a grayer, ghostlier sort ofgloom. But he could not see the water under his feet. Nor could he seethe rail of the scow, or the river. From the stern, ten feet from thecabin door, the cabin itself was swallowed up and invisible.
With the steady, swinging motion of the riverman he began bailing. Soregular became his movements that they ran in a sort of rhythmicaccompaniment to his thoughts. The monotonous _splash, splash, splash_ ofthe outflung pails of water assumed, after a few minutes, the characterof a mechanical thing. He could smell the nearness of the shore. Evenin the rain the tang of cedar and balsam came to him faintly.
But it was the river that impressed itself most upon his senses. Itseemed to him, as the minutes passed, like a living thing. He couldhear it gurgling and playing under the end of the scow. And with thatsound there was another and more indescribable thing, the tremble ofit, the pulse of it, the thrill of it in the impenetrable gloom, thelife of it as it swept on in a slow and mighty flood between itswilderness walls. Kent had always said, "You can hear the river's heartbeat--if you know how to listen for it." And he heard it now. He feltit. The rain could not beat it out, nor could the splash of the waterhe was throwing overboard drown it, and the darkness could not hide itfrom the vision that was burning like a living coal within him. Alwaysit was the river that had given him consolation in times of loneliness.For him it had grown into a thing with a soul, a thing that personifiedhope, courage, comradeship, everything that was big and great in finalachievement. And tonight--for he still thought of the darkness asnight--the soul of it seemed whispering to him a sort of paean.
He could not lose. That was the thought that filled him. Never had hispulse beat with greater assurance, never had a more positive sense ofthe inevitable possessed him. It was inconceivable, he thought, even tofear the possibility of being taken by the Police. He was more than aman fighting for his freedom alone, more than an individual strugglingfor the right to exist. A thing vastly more priceless than eitherfreedom or life, if they were to be accepted alone, waited for him inthe little cabin, shut in by its sea of darkness. And ahead of them laytheir world. He emphasized that. _Their_ world--the world which, in anillusive and unreal sort of way, had been a part of his dreams all hislife. In that world they would shut themselves in. No one would everfind them. And the glory of the sun and the stars and God's opencountry would be with them always.
Marette was the very heart of that reality which impinged itself uponhim now. He did not worry about what it was she would tell himtomorrow, or day after tomorrow. He believed that it was then--when shehad told him what there was to tell, and he still reached, out his armsto her--that she would come into those arms. And he knew that nothingthat might have happened in Kedsty's room would keep his arms fromreaching, to her. Such was his faith, potent as the mighty flood hiddenin the gray-ghost gloom of approaching dawn.
Yet he did not expect to win easily. As he worked, his mind swept upand down the Three Rivers from the Landing to Fort Simpson, andmentally he pictured the situations that might arise, and how he wouldtriumph over them. He figured that the men at Barracks would not enterKedsty's bungalow until noon at the earliest. The Police gasolinelaunch would probably set out on a river search soon after. Bymid-afternoon the scow would have a fifty-mile start.
Before darkness came again they would be through the Death Chute, whereFollette and Ladouceur swam their mad race for the love of a girl. Andnot many miles below the Chute was a swampy country where he could hidethe scow. Then they would start overland, west and north. Given untilanother sunset, and they would be safe. This was what he expected. Butif it came to fighting--he would fight.
The rain had slackened to a thin drizzle by the time he finished hisbailing. The aroma of cedar and balsam came to him more clearly, and heheard more distinctly the murmuring surge of the river. He tapped againat the door of the cabin, and Marette answered him.
The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals when he entered.Again he fell on his knees, and took off his dripping slicker.
The girl greeted him from the berth. "You look like a great bear,Jeems." There was a glad, welcoming note in her voice.
He laughed, and drew the stool beside her, and managed to sit on it,the roof compelling him to bend his head over a little. "I feel like anelephant in a birdcage," he replied. "Are you comfortable, little GrayGoose?"
"Yes. But you, Jeems? You are wet!"
"But so happy that I don't feel it, Gray Goose."
He could make her out only dimly there in the darkness of the berth.Her face was a pale shadow, and she had loosened her damp hair so thatthe warmth and dry air might reach it more easily. Kent wondered if shecould hear the beating of his heart. He forgot the fire, and thedarkness grew thicker. He could no longer see the pale outline of herface, and he drew back a little, possessed by the thought that it wassacrilegious to bend nearer to her, like a thief, in that gloom. Shesensed his movement, and her hand reached to him and lay lightly withits fingertips touching his arm.
"Jeems," she said softly. "I'm not sorry--now--that I came up toCardigan's place that day--when you thought you were dying. I wasn'twrong. You are different. And I made fun of you then, and laughed atyou, because I knew that you were not going to die. Will you forgiveme?"
