The Fur Bringers Part 46

"I believed in you," she murmured in a dead voice. "I believed in you!

Oh, G.o.d!" Her hands were flung up in a despairing gesture. "Let him go!" she cried to Macfarlane over her shoulder, and ran down the hall and up the stairs.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A CHANGE OF JAILERS.

There was a significant silence in the pa.s.sage when Colina had gone.

Finally Macfarlane said stubbornly, "He's my prisoner. It's my duty to hold him against any odds. It's the first rule of the service."

Giddings and Pringle urgently remonstrated with him. Strange held apart as if he considered it none of his business. At last, with a deprecating air, he added his voice to the other men's.

"Look here," he said smoothly; "you know best, of course; but aren't there times when a soldier must make his own rules? All of us men would stand by you gladly, but there's a sick man up-stairs that they have been taught to hate. And a woman."

Macfarlane gave in with a shrug. "I suppose you'll stand by me if I'm hauled up for it," he grumbled.

He drew his revolver and stood aside to let Ambrose pa.s.s. The others likewise drew back, as from one marked with the plague. Every face was hard with scorn.

Ambrose kept his eyes straight ahead. When he appeared on the porch, cries, apparently of welcome, were raised by the Kakisas.

Ambrose supposed that Strange had made a deal with the Kakisas to put him out of the way. He believed that he was going straight to his death.

He accepted it sooner than make an appeal to those who scorned him. He wished to speak to them before he went; but it was to warn them, not to ask for aid for himself.

He faced the little group in the doorway. "I tell you again," he said, "this is all a put-up job. You know nothing of what is going on but what this breed chooses to tell you. He's a liar and a murderer. If you put yourselves in his hands, so much the worse for you."

The white men laughed in Ambrose's face. The breed smiled deprecatingly and forgivingly.

"Hold your tongue, and be thankful you're getting off so easy,"

Macfarlane said, full of honest contempt.

Ambrose became very pale. He turned his back, on them, and, climbing over the wire barrier, marched stiffly down to the gate. The consciousness of innocence is supposed to be sufficient to armor a man against any slanders, but this is only partially true.

When one's accusers are honest, their scorn hurts, hurts more than any other wound we are capable of receiving. Ambrose was of the type that rages against a hurt. At present, for all he was outwardly so pale and still, he was deafened and blinded by rage.

It was now full daylight. An extraordinary picture faced the watchers from the doorway--the ruined store in the background, the grotesque crew hanging to the fence palings.

Their ordinary rags were covered with layers of misfit clothing out of the store, while many of them wore several hats, and others had extra pairs of shoes hanging around their necks.

There was a great display of gaudy silk handkerchiefs. Pockets bulged with small articles of loot, and nearly every man lugged some particular treasure according to his fancy, whether it was an alarm clock or a gla.s.s pitcher or a bolt of red flannel.

The younger men, still susceptible to gallantry, mostly were burdened with crushed articles of feminine finery, gaily trimmed hats, red or blue shawls, fancy satin bodices, corsets with the strings dangling.

The faces, after a night of unbridled license, showed dull and slack in the daylight.

Myengeen, whom Ambrose had marked earlier as a leader of the mob, gripped his hand at the gate and cried out with hypocritical joy.

Others crowded around, those who could not obtain his hands, stroking his sleeves and fawning upon him.

There was an ironical note in the demonstration. Ambrose observed that the majority of the Indians looked on indifferently. He smelted treachery in the air.

The mob, facing about, started to move in open order toward the river.

Ambrose, as they opened up, caught sight of the two dead bodies. It afflicted him with a dull at the pit of the stomach--these were the first deaths by violence he had witnessed.

They still lay where they had fallen--the Indian sprawling in the middle of a black stain on the platform; Tole huddled on the bare earth of the quadrangle. Ambrose's heart sank at the thought of returning to Simon Grampierre with the gift of a dead son.

The Indians gave no regard to the bodies--apparently they meant to leave them behind. Ambrose with no uncertain gestures commanded Myengeen to have them taken up and carried to the boat. It was done.

When they got down the bank out of sight of the house Myengeen and the others gave over their hollow pretense of enthusiasm at Ambrose's release.

Thereafter none paid the least attention to him.

He saw that they had not only loaded the boat they came in, but on the principle of in for a penny, in for a pound, had also taken possession of one of the company york boats, and had loaded it to the gunwale.

They immediately embarked and pushed off. Ambrose secured a place below Myengeen's steering platform. In the bottom of the boat, at his feet, lay the wizened Indian in his rags, and the straight, slim body of Tole--side by side like brothers in a bed.

Tole's face was not disfigured; serene, boyish, and comely, it gave Ambrose's heart-strings a fresh wrench. He covered them both with a piece of sail-cloth.

Across the river, as the Indians started to unload, Watusk came down to the beach, followed by several of his councilors. It was impossible to tell from his inscrutable, self-important air what he thought of all this.

His flabby, yellow face changed neither at the sight of all the wealth they brought nor at the two dead men. Ambrose demanded four men of him to carry Tole's body to his father's house.

Watusk kept him waiting while he listened to a communication from Myengeen. Ambrose guessed that it had to do with himself, for both men glanced furtively at him. Watusk finally turned away without having answered the white man.

Ambrose, growing red, imperiously repeated his demand. Watusk, still without looking at him directly, spoke a word to some Indians within call, and Ambrose was immediately seized by a dozen hands.

He was finally bound hand and foot with thongs of hide. This was no more than he expected, still he did not submit without a fierce but ineffectual struggle.

When it was done his captors looked on him with respect--they did not laugh at him nor evince any anger. It was impossible for him to read any clue in their stolid faces what was going forward.

Half a dozen of them carried him up the bank and laid him at the door of a teepee. Presently Watusk pa.s.sed by. Ambrose so violently demanded an explanation that the Indian was forced to stop. He said, still without meeting Ambrose's eye:

"Myengeen say you kill Tom Moosa. You got to take our law."

"It's a lie!" cried Ambrose, suffocating with indignation.

Watusk shrugged and disappeared. It was useless for Ambrose to shout at any of the others. He fumed in silence. The Indians gave his dangerous eyes a wide berth.

Meanwhile the camp was plunged into a babel of confusion by the order to move.

Boys ran here and there catching the horses, the teepees came down on the run, and the squaws frantically to pack their household gear.

Infants and dogs infected with a common excitement outvied each other in screaming and barking.

Ambrose saw only the beginning of the preparations. A horse was brought to where he lay, and the six men whom he was beginning to recognize as his particular guard unbound his ankles and lifted him into the saddle.

They never dared lay hands on him except in concert--he took what comfort he could out of that tribute to his prowess. They tied his bound wrists to the saddle-horn, and also tied his ankles under the horse's belly, leaving just play enough for him to use the stirrups.