Chapter XXVI: Man and Woman

A voyageur in the best physical trim would have found it fatiguing to travel along the rough mountain slopes, breaking a path over fallen snow crust, wallowing through deep, soggy drifts. Before he had traveled a mile of his journey, Dexter found himself growing short of breath, slipping and floundering more than a trained mountaineer should. It took determination to push onward, but he kept going as long as he could; until his head was reeling and his legs tottered under him. The heavy pounding of his heart warned him at last, and he had sense enough to quit. He was anxious to reach Devreaux, but he must take his time about it.

It was an hour or more before sundown when he finally admitted that he could go no farther. They made camp in the lee of a warm rock ledge, the corporal helping to gather sticks to build the night fire. The remains of the rabbit stew were heated, and as soon as he had eaten his supper, Dexter rolled up in a blanket and almost instantly dropped off into profound slumber. He slept all night like a dead man, and did not awaken until the morning sun flooded upon him over the eastern mountain peaks.

Every bone and muscle of his body was an aching torment, but he forced himself to his feet, and as soon as possible he and Alison resumed their northward journey. They moved by easy stages up the valley that day, stopping at intervals for rest, and then pushing on again a little farther. And some time during mid-afternoon they crossed the flank of a forested hillslope, and caught a distant view of Saddle Mountain, looming in pale white outline against the limpid sky.

Complete exhaustion forced the corporal to call a halt at a point five or six miles south of the double peaks, but he went to sleep that evening with the assurance that he would be able to reach his destination by noon of the following day.

Alison, for some reason, was in a subdued and quiet mood when they set forth next morning to finish the last stage of their journey. She answered the corporal's occasional remarks in the barest monosyllables, but she kept closer at his side than usual; and frequently, when she thought he was not looking, she would glance stealthily towards him, from under veiling lashes, as though she had grown curious to know what thoughts lurked behind the stern immobility of his weather-bronzed face. Several times Dexter caught her unawares, before she could turn her eyes away, and he gathered, from her troubled expression, that there was something on her mind that needed saying. It was not until they were climbing the last slope across the base of Saddle Mountain, however, that she finally broke the silence that had lasted between them all that morning.

"I wonder what you think of me?" she blurted out unexpectedly.

The suddenness of the question startled him. "Why--what do you mean?"

"You know what I mean!" She spoke in a voice tremulous with repressed feeling. "But there's no need of asking. It's horrible--what I realize you do think. And I can't--it's almost more than I can bear."

"Why, Alison," he began wonderingly, "you must know--"

She interrupted with a passionate gesture. "I do know. That newspaper clipping you showed me--it's about me and my brother. We ran away--yes. That much is true, but the rest of it is a lie--a shameless lie. Neither Archie nor I had anything to do with my uncle's--with the dreadful thing they charged. I'm telling you the truth. I swear it's the truth!"

Dexter looked down grimly at the girl, steeling his heart against the appeal of beseeching blue eyes. "It's been my experience," he observed, "that innocent people as a rule do not run from the law."

"I know--I know!" she cried brokenly. "It looks bad not to stay, and I wanted to stay and face it out. We never would have left home if I'd had my way!"

"Well?" he asked mildly.

"As you read in the clipping," she went on in quick, overwrought speech, "my uncle, our guardian, died, and it was found that a poison had been given him. Archie and I were his heirs. We were--the police discovered that we were the only ones in the household who had easy access to his medicine. Archie had been foolishly playing the market, had lost heavily, was in desperate financial straits. That all came out, and--well, we got word that a murder indictment had been brought by the grand jury. And Archie lost his head--saw no hope of escape if he stayed--decided there was nothing to do but run while he had the chance."

"He got together all the money he could," she added in a choking voice; "he packed a bag, and left secretly in the night. But I had been watching." She shook her head sadly. "Archie is younger than I, the baby--I've got to say it--the weakling of the family. I knew he would do the wrong thing. And I followed him and overtook him at the station as he was about to board a west-bound train. I argued, pleaded, begged him to stay and see it through. He was afraid--desperately. I could do nothing with him, and so at the end--there was nothing for me to do but get on the train and go with him. He's always needed looking after, and at the last--well, I had to stand by him. I couldn't let him go alone."

"Believing him innocent, of course," Dexter remarked dryly.

Alison threw up her head and confronted her companion with flashing eyes. "I know he is innocent!" she declared passionately. "I didn't even ask him to swear to me. I've known him all his life, and I know he's utterly incapable of that crime--of any crime. I've never blinded myself to his weaknesses, but I know also that he could never have done this thing."

