CHAPTER I
In the mind of James Grenfell Kent, sergeant in the Royal NorthwestMounted Police, there remained no shadow of a doubt. He knew that hewas dying. He had implicit faith in Cardigan, his surgeon friend, andCardigan had told him that what was left of his life would be measuredout in hours--perhaps in minutes or seconds. It was an unusual case.There was one chance in fifty that he might live two or three days, butthere was no chance at all that he would live more than three. The endmight come with any breath he drew into his lungs. That was thepathological history of the thing, as far as medical and surgicalscience knew of cases similar to his own.
Personally, Kent did not feel like a dying man. His vision and hisbrain were clear. He felt no pain, and only at infrequent intervals washis temperature above normal. His voice was particularly calm andnatural.
At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan broke the news. Thatthe bullet which a drunken half-breed had sent into his chest two weeksbefore had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an aneurism, wasa statement by Cardigan which did not sound especially wicked orconvincing to him. "Aorta" and "aneurism" held about as muchsignificance for him as his perichondrium or the process of hisstylomastoid. But Kent possessed an unswerving passion to grip at factsin detail, a characteristic that had largely helped him to earn thereputation of being the best man-hunter in all the northland service.So he had insisted, and his surgeon friend had explained.
The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching over and leadingfrom the heart, and in nicking it the bullet had so weakened its outerwall that it bulged out in the form of a sack, just as the inner tubeof an automobile tire bulges through the outer casing when there is ablowout.
"And when that sack gives way inside you," Cardigan had explained,"you'll go like that!" He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive thefact home.
After that it was merely a matter of common sense to believe, and now,sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting in thefull health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the paralyzingshock he was contributing as a final legacy to the world at large, orat least to that part of it which knew him or was interested. Thetragedy of the thing did not oppress him. A thousand times in his lifehe had discovered that humor and tragedy were very closely related, andthat there were times when only the breadth of a hair separated thetwo. Many times he had seen a laugh change suddenly to tears, and tearsto laughter.
The tableau, as it presented itself about his bedside now, amused him.Its humor was grim, but even in these last hours of his life heappreciated it. He had always more or less regarded life as a joke--avery serious joke, but a joke for all that--a whimsical and trickfulsort of thing played by the Great Arbiter on humanity at large; andthis last count in his own life, as it was solemnly and tragicallyticking itself off, was the greatest joke of all. The amazed faces thatstared at him, their passing moments of disbelief, their repressed butat times visible betrayals of horror, the steadiness of their eyes, thetenseness of their lips--all added to what he might have called, atanother time, the dramatic artistry of his last great adventure.
That he was dying did not chill him, or make him afraid, or put atremble into his voice. The contemplation of throwing off the merehabit of breathing had never at any stage of his thirty-six years oflife appalled him. Those years, because he had spent a sufficientnumber of them in the raw places of the earth, had given him aphilosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he kept unto himselfwithout effort to impress them on other people. He believed that lifeitself was the cheapest thing on the face of all the earth. All otherthings had their limitations.
There was so much water and so much land, so many mountains and so manyplains, so many square feet to live on and so many square feet to beburied in. All things could be measured, and stood up, andcatalogued--except life itself. "Given time," he would say, "a singlepair of humans can populate all creation." Therefore, being thecheapest of all things, it was true philosophy that life should be theeasiest of all things to give up when the necessity came.
Which is only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and neverhad been, afraid to die. But it does not say that he treasured life awhit less than the man in another room, who, a day or so before, hadfought like a lunatic before going under an anesthetic for theamputation of a bad finger. No man had loved life more than he. No manhad lived nearer it.
It had been a passion with him. Full of dreams, and always withanticipations ahead, no matter how far short realizations fell, he wasan optimist, a lover of the sun and the moon and the stars, a worshiperof the forests and of the mountains, a man who loved his life, and whohad fought for it, and yet who was ready--at the last--to yield it upwithout a whimper when the fates asked for it.
Bolstered up against his pillows, he did not look the part of the fiendhe was confessing himself to be to the people about him. Sickness hadnot emaciated him. The bronze of his lean, clean-cut face had faded alittle, but the tanning of wind and sun and campfire was still there.His blue eyes were perhaps dulled somewhat by the nearness of death.One would not have judged him to be thirty-six, even though over onetemple there was a streak of gray in his blond hair--a heritage fromhis mother, who was dead. Looking at him, as his lips quietly andcalmly confessed himself beyond the pale of men's sympathy orforgiveness, one would have said that his crime was impossible.
Through his window, as he sat bolstered up in his cot, Kent could seethe slow-moving shimmer of the great Athabasca River as it moved on itsway toward the Arctic Ocean. The sun was shining, and he saw the cool,thick masses of the spruce and cedar forests beyond, the risingundulations of wilderness ridges and hills, and through that openwindow he caught the sweet scents that came with a soft wind from outof the forests he had loved for so many years.
"They've been my best friends," he had said to Cardigan, "and when thisnice little thing you're promising happens to me, old man, I want to gowith my eyes on them."
So his cot was close to the window.
