The Heart of Unaga Part 22

It was the hospital hut at the police headquarters at Reindeer. A cheerless, primitive place of healing, severe but adequate, as were most things which concerned the lives of the riders of the plains and the trail.

Steve was in occupation of the officer's ward, with its single bed, and its boarded floor bare of all covering and scrubbed to a chilly whiteness. For days he had contemplated its hygienic lack of comfort.

For days his weary, ceaseless thought had battered itself against kalsomined walls, while his body, made feverishly restless, had sought distraction between the hard Windsor chair at the only table, and the iron bed-cot which seemed to add to his mental sufferings.

He had met his superior. He had supported the official half hour of congratulations upon work successfully accomplished and a fortunate escape from disaster without a sign. He had yielded to the post doctor's ministrations, and satisfied his curiosity with explanations which could never have been more matter-of-fact. He had been visited by two comrades of his own rank, who contrived, with the best will in the world, by deliberate avoidance of anything of an intimate nature, to display to him their perfect knowledge of his domestic disaster.

All these things he had faced with a heart crying out for mercy, but with an outward calm that left those whom he encountered guessing. And something of the general opinion found expression in Superintendent McDowell's remarks to his subordinate, who filled the office of acting-adjutant.

"It seems to me, Syme, we needn't have worried a thing," he said.

"Allenwood isn't the feller to get up and shout any time. He's the sort of boy to take a punch and come up for more. There's no woman got grip enough on him to break him to small meat. I don't guess there's anything could fix him that way--and after the way he made this last trip. He's quite a feller when it comes to grit."

"Yes, sir." Syme smiled into his superior's keen face. "Maybe he doesn't care. I've heard some fellers are that way after being married a few years."

The cynicism of the younger man drew a responsive smile in reply. But it also drew a very definite and decided shake of the head.

Whatever the general opinion, one man knew, one man had witnessed the momentary baring of a man's soul torn with agony, in the candle-lit tent on the banks of the Theton River. And now, had he been in Reindeer to witness, he would have understood the reality of suffering under the stern, almost forbidding front with which Steve confronted his little world.

Not a sign did Steve give. His habitual, shadowy smile was ready when he felt it to be due. He discussed everything that needed discussion with the apparent interest of a mind wholly unabsorbed. He forced a cheerfulness which carried conviction, and even drew forth such cynical comments as those of Inspector Syme. But under it all the agony of mind was something bordering on the insupportable.

The desolation of his outlook was appalling. And during his weary hours of solitude the hopelessness of it stirred him to a bitterness that at moments became almost insanely profane. Shadows, too, crept into his mind. Ugly shadows that gained power with the pa.s.sing of days. Had not such shadows come he must have been more than human. But he was very simply human, capable of the deepest pa.s.sion subject to the human heart.

Hate seized upon him with a force even greater perhaps than the pa.s.sions that had hitherto swayed him, and hard on the heels of hate came a deep, burning desire for revenge.

His desire was not against the woman who had wronged and deceived him. A sort of pitying contempt had replaced the wealth of pa.s.sionate devotion he had lavished. His whole desire was against the man. And, curiously enough, this fevered desire became a sort of palliative drug which left him with the necessary strength to withstand the pain of his heart.

Slowly at first it took possession of him, but, with each pa.s.sing day, it grew, until, at last, it occupied him to the exclusion of everything.

Even the thought of his child, that tender atom of humanity who had been a living part of him, and whose soft lips and baby hands could never again become anything more than a memory, was powerless to rob him of one particle of the cold delight, as, in a hundred ways, he discovered the broken, dead body of the man who had wronged him within the grasp of his merciless hands.

But none of this was outwardly visible. It was concealed with the rest.

And so the cynicism of Syme, and the general comfort of those who came to cheer the sick room of a valued comrade.

So it came that one day, towards the end of Steve's convalescence, the Superintendent found himself occupying the solitary chair, with Steve lounging smoking on the be-patterned coverlet of the bed, talking of the Unaga Indians and their habits of hibernation which sounded so incredible to the man who had never seen for himself.

Steve had a bunch of mail lying on the bed beside him. He had been reading when his superior had made his appearance. But his reading had been discarded while he gave full attention to the man under whom he had served so long and for whom he possessed no small measure of regard.

Steve had been talking in his deliberate, a.s.sured manner, and McDowell, alert, keen-eyed, half smiling had been listening to the story of a mysterious weed of marvellous narcotic powers. Curiously enough Steve had imparted only the briefest outline. He had told nothing of all that which he had read and discovered in Marcel Brand's laboratory. He had forgotten even to point the fact that he was a chemist first and only a trader through circ.u.mstances. There were many other things, too, that Steve omitted. Nor was the reason for the omission clear. It may have been forgetfulness. It may have been lack of interest. Yet neither of these suggested the reality.

"Well, it all sounds crazy enough, Allenwood, and I admit if Belton or Syme had told me the yarn I'd have sent 'em on leave to get a rest.

