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The Courage of Marge O'Doone, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI They went down into the plain. David strained his eyes, but he could see nothing where Father Roland had pointed except the purplish sea of forest growing black in the fading twilight. Ahead of the team Mukoki picked his way slowly and cautiously among the snow-hidden rocks, and with the Missioner David flung his weight backward on the sledge to keep it from running upon the dogs. It was a thick, wild place and it struck him that Tavish could not have chosen a spot of more sinister aspect in which to hide himself and his secret. A terribly lonely place it was, and still as death as they went down into it. They heard not even the howl of a dog, and surely Tavish had dogs. He was on the point of speaking, of asking the Missioner why Tavish, haunted by fear, should bury himself in a place like this, when the lead-dog suddenly stopped and a low, lingering whine drifted back to them. David had never heard anything like that whine. It swept through the line of dogs, from throat to throat, and the beasts stood stiff-legged and stark in their traces, staring with eight pairs of restlessly blazing eyes into the wall of darkness ahead. The Cree had turned, but the sharp command on his lips had frozen there. David saw him standing ahead of the team as silent and as motionless as rock. From him he looked into the Missioner's face. Father Roland was staring. There was a strange suspense in his breathing. And then, suddenly, the lead-dog sat back on his haunches and turning his gray muzzle up to the sky emitted a long and mournful howl. There was something about it that made David shiver. Mukoki came staggering back through the snow like a sick man. "_Nipoo-win Ooyoo!_" he said, his eyes shining like points of flame. A shiver seemed to be running through him. For a moment the Missioner did not seem to hear him. Then he cried: "Give them the whip! Drive them on!" The Cree turned, unwinding his long lash. "_Nipoo-win Ooyoo!_" he muttered again. The whip cracked over the backs of the huskies, the end of it stinging the rump of the lead-dog, who was master of them all. A snarl rose for an instant in his throat, then he straightened out, and the dogs lurched forward. Mukoki ran ahead, so that the lead-dog was close at his heels. "What did he say?" asked David. In the gloom the Missioner made a gesture of protest with his two hands. David could no longer see his face. "He is superstitious," he growled. "He is absurd. He would make the very devil's flesh creep. He says that old Beaver has given the death howl. Bah!" David could _feel_ the other's shudder in the darkness. They went on for another hundred yards. With a low word Mukoki stopped the team. The dogs were whining softly, staring straight ahead, when David and the Missioner joined the Cree. Father Roland pointed to a dark blot in the night, fifty paces beyond them. He spoke to David. "There is Tavish's cabin. Come. We will see." Mukoki remained with the team. They could hear the dogs whining as they advanced. The cabin took shape in their faces--grotesque, dark, lifeless. It was a foreboding thing, that cabin. He remembered in a flash all that the Missioner had told him about Tavish. His pulse was beating swiftly. A shiver ran up his back, and he was filled with a strange dread. Father Roland's voice startled him. "Tavish! Tavish!" it called. They stood close to the door, but heard no answer. Father Roland stamped with his foot, and scraped with his toe on the ground. "See, the snow has been cleaned away recently," he said. "Mukoki is a fool. He is superstitious. He made me, for an instant--afraid." There was a vast relief in his voice. The cabin door was unbolted and he flung it open confidently. It was pitch dark inside, but a flood of warm air struck their faces. The Missioner laughed. "Tavish, are you asleep?" he called. There was no answer. Father Roland entered. "He has been here recently. There is a fire in the stove. We will make ourselves at home." He fumbled in his clothes and found a match. A moment later he struck it, and lighted a tin lamp that hung from the ceiling. In its glow his face was of a strange colour. He had been under strain. The hand that held the burning match was unsteady. "Strange, very strange," he was saying, as if to himself. And then: "Preposterous! I will go back and tell Mukoki. He is shivering. He is afraid. He believes that Tavish is in league with the devil. He says that the dogs know, and that they have warned him. Queer. Monstrously queer. And interesting. Eh?" He went out. David stood where he was, looking about him in the blurred light of the lamp over his head. He almost expected Tavish to creep out from some dark corner; he half expected to see him move from under the dishevelled blankets in the bunk at the far end of the room. It was a big room, twenty feet from end to end, and almost as wide, and after a moment or two he knew that he was the only living thing in it, except a small, gray mouse that came fearlessly quite close to his feet. And then he saw a second mouse, and a third, and about him, and over him, he heard a creeping, scurrying noise, as of many tiny feet pattering. A paper on the table rustled, a series of squeaks came from the bunk, he felt something that was like a gentle touch on the toe of his moccasin, and looked down. The cabin was alive with mice! It was filled with the restless movement of them--little bright-eyed creatures who moved about him without fear, and, he thought, expectantly. He had not moved an inch when Father Roland came again into the cabin. He