The Snowshoe Trail Part 15

Bill stared at the woman and for the moment he did not see the little sparks growing to flame in Harold's eyes.

"What did you say?" he asked, menacing. He had caught a word that has come to be an epithet in the North.

But by taking it up Harold made a severe strategical error. Bill had never hesitated, by the light of an ancient idiom, to call a spade a spade. Also he always had good reasons before he took back his words.

"I said," he repeated clearly, "that I'd found--a squaw man."

Harold's muscles set but immediately relaxed again. He shrugged once.

"And is it anybody's business but my own?" he asked.

"It hadn't ought to be, but it is," was the answer. "It's my business, and somebody else's too." he turned to the woman. "Listen, Sindy, and give me a polite answer. You're Joe Robinson's sister, aren't you?"

The Indian looked up, nodded, then went back to her work.

"Then you left Buckshot Dan--to come here and live with this white man?"

Harold turned to her with a snarl. "Don't answer him, Sindy. It's none of his business." Then his smoldering eyes met Bill's. "Now we've talked enough. You can go."

"Wait!" Something in the grave face and set features silenced the squaw man. "But it's true--we have talked just about enough. I've got one question. Lounsbury--do you think, by any chance--you've got any manhood left? Do you think you're rotten clear through?"

Harold leaped then, savage as a wolf, and his rifle swung in his arms.

Instantly Bill's form, impa.s.sive before, seemed simply to waken with life. There was no rage in his face, only determination; but his arm drove out fast as a serpent's head. Seemingly with one motion he wrenched the gun from the man's hand and sent him spinning against the wall.

Before even his body crashed against the logs, Bill had whirled to face the squaw. He knew these savage women. It would be wholly in character for her whip a gleaming knife from her dress and spring to her man's aid. But she looked up as if with indifference, and once more went back to her work.

Bill was considerably heartened. At least he didn't have to deal with the savage love that sometimes the Indian women bore the whites. Sindy was evidently wholly indifferent to Harold's fate. The match obviously had not been a great success.

For an instant Harold lay still, crumpled on the floor; then his bleeding hands fumbled at his belt. Once more Bill sprang and s.n.a.t.c.hed him to his feet. The holster, however, was empty.

"No more of that," Bill cautioned. The man's eyes smoldered with resentment, but for the moment he was cowed. "Before you start anything more, hear what I've got to offer you." His voice lowered, and the words came rather painfully. "It's your one chance, Lounsbury--to come back. Virginia Tremont has come into the North, looking for you.

She's at my camp. She wants to take you back with her."

Lounsbury's breath caught with a strange, sobbing sound. "Virginia--up here?" he cried. "Does she know about--this----" He indicated the cabin interior, and all it meant, with one sweep of his arm.

"Of course not. How could she? Whether you tell her or not is a matter for you and she to decide. She's come to find you--and bring you back."

"My G.o.d! To the States?"

"Of course."

For the instant the black wrath had left his face, and his thought swung backward to his own youth,--to the days he had known Virginia in a far-off city. He was more than a little awed at this manifestation of her love. He supposed that she had forgotten him long since and had never dreamed that she would search for him here.

Once more the expression of his face changed, and Bill couldn't have explained the wave of revulsion that surged through him. He only knew a blind desire to tear with his strong fingers those leering lips before him. Harold was lost in insidious speculations. He remembered the girl's beauty, the grace and litheness of her form, the holy miracle of her kisses. Opposite him sat his squaw,--swarthy, unclean, shapeless, comely as squaws go but as far from Virginia as night was from day.

Perhaps it wasn't too late yet----

But at that instant he heard the East Wind on the roof, and he recalled that the old problem of existence faced him still. He had solved it up here. His cabin was warm, he was full-fed; the squaw grubbed his living for him out of the frozen forests. He did not want to be forced to face the compet.i.tion of civilized existence again. He was dirty, care-free; his furs supplied food and clothes for him and certain rags for her, and filled his cupboard with strong drink. He remembered that the girl had had no money, and that he had come first to the North to find gold. If he had succeeded, if his poke were heavy with the yellow metal, he could go back to his city and take up his old life anew, but he couldn't begin at the bottom. With wealth at his command he might even find a more desirable woman than Virginia: perhaps the years had changed her even as himself. There was no need of dreaming further about the matter. Only one course, considering the circ.u.mstances, lay before him.