He laughed happily. "It's funny how little things work out, sometimes,"he said. "Wasn't a kingdom lost once upon a time because some fellowdidn't have a horseshoe? Anyway, I knew of a man whose life was savedbecause of a broken pipe-stem. And you came to me, and I'm here withyou now, because--"
"Of what?" she whispered.
"Because of something that happened a long time ago," he said."Something you wouldn't dream could have anything to do with you orwith me. Shall I tell you about it, Marette?"
Her fingers pressed slightly upon his arm. "Yes."
"Of course, it's a story of the Police," he began. "And I won't mentionthis fellow's name. You may think of him as that red-headed O'Connor,if you want to. But I don't say that it was he. He was a constable inthe Service and had been away North looking up some Indians who werebrewing an intoxicating liquor from roots. That was six years ago. Andhe caught something. Le Mort Rouge, we sometimes call it--the RedDeath--or smallpox. And he was alone when the fever knocked him down,three hundred miles from anywhere. His Indian ran away at the firstsign of it, and he had just time to get up his tent before he was flaton his back. I won't try to tell you of the days he went through. Itwas a living death. And he would have died, there is no doubt of it, ifit hadn't been for a stranger who came along. He was a white man.Marette, it doesn't take a great deal of nerve to go up against a manwith a gun, when you've got a gun of your own; and it doesn't take sucha lot of nerve to go into battle when a thousand others are going withyou. But it does take nerve to face what that stranger faced. And thesick man was nothing to him. He went into that tent and nursed theother back to life. Then the sickness got him, and for ten weeks thosetwo were together, each fighting to save the other's life, and they wonout. But the glory of it was with the stranger. He was going west. Theconstable was going south. They shook hands and parted."
Marette's fingers tightened on Kent's arm. And Kent went on.
"And the constable never forgot, Gray Goose. He wanted the day to comewhen he might repay. And the time came. It was years later, and itworked out in a curious way. A man was murdered. And the constable, whohad become a sergeant now, had talked with the dead man only a littlewhile before he was killed. Returning for something he had forgotten,it was the sergeant who found him dead. Very shortly afterward a manwas arrested. There was blood on his clothing. The evidence wasconvincing, deadly. And this man--"
Kent paused, and in the darkness Marette's hand crept down his arm tohis hand, and her fingers closed round it.
"Was the man you lied to save," she whispered.
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"Yes. When the halfbreed's bullet got me, I thought it was a goodchance to repay Sandy McTrigger for what he did for me in that tentyears before. But it wasn't heroic. It wasn't even brave. I thought Iwas going to die and that I was risking nothing."
And then there came a soft, joyous little laugh from where her head layon the pillow. "And all the time you were lying so splendidly, Jeems--IKNEW," she cried. "I knew that you didn't kill Barkley, and I knew thatyou weren't going to die, and I knew what happened in that tent tenyears ago. And--Jeems--Jeems--"
She raised herself from the pillow. Her breath was coming a littleexcitedly. Both her hands, instead of one, were gripping his hand now."I knew that you didn't kill John Barkley," she repeated. "And--_SandyMcTrigger didn't kill him_!"
"But--"
"He _didn't_," she interrupted him, almost fiercely. "He was innocent, asinnocent as you were. Jeems--I Jeems--I know who killed Barkley. Oh, I_know_--I _know_!"
A choking sob came into her throat, and then she added, in a voicewhich she was straining to make calm, "Don't think that I haven't faithin you because I can't tell you more now, Jeems," she said. "You willunderstand--quite soon. When we are safe from the Police, I shall tellyou. I shall keep nothing from you then. I shall tell you aboutBarkley, and Kedsty--everything. But I can't now. It won't be long.When you tell me we are safe, I shall believe you. And then--" Shewithdrew her hands from his and dropped back on her pillow.
"And then--what?" he asked, leaning far over.
"You may not like me, Jeems."
"I love you," he whispered. "Nothing in the world can stop my lovingyou."
"Even if I tell you--soon--that I killed Barkley?"
"No. You would be lying."
"Or--if I told you--that I--killed--Kedsty?"
"No matter what you said, or what proof there might be back there, Iwould not believe you."
She was silent. And then, "Jeems--"
"Yes, Niska, Little Goddess--?"
"I'm going to tell you something--now!"
He waited.
"It is going to--shock you--Jeems."
He felt her arms reaching up. Her two hands touched his shoulders.
"Are you listening?"
"Yes, I am listening."
"Because I'm not going to say it very loud." And then she whispered,"Jeems--_I love you_!"