CLAWS UNSHEATHED

The heavy log walls must have muffled the shot completely, for, contrary to my expectations, no inquiring faces came poking in the door. In pure defiance, I believe, Barreau kept his place by the fire, smoking placidly till it wore on to ten o’clock. Then Montell, pursing up his lips, put on his overcoat and left without a word. Shortly after that Cullen came in, followed by Ben Wise. They slept in the store, one at each end. At their entrance Barreau drew the parka hood about his ears and we took our departure.

The fire was down to a single charred stick, but the chill had not yet laid hold of the air within, and we made ready for bed before the numbing fingers of the frost made free with our persons. I stretched myself on my bunk and wrapped the blankets and a rabbit-skin robe about me, but Barreau sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the candle flame as if he sought therein the answer to a riddle.

“If those Company men made the same proposition to Montell,” he broke out suddenly, “that they made to me, it is ten to one that Montell stands ready to deliver the goods. That would account for the baldness of that play to-night.”

“You think he did mean it, then?” I had so far given Montell the benefit of the doubt, despite a growing conviction that he had stumbled purposely.

“Why, of course; that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Barreau declared. “You know he did. Else why did you move that gun after he’d very artfully contrived to point it my way?”

“So you were watching him, after all?” said I.

“I always watch him,” he answered drily.

“I feel sure that he sees or thinks he sees the way clear, once I’m attended to,” Barreau continued. “I’ve been looking for this very thing. It came to me that day we struck the pack-trail. You remember? I started to tell you, and changed my mind.”

I nodded. The incident was quite fresh in my memory my juvenile egotism had received a bump on that very occasion.

It struck me with a sort of premonitory force, as I stood there looking at those mule tracks, he went on, that if the Company offered him the same terms they did me he would jump at it. They offered me forty thousand dollars to get out of the game, to give them a bill of sale of my interest and they would take care of my partner. You see? Now I’m satisfied they wouldn’t incorporate that last clause in any offer to Montell. I’m not boasting when I say that from the beginning I’ve been the thorn in the Company’s flesh. Every time they’ve locked horns with me, I’ve come out on top. They might offer him forty thousand, but he’d have to guarantee them against me. And I think that performance to-night is a sample of how he will try to clear the way.”

“To put it baldly,” I said. “You think he’ll kill you out of hand if he gets a chance to do it in a way that won’t prove a boomerang?”

“Exactly,” Barreau observed.

“Then,” I suggested, and even as the words were on my tongue I stood amazed at the ruthless streak they seemed to uncover, “why not catch him at it and do the killing yourself. There’s no law here to restrain him, apparently. Be your own law if you know you’re right.”

“I can’t.” Barreau muttered. “Not that my conscience would ever trouble me. He’s protected in a way he doesn’t dream of. And he’s too wary of me to lay himself liable. If anything happens it will be an accident; you know how it would have been to-night. You, sitting right there, could not have declared it otherwise, no matter what your private opinion might have been. He has pretty well calculated the chances. No, Mr. Montell is not going to put himself in any position where I’d be clearly justified in snuffing him out.”

For a minute or so he sat silent, frowning at the candle on the table between my bunk and his.

“How he would bait me,” he went on presently, “if he knew that killing him is the one thing I desire to avoid, at any cost! I hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be only just, but I have no wish to mete out justice to him. His miserable life is safe from me, for her sake no, I’ll be honest: for my own. I want him to live, till I can force him to tell her a few truths that she will never believe except from his own lips. I was a seven times fool for not doing that long before we reached Benton. I could have forestalled all this. But I didn’t suspect he was tolling her on for a purpose.”

He stopped again. It was not the first time that Barreau had touched upon that theme, and always his tongue had been stricken with a semi-paralysis just short of complete revelation. In a general way it was plain enough to me, from the verbal collisions between himself and Montell on that same subject. And though I was humanly curious enough to want the particulars at first hand, I made no effort to draw forth his story. Hence I was surprised when he took up the thread of the conversation where he had left off.

