Читать книгу Never Fire First - James French Dorrance - Страница 6

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In his grown-up life, Sergeant Seymour had met a procession of emergencies. Seldom had he failed to do the right and proper thing—the best for all concerned. But never had he faced a more difficult proposition than that presented by the young woman who now faced him on the trail, awaiting news of the brother she had journeyed so far to join.

When he thought of what lay in the hut they had just replaced under Mounted Police seal, he was distressed to the quick. When he pondered the distress and disappointment that must be hers when she learned the truth, that hidden strain of kindness within him promptly interposed barrier against his blurting out the facts, police fashion. He felt that he must temporize.

"You've come to the right camp, Miss O'Malley, but your brother won't be in to-night. In the morning——. But surely you did not mush from the Mackenzie alone?"

A small sigh, doubtless of disappointment at the further delay, passed her lips; but no exclamation came. Evidently she was a self-contained young person.

No, she explained readily, she had not come alone. The Rev. Luke Morrow and his wife were behind with another sled and they had traveled only from Wolf Lake. The Rev. Morrow, it seemed, was a friend and fellow churchman of her father, then stationed at Gold, British Columbia.

"Only mushed from Wolf Lake!" exclaimed Constable La Marr, stressing the only, although after one glance into her wonder face he was hating himself the more for having let the fox hunter get away from him.

The missionaries were having trail trouble, she continued. Being so near journey's end, she had dashed on with her lighter load, hoping to send her brother to help them into camp, as well as being the earlier to the reunion.

"Constable La Marr will go out at once," declared the sergeant. "How far are they?"

"Scarcely a mile. We were in sight of your flag when they spilled."

La Marr at once took the back trail, not waiting to go to the post for the worn police team nor, considering the distance, wishing to experiment with the girl's strange huskies.

At the moment Moira turned to quell an incipient dog fight; the sergeant turned quickly to Karmack.

"Not a word to her until after the inquest—until we've a chance to break it to her gently."

The trader nodded agreement and was introduced when she had straightened out her team.

"Mr. Karmack was—is your brother's chief here at lonely young Armistice."

For a moment he held his breath for fear the verb slip would be noticed and the question of tense raised. The girl, however, was too much interested in her surroundings to heed. The trader helped by bowing in his best manner and seizing one of her mittened hands in both his own for a warm greeting.

"A fine lad, Oliver. Dear eyes, what a fine chap!"

His startling exclamative caused her own eyes to open, but Karmack merely grinned in amiable fashion.

"I hope you and your friends will accept the poor hospitality of the trading post, at least for this night," he concluded heartily. "We'll have plenty of room."

"But isn't there a mission house," began the girl. "I thought the Morrows——"

Seymour interrupted.

"Nothing doing, Karmack, with your commercialized hospitality. They're the first visitors of the winter; I claim them in the name of the king." He turned to the girl. "The mission house hasn't been opened for months. We'll make you comfortable at the detachment barrack—won't have to use the guard room, either. If you'll draw rein at the flag pole——"

Her "mush—mush on!" to the dogs rang clear and gave the policeman further speech with the factor.

"You couldn't have her there to-night, Karmack, in view of what I have to tell her to-morrow. Her brother's things scattered all about——she'd ask too many questions. Have you tangled in no time."

Again Karmack nodded agreement. He hadn't thought of that, but only of being hospitable. It would have been a treat, though, to entertain such a charmer under the chaperonage of the missionary couple. He would send up some butter for their supper. That of the police stores smelled to the heavens.

"That's fine; if ours came from cows, they were athletes," Seymour replied with a grimace. "Come up with yourself for coffee. And I wish you'd send your man for their dogs and kennel them for the night. My malamutes raise Billy-blue when there's any new canine clan in sniffing distance."

The isolation of Armistice, with its difficulties of transportation, combined with its newness as a police post caused even the living room of the detachment to take on a barracks-like austerity.

The scant furniture had been made on the spot and was all too rustic. There were bunks along three walls and a scattering of skins upon the rough boards of the floor. A lithograph of King George, draped with the colors, occupied a position of honor, the only other decoration being a print of the widely popular "Eddie," Prince of Wales. But logs blazed cheerfully in the stone fireplace and Moira O'Malley, divested of her outer trail clothes, looked very much at home as she stood to its warmth.

Not until he returned from the kitchen and the starting of a "company" supper did Russell Seymour realize in full the startling beauty of the Irish girl who had come to them at such an unfortunate moment. She was within an inch of being as tall as himself as she stood there on the hearth. Her lampblack hair, coiled low on her lovely neck, actually was dressed to show her small ears—and almost had he forgotten that white women had pairs of such.