But--anyway you've handed me a good report and it's gone on down to the Department without a word altered, and only my own comment added, which," he went on with smiling goodwill, "I don't guess I need to tell you about. Meanwhile I'd not be surprised if you hear things. Your seniority runs high. And this should hand you a jump--"

Steve shook his head.

"I'm not yearning, sir," he said. "But I need to thank you for your comments without seeing them. I can guess how they run--knowing you."

The Superintendent's eyes had suddenly become seriously searching.

"Not yearning? How--d'you mean?" he demanded.

A slight smile lit Steve's eyes at the abrupt change in the other's tone.

"You said just now if Belton or Syme had told you my yarn you'd have handed them leave--for a rest. I'd be glad for you to include my name with theirs."

"You want leave?"

Steve nodded.

"I'd be glad to have six months' leave pending resignation."

"But--resignation? You want to quit? You?"

McDowell was startled completely out of all official att.i.tude. Such a thing as Allenwood's resignation from the force had never for a moment entered his thoughts. It would have been simply unthinkable.

"Yes." Steve was very deliberate. He picked up one of the letters at his side and tapped it with a forefinger.

"It's this, sir," he said. "You can read this, and--the others. I'd be glad for you to take them away with you and read them, and then attach them to my papers asking for my discharge. These letters were waiting me here, and there's quite a number. They're from my father's attorneys.

You see, sir, he's dead, and I'm his heir. It's only a matter of some fifty thousand dollars and his farm in Ontario. But I'll have to get around and fix things."

"Oh, I'm sor--I see," McDowell had recovered from surprise, and promptly saw his advantage. "But resignation, Steve," he cried, dropping into an unusual familiarity. "Where's the need? You can get twelve months'

leave, if necessary, to straighten these things out. After that you'll get back to us a Superintendent, and with money to burn. If you quit you'll be pitching away years of big work. You'll be sacrificing more.

With means like your father's left you you can get into politics, and then, through your official a.s.sociations you don't need to get off the political ladder till you're tired. Man, it would be crazy. Think."

Steve folded his letters with precise care while McDowell pointed to the position as he saw it. Then he laid them together in a small pile. And all the while his eyes remained hidden from the other as though wilfully avoiding him. Nor, as his superior ceased speaking, did he look up.

"I have thought, sir," he said in level tones. "I've had days--weeks to think in. Yes, and nights, too." He shook his head. "A year ago the things you're handing me now would have sounded bully. A year ago I'd all sorts of notions, just like you're talking now. And I was crazy to get busy. That was a year ago. I'm still crazy to get busy, but--in a different way. I've got to get that leave, sir. I've got to make my resignation."

McDowell had suddenly become aware of an unusual restraint in Steve's tone. He had also realized the avoidance of his eyes. A wave of suspicion startled him out of his comfortable equanimity.

"You're ent.i.tled to your leave, you're ent.i.tled to resign your commission if you want to," he said with a quick return to his more official att.i.tude. Then, with a sudden unbending under the pressure of curiosity and even sympathy: "I'm sorry. I'm darn sorry. You're the one man in my command I'd just hate to lose. Still--What do you figure to do?"

"Do?"

The sharp interrogation came with startling force. It came full of a world of suppressed feeling. Irony, bitterness, harsh, inflexible purpose. These things and others, which were beyond McDowell's estimation, rang in that sharp exclamation. Steve laughed, and even to the Superintendent there was something utterly hateful in the sound that broke on his ears.

"Just forget you're my superior officer, McDowell," Steve cried, raising a pair of eyes which blazed with a frigid pa.s.sion of hate. "Just figure we're two plain men, no better and no worse than most. You've a wife and two kiddies, both growing as you'd have them. A schoolgirl and a boy, and round whom you've built up all your notions of life. I had a wife and one kiddie, and round them I'd built up all my notions of life.

Well, those notions of life are wrecked. They'd been building years.

Years before I had a wife. To-day they're gone completely. I haven't a wife, and, G.o.d help me, I haven't a kiddie. And this because of one man.

I've got to find that man."

The two men were gazing eye to eye, McDowell's darkly keen and questioning, Steve's full of irrevocable decision and cold hate.

"And when you--find him?"

Steve made a movement of the hands. It was indescribable but significant. His lips parted to speak, and, in parting, his even teeth were unusually bared.

"He's going to die!"

The words were spoken without emotion, without colour. They were quiet, and carried a conviction that left the other without a shadow of doubt.

"I'm telling you this, McDowell, so you shall know clearly what's on my mind." Steve went on after a pause. "Maybe you'll feel, as an officer of police, it's up to you to do everything to prevent what I intend. But I tell you you can't prevent it. I demand the right of a man from a man, a husband, and a father. I'm quitting. If you try to hold me it'll make no difference. You can delay. It'll make no difference. I shall quit--eventually. And then I shall carry out my purpose. Get that. Then we'll understand each other."