Читать книгу Angels' Shoes and other stories - Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall - Страница 13

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In the darkness and the shadow something moved. Desmond was in his own bunk at the shack. There seemed to be an echo of words in the air, yet he knew that he had slept for some time. He was not asleep now, yet sleep lay on him like a weight, and he could not move.

Forbes was silent, too. He was quite clear that he was alone with Forbes, and that the other two had gone prospecting beyond Fachette. Forbes had asked him, “Will ye stay here with me and rest,—I’m all but blind the day,—or will ye go in to Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?” And he knew he had chosen to stay in the shack with Forbes.

It was night. The shack was dark, save for the red glow of the stove, and something moved very softly in the dusk and the shadow.

Desmond, weighted with sleep, could not move; but he listened. Someone was shuffling very softly and slowly round the wall of the shack, pausing at the bunks. It was Forbes. He was snuffling to himself, as some little soft-nosed animal might snuffle, and feeling in his blind way with one yellowed hand.

Desmond was amused. “If I was to yell out, old Scotty’d have a fit,” he thought. He decided to wait until Forbes was quite near, and then yell, and hear the old man curse. Old Forbes’ cursing was the admiration of the camps. Desmond lay very still and listened.

Forbes was coming nearer, feeling his way as if over unseen ground, and whimpering to himself very softly. Desmond could hear the scratch, scratch of his long-clawed fingers as he slipped his hand over the empty bunk near the door. He was silent and still for a minute, then the shuffling came again.

“I’ll wait till he’s at the foot o’ my bunk,” thought Desmond, grinning foolishly, “and then I’ll bark like a dog. Used to do it in school when I was a kid and scare the teacher. Lord! how a bit of luck does raise a man’s spirits!” He lay very quiet, grinning to himself in the dark.

Forbes’ blind, bent head showed, swaying slightly, against the dull, red glow of the farther wall. A tremulous touch, as light as a falling leaf, fell on Desmond’s foot, and suddenly he was stricken with the black, dumb terror of dreams; for he knew there was death in the touch of that hand.

The walls reeled about him, shot with streaks of red. He could feel the hand hovering lightly at his knee. The blind man’s soft, whimpering breathing sounded close above him. But he could not move. His whole life was centred in the quivering nerves which recorded the touch of the blind man’s hand.

It travelled very slowly and lightly up his body, and lingered above his heart. His life gathered there also like a cold flame. And he could not move.

Visions rose before him. The gold was under his head; and he heard again the sound of wind in a garden among tall flowers, and thud of ripe apples falling, soft croons, and cluckings of hens, a whirring of the wings of doves. He saw a straight girl in a stiff print dress, with very blue eyes under brows and lashes the colour of sea-sand. He saw two children with hair the colour of gold.

The blind man moaned and bent waveringly near, his right hand gathered to his breast.

The flowers of the hollyhocks were gold, and the little ducks were gold, and gold sunlight lay on the gold hair of the children. “Gold,” said Desmond, faintly—“gold; my luck.” The blind hand crept upward. Like a blown flame, the golden visions flickered and went out.

Desmond awoke, fighting upward out of darkness and the dreams of the night. He felt reality coming back to him as a tide comes back to a beach, and opened his eyes on a glad world. His terrors fell away from him. He came near to thanking God. Dark words he had dreamed, dark deeds, but they were not true. Thank God! they were only dreams. He stirred in the bunk, sat up, and brushed a white feather of wood-ash from his sleeve. Only dreams!

Lajeune was cooking pork and making coffee; Ohlsen was mending snow shoes; Forbes bent over his bunk, black against the frozen window, feeling blindly with his hands and snuffling a little as he spoke:

“We’d ha’ let you sleep on, but we wanted to know what you’d be doing. Will ye stay with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

He stopped suddenly. Desmond shrank back slowly against the wall of the bunk, his eyes staring on them as a man stares on death, a fleck of froth on his lips. There was no sound in the shack but the quick breathing of four men.