"In any event," observed the corporal, walking onward with a slow, deliberate stride, "he lacked the courage of innocence, and cleared out. I suppose he had already bargained with one of Stark's agents to help him escape through the Canadian wilderness."

"With--what do you mean?" asked the girl sharply.

"I know all about Stark and his organization for fugitive criminals," Dexter said. "I'd already suspected the existence of an underground railroad, running through this country." His lips twisted into a fleeting smile. "And Stark himself did me the honor to tell me the details of his business--when he thought I was doomed to certain death."

"In that case," said Alison after a little pause, "I'm not betraying--Yes: one of Stark's men came to Archie in his trouble. He offered the chance of escape, took all the money Archie had left and Stark has helped us this far on our way.

"It's--I can't ask you to have my faith in Archie," the girl resumed after a momentary pause. "It isn't about him that I really want to talk, but--" She glanced towards Dexter with a timidity that he had never before seen in her eyes. "It's about the night you found me at that cabin where--where the men were killed."

"Yes?" he urged as she hesitated.

Alison's rounded chin set resolutely. It was apparent that there was something she had decided to say, and she did not propose to mince matters. "You told me that you heard a woman's voice in that cabin over yonder, just before the two men were shot in their bunks. You say there were no footprints near the place beside my own. So by police logic you arrive at the only deduction that fits the case. I must have fired the shots."

They had climbed the southward slope leading across the foot of Saddle Mountain, and were now making their way over a stretch of rough, furrowed ground along the edge of the open plateau. Dexter absently offered his hand to steady the girl's steps across a slippery outcropping of rock. "You came to that cabin that night from the cabin farther up the valley, where I afterwards found your brother," he stated with thoughtfully knitting brows. "Why did you make that journey alone at such an hour?"

"To find help for Archie," she answered. "You saw him yourself next day, and know how badly he needed it. I didn't know what to do for him, and so I went down the valley to the lower cabin, looking for some one who might know more about such matters than I."

"Who in particular?" the corporal persisted.

"Anybody who might have been there. What difference did it make who, as long as he could do something to relieve Archie of his pain?"

Dexter eyed the girl covertly for a space as she walked at his elbow. "Did you know a man named Mudgett?" he inquired.

"I don't remember seeing such a person, but I think I'd heard the name."

"One of Stark's gang, wasn't he?"

"Why, possibly he and Mr. Stark were associated in some way. I'm not positive though."

"Who was Mudgett's companion that night--small, swarthy, hook-beaked chap with sullen black eyes?"

"I don't recall seeing any man who answers that description," Alison asserted.

"He and Mudgett were the two who were shot," Dexter said, as he keenly scrutinized her sensitive features.

The girl nodded slowly, without speaking.

"You had no feelings against either of these men? They didn't know anything you were afraid they might tell?"

Alison's face blanched under her companion's merciless gaze, and he saw it was all she could do to keep back her tears. "Oh, what could--I swear to you--I didn't know either of them, even by sight. So why would I--what motive could there be?"

"I've been asking myself that question for months," Dexter observed. "The motive? All I know is that the woman's voice I heard talking in that dark cabin said something about dead tongues never talking. The few fragments of speech suggested the idea that either fear or vengeance had much to do with the tragedy. You have no notion of what it all meant?"

"No!" she moaned. "How could I? I don't know anything more than you yourself have told me."

The corporal strode along for a distance in meditative silence, soberly watching the ground underfoot. Alison looked up at him, and shook her head, and sighed. "It isn't that I'm hoping to influence you in your duty," she said at last in a small, stifled voice. "I don't think I---I'd want you to yield an inch from the straight line as you see it, even if I could persuade you. And I know I couldn't. I'm not asking anything, only--"

"Only what?" he asked as she failed to finish.

"I want you to believe that I have done nothing wrong," she said in stumbling accents. "I know what I've got to go through later with others, but if you didn't think evil of me, then I--it would make it a little easier."

"You were the only woman in that section of the forest that night," Dexter stated dully, and deep lines of unhappiness were graven at the corners of his mouth. "Can I deny the testimony of my own eyes and ears? I was there, and saw and heard."

"Try to believe in me," she sobbed. "I--I'm not bad. Won't you try to think that I'm not? Please!"

"As a man, I want to believe: you know that! But as a policeman--" He turned his head aside for a moment to hide the anguish in his face. "As a policeman," he went on somberly, "I've got to believe in the evidence that I gather--in facts."

"Don't think of evidence now," she begged in a piteous voice. "Think--try to think--just of me."

"I've done little else but that, Alison, since the first night I saw you," he told her with a faint, sad smile.

"Then--" She caught her breath with a quivering sound. "Look at me, David!" Her hand fluttered towards him and touched his wrist. "Look!"

