Читать книгу The Bull Moose - Sidney Groves Burghard - Страница 10

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Sandy drove his paddle fiercely. The eager youth of him was yearning. Wanita! The wonderful creature whose beauty looked up at him, death-like, from the flat bottom of the kyak must be claimed back to life. Her brave, tragic soul must know once more such happiness as he could bring into its life. Yes. She must live. And his hope lay in Marthe. He must reach Reliance and Marthe. And all the big body of him was prepared to expend itself on the speed at which he made that goal.

The flood of the river rushed the long, low craft away from the shore on its heavy tide. And, in a moment, Sandy became no more in the general litter than were the lumbering tree boles, and any other "washout" from the river's upper reaches.

But Sandy saw nothing to daunt. The river was monstrously broad. And his skill would carry them safely through the litter of "washout." He was braced for the welcome task that was now his. And as he girded his every faculty there was not even a passing thought for the man who had adventured northward on his selfless errand.

Such was the flood of the river that in less than an hour, the whole of the grim structure of the gorge was completely left behind, and the river had opened out widening into more gracious space.

There were no longer granite walls, but a great fall-back into the heartening spectacle of a reach of glorious hill-slopes. At foot they were bluffed with scattered stretches of woodland. While their rugged heads were capped by the gleaming sheen of melting glacier. There were gracious forest inlets nursing tributary streams that poured into the ever thirsty main river; there were coves hewn in hill-slopes whose lofty walls seemed to darken the noon sunshine searching their obscure deeps.

It was a mountain world of impregnable immensity that piled itself up and up. Yet the avalanche of the Alikine had cut whither it listed through the heart of its stoutest defenses.

Now there was foreshore to either bank. That foreshore of reddish, alluvial which would one day prove a lodestone to half the reckless adventurers of the world. Everywhere there was superb landscape of unspoilt primordial beauty. A glad, sunlit picture to hearten the voyager on his approach to the grim reach of Skittle Race.

Skittle Race was a title whose aptness was characteristic of the northern outworld. No other name was possible for it. It was a mile long bottle neck, narrow and dead straight like a skittle alley.

It was a passage that looked to have been humanly hewn between abutting hills. And the whole length of it was dotted at unprecise intervals with cleanly cut sentry rocks. Nature in Her whimsey had set up fourteen towering skittles. Vasty monoliths whose jet-black stone foundations had defied erosion by the fierce water-race throughout the ages. They were all that remained of the original saddle bonding the two hills which had dared to bar the torrent of the Alikine.

Sandy knew Skittle Race as intimately as he knew all the rest of the river upon which his life was spent. Neither did he fear it, for all its threat. Nevertheless his respect for that queer stone forest was undoubted.

He had negotiated its down-stream passage a hundred times. And the thrill of it was never without its appeal. But now, with the half dead body that was so precious to him in his charge, he found himself in different mood.

He eyed the narrow channel with its first great monolith rearing itself up in the very center of its gaping mouth without any joy. The oily-flowing surface of the river had changed. It had roughened into something akin to the breakers on a windswept sea. His keelless kyak was rocking and pitching. And its sides were being furiously slapped by wavelets that flung their cold spray so viciously.

The first skittle, as bald as the world before vegetation was created, rushed at him out of the distance. It stood up, sharply defined in the brilliant daylight, rising sheer from the deeps, with a white surf hammering, thundering, spuming at its inerodible foundations.

Sandy knew that the might of the stream was a good enough friend if treated with skill. He understood that the nose of his kyak must always point midway of the right opening between the rocks. His hand must at all times be ready for the lurch of any swinging "washout" plunging its way down stream. No angry surge of water must be permitted to deflect his course. And he must ride every rapid in the full confidence of fathoms of water beneath him. Those were the rules of the game as he had learned them. And the breaking of any of them would mean the certainty of disaster and death.

The rush of it all, the blinding sprays, the surge of litter, the crashing echoes that leapt from wall to wall were sufficient to bemuse the clearest mind. But never for a single moment in all that mad mile was the youth in Sandy affected. And, in the end, he and his rocking craft, with its precious burden, were literally belched out of the chaos of it on to the broad open waters below the Race.

