Chapter XI: The Voice of Warning

Dusk was falling, and a hush of emptiness and desolation brooded over the clearing. The cabin door was closed, and no smoke came from the mud-daubed chimney. Dexter's eyes searched over the ground, and he saw only the single track of footprints. Evidently the girl was the only one who had crossed here, either departing or arriving, since the fall of yesterday's snow.

Quite certain that the dwelling had no present tenant, the corporal nevertheless was taking no chances. Slinging his carbine at his back, he drew his heavy service pistol. Then, without further ado, he stepped forward to investigate.

The cabin was constructed of freshly peeled logs, saddle-notched, and in size and method of building, it was a practical duplication of the other mysterious habitation which he had stumbled upon last night in this same lonesome valley. He recalled the story told him by Mudgett--of a so-called settler and trapper named Stark who had put up a shack somewhere in this direction. Possibly this was the cabin mentioned.

The latchstring dangled invitingly on the outside, and, without pausing to reconnoiter, the corporal pulled up the fastening bar and shoved the door open. He crossed the threshold, and found himself in a large, square room, dimly revealed in the failing daylight. In the gloom he made out a stone fireplace, and a pole bunk built against the opposite wall.

As he stood blinking, trying to accustom his vision to the semi-darkness, he heard a quick rustling sound, and was suddenly aware of a white face and a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him from the bunk.

"Hello!" he ejaculated, taken aback for an instant by the unexpected apparition. "If I'd imagined any one was here I'd have knocked."

He crossed the floor and saw a man's blanketed shape, propped half erect in the bunk. A glance told the corporal that the other was a stranger. He was a smooth-faced youth, nineteen or twenty years old probably, with drawn, haggard features, dank, uncut hair, and wide-spaced, staring eyes that glowed with feverish brightness in the gathering dusk. His weight was rigidly supported on one elbow, and a look of seeming consternation flitted across his face as he caught sight of the police uniform.

"What--what do you want here?" he faltered in a straining undertone.

Dexter did not answer. "Who are you?" he countered. "What's your name?"

"Why, it's--Smith," said the boy with a noticeable stumbling. "Tom Smith."

The corporal's mouth twisted skeptically. "Seems to me I've heard that name somewhere else. Smith, eh? Well, Smith, what's the matter with you? Sick?"

The boy stirred and brought his bare arm from under the blanket. "Ax slipped and cut me, and the thing's got infected," he said. "I've been in agony for two days."

"I should think so!" exclaimed Dexter. The forearm was darkly inflamed, swollen to twice its normal dimensions, and reddish purple streaks had begun to creep upward to the shoulder joint. "You've neglected this for two days?"

"I didn't know what to do with it."

"Then you've no business in this country." Dexter regarded the young man curiously. "These little accidents are always apt to occur, and unless you've got the nerve and sense to do your own surgery, you'd better stay where hospitals are handy."

He turned his back for a moment and put away his pistol. Then, unobserved, he drew a small, thin bladed knife from his pocket. "Here!" he said. "Let's see that."

Gripping the injured arm firmly, he leaned forward and found the seat of the wound. Then, with merciful swiftness, before the other could guess his purpose, he slashed with his sharp blade, cutting deep into the throbbing flesh. The boy jerked away, screaming in sudden anguish.

"Oh, you--what have you done?" he moaned.

"In town they'd have given you an anæsthetic," remarked the officer. "Here we've got to take what comes, and bear it. You should have done that for yourself yesterday."

The stranger groaned feebly, and hugged his wrist, and for the moment, evidently, speech was beyond him.

"All we need now is hot water, and plenty of antiseptics," said Dexter. "We can do."

He crossed to the hearth, laid kindling, and ignited a fire. This done, he went outside, and returned a moment later with a snow-filled kettle to hang over the flame.

"How do you feel now?" he asked, going back to the bunk.

"I think--a little better," came a weak answer from the pillow. "It's a different kind of hurt."

"If I hadn't come along you would have died--about four days from now," said the policeman lightly. "As it is, you should be able to handle an ax again in about four days."

