The Triumph of John Kars Part 14

Big Chief, Bill. Two." Again the inevitable fingers. "Shoot plenty much. No good. Five hundred Bell River devils. Mush gun. Shoot bad.

Big Chief boss all kill up. Boss go Bell River. Boss crazy--sure."

Bill was thoroughly enjoying himself. Nor did Kars resent his smiles.

He, too, laughed in spite of the Indian's growing concern.

"We make Bell River to-morrow," he said finally. "See the boys get busy with food. We mush in half an hour."

The Indian had made his protest. There was nothing further to add. So he went off and the white man watched him go.

"Guess there'll be something doing around the camp when he gets amongst the boys," Kars observed. Then he added, after a smiling pause, "That feller thinks me crazy. Guess Murray McTavish would think that way, too. Maybe that's how you're thinking. Maybe you're all right, and I'm all wrong. I can't say. And I can't worry it out. Y'see, Bill, my instinct needs to serve me, like your argument serves you. Only you can't argue with instinct. The logic of things don't come handy to me, and Euclid's a sort of fool puzzle anyway to a feller raised chasing gold. There's just about three things worrying the back of my head now. They've been worrying it all summer, worse than the skitters.

Maybe Bell River can answer them all. I don't know. Why are these Bell River neches always shooting up their neighbors, and any one else?

How comes it Allan Mowbray died worth half a million dollars on a fur trade? What was he doing on Bell River when he got killed?"

It was a wide flat stretch of gra.s.s, a miniature table-land, set high up overlooking the broken territory of the Bell River forge. It was bleak. A sharp breeze played across it with a chill bitterness which suggested little enough mercy when winter reigned. It was an outlook upon a world quite new to Bill. To John Kars the scene was by no means familiar.

These men gazed out with a profound interest not untouched by awe.

Their eyes sought in every direction, and no detail in the rugged splendor was lost. For long minutes they stood silently reading the pages of the new book opened to them.

It was, in Kars' own words, a "fierce" country. It suggested something like desperation in the Creator of it all. It seemed as though imagination must have deserted Him, and He was left only with the foundations, and the skeleton walls of a vast structure upon His hands.

The horizon was approached by tier on tier of alternating glacier and barren hill. What lay hidden in the hollows could only be conjectured.

In every direction, except the southeast, whence they had come, the outlook was the same. Hills, and more hills. Glacial stretch, followed by glacial stretch. Doubtless the hollows contained vast primordial woods, and fiercely flooding mountain streams, scoring their paths through wide stretches of miry tundra, quaking and treacherous.

This was the distance, than which nothing could have been more desolate. But the nearer view was their chief concern.

The gorge yawned almost at their feet. It was tremendous, and its vastness set the mind dizzy. Great circling patches of mist rose up from below and added a sense of infinity to its depths. So wide. So deep. The broad river in its bowels was reduced to something like a trickling streamlet. The woodlands crowding the lower slopes, dim, vague in the distance, became merely a deepening of the shadows below.

Forests of primordial immensity were lost in the overwhelming nature of their setting.

The air of sterility, in spite of the woodlands so far down below, in spite of the attenuated gra.s.s on which they stood, inspired a profound sense of repugnance. To the mind of Bill Brudenell, at least, it was a land of hopelessness, a land of starvation and despair.

He turned to his companion at last, and his voice rang with deep feeling.

"Fierce? Gee! There's not a word in the whole vocabulary of a white man that gets nearer than ten miles of describing it," he exclaimed.

"And the neches, here, figger to sc.r.a.p to hold it. Well, it certainly needs attractions we can't locate from here."

Kars nodded agreement.

"That's how I've felt all through," he said. "Now? Why, now I'm dead sure. This is where they murdered Jessie's father. Well, even a railroad corporation couldn't advertise it a pleasure resort. We'd best get right on down to the camp. I reckon to locate those attractions before we're through."

Leaving the plateau they pa.s.sed down the seemingly endless slope. Bill cursed the foothold, and blasphemed generally. Kars remained silent.

He was absorbed with the task he had set himself in approaching this murder-haunted gorge.

The return to the camp occupied the best part of an hour, and the latter part of the journey was made through a belt of pine wood, the timber of which left the human figure something so infinitesimal that its pa.s.sage was incapable of disturbing the abiding silence. The scrunch of the springy carpet of needles and pine cones under heavily shod feet was completely lost. The profoundness of the gloom was tremendous.

The camp suggested secrecy. It lay in the bowels of a hollow. The hollow was crowded with spruce, a low, spa.r.s.e-growing scrub, and mosquitoes. Its approach was a defile which suggested a rift in the hills at the back. Its exit was of a similar nature, except that it followed the rocky bed of a trickling mountain stream. A mile or so further on this gave on to the more gracious banks of the Bell River to the west of the gorge.

Kars had taken up a position upon some rolled blankets. He was smoking, and meditating over the remains of a small fire. Bill was stretched full-length upon the ground. His philosophic temperament seemed to render him impervious to the attacking hordes of mosquitoes.

Beyond the hum of the flying pestilence the place was soundless.

Near by the Indians were slumbering restfully. It is the nature of the laboring Indian to slumber at every opportunity--slumber or eat.

Peigan Charley was different from these others of his race. But the scout had long been absent from the camp on work that only the keenest of his kind could accomplish successfully. Indian spying upon Indian is like hunting the black panther. The difficulty is to decide which is the hunter.

Bill was drowsily watching a cloud of mosquitoes set into undue commotion by the smoke from his pipe. But for all that his thoughts were busy.

"Guess Charley isn't likely to take fool chances?" he suggested after a while.

Kars shook his head at the fire. His action possessed all the decision of conviction.

"Charley's slim. He's a razor edge, I guess. He's got us all beaten to death on his own play. He's got these murdering devils beaten before they start." Then he turned, and a smile lit his steady eyes as they encountered the regard of his friend. "It seems queer sending a poor darn Indian to take a big chance while we sit around."

Then he kicked the fire together as he went on.

"But we're taking the real chance, I guess," he said, with a short laugh. "If the Bell River outfit is all we reckon, then it's no sort of gamble we made this camp without them getting wise."

Bill sat up.

"Then we certainly are taking the big chance."

Kars laughed again.

"Sure. And I'll be all broken up if we don't hear from 'em," he said.

He knocked out his pipe and refilled it. Once during the operation he paused and listened.

"Y'see," he went on, after a while, "we're white folks."

"That's how I've always heard. So was--Allan Mowbray."

Kars picked up a hot coal from the fire, rolled it in the palm of his hand, and dropped it on the bowl of his pipe. Once the pipe was lit he shook it off again.

"Allan got around here--many times," he said reflectively. "He wasn't murdered on his first visit--nor his second. Allan's case isn't ours.

Not if I figger right."

"How d'you figger?"

"They'll try and hustle us. If I figger right they don't want folk around--any folk. I don't think that's why they murdered Allan. There was more to that. Seems to me we'll get a visit from a bunch of 'em.

Maybe they'll get around with some of the rifles they stole from Allan.

They'll squat right here on their haunches and tell us the things they fancy, and---- h.e.l.lo!"

Kars broke off, but made no movement. He did not even turn his head from his contemplative regard of the white ashes of the fire. There was a sound. The sound of some one approaching through the trees. It was the sound of a shod footstep. It was not the tread of moccasins.

Bill eased himself. In doing so his revolver holster was swung round to a handy position. But Kars never stirred a muscle.

A moment later he spoke in a tone keyed a shade lower.

"A feller wearing boots. It's only one--I wonder."

Bill had risen to his feet.