pointed to the floor. "The place is alive with them!" he protested. Father Roland appeared in great good humour as he slipped off his mittens and rubbed his hands over the stove. "Tavish's pets," he chuckled. "He says they're company. I've seen a dozen of them on his shoulders at one time. Queer. Queer." His hands made the rasping sound as he rubbed them. Suddenly he lifted a lid from the stove and peered into the fire-box. "He put fuel in here less than an hour ago," he said. "Wonder where he can be mouching at this hour. The dogs are gone." He scanned the table. "No supper. Pans clean. Mice hungry. He'll be back soon. But we won't wait. I'm famished." He spoke swiftly, and filled the stove with wood. Mukoki began bringing in the dunnage. The uneasy gleam was still in his eyes. His gaze was shifting and restless with expectation. He came and went noiselessly, treading as though he feared his footsteps would awaken some one, and David saw that he was afraid of the mice. One of them ran up his sleeve as they were eating supper, and he flung it from him with a strange, quick breath, his eyes blazing. "_Muche Munito!_" he shuddered. He swallowed the rest of his meat hurriedly, and after that took his blankets, and with a few words in Cree to the Missioner left the cabin. "He says they are little devils--the mice," said Father Roland, looking after him reflectively. "He will sleep near the dogs. I wonder how far his intuition goes? He believes that Tavish harbours bad spirits in this cabin, and that they have taken the form of mice. Pooh! They're cunning little vermin. Tavish has taught them tricks. Watch this one feed out of my hand!" Half a dozen times they had climbed to David's shoulders. One of them had nestled in a warm furry ball against his neck, as if waiting. They were certainly companionable--quite chummy, as the Missioner said. No wonder Tavish harboured them in his loneliness. David fed them and let them nibble from his fingers, and yet they gave him a distinctly unpleasant sensation. When the Missioner had finished his last cup of coffee he crumbled a thick chunk of bannock and placed it on the floor back of the stove. The mice gathered round it in a silent, hungry, nibbling horde. David tried to count them. There must have been twenty. He felt an impulse to scoop them up in something, Tavish's water pail for instance, and pitch them out into the night. The creatures became quieter after their gorge on bannock crumbs. Most of them disappeared. For a long time David and the Missioner sat smoking their pipes, waiting for Tavish. Father Roland was puzzled and yet he was assured. He was puzzled because Tavish's snow shoes hung on their wooden peg in one of the cross logs and his rifle was in its rack over the bunk. "I didn't know he had another pair of snow shoes," he said. "Still, it is quite a time since I have seen him--a number of weeks. I came down in the early November snow. He is not far away or he would have taken his rifle. Probably setting a few fresh poison-baits after the storm." They heard the sweep of a low wind. It often came at night after a storm, usually from off the Barrens to the northwest. Something thumped gently against the outside of the cabin, a low, peculiarly heavy and soft sort of sound, like a padded object, with only the log wall separating it from the bunk. Their ears caught it quite distinctly. "Tavish hangs his meat out there," the Missioner explained, observing the sudden direction of David's eyes. "A haunch of moose, or, if he has been lucky, of caribou. I had forgotten Tavish's cache or we might have saved our meat." He ran a hand through his thick, grayish hair until it stood up about his head like a brush. David tried not to reveal his restlessness as they waited. At each new sound he hoped that what he heard was Tavish's footsteps. He had quite decidedly planned his action. Tavish would enter, and of course there would be greetings, and possibly half an hour or more of smoking and talk before he brought up the Firepan Creek country, unless, as might fortuitously happen, Father Roland spoke of it ahead of him. After that he would show Tavish the picture, and he would stand well in the light so that it would be impressed upon Tavish all at once. He noticed that the chimney of the lamp was sooty and discoloured, and somewhat to the Missioner's amusement he took it off and cleaned it. The light was much more satisfactory then. He wandered about the cabin, scrutinizing, as if out of curiosity, Tavish's belongings. There was not much to discover. Close to the bunk there was a small battered chest with riveted steel ribs. He wondered whether it was unlocked, and what it contained. As he stood over it he could hear plainly the _thud, thud, thud_, of the thing outside--the haunch of meat--as though some one were tapping fragments of the Morse code in a careless and broken sort of way. Then, without any particular motive, he stepped into the dark corner at the end of the bunk. An agonized squeak came from under his foot, and he felt something small and soft flatten out, like a wad of dough. He jumped back. An exclamation broke from his lips. It was unpleasant, though the soft thing was nothing more than a mouse. "Confound it!" he said. Father Roland was listening to the slow, pendulum-like _thud_, _thud_, _thud_, against the logs of the cabin. It seemed to come more distinctly as David crushed out the life of the mouse, as if pounding a protest upon the wall. "Tavish has hung his meat low," he said concernedly. "Quite careless of him, unless it is a very large quarter." He began slowly to undress. "We might as well turn in," he suggested. "When Tavish shows up the dogs will raise bedlam and wake us. Throw out Tavish's blankets and put your own in his bunk. I prefer the floor. Always did. Nothing like a good, smooth floor...." He was interrupted by the opening of the cabin door. The Cree thrust in his head and shoulders. He came no farther. His eyes were afire with the smouldering gleam of garnets. He spoke rapidly in his native tongue to the Missioner, gesturing with one lean, brown hand as he talked. Father Roland's face became heavy, furrowed, perplexed. He broke in suddenly, in Cree, and when he ceased speaking Mukoki withdrew slowly. The last David saw of the Indian was his shifting, garnet-like eyes, disappearing like beads of blackish flame. "_Pest!