Man Size Part 45

Afterward, they attached him by a line to the driver. He stumbled along behind. Sometimes he caught his foot or slipped and plunged down into the snow. n.o.body had ever called him a patient man. Whenever any mishap occurred, he polluted the air with his vile speech.

They made slow progress, for the pace had to be regulated to suit the prisoner.

Day succeeded day, each with its routine much the same as the one before. They made breakfast, broke camp, packed, and mushed. The swish of the runners sounded from morning till night fell. Food began to run scarce. Once they left the blind man at the camp while they hunted wood buffalo. It was a long, hard business. They came back empty-handed after a two-day chase, but less than a mile from camp they sighted a half-grown polar bear and dropped it before the animal had a chance to move.

One happy hour they got through the Land of Little Sticks and struck the forests again.

They had a blazing fire again for the first time in six weeks. Brush and sticks and logs went into it till it roared furiously.

Morse turned from replenis.h.i.+ng it to notice that West had removed the bandage from his eyes.

"Better keep it on," the young man advised.

"I was changin' it. Too tight. Gives me a headache," the convict answered sulkily.

"Can you see anything at all yet?"

"Not a thing. Looks to me like I never would."

Tom turned his head for him, so that he faced the blaze squarely. "No light at all?"

"Nope. Don't reckon I ever will see."

"Maybe you will. I've known' cases of snow-blindness where they couldn't see for a month an' came out all right."

"Hurts like blazes," growled the big fellow.

"I know. But not as bad as it did, does it? That salve has helped some."

The two young fellows took care of the man as though he had been a brother. They bathed his eyes, fed him, guided him, encouraged him. He was a bad lot--the worst that either of them had known. But he was in trouble and filled with self-pity. Never ill before, a giant of strength and energy, his condition now apparently filled him with despair.

He would sit hunched down before the fire, head bowed in his hands, a mountain of dole and woe. Sometimes he talked, and he blamed every one but himself for his condition. He never had had a square deal. Every one was against him. It was a rotten world. Then he would fall to cursing G.o.d and man.

In some ways he was less trouble than if he had been able to see. He was helpless and had to trust to them. His safety depended on their safety. He could not strike at them without injuring himself. No matter how much he cringed at the thought of being dragged back to punishment, he shrank still more from the prospect of death in the snow wastes. The situation galled him. Every decent word he gave them came grudgingly, and he still snarled and complained and occasionally bullied as though he had the whip hand.

"A nice specimen of _ursus horribilis_," Beresford murmured to his companion one day. "Thought he was game, anyhow, but he's a yellow quitter. Acts as though we were to blame for his blindness and for what's waiting for him at the end of the journey. I like a man to stand the gaff when it's prodding him."

Morse nodded. "Look out for him. I've got a notion in the back o' my head that he's beginning to see again. He'd kill us in a holy minute if he dared. Only his blindness keeps him from it. What do you say?

Shall we handcuff him nights?"

"Not necessary," the constable said. "He can't see a thing. Watch him groping for that stick."

"All his brains run to cunning. Don't forget that. Why should he have to feel so long for that stick? He laid it down himself a minute ago.

Tryin' to slip one over on us maybe."

The Canadian looked at the lean, brown face of his friend and grinned.

"I've a notion our imaginations too are getting a bit jumpy. We've had one bully time on this trip--with the reverse English. It's all in the day's work to buck blizzards and starve and freeze, though I wouldn't be surprised if our systems were pretty well fed up with grief before we caught Mr. Bully West. Since then--well, you couldn't call him a cheerful traveling companion, could you? A dozen times a day I want to rip loose and tell him how much I don't think of him."

"Still--"

"We'll keep an eye on him. If necessary, it'll be the bracelets for him. I'd hate to have the Inspector send in a report to headquarters, 'Constable Beresford missing in the line of duty.' I've a prejudice against being shot in the back."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here--to see you're not if I can help it."

Beresford's boyish face lit up. He understood what his friend meant.

"Say, Faraway isn't New York or London or even Toronto. But how'd you like to be sitting down to one of Jessie McRae's suppers? A bit of broiled venison done to a juicy turn, potatoes, turnips, hot biscuits spread with raspberry jam. By jove, it makes the mouth water."

"And a slice of plum puddin' to top off with," suggested Morse, bringing his own memory into play. "Don't ask me how I'd like it.

That's a justifiable excuse for murder. Get busy on that rubaboo. Our guest's howlin' for his dinner."

The faint suspicions of Morse made the officers more wary. They watched their prisoner a little closer. Neither of them quite believed that he was recovering his sight. It was merely a possibility to be guarded against.

But the guess of Morse had been true. It had been a week since flashes of light had first come to West faintly. He began to distinguish objects in a hazy way. Every day he could see better. Now he could tell Morse from Beresford, one dog from another. Give him a few more days and he would have as good vision as before he had gone blind.

All this he hid cunningly, as a miser does his gold. For his warped, cruel brain was planning death to these two men. After that, another plunge into the North for life and freedom.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE WILD BEAST LEAPS

Tom Morse was chopping wood. He knew how to handle an axe. His strokes fell sure and strong, with the full circling sweep of the expert.

The young tree crashed down and he began to lop off its branches.

Halfway up the trunk he stopped and raised his head to listen.

No sound had come to him. None came now. But dear as a bell he heard the voice of Win Beresford calling.

"_Help! Help!_"

It was not a cry that had issued from his friend's throat. Tom knew that. But it was real. It had sprung out of his dire need from the heart, perhaps in the one instant of time left him, and it had leaped silently across s.p.a.ce straight to the heart of his friend.

Tom kicked into his snowshoes and began to run. He held the axe in his hand, gripped near the haft. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, lay between him and camp, which was just over the brow of a small hill.

The bushes flew past as he swung to his stride. Never had he skimmed the crust faster, but his feet seemed to be weighted with lead. Then, as he topped the rise, he saw the disaster he had dreaded.

The constable was crumpling to the ground, his body slack and inert, while the giant slashed at him with a dub of firewood he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the ground. The upraised arm of the soldier broke the force of the blow, but Morse guessed by the way the arm fell that the bone had snapped.

At the sound of the sc.r.a.ping runners, West whirled. He lunged savagely. Even as Tom ducked, a sharp pain shot through his leg from the force of the glancing blow. The axe-head swung like a circle of steel. It struck the convict's fur cap. The fellow went down like an ox in a slaughter-house.

Tom took one look at him and ran to his friend. Beresford was a sorry sight. He lay unconscious, head and face battered, the blood from his wounds staining the snow.

The man-hunters had come into the wilderness prepared for emergencies.

Jessie McRae had prepared a small medicine case as a present for the constable. Morse ran to the sled and found this. He unrolled bandages and after he had washed the wounds bound them. As he was about to examine the arm, he glanced up.

For a fraction of a second West's wolfish eyes glared at him before they took on again the stare of blindness. The man had moved. He had hitched himself several yards nearer a rifle which stood propped against a balsam.