And Wanita? She had awakened from her long unconsciousness. The girl's dark eyes were wide. They were gazing up in perfect comprehension at the swaying figure as Sandy drove down the stream.

"Where are we, Sandy? Where? This boat? Yours?"

Her questions came calmly but rapidly. The first was a mere whisper. But in a moment strength gathered. And with her final question Wanita struggled with the robes that were so tightly packed about her.

A great gladness lit Sandy's eyes. They smiled down at the stirring body as he abruptly shipped his paddle.

"Say, kid, don't shift those robes from about you," he cried in alarm. "You'll get your death sure. You haven't a thing to your poor cold body but them. Not a thing. That swell frock was all mussed with water. So I took it off you."

The girl's struggles ceased on the instant. She lay quite still staring up at Sandy's glad face while memory came back to her.

Sandy, watching, saw the sudden dreadful change in the expression of the big eyes he loved. And he dipped his paddle with a savage lunge.

He wanted to speak. He wanted to pour out a hot tide of feeling. He wanted to tell Wanita of his great love, and his yearning for her in her trouble. But he remained silent before those pathetic eyes gazing up at him. His safety valve was his paddle. And the boat raced on for its goal under vicious strokes.

Then Wanita's voice came again. And Sandy gazed down at her in less grievous mood. Her voice was even, calm. And he knew that she was mistress of the storm he had seen behind her eyes.

"We're making down stream," she said. "Why?"

"To get you to Marthe, so she can fix you right. You got pneumony from the river. It gave it you. Jim guesses it would give pneumony to a tin image. You need to get to Marthe quick. She can fool that pneumony right away. Else you'll die. I guessed you were—dead."

The girl's eyes had a soft light in them which had not been there before.

"Marthe can't fool any pneumony, Sandy," she said quietly. "There isn't any—in my body. I just want to sit right up and use a paddle. But I can't because you stripped my frock off me. I'm not sick, Sandy. Not in body. I guess I was just beat by that river. That's all."

Sandy smiled as he drove the water with his paddle.

"Maybe it was Jim's whisky saved you, kid," he said.

"Jim? His whisky? He gave it me to—save me?"

"Sure. Jim would have given you most anything he had to save you," Sandy said eagerly. "He grabbed you when you were took bad. He carried you right up to me. He handed you his bunk to lie on, and his robes to warm you. And he told me to give you a hell of a dope of his whisky to get your body alive quick. Now he's gone to save your Shamus."

There was movement under the furs. Wanita's dark head lifted. Her eyes were passionately compelling as Sandy smiled down into them.

"He's gone to save—my father?" she cried, incredulously. "Jim has? Alone? They'll kill him! They'll murder him the same as they'll murder my Shamus when his ammunition runs out. They're Kaskas. And the Bull Moose. Oh, it's—crazy!"

Sandy drove with all his might as he shook his head.

"There's not a thing crazy to Jim," he denied. "There's nothing on this river to scare him, either. Not even the Bull Moose. Jim's gone after the bunch to save your Shamus. He'll make it. And he's gone with a repeater rifle and his guns. You don't know Jim."

Wanita made no reply. She lay there gazing up at the glad face that now seemed to be all that was left to her in the world. She remained silent for awhile, just gazing. Then of a sudden a storm of passionate protest swept her.

"But we don't need Marthe, Sandy," she cried. "We don't need anyone now but Jim and my Shamus. Make back, Sandy. Give me my old frock so I can paddle, too. We can make the Race back even in this. And maybe will get in time to save them—both. We—"

Sandy shook his head. His smile had gone. And his eyes narrowed in the manner of his father.

"Not on your life, kid," he cried sharply. And again it was the hard manner of Jim. "It's Jim's planning. And Jim knows. You got to get to Marthe quick. Maybe you don't know pneumony when you got it. He guessed you need Marthe. So you'll get her. The other's no sort of use anyway. Jim's got all our ammunition. 'Cep' the ten each in my guns. We'd be fodder for the Moose's Kaskas. Then there's our dust. It's a big bunch. And it's right with us in this kyak. Jim's all for his dust. So's Marthe. No, kid. I got you safe. And I'm keeping you that way. You're all sorts to me. You're just that way if it costs me Jim and your Shamus. That goes."