"I suppose I ought to thank you," said Smith after a little silence.

"I expect you ought to. You'll sleep to-night." Dexter grinned encouragingly. "Hungry?"

"Not very."

"I am." The corporal unslung his pack, and turned to investigate the culinary resources of the shack. His search discovered a well stocked larder, and he calmly helped himself to such things as he required. He kneaded dough for bannock bread and set the loaf baking, started coffee, and sliced a liberal quantity of bacon. By the time these preparations were made, the kettle of snow water was boiling.

He dissolved tablets from his emergency kit in a strong solution, and then swathed the arm of his wincing patient in steaming bandages. "We'll keep that about ten degrees hotter than you think you can stand it," he asserted. "And the first thing you know you'll be off the casualty list."

Dexter returned to his cooking, and when the simple meal was finally ready, he heaped a plate for Smith, and then set a place for himself at a slab table near the bunk.

"Whose cabin is this?" he asked abruptly as he pulled up a stool.

The boy hesitated for a second, and then apparently decided that there was no harm in telling the truth. "It belongs to Owen Stark," he said.

"Stark!" the corporal nodded. So this was the shack that Mudgett had mentioned. "Who's Owen Stark? I don't know him."

"A trapper," was the reply. "He intends to live here this winter."

"What about you? You're not a woodsman."

"No," admitted the other after a pause. "Stark invited me to visit him--for the fall hunting. I don't expect to stay much longer."

"Where's Stark now?" the policeman asked as he applied himself to his plate.

"He went up the valley somewhere--probably twenty miles or so north of here. Left two days ago, and I wouldn't expect him back much before to-morrow. Looking for places to run his trap line."

Dexter offered no comment. It was a plausible enough story--if Stark were really a trapper. Yet there was something anxious and overstrained in the boy's speech, as though he might be inventing his answers. Or again, perhaps it was only his arm that troubled him.

"Stark went off and left you here alone?" the corporal asked with a slantwise glance.

"Yes. I wasn't so bad at the time."

During his inspection of the cabin interior, Dexter had noticed a woman's cloak and hat hanging on one of the wall pegs. Now he suddenly turned, and pointed with his thumb. "Whom do those belong to?" he demanded.

The patient moved gingerly under his blanket, rolling his head so he might see. "Those are Mrs. Stark's," he said.

"What?" The exclamation came sharply, before Dexter could control his voice, and his knife and fork dropped on the table. "You mean to say--she's married?" He stared for a moment with puckered brows, and then almost instantly recalled himself. "I mean--Stark has a wife?"

"Yes."

"She left here yesterday?" asked the corporal in low, curiously restrained accents.

"No," returned the other unhesitatingly. "She left a couple of weeks ago for a visit in the settlements. She hasn't come back yet."

"Let's get this straight," said Dexter after a tense interlude, "She's been away for a couple of weeks, you say. What's she like? Rather pretty girl, copper-tinted hair, large blue eyes--wearing--"

"No," interrupted Smith. "Not at all."

Dexter drew a short breath. "Well?" he demanded.

"Vera Stark's not a girl, but a woman about thirty-five," stated the boy. "Thin--dark complexion--jet black hair and eyes."

"Oh, I see." Dexter picked up his knife and fork, and started to eat once more with a healthy man's appetite. For the moment his attention was fixed upon his plate, but he was somehow aware that furtive eyes were watching him from the shadow of the bunk.

"You seem to have got her mixed up with some one else," his companion presently ventured to remark.

"Yes, it would seem so." The corporal looked up with a retrospective smile. "The one I was thinking of, I happened to meet yesterday in the lower valley. Her shoe tracks would indicate that she came from this cabin. Know her?"

"There was a girl such as you describe--here--yesterday," said Smith. He turned on his pillow and yawned, with every sign of indifference.

"Who was she?" asked the policeman crisply.

"She didn't say. Didn't tell me a thing about herself. And I was too sick to be very curious." The boy stretched himself and buried his head deeper in the pillow. "Gee--I feel better," he murmured. "This is the first comfortable minute I've had--"

"Where'd she come from?" interrupted the officer.