Nearest to him sat Cardigan. In his face, more than in any of theothers, was disbelief. Kedsty, Inspector of the Royal Northwest MountedPolice, in charge of N Division during an indefinite leave of absenceof the superintendent, was paler even than the girl whose nervousfingers were swiftly putting upon paper every word that was spoken bythose in the room. O'Connor, staff-sergeant, was like one struck dumb.The little, smooth-faced Catholic missioner whose presence as a witnessKent had requested, sat with his thin fingers tightly interlaced,silently placing this among all the other strange tragedies that thewilderness had given up to him. They had all been Kent's friends, hisintimate friends, with the exception of the girl, whom Inspector Kedstyhad borrowed for the occasion. With the little missioner he had spentmany an evening, exchanging in mutual confidence the strange andmysterious happenings of the deep forests, and of the great northbeyond the forests. O'Connor's friendship was a friendship bred of thebrotherhood of the trails. It was Kent and O'Connor who had broughtdown the two Eskimo murderers from the mouth of the Mackenzie, and theadventure had taken them fourteen months. Kent loved O'Connor, with hisred face, his red hair, and his big heart, and to him the most tragicpart of it all was that he was breaking this friendship now.
But it was Inspector Kedsty, commanding N Division, the biggest andwildest division in all the Northland, that roused in Kent an unusualemotion, even as he waited for that explosion just over his heart whichthe surgeon had told him might occur at any moment. On his death-bedhis mind still worked analytically. And Kedsty, since the moment he hadentered the room, had puzzled Kent. The commander of N Division was anunusual man. He was sixty, with iron-gray hair, cold, almost colorlesseyes in which one would search long for a gleam of either mercy orfear, and a nerve that Kent had never seen even slightly disturbed. Ittook such a man, an iron man, to run N Division according to law, for NDivision covered an area of six hundred and twenty thousand squaremiles of wildest North America, extending more than two thousand milesnorth of the 70th para
llel of latitude, with its farthest limit threeand one-half degrees within the Arctic Circle. To police this areameant upholding the law in a country fourteen times the size of thestate of Ohio. And Kedsty was the man who had performed this duty asonly one other man had ever succeeded in doing it.
Yet Kedsty, of the five about Kent, was most disturbed. His face wasash-gray. A number of times Kent had detected a broken note in hisvoice. He had seen his hands grip at the arms of the chair he sat inuntil the cords stood out on them as if about to burst. He had neverseen Kedsty sweat until now.
Twice the Inspector had wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He wasno longer Minisak--"The Rock"--a name given to him by the Crees. Thearmor that no shaft had ever penetrated seemed to have dropped fromhim. He had ceased to be Kedsty, the most dreaded inquisitor in theservice. He was nervous, and Kent could see that he was fighting torepossess himself.
"Of course you know what this means to the Service," he said in a hard,low voice. "It means--"
"Disgrace," nodded Kent. "I know. It means a black spot on theotherwise bright escutcheon of N Division. But it can't be helped. Ikilled John Barkley. The man you've got in the guard-house, condemnedto be hanged by the neck until he is dead, is innocent. I understand.It won't be nice for the Service to let it be known that a sergeant inHis Majesty's Royal Mounted is an ordinary murderer, but--"
"Not an ORDINARY murderer," interrupted Kedsty. "As you have describedit, the crime was deliberate--horrible and inexcusable to its lastdetail. You were not moved by a sudden passion. You tortured yourvictim. It is inconceivable!"
"And yet true," said Kent.
He was looking at the stenographer's slim fingers as they put down hiswords and Kedsty's. A bit of sunshine touched her bowed head, and heobserved the red lights in her hair. His eyes swept to O'Connor, and inthat moment the commander of N Division bent over him, so close thathis face almost touched Kent's, and he whispered, in a voice so lowthat no one of the other four could hear,
"KENT--YOU LIE!"
"No, it is true," replied Kent.
Kedsty drew back, again wiping the moisture from his forehead.
"I killed Barkley, and I killed him as I planned that he should die,"Kent went on. "It was my desire that he should suffer. The one thingwhich I shall not tell you is WHY I killed him. But it was a sufficientreason."
He saw the shuddering tremor that swept through the shoulders of thegirl who was putting down the condemning notes.
"And you refuse to confess your motive?"
"Absolutely--except that he had wronged me in a way that deserveddeath."
"And you make this confession knowing that you are about to die?"
The flicker of a smile passed over Kent's lips. He looked at O'Connorand for an instant saw in O'Connor's eyes a flash of their oldcomradeship.
"Yes. Dr. Cardigan has told me. Otherwise I should have let the man inthe guard-house hang. It's simply that this accursed bullet has spoiledmy luck--and saved him!"
Kedsty spoke to the girl. For half an hour she read her notes, andafter that Kent wrote his name on the last page. Then Kedsty rose fromhis chair.
"We have finished, gentlemen," he said.