Marthe McBarr was standing on the wide porch of her store. She was just beyond the door which admitted to the great old room that had once been the living quarters of the fighting men of the old-time free-traders. Now it was everything from a dance hall to a sheer drinking booth.

She was a big, angular creature, famous for her raw muscle rather than for any feminine charms. Her face was lean and gray. But her features were good. In early youth she may have possessed sufficient attraction for a man. Now, when one regarded the definite whisker on her strong chin, and the down of mustache about her upper lip, one felt that comradeship without sex attraction was alone possible.

Her sleeves were rolled clear to the elbows of her muscular arms. Her cloth skirt was covered by a blue linen overall. And her feet were encased in man's-sized boots. She was a rugged creature.

There was an air of hard capacity about her. And the eyes that were big and blue were steady gazing and calculating as they regarded without friendliness Ike Clancy and Joe Makers, two of Reliance's leading citizens, as they sprawled in their hard chairs beside a small table. There was a whisky bottle and glasses between them, which was something unusual.

The men were gazing out over the river in the thoughtful manner of those deeply concerned. They, too, were hard-faced. No less hard-faced than the woman observing them. They were clad in the rough clothing common to the men of Reliance. Trousers belted at their waists, plain cotton shirts with soft collars, their broad backs under tweed jackets, which indicated vacation from work out on the river.

"Maybe you're right, Marthe. I don't know," Clancy said after awhile, in the way of a man hedging. "But you're goin' to get it. An' quick. Joe an' me got word along up river. The gover'ment's goin' to take over jest as soon as the p'lice at Glenach can put it over Ottawa. It'll take awhile, I allow. Ottawa don't jump active. But ther's a p'lice post coming. An' that means a license commissioner, missioners, taxes, banks, and all the rest of it. It means an end to easy money for you and Jim, and all of us. And it means Sunday School manners for all the boys an' gals of this darn burg. Do I fancy it? Do I hell!" The man's dark head shook solemnly. "But we need it. We got to have it. Certain sure."

Ike's big hand descended upon his half-filled glass on the table. And he drank quickly. Joe slanted a shrewd eye as the raw liquor gurgled in the man's throat.

"It'll clean up the Bull Moose, anyway," he said, with a short laugh. "They'll put those Kaskas back where they belong. An' they'll keep 'em there. I'm tired standing aside my sluice with a gat in each hand and a pouch of shell clips weighing me down. I allow there's compensations—sure."

"Which the gover'ment 'll collect to itself."

Marthe's tone was sharp set. Her blue eyes were sparkling angrily. The men waited for more. But Marthe's whole interest seemed to have become absorbed in the squalid limits of the township.

A fury of protest was driving her. This thing she had just heard about. She hated it. It was the last thing in the world she desired. The police, and those others, to be in charge of her township! And she knew these men secretly wanted it.

Fort Reliance stood in a wide clearing which had been hewn out of an almost limitless belt of primordial forest. The forest began on the western bank of the Alikine, and only terminated at the glacial line of the great mountain range that backboned Alaska. It was dense and lofty, and deeply shadowed. A wealth of bare trunks and heavy top-foliage. And behind its hoary growth lay thousands of years of the outworld's history.

The clearing was some twenty feet above the river on a great cut-bank where the Alikine swung its course in a big bend. The old fort centered it, squatting there like some immobile hen with her brood of chicks scattered about her. Viewed from afar Fort Reliance was a tiny sylvan gem in a superb setting. Under the search of a "close-up," however, it revealed all the squalor with which homing humanity never fails to outrage nature's most perfect artistry.

Fort Reliance was the joy of Marthe McBarr's rugged heart. She loved it. And, back of her acquisitive mind, claimed ownership of it. Were not she and her man its original pioneers? Was it not Jim who had first struck color in this Eldorado of the Alikine? Was it not they, together, who had reclaimed the derelict fort, and, spending every cent of their limited resources, made life possible for all those assorted adventurers who had since drifted on to the river? Of course it was.

Now it was to be snatched out of their hands. Ottawa intended to reap the rich harvest she and Jim had so laboriously sown.

