Chapter XIX: An Old Score Is Charged Off

Drawing near to the Sapi village on his return, Jack first came upon a group of children picking wild strawberries in the meadow, who fled screaming in advance of him into the compound. There, every task was dropped, and every dark face turned toward him. Fairly startled out of their affectation of stolidity, they streamed toward him from under the sun shelters and from out of the tepees with cries of astonishment. Jack was not deceived by the apparent warmth of their welcome; they were not glad to see him, only amazed that he should have come back at all.

He pulled up his horse in the centre of the square, and remembering the last time he had addressed them, looked them over with a kind of grim scorn. Just now he was unable to feel any of the kindness for these feather-brained children of the woods that Mary had. He knew the value of scant speech with them, and he made them wait for his announcement.

At last he said: "Ascota is dead!"

They stirred, and softly exclaimed, but one man laughed. His example was infectious; incredulity showed openly in their faces.

"Big talk!" one said insolently. "Where's the proof?"

Jack quietly untied a little bundle from the back of his saddle, and unrolling the flour bag in which he had carried his grub, produced a little book and held it up. It was Jean Paul's Testament, that they all knew. There was a dark and swollen blotch on the leather cover. The absolute silence with which it was received was more impressive than their cries.

Jack handed it to the man who had spoken. It opened in his hands. There was a crimson stain around the edges of the printed page--wet crimson. The man who held it started back, and those looking over his shoulders gasped. The book was passed among trembling hands. Finally it came back to Jack.

"I will tell you where his body is hidden," said Jack. "A mile beyond the crossing of the creek out of Mount Darwin there is a big spruce on the right-hand side of the trail. On it I made a blaze with the sign of the cross in it. One hundred and ten paces from that tree as you walk toward the mountain he lies under a pile of stones. There is a big rock above, with his name and his story cut upon it."

It was very clear that none of them had any desire to seek out the spot; indeed, from that time the Fort Erskine trail was closed to the Sapis by reason of Ascota's grave being upon it.

"Who is the head man now?" Jack demanded.

They turned toward Etzeeah's eldest son, a sullen broad-shouldered brave, the best physical specimen among them.

"Take warning," said Jack clearly, "you and your people! Ascota was a bad man, a big mouth, a trouble-maker, who tried to stir you to evil, while he kept himself clear. He dared to speak against the great white father across the sea. It was the chickadee piping at the eagle. He is dead. We are all the children of the white father; his children and his servants. His police are now at the fort. You will do well to ride in and make your peace, before they come to punish you. That is all I have to say."

One silently brought him the horse he had left there, and, leading it, he rode through the quadrangle and away by the trail, without looking back. There was no demonstration against him now. The awe that Ascota had inspired in them was transferred to the man who had brought about his death.

Three hours later, as Jack's horse sidled down the hill into the Spirit River valley, his rider looked with a beating heart for the four little tents he had left in the meadow below. They were not there. A great disappointment filled him, and a sharp anxiety. What he had been through had made greater inroads on his reserve forces than he knew, and in Mary's deep eyes his weary spirit was unconsciously seeking harbourage.

However, as he rode up to the ashes of their fire he saw that he had not been forgotten. In the forks of two little sticks driven into the ground was laid a peeled wand roughly shaped like an arrow, and pointing northeast. On it had been printed with a piece of charcoal: "7 miles."

Riding in the direction it pointed he found a freshly blazed trail through the trees. It led him among the poplars along the foot of the bench to the opening of a coulee, up which it turned. It took him north through a narrow valley wooded with great spruce trees. Through openings in the trees on either hand he could see the steep, naked, uncouth forms of the foothills that hemmed the valley in. A trickle of water flowed musically in the bottom of it.

It was difficult going for the horses over the fallen and rotting trunks of the untrodden forest, with its treacherous, moss-hidden pitfalls. The seven miles seemed to stretch out into thrice that distance before he came to the end of his journey. He smelled the smoke of a campfire long before he could see it. Finally the trail turned at right angles, and started to climb. He issued out of the trees, and there on a terrace of grass above him he saw the little tents and the fire; he saw Mary turning toward him with harassed, expectant face.

A little cry escaped her, and she came flying to meet him. Jack slipped off his horse. A little way from him she caught herself up, and her body stiffened. The action brought to Jack's mind all that he had forgotten, and he turned a dull red. It had been in his heart to seize her in his arms. A horrible constraint descended on them both. They did not touch hands; they could not meet each other's eyes; speech was very difficult and painful.