They trailed out, the girl hurrying through the door first in herdesire to free herself of an ordeal that had strained every nerve inher body. The commander of N Division was last to go. Cardiganhesitated, as if to remain, but Kedsty motioned him on. It was Kedstywho closed the door, and as he closed it he looked back, and for aflash Kent met his eyes squarely. In that moment he received animpression which he had not caught while the Inspector was in the room.It was like an electrical shock in its unexpectedness, and Kedsty musthave seen the effect of it in his face, for he moved back quickly andclosed the door. In that instant Kent had seen in Kedsty's eyes andface a look that was not only of horror, but what in the face and eyesof another man he would have sworn was fear.
It was a gruesome moment in which to smile, but Kent smiled. The shockwas over. By the rules of the Criminal Code he knew that Kedsty evennow was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail an officer toguard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop off at any momentwould make no difference in the regulations of the law. And Kedsty wasa stickler for the law as it was written. Through the closed door heheard voices indistinctly. Then there were footsteps, dying away. Hecould hear the heavy thump, thump of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor hadalways walked like that, even on the trail.
Softly then the door reopened, and Father Layonne, the littlemissioner, came in. Kent knew that this would be so, for Father Layonneknew neither code nor creed that did not reach all the hearts of thewilderness. He came back, and sat down close to Kent, and took one ofhis hands and held it closely in both of his own. They were not thesoft, smooth hands of the priestly hierarchy, but were hard with thecallosity of toil, yet gentle with the gentleness of a great sympathy.He had loved Kent yesterday, when Kent had stood clean in the eyes ofboth God and men, and he still loved him today, when his soul wasstained with a thing that must be washed away with his own life.
"I'm sorry, lad," he said. "I'm sorry."
Something rose up in Kent's throat that was not the blood he had beenwiping away since morning. His fingers returned the pressure of thelittle missioner's hands. Then he pointed out through the window to thepanorama of shimmering river and green forests.
"It is hard to say good-by to all that, Father," he said. "But, if youdon't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm not afraid of it. And whybe unhappy because one has only a little while to live? Looking backover your life, does it seem so very long ago that you were a boy, asmall boy?"
"The time has gone swiftly, very swiftly."
"It seems only yesterday--or so?"
"Yes, only yesterday--or so."
Kent's face lit up with the whimsical smile that long ago had reachedthe little missioner's heart. "Well, that's the way I'm looking at it,Father. There is only a yesterday, a today, and a tomorrow in thelongest of our lives. Looking back from seventy years isn't muchdifferent from looking back from thirty-six WHEN you're looking backand not ahead. Do you think what I have just said will free SandyMcTrigger?"
"There is no doubt. Your statements have been accepted as a death-bedconfession."
The little missioner, instead of Kent, was betraying a bit ofnervousness.
"There are matters, my son--some few matters--which you will wantattended to. Shall we not talk about them?"
"You mean--"
"Your people, first. I remember that once you told me there was no one.But surely there is some one somewhere."
Kent shook his head. "There is no one now. For ten years those forestsout there have been father, mother, and home to me."
"But there must be personal affairs, affairs which you would like toentrust, perhaps, to me?"
Kent's face brightened, and for an instant a flash of humor leaped intohis eyes. "It is funny," he chuckled. "Since you remind me of it,Father, it is quite in form to make my will. I've bought a few littlepieces of land here. Now that the railroad has almost reached us fromEdmonton, they've jumped up from the seven or eight hundred dollars Igave for them to about ten thousand. I want you to sell the lots anduse the money in your work. Put as much of it on the Indians as youcan. They've always been good brothers to me. And I wouldn't waste muchtime in getting my signature on some sort of paper to that effect."
Father Layonne's eyes shone softly. "God will bless you for that,Jimmy," he said, using the intimate name by which he had known him."And I think He is going to pardon you for something else, if you havethe courage to ask Him."
"I am pardoned," replied Kent, looking out through the window. "I feelit. I know it, Father."
In his soul the little missioner was praying. He knew that Kent'sreligion was not his religion, and he did not press the service whichhe would otherwise have rendered. After a moment he rose to his feet,and it was the old Kent who looked up into his face, the clean-faced,gray-eyed, unafraid Kent, smiling in the old way.
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"I have one big favor to ask of you, Father," he said. "If I've got aday to live, I don't want every one forcing the fact on me that I'mdying. If I've any friends left, I want them to come in and see me, andtalk, and crack jokes. I want to smoke my pipe. I'll appreciate a boxof cigars if you'll send 'em up. Cardigan can't object now. Will youarrange these things for me? They'll listen to you--and please shove mycot a little nearer the window before you go."
Father Layonne performed the service in silence. Then at last theyearning overcame him to have the soul speak out, that his God might bemore merciful, and he said: "My boy, you are sorry? You repent that youkilled John Barkley?"
"No, I'm not sorry. It had to be done. And please don't forget thecigars, will you, Father?"
"No, I won't forget," said the little missioner, and turned away.
As the door opened and closed behind him, the flash of humor leapedinto Kent's eyes again, and he chuckled even as he wiped another of thetelltale stains of blood from his lips. He had played the game. And thefunny part about it was that no one in all the world would ever know,except himself--and perhaps one other.