“One reads of these peculiar situations in books,” he rested his chin in the palms of his hands and stared abstractedly at me, “but they are seldom encountered in everyday living. I dare say the world is full of women, good women, beautiful, brilliant women, that I might have won. Yet I must fall victim to an insane craving for an elfin-faced, hot-tempered sprite who will have none of me. Six or seven years ago she was a big-eyed school-girl, with a mop of unruly hair. Then all at once, she grew up, and and I’ve been the captive of her bow and spear ever since. Love the old, primal instinct to mate! It’s a brutal force, Bob, when it focuses all a man’s being on one particular woman. I never told her, but I’m sure she knew; I know she did. And she well, a man never can tell what a woman thinks or feels or will do or say, or whether she means what she says when she says it. I don’t know. But I’ve thought that she did care only she wouldn’t admit it until I made her. She’s the type that wouldn’t give herself to even the man she loved without a struggle. And I’m just savage enough to be glad of that. I’ve only been waiting till this spring and the end of this fur deal, so that we would have the wherewith to live, before I cornered her and fought it out.

“But I’ve waited too long, I’m afraid. You see, Montell has always been against me; that is, he has secretly been cutting the ground from under my feet since he learned that I wanted her. The old fool looks into his own heart and seeing perfect bliss in an alliance with ‘blood’ and ‘money,’ straightway determines that these two will insure her future happiness oh, I can read him, like an open book. He’d move the heavens to bring about what he’d term ‘a good match.’

“As it happens I can compare pedigrees with the best of them Good Lord!” he broke off and laughed ironically. “That’s sickening; but I’m trying to make the thing clear. Naïve recital this, I must say. Well, anyway, I measured up to the standard of breeding, but fell wofully short on the financial requirements. And, somehow, foxy Simon grew afraid that I was in a fair way to upset his cherished plans for Jess. This was after we’d gone in together on this fur business. He had always acted rather guardedly about Jessie and myself, but I had him there; so long as she went out, I could meet her socially, and he could not prevent. Then a year ago last summer the Hudson’s Bay undertook to run me out of this country. That bred the trouble on High River, and after that I was really outlawed. I expect he began at once to figure how he could turn that to his advantage regarding me as a dishtowel that he could wring dry and throw aside. He has nursed a direct, personal grudge since the first season. Naturally, he wanted to dominate everything, and I wouldn’t let him. He thought himself the biggest toad in the puddle, and it angered him when he found himself outsplashed. He made mistakes. I corrected them, and held him down at every turn; I had to. It was a ticklish job, and I made him move according to my judgment. Which was a very bitter sort of medicine for a man of Montell’s domineering stamp. So he was not long in developing a rancorous dislike of me, which seems to have thrived on concealment.

“Where I made the grand mistake was in letting him keep her from knowing that we were partners in this business. Without giving the matter a second thought I had kept our business strictly to myself. He hinted that others might follow our lead, and at first we had visions of making terms with the Hudson’s Bay and building up a permanent trade here. After two or three years of this I didn’t think it well to plunge into explanations last spring. I made a mistake there, however; the mistake, I should say. Jessie had gone out a good deal the last two winters, both in St. Louis and New Orleans, and she was becoming quite a belle. For all that, I think oh, well, it doesn’t matter what I think. To make a long story short, a day or two before the Moon went upstream she told me that she was going as far as Benton with her father. I, of course had to rise to the occasion, be very properly surprised and inform her that I, too, contemplated a trip on that same steamer. And I straightway hunted Montell up and tried to have him dissuade her from the journey.

“I didn’t fathom the purport of it, even then although I knew that he would welcome any chance to put me wrong in her eyes. It was too late, I felt, to volunteer any details concerning my part in her father’s business up North. So I contented myself with his assurance and her statement, that she would see him as far as Benton and then return on the Moon.

“You see, I could easily imagine what would be her opinion of me, if she learned all the unsavory details with which the Northwest has been pleased to embellish the record of Slowfoot George. She has such a profound scorn for anything verging on dishonesty, and according to the sources of her information I’ve got some very shady things laid at my door. I can’t be anything but a moral degenerate, in her eyes. Oh, he engineered it skilfully. If I had only waited at Benton till the bull-train was ready to start!