"You are all right?" she murmured. "Not hurt?"

"Not a scratch."

"And Jean Paul?"

"He is dead."

She started with horror, and in spite of herself glanced at Jack's hands.

"He killed himself," Jack added quickly.

Her hands betrayed a movement of relief. There was a silence.

"What about you?" mumbled Jack, scowling. "What are you doing up here? Where is Davy?"

"I have something to show you," she said, with a strange look.

He followed her up the slope. He wondered why there were three tents pitched. The third was Jean Paul's A-tent. Mary threw back one of the flaps, and he saw a blanketed form inside.

"The kid!" he murmured, full of anxious concern. But even as he said it, he saw that it was not Davy. Stooping, and looking farther within, he saw a gaunt travesty of the face of Frank Garrod. The eyes were closed.

Something clutched at Jack's heart. He fell back. "Good God!" he muttered. "You've got him! Is he dead?"

She shook her head. "Sleeping," she said. "Come away a little."

They sat on the other side of the fire. "Davy has gone back to the cache," she said, taking care to avoid Jack's eyes, "for milk powder, if there is any, and whiskey, and any medicines he can find. He will be back before dark."

"Has he said anything?" asked Jack, looking toward the tent.

Mary shook her head. "Nothing you could understand. He is very low. We will not get him back to the fort. He was four days in the bush. He had only berries."

"Then it's too late after all," said Jack apathetically.

"Who can tell?" said Mary. "They say often they get their full senses back for a little while before they die."

Jack shrugged. "Who would believe what he said at such a time?"

Mary was silent. Her capacity for silence was greater perhaps than Jack's.

"Tell me about finding him," Jack said.

"We started out as soon as you left," she said, carefully schooling her voice. "It was clear Jean Paul would take him among the hills to lose him, so we struck up the coulee at once. Too many days had passed for us to find their tracks, and it had rained. But I was sure we would find him in the valley. The hills were too steep; besides, even a madman stays by the water. We looked all day without finding anything until near dark. Then we came on some tracks in the mud by the stream. We camped right there the first night. There were many coyotes on the hills, both sides, and I thought he must be near and they were--waiting." She shuddered.

"In the morning we found him," she went on in a low voice. "Just below here. He had fallen down beside the water. His face was in the mud, but the mosquitoes had not left him. So I knew he was not dead. Davy and I carried him up here where it was dry. I fed him a little bread soaked in water. Davy went back for the other horses and the dunnage, and to leave a sign for you. That was yesterday. This morning Davy went to the cache."

"Oh, Mary! what a woman you are!" Jack murmured out of the deeps of his heart.

She rose with an abrupt movement, and went to look at the sick man. She came back presently with a pale, composed face, and quietly set to work mixing dough for their evening meal. There was a long and sufficiently painful silence.

"It's a funny situation, isn't it?" said Jack at last, with a bitter note of laughter.

"Better not talk about it," she murmured. "Let us just wait and see."

Being forbidden to talk about it, the desire to do so became overmastering. "Suppose he doesn't say anything," he began.

"It won't make any difference to your friends," she said. "They know you're not a thief."

"It's a queer business this having a good name and not having one," Jack went on, plucking blades of grass. "As if anybody cared who took the money."

Mary offered no comment.

"I'd lose my claims," Jack went on. "I couldn't go out to file them. But the governor would never put the police on to me, now. He'd be too jolly glad to get rid of me."

Mary refused to raise her eyes from the dough.

Jack thought she hadn't understood what he was driving at. "You see it would let me out there," he went on. "This would be my country for ever and ever, and the people up here my only friends."

There was another silence. He looked at her hungrily. The hard young face was soft enough now.

"Mary," he murmured hoarsely at last; "I don't give a damn if he never speaks."

The dough-pan was dropped at last. She lifted a tortured face. "Don't," she murmured low and swiftly. "Don't you see what it means? Don't you see how you're hurting me? You mustn't wish it. Maybe our thoughts are influencing his sick brain this minute. He must speak! He must tell the truth and clear you. Nothing else matters. You must be able to go wherever you choose. You must be able to look any man in the face. I couldn't bear anything else."

Jack scowled, very much hurt--and a little ashamed perhaps. "I didn't think you were so anxious to send me outside," he muttered.