"I didn't ask her," replied the other in a drowsy voice.

"Just dropped in from nowhere?"

"Yes. Wanted to rest a while, and get out of the snow. When it stopped snowing she went on her way." The young man sighed, and pulled the blanket higher, as though to keep the firelight out of his eyes. "I would have thought it funny," he pursued in a dreamy, far-away tone--"a girl like that--alone--but as I told you I was so miserable, I didn't think--I didn't ask her anything about herself." The voice trailed off to a whisper, and speech momentarily failed.

"That's all you can tell me about her?"

"'S all."

"Where are you from yourself?" asked the officer.

"Montreal," was the sleepy reply.

"How long you been here?"

No answer came from the bunk.

Dexter stood up and crossed the room, to look down at the face on the pillow. The boy's eyes were shut, and his breathing was deep and regular, as though he had fallen into a doze. Perhaps he was shamming to avoid further questioning. Perhaps not. It was quite likely that he had not slept for nights, and was on the verge of complete exhaustion. Now--soothed by the hot bandages, relieved from his long protracted pain--he might easily drop off like this in the middle of a word.

Upon reflection the officer decided not to disturb him. Possibly he knew more than he was willing to tell about the mysterious girl. But he could go on with sweeping denials of ever having seen her before, and Dexter knew from experience how impossible it is to pin down a witness who persists in answering in general negatives. Besides, if the boy were really suffering from lack of sleep, it would be cruelty to force him to stay awake.

The policeman himself was beginning to feel the effect of long, jading hours. He sat for a while, musing over the fire, but after darkness had fallen it occurred to him that he might as well call it a day. A last reconnaissance out-of-doors convinced him that, for the time being at least, he and his chance-found cabin mate were the only mortal beings existent in that particular section of the forest. It was a breathless night, deathly silent. A bank of low-hanging clouds scudded over the tree tops, and the weighted air held the promise of snow. He went back into the cabin, discreetly barred the door and withdrew the latch cord, and then spread his blanket by the fireplace and rolled up for the night. In two minutes he was sunk in profoundest slumber.

Hours passed, and the silence endured. From time to time Dexter was vaguely aware of a fretful stirring and moaning in the darkness where the bunk stood, but such sounds were self-explanatory and gave him no reason to awaken. The fire burned to dead ashes, and the early morning chill crept through the room, but he only drew his blanket tighter. But sometime near the approach of dawn, at the darkest, stillest hour of ebbing night-tide, a queer, faint buzzing noise broke suddenly upon his inner consciousness.

In a flash he roused himself, trying to see through the gloom, listening for some repetition of the sound. He had almost persuaded himself that imagination had tricked him, and was on the point of reaching again for the blanket flap, when, all at once, a muffled voice began to speak from the bunk. The tones were repressed and rather unsteady, but the words were intelligible.

"I'm all right. Lots better. Policeman fixed me up." It was the boy, apparently talking to himself in the darkness.

The tenseness of Dexter's attitude promptly relaxed. His patient no doubt was feverish, a little delirious--maundering in his sleep. Nevertheless the corporal waited, mildly curious to know what else might be said.

He was not kept long in suspense. "You were?" exclaimed the voice, as though questioning a fanciful person. "And got away? That's good, anyhow."

There followed another short silence, and then the speaker in the bunk was heard again. "No!" This time the tone seemed to carry a sharp warning. "Don't come here. Go to the Saddle Notch. Somebody'll meet you there. Understand?"

As he listened Dexter stiffened to keen alertness. This was not like the raving of a dreaming man. The words were beginning to make sense. And there were definite pauses between sentences, as though the speaker were waiting for some one else to reply. As the corporal leaned forward, trying to see in the darkness, he was grimly reminded of last night's strange events--of another lonely cabin, of another voice heard in seeming conversation with an unidentified some one who answered mysteriously from somewhere else.

He waited, breathless, and the boy spoke once more. "See you later," he declared. "Good luck." And then he ended with a farewell utterance that brought Dexter to his feet in gasping wonderment. "Good-by, Alison!" he said.