“You know how her returning panned out. I believe now, that he intended from the first that she should go on to MacLeod. I’d come to the conclusion that he would knife me on the business end, and that was why I wanted Walt Sanders with me. But it didn’t occur to me that his plans were so far-reaching. That unfortunate Police raid delivered me into his hands at the psychological moment I was like a cornered rat that day she came to the guardhouse and peered in on us through the cell door. I couldn’t help lashing back when she was so frankly contemptuous. I could see so clearly how he had managed it. And having accomplished his purpose he saw to it that escape was made easy, for he still needed me up here. Mind you, it would have been pretty much the same if I had not been taken by the Police. He would have seen that she was well posted before she left MacLeod.

“The rest you have seen for yourself. She spoiled his plan a little, perhaps, by coming all the way once she had started. That wasn’t his fault; he didn’t want her to come here, especially after I picked up one of her combs that night we came to the camp, and threatened him if he didn’t send her home. She is wilful. And the only way he could have kept her from coming to the Sicannie would have been to go back himself.

“If our presence here has puzzled her you may be sure he has made satisfactory explanations. I am only biding my time. If I can hold him down and stand off the Hudson’s Bay till the furs come in, I can win out so far as the money end is concerned. And if I am to lose her, by God he’ll pay for it! She shall know the truth if I have to choke it out of him one word at a time.”

“It looks like a big contract,” I sympathized.

He made a gesture that might have meant anything, but did not reply. Presently he reached for his tobacco. When his cigarette was lighted he blew out the candle. By the glowing red tip I could follow his movements as he settled himself and drew the bedding about him. “Oh, Bob,” he addressed me after a long interval.

“What is it?” I answered.

“If that old hound and I should get mixed up, you keep out of it. Somebody will have to see that Jess gets out of this God-forsaken country. You’re woods-wise enough to manage that now.”

“Why, of course I’d do that,” I replied. It was a startling prospect he held forth. “But I hope nothing like that happens.”

“Anything might happen,” he returned. “We’re sitting on a powder-keg. I can’t guarantee that it won’t blow up. Montell is a bull-headed brute, and so am I. If he should throw a slug into me, I’d probably live long enough to return the favor.”

Then, after a pause: “I’ve been running on like an old woman. That rifle business to-night jarred me like the devil. Maybe a decent night’s rest will scatter these pessimistic ideas. Here goes, Robert; good-night.”

With which he turned his face to the wall, and did, I verily believe, go at once to sleep. And he was still asleep, his head resting on one doubled-up arm, when I got up and lighted the candle at seven in the morning. My slumbers had been beset by disturbing visions of violent deeds, the by-product of what I had seen and heard that evening; Barreau, by his cheerful aspect on arising, had banished his troubles while he slept.

The day dawned, clear and cold and very still. It passed, and another followed, and still others, till I lost track of their number in the frost-ridden cycle of time. Montell’s momentous stumble grew to be a dim incident of the past; sometimes I was constrained to wonder if, after all, he had done that with malice aforethought. Upon divers occasions I met and talked with Jessie, but I did not go to the house again, until Barreau hinted, one day, that unless I continued the intimacy I had accidentally begun, Montell would think I suspected him, that I was taking Barreau’s side.

“There is no use in your making an enemy of him,” he said.

“Well,” I replied, “I must say I don’t altogether like his fatherly manner. He makes me uncomfortable.”

“Nevertheless,” Barreau declared, “he has taken a fancy to you. He’s human. And seeing it’s not your fight, you’d better not break off short on that account. Better not antagonize him. It’s different with me; I have no choice.”

Influenced more or less by Barreau’s suggestion, I suppose, I found myself giving assent that very afternoon when Montell asked me to the cabin for supper and a session at cribbage. Over the meal and the subsequent card-game he was so genial, so very much like other big easy-going men that I had known, I could scarcely credit him as cold-bloodedly scheming to defraud and, if necessary, murder another man. Somehow, without any logical reason, I had always associated fat men, especially big, fat men, with the utmost good-nature, with a sort of rugged straightforward uprightness that frowned on anything that savored of unfair advantage. I could not quite fathom Mr. Simon Montell nor George Barreau, either, so far as that goes.