She threw him the look of pity and despair that women have for the men they love who will not understand them, and, springing up, went to look at her patient again.

By and by Davy arrived. His greeting to Jack supplied the warmth that Mary's had lacked. Jack hugged the boy with a sidelong look at his sister. Afterward Jack briefly and baldly told his story by the fire. Our hero had no talent for description.

"I slept until dark, and then just crawled around the edge of the slide below the ridge, and climbed up the back of the rock."

Davy's and Mary's eyes were big. "Climbed up the back of the summit at night?" murmured Mary.

"Sure," said Jack. "I took it slow and easy. As soon as I got light enough I dropped on him from behind. That was one surprised redskin!"

"Then what happened?" demanded Davy, breathlessly.

Jack frowned. "He jumped off," he said shortly.

"Jumped?" they cried. "Was he killed?" asked Davy.

"Quite," said Jack grimly. "And some to spare." That was all they could get out of him.

They ate their supper, and the sun went down. Mary, leaving the boys smoking by the fire, took up her vigil within the door of the little A-tent. Davy chattered about the prairie chicken that had flown across the trail, about the squirrels that had broken into the cache, about the moose he had seen swimming the river. Jack with an unquiet breast sat listening for a sign from Mary.

Suddenly she came out of the tent, dropping the flaps behind her. "Jack!" she whispered breathlessly.

He sprang to her.

Her clenched hands were pressed hard to her breast. "He's awake," she murmured.

"Is he--sane?"

"I--I don't know," she said a little wildly. "He looked at me so strangely. Oh, Jack!"

He took her trembling hand in his firm one. There was no selfish passion in him now. "Steady, Mary," he said deeply. "We've done the best we could. Whatever will happen, will happen. Better go away for a little."

She gave his hand a little squeeze, and shook her head. "I'm all right," she murmured. "I must know."

Jack threw back the flaps, and, stooping, entered. "Hello, there!" he said quietly.

The sick man turned his head. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and a feverish colour suffused his face; his lips were swollen. "Macgreegor," he whispered. He passed a hand across his eyes. "It is Macgreegor, isn't it?"

Something melted in Jack's breast at the sound of the old boyish nickname. "Sure thing," he said, kneeling beside him.

Garrod reached out his hand, and Jack took it. "Thank God, you're here," he murmured in the soft, hurried accents of the fever patient. "I'm going, Macgreegor. I've made a rotten mess of it, haven't I? I'll be glad to go if I can square myself with you first. Where are we? It doesn't matter. Can anybody take down what I want to say?"

Mary's eyes were big with tears. She produced the pencil Jack had given her, but it appeared there was not a scrap of blank paper in the outfit, not a scrap of paper except the little Testament with its ugly stains. Davy handed it to her. On the fly leaves, with their damp, red borders, Mary prepared to write as Garrod dictated.

"Lift me up a little, Macgreegor," Garrod said. "I can breathe easier. Your arm under my shoulders. That's good. It's like the day at Ste. Anne's when I fell out of the tree. We were seventeen then. You were always holding me up one way and another, Macgreegor. You never knew what you were to me. It was quite different from your feeling for me. I can say it now, anyway. I was a bit cracked about you."

"You'll wear yourself out talking," said Jack with gruff tenderness.

"It won't take me long," Garrod said. "I'll have time."

He expressed no further curiosity as to where he was, or how Jack had come there. He referred to no recent happening. His attention was fixed on the all-concealing gray curtain ahead, through which he must presently pass, and he hurried to get what must be said, said in time. There was something uncanny in the perfect clearness of his thoughts, after what had passed.

"You wonder how I could do as I did if I felt like that toward you," he went on. "Well, sometimes I hated you too. I was jealous of you, you were so much cooler and stronger than I, so much more of a man. I don't suppose you understand. We're not supposed to be like that. I guess I was born with a queer streak."

On the other side of Garrod sat Mary, ready with the pencil and the book. Davy, large-eyed and solemn, filled the doorway.

"I, Francis Garrod, being about to die, do desire to make my peace with God if I may, and with my friend Malcolm Piers, whom I have deeply wronged. It was I who took the money from the Bank of Canada that he was accused of stealing. None but I knew before-hand that he was going away, nor his reasons for going. The morning after he went the sight of the money in the vaults tempted me. He had influential friends and relatives, and I knew there would be no scandal. I took the money in old bills that could not be traced. I have not known a minute's peace since then. It drove me mad by degrees, and it is the cause of my death.