Marthe did not attempt to remind herself that she and her man had already accumulated a no inconsiderable fortune for their pains. That aspect of the position, though of paramount interest to her supremely acquisitive nature, left her cold. Marthe was a real possessor. Possession appealed to her like nothing else in the world. She was something of a benign buccaneer. Even a "gunman" in her methods. She was the type to break her unscrupulous heart if her grip loosed from anything on which it had been laid. She had set her grip on Fort Reliance. She ruled it with proprietorial despotism. And now she felt it was to be taken from her.

Marthe loved it as a township which had been built on the foundations which she had laid, and out of which her profits were several hundred per cent. That it was squalid, primitive, unholy, mattered not at all to her. Its log shanties and frame buildings afforded her not a qualm. That it was without sanitation and any of the common amenities of life made no impression on her pride in it. She was more than satisfied even though in spring it was a quagmire; in winter it had to be dug from beneath feet of snow; and in summer a fog of dust rose with every wind that blew. Then the flies, and the mosquitoes!

Suddenly she gestured with violently expressive hands.

"What's the use in you boys talking?" she demanded, with tight-lipped harshness. "I know the stuff you're both thinking—wanting. I tell you the police 'll come with their schedule of regulations. Every boy 'll toe the jumping off mark, and God help him if he oversteps it. We'll get every sort of gover'ment grafter from the guy that signs our licenses downwards. We'll have a law court and a jail for every boy or girl who gets gay. And outside financiers 'll scrounge every spot of pay dirt you boys ain't got the wit to hold. Who worries for the Bull Moose and his neches? He pulls the game once in awhile, and the bone-heads have to pass up their chips or get his lead. Has it hurt you, Ike? An' you, Joe, in the years you've sluiced? You've paid toll. Both of you. I know that. But it ain't a thing to the toll the gover'ment 'll take out of you. Boys, it's hell! Once the gover'ment stakes out its claim we're through. I seen it all at Leaping Horse, and other northern cities. There'll be a city here grow up in the night, with hotels, and stores, and offices. And the red lights 'll be bunched outside the town limits. And take it from me, boys like you won't have the cents to quench a full-sized thirst. No. You—Say, what's that?"

Marthe flung out a pointing hand. And the direction was where the river entered the great bend of the clearing. Ike was on his feet in a jump. Joe was more deliberate.

The three of them stared in silence for some moments. Then Joe returned to his chair.

"It's just a double kyak with a single paddle shifting it. It's some boy who's yearning for you to weigh up his dust for him, Marthe. Poor kid!" The man laughed unpleasantly.

"He'll get a better deal with me than he'll get with a bank teller," Marthe snorted. "But who's got a double kyak on the river but my Jim and Sandy? I don't know one. And Jim ain't due along home till summer's out."

"That's your kyak, Marthe," Ike Clancy said, shading his eyes from the glare of sunshine. "An' it's your Sandy whipping the stream. He's putting a punch into it that looks like he's scared what's behind him."

The news was out and the whole township was astir. Every shack and frame house had contrived to produce one or more soul whose eager mind had been shocked by the cry of "The Bull Moose"!

Men and women ran for Marthe's store like filings drawn to a magnet. Sandy had flung his news at those awaiting him at the old landing. And, in seconds only, it had broadcast itself through the township.

The Bull Moose! Shamus! Roskana! The mother of Wanita! The little Dogrib Indian who had captured the reckless Irish soul of Shamus Hoogan had been murdered! Hacked down in her tracks by a howling mob of Kaskas from the hill forests! Wanita had swum the river in a getaway that had nearly cost her life! And Jim McBarr had gone up in a mad attempt to save the Irishman besieged by a horde of blood-crazed neches!

Marthe stood considering Wanita as she gazed up out of the fur robe in which her bare body was still closely wrapped. She was sitting in the chair Ike Clancy had occupied on the porch of the store. She was watching Sandy, towering over the big frame of his mother, while he recounted to her the ghastly horror that had been perpetrated up on Ten Mile Gorge. Ike Clancy and Joe Makers were there, too. And the porch was crowded with men, women, and youngsters whose eyes were popping with the scare of the Bull Moose.

"And you let Jim go right up there lone-handed to pull the game with Shamus?" Marthe demanded, as Sandy reached the end of his story. "You?"

