Читать книгу The Bull Moose - Sidney Groves Burghard - Страница 4

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"A sergeant and four men, eh?"

"Yes, sir. I think that's the minimum—for the present."

Superintendent Richard Ferrers was standing at the window. It was double-glassed and streaming with melting frost-rime. His lean, straight back was turned upon the barely furnished room, and upon the youthful officer seated at the big, whitewood table which was the official desk.

It was police headquarters at Fort Glenach, which was a high-sounding title for a very small cluster of frame buildings and log dugouts dotted about promiscuously on the precipitous cliff banks of the Alikine River. It was at that point on the international boundary where the swiftest river in the whole of the Canadian north rushed headlong on its way to the sea through the southernmost coastal region of Alaska.

Inspector Jack Danvers waited; and the while his chief's back, in its smartly tailored patrol jacket, became a complete preoccupation for his steady but anxious eyes. He waited silently for that decision, which one way or the other, would mean so much in the many-sided work of his detachment.

But the man at the window seemed in no hurry to respond to his subordinate's request. He just remained staring out through the moisture on the window.

It was a grim scene in spite of the glory of blazing spring sunshine. Far as the eye could see it was a world of forest and deep-shadowed valleys; it was tumbled and tattered; it was mistily steaming; and it went on miles and miles into the far distance, to the glacial rampart of mountains set up by nature against the wild fury of northern seas.

The rush of spring was in full season. Life had returned to a moribund world; it was there in a glorious sun that was high in the heavens; it was in the streaming hillsides pouring a liquid flood into the valleys below; it was in the already lightening hues of the dark pine forests. But more than all it was in the legions of waterfowl winging at speed for their remote northern feeding and breeding grounds.

At last there came a negative movement of the dark head. "You know, Danvers, I'd be glad to say 'yes,'" Superintendent Ferrers said quietly. "Very glad. If you'd asked me the loan of a month's pay it wouldn't have given me more worry than to tell you not to get feeble. But a sergeant! And four men! Why, Athaba couldn't produce an available boy scout."

The superintendent turned back from the window. He crossed to the unpretentious table, and smilingly flung himself into a chair opposite his subordinate.

"You don't realize the character of the control of our department down at Ottawa," he proceeded. "It's not police; it's politician. Police and politicians don't add up together in the same column of figures in a country's ledger. Police are assets. The only thing that really stirs a politician's gray matter to more than talk is the weighty club the press is just now wielding on the subject of official squandermania. Its bludgeoning is served up at every political breakfast table till its wretched victim doesn't know if he's eating ham and eggs, or the ashes of his own particular political career. Now Fort Reliance has jumped into life. It's full of placer gold, and—other things. It's three hundred miles north of you, here. It's not in your area, nor in your work. Yet you want Ottawa to spend money on reinforcements. Tell me about it."

Danvers held out his open cigarette case.

"That's all right, sir," he said cheerfully. "I know you're tied hand and foot by Ottawa. But I've got to get those reinforcements. So long as I'm just a border patrol my detachment's sufficient. I can hold the game down. But with a dead world resurrected away behind me into ugly life, it's—different."

Ferrers took a cigarette from the case and lit it. And as Danvers did the same he flashed a swift glance out of narrowed eyes at his subordinate.

"And why should a specially detailed border patrol find it—different?" he questioned.

"A police officer can possess a conscience."

The superintendent inhaled luxuriously. Then he nodded.

"I s'pose he can," he agreed.

"That's the hell of it, chief!" Danvers exploded, with a laugh that did not contain much mirth. "The territory back of me has come alive. There's Reliance, with a hundred souls and a bunch of four thousand of the world's meannest neches. It's full up with a welter of human muck that's always boiling over. And there's not a soul to clean up the mess, unless it's me."

Ferrers liked the forthrightness of this man who was his junior officer.

He stood up from his chair and passed across to the woodstove radiating pleasant heat that was wholly welcome in spite of the spring thaw.

"Reliance is going to be a big placer field?" he observed casually.