_" cried the Little Missioner, shrugging his shoulders in disgust. "The dogs are uneasy. Mukoki says they smell death. They sit on their haunches, he says, staring--staring at nothing, and whining like puppies. He is going back with them to the other side of the ridge. If it will ease his soul, let him go." "I have heard of dogs doing that," said David. "Of course they will do it," shot back Father Roland unhesitatingly. "Northern dogs always do it, and especially mine. They are accustomed to death. Twenty times in a winter, and sometimes more, I care for the dead. They always go with me, and they can smell death in the wind. But here--why, it is absurd! There is nothing dead here--unless it is that mouse, and Tavish's meat!" He shook himself, grumbling under his breath at Mukoki's folly. And then: "The dogs have always acted queerly when Tavish was near," he added in a lower voice. "I can't explain why; they simply do. Instinct, possibly. His presence makes them uneasy. An unusual man, this Tavish. I wish he would come. I am anxious for you to meet him." That his mind was quite easy on the score of Tavish's physical well-being he emphasized by falling asleep very shortly after rolling himself up in his blankets on the floor. During their three nights in camp David had marvelled at and envied the ease with which Father Roland could drop off into profound and satisfactory slumber, this being, as his new friend had explained to him, the great and underlying virtue of a good stomach. To-night, however, the Missioner's deep and regular breathing as he lay on the floor was a matter of vexation to him. He wanted him awake. He wanted him up and alive, thoroughly alive, when Tavish came. "Pounding his ear like a tenderfoot," he thought, "while I, a puppy in harness, couldn't sleep if I wanted to." He was nervously alert. He filled his pipe for the third or fourth time and sat down on the edge of the bunk, listening for Tavish. He was certain, from all that had been said, that Tavish would come. All he had to do was wait. There had been growing in him, a bit unconsciously at first, a feeling of animosity toward Tavish, an emotion that burned in him with a gathering fierceness as he sat alone in the dim light of the cabin, grinding out in his mental restlessness visions of what Tavish might have done. Conviction had never been stronger in him. Tavish, if he had guessed correctly, was a fiend. He would soon know. And if he was right, if Tavish had done that, if up in those mountains.... His eyes blazed and his hands were clenched as he looked down at Father Roland. After a moment, without taking his eyes from the Missioner's recumbent form, he reached to the pocket of his coat which he had flung on the bunk and drew out the picture of the Girl. He looked at it a long time, his heart growing warm, and the tense lines softening in his face. "It can't be," he whispered. "She is alive!" As if the wind had heard him, and was answering, there came more distinctly the sound close behind him. _Thud! Thud! Thud!_ There was a silence, in which David closed his fingers tightly about the picture. And then, more insistently: _Thud! Thud! Thud!_ He put the picture back into his pocket, and rose to his feet. Mechanically he slipped on his coat. He went to the door, opened it softly, and passed out into the night. The moon was above him, like a great, white disc. The sky burned with stars. He could see now to the foot of the ridge over which Mukoki had gone, and the clearing about the cabin lay in a cold and luminous glory. Tavish, if he had been caught in the twilight darkness and had waited for the moon to rise, would be showing up soon. He walked to the side of the cabin and looked back. Quite distinctly he could see Tavish's meat, suspended from a stout sapling that projected straight out from under the edge of the roof. It hung there darkly, a little in shadow, swinging gently in the wind that had risen, and tap-tap-tapping against the logs. David moved toward it, gazing at the edge of the forest in which he thought he had heard a sound that was like the creak of a sledge runner. He hoped it was Tavish returning. For several moments he listened with his back to the cabin. Then he turned. He was very close to the thing hanging from the sapling. It was swinging slightly. The moon shone on it, and then--Great God! A face--a human face! A face, bearded, with bulging, staring eyes, gaping mouth--a grin of agony frozen in it! And it was tapping, tapping, tapping! He staggered back with a dreadful cry. He swayed to the door, groped blindly for the latch, stumbled in clumsily, like a drunken man. The horror of that lifeless, grinning face was in his voice. He had awakened the Missioner, who was sitting up, staring at him. "Tavish ..." cried David chokingly; "Tavish--is dead!" and he pointed to the end of the cabin where they could hear again that _tap-tap-tapping_ against the log wall. _ |
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