Slowly he turned, and found himself gazing deep into her eyes--straight-seeing eyes, clear and soft blue as violets--eyes overflowing with womanly sweetness, giving back his glance, unafraid and unashamed.

"Do you believe?" she whispered.

He gazed long and searchingly, and somehow all sense of doubting left him. "I do!" he declared suddenly, in a straining voice. "I've got to. What else can I do? It's impossible not to believe the truth when you see it. I believe in you."

"Oh!" she said with a full-drawn sigh, and Dexter saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes as her lashes slowly closed. "That's all I wanted," she breathed.

"Alison!" he cried. He swayed towards her, impelled by an overwhelming desire to touch her, to feel her nearness, to draw her into the comforting circle of his arm. "Alison!"

The girl lifted her head to face him, seeing the look he gave her, and she did not move away. "Yes," she said, so low he barely heard.

He stood for an instant in wavering silence, and then all at once he caught himself with a startled movement. The muscles of his body stiffened, and the inflexible line of his jaw reasserted itself. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said.

They had halted for a moment on the open plateau, standing in knee deep snow; but now Dexter turned with heavy steps and started to break his way forward once more through the drift. Alison at once caught pace with him.

"I hadn't asked you to do anything about it," she reminded him quietly.

Dexter gave no sign of hearing her, but went on in a ruminative voice, following the train of his own thoughts. "I must take you to the fort with me, and lay all our data before the commissioner. What I may feel in my heart, and what the logic of the law decides, are two different matters. I'm still a policeman, Alison, whatever else I may be, and I'm going through straight--clean."

"Listen!" the girl interrupted sharply. She threw up her chin, and there was a compelling quality in her tone that forced him to meet her eyes. "I have asked for only one thing--just blind, honest faith. You have given it to me. Don't spoil it, David, please! I've asked for nothing else."

"I didn't exactly mean it that way," Dexter said unsteadily.

"I hope you didn't," she returned, "because--I know as well as you know that you could never do anything that wasn't absolutely right in your own mind. If you ever failed in a trust you wouldn't be you." She smiled wanly. "And then--things wouldn't matter much one way or another--would they?"

"Don't!" he protested. "Please! Let's not talk like this. Let's try and find the way out somehow."

They were not more than fifty yards from the coppice where the entrance of the bear cave was hidden. If Devreaux were at home a shout would have reached him, but the corporal for the time being had forgotten the existence of his commanding officer, and did not think to announce himself. He trudged along with bent head, weighed in profoundest thought. But at last the scowl cleared from his face, and he looked up intense and eager.

"I'll tell you!" he exclaimed. "Here's what we can do!"

"What?" The girl stared at him, apparently a little frightened by his sudden vehemence.

"My enlistment expires this spring," he declared. "I won't reenlist."

"Then what?" she asked, a strange limpness sounding in her voice.

"Why, then, I'll be my own man, of course."

"You won't be your own man until you've discharged your present duties," Alison said with a quick, sidewise glance.

"Of course not," he agreed. "I'll have to take you to the fort and turn you over. They're decent chaps down there. They'll make it as easy as possible for you--"

"Oh, I see," Alison interrupted. "I didn't quite understand what you meant."

"Just this," he plunged on--"I come back here as a free agent. There's a mystery in all this business that we haven't even begun to fathom. The facts as they stand make things look very black for you, but we'll get at the bottom of the affair somehow. I'll work day and night. I'll never rest until I dig out the truth. You've forced me against my reason to believe in you absolutely, and with such faith to back me, I know that I cannot fail!"

Dexter had entered the thicket beyond the treeless plateau, and was picking his way absentmindedly over the broken ground. The entrance of the cave was only a few paces distant, concealed behind a clump of bushes. As he skirted the fringe of underbrush, he discovered a trail of freshly made boot prints. The sight of the footmarks recalled him sharply to himself, and for the first time in the last half hour he thought of Devreaux. The colonel evidently was somewhere about, still waiting for his return.

Forcing his way through the screening branches, he reached the foot of the mountain slope and stood before the dark mouth of the cave. The line of footprints went inside. "Colonel Devreaux!" he called. "Oh, colonel!"

Nobody replied. But as he bent forward to look into the opening, he caught a sudden movement in the gloom, and the next instant a human figure loomed into view, and Dexter found himself staring full in the muzzle of a leveled rifle.

"Hands up!" commanded a sharp, high-pitched voice.

The corporal stood stock-still, gazing in blank amazement at the face that peered at him from behind the rifle sights. And all at once he recognized the unexpected intruder, and he caught his breath in wonderment. The man was Alison's brother, Archie.