Danvers' eyes became thoughtful.

"It's that already, sir. It's—it's saturated with pay stuff all the way along the river right from Reliance up to the Valley of the Moose, another hundred miles farther north. You can sluice or pan it anywhere where there's foreshore on the river. It's—it's just alive with gold. It's over five years now, sir, since color was first struck. And in a way it's queer the rush hasn't come before. It would have, only there hasn't been a front door to Reliance all that time. Only the back door over-land from Leaping Horse."

"Why?"

Danvers smiled.

"It's the Alikine River. That's Reliance's front door. And it's been shut tight—till last summer. You see, sir, the Alikine isn't just a river; it's a liquid avalanche. The deepest, swiftest, roughest waters anywhere north of 60°. It's never been navigable from the coast up to Reliance till Noah Bartlet, the sternwheel king of Alaska, heard about it. Some lunatic must have dared him. Anyway, last summer he came along down to Port Curtis with a big blare of trumpets and one of his oil-fuel, sternwheel kettles, and handed Port Curtis a big laugh. He told the folks he was opening a two months service on the Alikine from Curtis to Reliance. And he put it over."

Danvers flung his cigarette stub into a cuspidor.

"He's opened that front door all right, sir," he added. "And he figures to keep it wide open. Master Noah's some boy on the swift waters."

"He should be."

"Sure, sir." Danvers smiled. "It would be humorous if I didn't know Reliance, and just what opening that front door means. I've been up there on three trips. Each one was a police call—for a killing. I've reported them to you, sir, one time and another. And they were all pretty ugly. Those three trips to Reliance told me I'd found the real hell. The other's just imitation."

Danvers gestured while his chief helped himself to another cigarette, and retired again to the pleasant warmth of his stove.

"That doesn't say a thing, chief," he cried. "Oh, I know. I haven't your experience. I don't know the north like you. But I know a sink when I see it. And I found one at Reliance. Just think of a derelict old fur post hundreds of miles from any living soul with a spot of civilization in them. Then think of a bunch of folk who don't care a curse, and all of them sluicing gold they can almost shovel on to their riffles. Think of hard men, the sort of jetsam Leaping Horse was mighty glad to see the backs of, with more gold than they can spend. What's to happen?

"That old fur post has been rebuilt into a great store," he went on. "And all around it is a dump of shacks and dugouts they call a town. Jim McBarr, a tough prospector, rebuilt that place. He founded it out of his recollection of other similar places he'd known. And he stocked it with all the things that plentiful yellow dust can buy at extortionate prices. Goods? Oh, yes. All sorts of goods to fill the belly and clothe the body, and to help out the gathering of placer gold. Hooch? The world's worst. Gambling? Every known form from craps to roulette. They can amuse themselves there from daylight to daylight with the lowest down sweepings of the red light sisterhood. And Jim McBarr's handed control of that sump to his granite-hard Scottish dame he calls Marthe, while he and his boy sluice away up the river.

"Can you see a woman who hasn't a thought, or feeling, or sense that isn't yellow dust? That's Marthe. She's as soulless as a bank without its honesty. I've watched her there, standing behind her counter, weighing in the boys' dust in scales a newborn kid wouldn't stand for, and passing them a credit at outrageous prices. There isn't a day or night that shanty isn't crazy drunk. There's no sort of law or order other than they hand out to themselves. There's no bank or gold control. There's not a doc nor a missioner to see after bodily or spiritual welfare. It's just a dump in the heart of the Kaska Indian territory, who are a fighting, murdering, thieving bunch of some four thousand neches. There's all those things. And the—Bull Moose."

"The Bull Moose?"

The eyes of the man at the stove were sharply questioning. But Danvers paid no heed.

"Maybe it's just a living sore that's only itching a fool inspector of police now. But don't make any mistake. It's malignant. And there's coming a stampede over this river that'll make the old rush of '98 over the Skagway look like a kid's tea-party. I tell you, sir, it's bad now. And when that stampede gets into full flood what's it going to be then?"