"You're very kind," he said at last. "But I won't go. Tell her you didn't find me."

Bill straightened and sighed. "Make no mistake about that, Lounsbury,"

he answered. "You're going with me--" and then he spoke softly, a pause between each word--"if I have to drag you there through the snow. I was told to bring you back, and I'm going to do it."

"You are, eh?" Harold scowled and tried to find courage to attack this man again. Yet his muscles hung limp, and he couldn't even raise his eyes to meet those that looked so steadfastly at him now.

"Sindy can go home to Buckshot Dan. He'll take her back--you stole her from him. And you, Lounsbury, rotten as you are, are coming with me. G.o.d knows I hope she'll drive you from her door; but I'm going to bring you, just the same."

Harold's eyes glowed, and for the moment his brain was too busy with other considerations openly to resent the words. Then his face grew cunning. It was all plain enough: Bill loved Virginia himself. Through some code of ethics that was almost incredible to Harold, he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness for hers. And the way to pay for the rough treatment he had just had, treatment that he couldn't, at present at least, avenge in kind, was to win the girl away from him. The thing was already done. She loved him enough to search even the frozen realms of the North for him: simply by a little tenderness, a little care, he could command her to love to the full again. The fact that Bill wanted her made her infinitely more desirable to him.

"You won't tell her--about Sindy?"

"Not as long as you're decent. That's for you to settle for yourself--whether she finds out about her."

Harold believed him. While he himself would have used the smirch as a weapon against his rival, he knew that Bill meant what he said. "I'll go," he announced. "If she's at the Gray Lake cabin, we've got plenty of time to make it before dark."

XV

Harold Lounsbury found to his surprise that they were not to start at once. It soon became evident that Bill had certain other matters on his mind.

"Build a fire and put on some water to heat--fill up every pan you have," he instructed Sindy. He himself began to cram their little stove with wood. Harold watched with ill-concealed anxiety.

"What's that for?" he asked at last.

Bill straightened up and faced him. "You didn't think I was going to take you looking like you do, do you--into Virginia's presence? The first thing on the program is--a bath."

Harold flushed: the red glow was evident even through the sooty acc.u.mulation on his face. "It seems to me you're going a little outside your authority as Miss Tremont's representative. I don't know that I need to have any hillbilly tell me when I need a bath."

"Yes?" Bill's eyes twinkled--for the first time during their talk.

"Hillbilly is right--in contrast to a cultured gentleman of cities.

But let me correct you. You may not know it, but I do. And you need one now." He turned once more to Sindy. "And see what you can do about this gentleman's clothes, too; if he's got any clean underwear or any other togs, load 'em out."

"Anything else?" Harold asked sarcastically.

"Several things. Have you got any kind of a razor?"

"No. I don't want one either."

"Better look around and find one. If you don't, I'll be obliged to shave you with my jackknife--and it will be inclined to pull. It's sharp enough for skinning grizzlies but not for that growth of yours.

And I'll try to trim your hair up for you a little, too. When you bathe, bathe all over--don't spare your face or your hair. Water may seem strange at first, but you'll get used to it. And I'll go over and sit with Joe Robinson and his friend until you are ready. The surroundings are more appetizing. If you can polish yourself well in an hour, we'll make it through to-night."

Harold's heart burned, but he acquiesced. Then Bill turned and left him to his ablutions.

Less than an hour later Harold came mus.h.i.+ng up the lean-to where Bill waited. And the hour had wrought a profound and amazing change in the man's appearance. He had conscientiously gone to work to cleanse himself, and he had succeeded. His hair, dull before, was a glossy dark-brown now; he had shaved off the matted growth about his lips, leaving only a small, neat mustache; his hair was trimmed and carefully parted. The man's skin had also resumed its natural shade.

For the first time Bill realized that Harold was really a rather handsome man. His features were much more regular than Bill's own. The lips were fine,--just a little too fine, in fact, giving an intangible but unmistakable hint of cruelty. The only thing that had not changed was his eyes. They were as smoldering and wolfish as ever.

By Bill's instructions he had loaded his back with blankets, his pistol was at his belt, and he carried a thirty-five rifle in the hollow of his arm.

"I'm ready," he said gruffly.