Shortly after that, at the close of an exceeding bitter day, an Indian came striding down the Sicannie to the post. When the guard at the big gate let him in his first word was for the “White Chief,” as Barreau was known among the men of the lodges. Ben Wise came shouting this at the door of our cabin, and we followed Ben to the store. The Indian shook hands with Barreau. Then he drew his blanket coat closer about him and delivered himself of a few short guttural sentences. Barreau stood looking rather thoughtful when the copper-skinned one had finished. He asked a few questions in the native tongue, receiving answers as brief. And after another period of consideration he turned to me.

“Crow Feathers is sick,” he said. “Pneumonia, I should judge, by this fellow’s description of the symptoms. The chances are good that he’ll be dead by the time I get there if he isn’t already. The medicine man can’t help him, so old Three Wolves has sent for me, out of his sublime faith in my ability to do anything. I can’t help him, but I’ll have to go, as a matter of policy. Do you want to come along, Bob? It won’t be a long jaunt, and it will give you some real snowshoe practice.”

I embraced the opportunity without giving him a chance to reconsider which he showed signs of doing later in the evening. Curiously enough Montell also attempted to dissuade me from the trip.

“What’s the use?” he argued. “You’ll likely get your fingers or your feet frozen. It’s a blamed poor time of the year to go trapesin’ around the country. You better stay here where there’s houses and fires.”

The cold and other disagreeable elements didn’t look formidable enough to deter me, however; I wanted something to break the monotony. A trip to Three Wolves’ camp in mid-winter appealed very strongly to me, and I turned a deaf ear to Montell’s advice, and held Barreau strictly to the proposal which he evinced a desire to withdraw.

That evening we got the dog harness ready, and rigged up a toboggan for the trail, loading it with food, bedding, and a small, light tent. Two hours before daybreak we started. There was a moon, and the land spread away boldly under the silver flood, like a great, ghostly study in black and white.

All that day our Indian led us up the Sicannie. There was no need to use our snowshoes or to “break” trail, for we kept to the ice, and its covering of snow was packed smooth and hard as a macadam roadway. By grace of an early start and steady jogging we traversed a distance that was really a two days’ journey, and at dusk the lodges of Three Wolves’ band loomed in the edge of a spruce grove. Then our Indian shook hands with Barreau and me, and swung off to the right.

“He says his lodge is over there in a draw,” Barreau told me, when I asked the reason for that.

The dogs of the camp greeted us with shrill yapping, and two or three Indians came out. They scattered the yelping huskies with swiftly thrown pieces of firewood, and greeted Barreau gravely. After a mutual exchange of words Barreau vented a sharp exclamation.

“The devil!” he said, and followed this by stripping the harness from the dogs.

“What now?” I asked, as I bent over the leader’s collar.

“You’ll see in a minute,” he answered briefly, and there was an angry ring in his voice.

The dogs freed and the toboggan turned on its side, he led the way to a lodge pointed out by one of the hunters. A head protruded. It was withdrawn as we approached, and some one within called out in Cree. And when we had inserted ourselves through the circular opening I echoed Barreau’s exclamation. For sitting beside the fire which burned cheerfully in the center, was Crow Feathers himself, smoking his pipe like a man in the best of health. Nor was there any suggestion of illness in the voice he lifted up at our entrance. Barreau fired a question or two at him, and a look of mild interest overspread Crow Feathers’ aquiline face as he answered.

“It was a plant all the way through,” Barreau declared, sitting down and slipping off his mitts. “Three Wolves sent no message to me. Crow Feathers never was sick in his life.”

“I wonder who’s responsible?” said I. “Do Indians ever play practical jokes?”

He shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion. Crow Feathers’ squaw pushed a pot of boiled venison before us, and some bannock, and we fell upon that in earnest. Not till we had finished and were fumbling for tobacco did Barreau refer to our wild-goose chase again.

“I’d like to have speech with that red gentleman who led us up here,” he said grimly. “It may be that Mr. Montell has unsheathed his claws in earnest. If he has, I’ll clip them, and clip them short.”