There was a glint in the blue of Marthe's hard eyes.

"I hadn't a chance to do else, Marthe," Sandy came back at once, a deep flush of feeling darkening the tan of his face. "It was Jim's plan. And Jim don't stand for a kid buttin' in on what he plans. Wanita had swum four miles in ice water to pass warning when she'd the wreck of her world falling around her. And he guessed she needed saving alive, which you could do here. She's stark as she come out of that river, and—and needs—Say, she's got but that robe Jim gave her and needs clothes. Jim's gone to help Shamus if he's alive, and to warn folks up river if he's not. He wants the bunch from here with an arsenal of help. Someone had to get it. He reckoned it was up to me. Then there's our dust he wanted you to get. I brought it."

Had it been calculated Sandy could not have served Wanita and himself better.

The glint in the blue eyes died out. Marthe's manner eased.

"That dust," she said quickly. "You got it safe?"

"Sure, Marthe. It's right here."

Sandy held up the stout canvas bag he was carrying, the sides of which bulged heavily. It was full to the neck. And the lifting of it was an effort.

Marthe regarded it. And none of the onlookers but understood. Suddenly the urgency of the moment seemed to take possession of her, and she flashed a commanding challenge at the press of folk about her.

"And Jim's right," she cried sharply. "Say, folks, it isn't any sort of time to stand around gawking! Get after it. Jim's passed you a lead. Follow right after quick. Ike! You and Joe get the boys right out on the river, and beat it up to pore Shamus. Get every gun, and every boy who can handle one. You can claim all you need from me. There's shells a-plenty in the store. And guns too. We got to do the best we can for Shamus. The same as Jim.

"You," she went on, turning on Wanita, who just sat staring up at her like a helpless child wondering for the reality of the things about her. "You just come right in with me and I'll fix you the way Jim said. You'll be sick to death in awhile else. There's warmth and blankets for you, and all the physic you can need. I'll see you don't go amiss, or my name's not Marthe McBarr."

Wanita sat up. The child wonder had gone out of her eyes. In that moment she was the passionate vibrant half-breed of her origin.

"I'm not sick, Marthe," she protested. "Not the way you, and Sandy, and Jim reckon. I don't need physic nor warmth. Only clothes. Pass me a kit to wear. Anything. Loan me a gun and plenty shells. My Shamus! I'm going right back with the boys. They murdered Roskana! They'll murder him. I—"

"Tain't fer you, Wanita," Ike broke in roughly. "You're right here with Marthe to fix you. Jim said."

Marthe eyed the girl's fur-robed figure as she sprang to her feet. She reached out, and one powerful arm closed about the slim shoulders.

"The kid's right, Ike," she cried sharply. "Now beat it. Every mother's son o' you. The boats. And quick. You Ike. And Joe. See to it. The kid must go, too."

She turned on Sandy as everyone hurried to obey.

"That dust," she demanded. "Pass it over. You can get busy with the boys. There's two up that river doing man's work. See you don't do less. You've got to get your father safe through."

She took the precious bag and held it in a grip that spoke volumes. She withdrew her arm from Wanita's befurred shoulders. And she turned back to the store.

"Come right in kid," she cried, over her heavy shoulder. "You reckon to do man's work, too, with those others. Well, I'll fix you. You can wear a pair of Sandy's boy's breeks and a parka. It'll leave you handy that way. Say, I haven't a deal more use for hafbred folk than Jim has. But you've grit enough to shame a white."

The two women passed back into the store. And Sandy, with doubtful eyes, looked after them. Then he set off for the river at a run.

Marthe was standing alone on the porch. Sounds came to her from within the store behind her, where her several helpers were carrying on their labors. There were sounds, too, came back to her from the river, where women were foregathered to speed the inadequate army of fighting men.

Her hard eyes were narrowed thoughtfully. Her face was set and grim. Feeling was a-riot. Anxiety, yearning, hope, fear. Her Jim had called the game as she had known him to call it hundreds of times before in her life. Had he called it once too often?

She saw the boats dart out from under the cut-bank of the river and head up stream. And as they went she hunched her great shoulders. Then she turned back into the store.

For all her stress of feeling she would weigh up her precious gold.