A generous mouth, full and red of lips, sent his eyes hastening on their fleeting inspection when she became aware of his presence in the kitchen doorway. If the even rows of pearls behind those lips had flashed him a smile then, the temptation must have been too great. Her slender figure merely hinted at rounding out in its mould of black blanket-cloth. He glanced shyly at her ankles—always the cover-point in his estimate of feminine pulchritude. She still wore her trail muckluks of fur, clumsy looking as a squaw's sacking, but he knew beyond doubt how silk stockings and pumps would become her.

In the eyes he had remarked on the trail, however, Moira's beauty reached its highest peak, he decided. They were as blue as the heart of an Ungova iceberg and as warm as the fire which glowed behind her. They looked out at him in a friendly, inquiring way from behind lashes as dark as an Arctic winter night.

And on the morrow those lashes would be wet with tears of grief. At the moment he'd gladly have given his hope of heaven to have ushered a laughing young Oliver O'Malley into the room.

"Decorative, to say the least," she remarked, at last flashing him the threatened smile.

"Yes, ma'am—what ma'am?" he stammered.

"The uniform of the Mounted as you wear it in that door frame," she teased him. "At that, I'd rather see it—you on a horse."

He fell back on the only defense he knew—a pretense at seriousness. "Up here we're the Royal Canadian Dis-Mounted Police, Miss O'Malley. We know only two seasons—dog and canoe. There isn't a single 'G' Division mount north of Fort Resolution. By the time I see a horse again, I'll probably have forgotten how to ride. I'll climb aboard Injun style and try to steer him by his tail."

The sergeant was glad to hear the crunch of steps upon the snow. Under the circumstances, he was in no mood for persiflage and more than willing to give up the bluff that seemed required. He stifled a sigh of relief as La Marr ushered in the missionaries.

A quiet couple, plain, both a trifle frail-looking for Arctic rigors, the Morrows proved to be. Serious as they were about "The Work" to which they were prepared to give years of sacrifice, both were "regulars" in the life of the North. Scarcely would they wait to warm up before insisting on helping their hosts prepare supper. Moira, too, insisted on having a hand. The lean-to kitchen refused to hold them all, however, so Seymour cited the "too many cooks" rule and discharged all but Mrs. Morrow.

The meal which soon was on the oilcloth was more substantial than formal. It consisted of warmed-up soup from a great kettle that held a week's supply at a time, then sizzling carabou steaks, sour-dough bread, boiled beans and bacon and, of course, marmalade from distant England. It was the sort of menu that "sticks to the ribs" gratefully after a day in the open. When Karmack came in for his promised coffee, he found the post gayer than ever he had known it to be. Yet, for three of them buoyancy was as forced as jigging at a wake.

With tact increased by the fear that some chance slip would disclose to their lovely guest the news that he felt temporarily should be kept from her, Sergeant Seymour discovered that the ladies were worn by their long run in the biting cold. He threw open the door of "officers' room," disclosing a wood fire crackling in a Yukon stove and two bunks spread with blankets fresh from the post's reserve supply.

"Not much to offer as a guest room, but our one best bet," he apologized. "I'll confess frankly that there isn't a single bunk-sheet in the detachment. But I think I can guarantee a sound sleep for both of you. I'll promise there'll be no breakfast alarm in the morning, but the makings of a meal will be beside the kitchen stove when you're ready."

Protest unexpected came from mild-mannered Mrs. Morrow. "But we're routing you out of house and home, sergeant," she exclaimed. With a nod of her blond head, she indicated an extra uniform which dangled from a hook against the wall, telltale staff stripes upon its crimson sleeve.

"A dreadful thing to do," added Moira. "And on your first night home after your long patrol!"

That portion of Seymour's face that was not bearded took color from the tunic that had betrayed him. "And I thought I'd removed all trace of the former occupant. Must be getting color blind." He carried the jacket into the living room. "Don't worry about your reverend, Mrs. Morrow; he'll bunk as snug as a bug out here with La Marr and me," he called back.

There was a chorus of good-nights; then the men settled to their pipes before the fireplace. After a reasonable wait in silence, Seymour lowered his voice and communicated to Luke Morrow the news of the tragedy. Without reservation, the missionary approved their course of keeping it from Moira until after the necessary legal formalities had been carried out. Then, he said, he would take charge with a religious reverence that might lighten the blow.