"Should any doubt be cast on this confession, it is easy to verify it. Within a month of the theft I opened accounts in the following banks and branches of banks in Montreal." A list of the banks followed. "In each I deposited a small sum. The total will be about forty-five hundred dollars. The rest I kept by me. Furthermore, among the papers in my desk will be found a letter from Malcolm Piers dated from Winnipeg a few days after his disappearance. The post-mark is intact. In every sentence of this letter there is proof that the writer had no theft on his conscience when he wrote it, and no money. So help me God!"

Garrod signed the page with a sufficiently firm hand, and Davy and Mary wrote their names beneath for witnesses. Jack gave Mary the grim little volume to keep for him, and she and Davy went away.

"That's done," murmured Garrod with a sigh. His fictitious strength seemed to ebb with the sigh. He slipped down on Jack's arm a little. "Don't leave me, Macgreegor," he murmured. "It's all right with us now, isn't it?"

"Sure, I won't leave you," said Jack.

The voice came in a whisper now with many breaks and pauses. "The lights of Ste. Catherine's street, Macgreegor, on a Saturday night, and the crowds, and the stairs up to the gallery of the old Queen's, how they echoed under our feet! We saw the 'Three Musketeers!' ... 'Member the rink in the winter? And the old Park Slide? ... And Ste. Anne's, with the sun shining on the river? There's another pair of kids winning the tandem paddles now, eh? ... How good it is to have you here, old fel'! 'Member the first day I came to work at the bank! You blacked Husky Nickerson's eyes because he blotted my ledger. We nearly all got fired, but you saved us with your pull. Husky, too! How I admired you, with your crooked eyebrow, and your curly hair, and your straight back!

"Well, it's all over for me, old fel' ... and nothing to show! I'll be twenty-six next month.... Life's a sad thing ... and empty! ... I wish--I wish I had done differently. It's good to feel your arm, Macgreegor! ... What time is it, old fel'? Pretty near closing-time? ..."

Three days later Jack, Mary, and Davy rode into Fort Cheever in the evening. On the fourth horse was lashed a significant looking bundle neatly wrapped in canvas, the canvas of the other dead man's tent. A heartfelt welcome awaited them. David Cranston showed no anger at his children. He only looked from Mary to Jack and back again with a kind of wistful, inquiring scowl.

During the interval of their absence the steamboat had arrived, and after waiting twenty-four hours, had returned down river only that morning, taking Sir Bryson and his party. Since nothing could be guessed of the probable return of Jack, the captain had not felt justified in waiting. Jack guessed, furthermore, that Sir Bryson had not exerted his authority to delay the steamer. The lieutenant-governor had had his fill of the North. The steamboat had brought up Sergeant Plaskett of the mounted police, and a trooper from the Crossing.

Garrod was buried at dusk on the hillside behind the fort. Sergeant Plaskett read the burial service. Afterward Jack told his story, and at daybreak the policemen started west to interview the Sapi Indians. Before noon they had returned with Ahcunazie, the eldest son of Etzeeah, and the members of his immediate family. He was on his way in to make peace with the authorities, as Jack had advised.

David Cranston learned something more from Mary, and something from Jack. The situation was too much for the honest trader. He shook his head dejectedly, and had nothing to offer. Measles broke out again among the Indians at Swan Lake--at least Mary said it had. At any rate, she rode away with Angus, Davy's next younger brother, the following day, and Jack did not see her again.

Cranston had a letter for Jack. Thus it ran, the paper blistered with tears, and the headlong words tumbling over each other:

MY OWN JACK: You _are_ mine, aren't you? I am nearly crazy. I don't know where you are or what has happened, and they're taking me away! How could you go without saying a word to me? How can you be so hard? As soon as you get this, come to me! Come to me wherever you are, or whatever has happened! I'll bring father around! Only come! I can't live unless you come! When I think of your failing me, I am ready to do anything! I have no one but you. They all look at me coldly. I am disgraced. Only you can save me. I love you! I love you! I love you! ...

And so on for many pages. Older heads can afford to smile, but to the inexperienced Jack it was terrible.

The police hearing was concluded two days later. At evening that day Jack, declining a lift down the river in Plaskett's canoe, pushed off alone on the same little raft that had brought him to Fort Cheever a month before.