"She's a wonderful woman, Moira O'Malley," he said with deep feeling. "She endeared herself to everyone who met her over at Wolf Lake. Utterly wrapped up in her brother, this will be a terrible blow. I wonder if——" He hesitated. "Would it be admissible, do you think, to tell her of the death but not the fearful form?"

Glances exchanged by the three laymen showed that they appreciated the missionary's struggle—kindly thought against strict truthfulness. Long had he taught the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." But just now he wavered.

"By gar! It absolutely would!" Karmack vociferated.

Seymour's quick wit worked out a solution.

"An accident of the Arctic prairies. I'll trust having that one marked up against me in the Doomsday Book."

"Blessed are the kindly of heart," murmured the "sky-pilot." "So be it!"

Of course, they all realized that Moira would learn in time the nature of the "accident," but that need not be until Time had its chance to salve the wound. The arrest of Avic need not bring about disclosure, once the whites in Armistice were pledged to keep it from her. She might know him only as another unfortunate, misguided Eskimo slayer, a handcuff brother to Olespe of the Lady Franklin band, then in the guard room.

"But Mrs. Morrow?" The thought came suddenly to Seymour that the woman missionary spoke some Eskimo. "She'll hear of it from the natives."

Luke Morrow smiled; they did not know of the iron which was in the make-up of his little blond wife as he did.

"She is a good woman, so merciful. I will pray this out with her in the morning."

For a time, gloomy silence held the group around the fireplace. Suddenly Karmack leaned over and grasped Morrow almost roughly by the shoulder.

"Parson, do you know why that girl left her father and the comparative comforts of a British Columbia gold camp to share a trader's shack in bleak Armistice with her brother?"

The trader's demand scarcely could have been more vehement had he personally resented Moira's coming. "I know that he did not expect her. What's more, he never even spoke of having a sister."

The missionary's calm was perfect.

"She had no way of letting him know that she was coming to spend the winter with him, once the wireless she sent to Edmonton failed to reach Wolf Lake," he replied. "She came through herself by team in the first storm of winter. We had great difficulty in keeping her with us until we ourselves were ready to make the trip across country. She'd have come through with an Indian dog driver if we had not protested so stoutly."

"All that to see a brother, eh?" snorted Karmack. "Are you certain she is his sister?"

Seymour sprang to his feet, an angry glitter in his gray eyes. "Enough of that, Karmack! Express another such doubt and out you go—for good."

For a moment, a snarling expression strove to master the trader's face. The missionary poured oil.

"I'm sure Mr. Karmack meant nothing wrong. He's just a bit upset by all these happenings."

"Upset? Dear eyes, yes—I'll say I'm upset." The factor made a quick grasp for peace, for the sergeant looked dangerous. "All I meant was that I could understand a wife going to such an effort to join a husband, but not a sister."

"Any reason to believe Oliver O'Malley had a wife?" Seymour remained stern.

"None in the world. But a sister—— To make a trip like that, she must have had some very pressing reason." Again his eyes questioned the parson.

"If there existed any other than sisterly affection," said Morrow evenly, "she did not express it to me." His manner was so final as to make further questioning discourteous.

Clumsily as Karmack had used his probe, he had but echoed a query that had been in Seymour's mind from his first realization of Moira's superlative comeliness. The sergeant had meant to ask about this when he and Morrow were alone, and he would have put his question without giving offense.

Why had one who deserved to be the honored toast of the Dominion rushed into the Arctic wilds, evidently unasked, certainly unexpected, at a time of year when it would be next to impossible to send her back?

Was there any connection between her coming and what had occurred so recently in the Eskimo hut? Had she brought a warning of some sort to this beloved brother and been lulled into thinking she might delay for a missionary escort and still be in time to serve and save him?

Those rapid-fire speculations, unvoiced, seemed to advise only negative answers. Yet why had she come?

Constable La Marr, who had been silent all evening to a point of moodiness, now snapped Seymour from his thoughts with a question of his own.

"And when are you going to turn me loose after that accursed Avic?" he demanded in a tone that was scarcely subordinate.

The missionary looked up at his violence, but had no censure for the speech of it. These men who give their lives to lighten the Arctic native's sorry burden grow accustomed to strong language.

"At daybreak you will take the dogs, mush over to Prospect, and subpoena those three mining engineers wintering there to serve on coroner's jury. Bring them back with you. Miss O'Malley need know of only one inquest." He glanced with thoughtful eyes toward the closed door of the inner room. "After that——"

One look at the young constable's face must have told any who saw it that Avic, the Eskimo, would need to hide like a weasel to escape that arm of the law.