"Cleaned up—quick!"

The reply snapped back, and Danvers stared.

"But why—why wait?" he stammered.

Ferrers came back to the desk and sat.

"You know, there's a whole heap we folks blame our department for," he said coolly. "Maybe it's the human nature of it. We're always right. And the department's always wrong. You see, we're executive and they're political. Your anxiety for Reliance, your view of the muck there, I'm dead sure is quite right and without exaggeration. I saw just the same in the early days of Leaping Horse. But it's got to be. The thing's historical of this old world of ours. I haven't a doubt those folk up there are all crooks, gunmen, harlots, gamblers. And that being so Ottawa could dump them into penitentiaries and detention homes without a worry. But the world would lose on balance. And lose badly. We'd gain plaudits. But no plaudits could compensate for the loss of the work these poor folk are doing.

"These reckless-living souls are the he-men, and she-women of life," he went on thoughtfully. "They may be uneducated or super-educated. It doesn't matter. But they're creatures of mentality and courage. They're creatures of imagination and personality. They're unquestionably of hell-fire passions, and energy, or they'd never quit the sidewalks of civilization for the dog's lot of the outland pioneer. You've got to look wide, boy; think wide. I know these folk. I've lived with them and watched them. I've laughed with them, and—cried—with them. And, yes, I guess I've loved them. You can believe me it's the iron courage, the reckless impulse, the physical, moral, mental sacrifice of just these that has always prepared the foundations of all the good that has grown up in the world's great countries and civilizations.

"Oh, you're not going to get your moralists, your Pharisees, your cranks to admit that. But it's everlastingly true. Morality, decency, even religion itself, have all been built up on foundations which have been set by the agony and bloody sweat of those whose monumental courage, energy and unquenchable wanderlust have driven them forth into the world's far places to seek their lives and lusts. Muck? Yes; if you like. But there's always litter and muck in the laying of foundations. Up there at Reliance foundations are being built. I've watched it all through your reports, and haven't needed to go see for myself. You see, I know it all so well. I've passed those reports to Ottawa; and when the political moment arrives Ottawa will clean up. But that won't be till the foundations which those poor souls are well and truly laying are dry, and ready to be built upon. Now, this—Bull Moose?"

It was all said with a pleasant humor which did not for a moment disguise the man's earnestness. Danvers smiled.

"That's the real business of all this talk, sir," he said.

"Surely. That's how I thought."

"The Bull Moose is a killer," Danvers said at once. "If you went up to Reliance and asked them you'd hear of a bogey they regard as something almost super-human. You'd hear of a queer figure looking something like the whole fore-quarters of a real bull moose. They'd tell you of a big man whose garments are a parka of moose fur reaching to his thighs. And of a pair of fur chaps reaching to his heels. Then they'd tell you of a headpiece that's joined to the neck of the parka, and which is no less than the great drooping tines of a fine bull moose, with the original fur mask entirely concealing the human face beneath it. That's the description you'd hear."

Danvers paused to offer another cigarette which was promptly refused.

"But you'd hear more than that." Danvers leant over the table with his elbows resting on it. "You'd hear it all in tones that would make you wonder. You know, sir, the sort of tone kids use when they're telling fairy stories. These toughs. Men and women who think no more of gunplay than you or I would of passing time of day. That make-up has got 'em cold. The Bull Moose! They talk of him as if he'd got clean out of the pages of a fairy story and come to life."

"Shall I make a guess at the rest of it?" Ferrers asked with a lift of his even brows.

"You don't need to, sir. It's just sheer 'hold-up'; and 'killing,' when killing seems good. The Bull Moose, up there in the country above the Valley of the Moose, has got the whole four thousand murdering Kaska Indians right in the palms of his two hands. He's got them hypnotized to do his bidding in just the way he's hypnotized the folk of Reliance into a sort of superstitious fear of him.

"His methods are theatrical," he went on bitterly. "Just get the position of those crazy gold men. They're all up and down a hundred miles of that river, and away out on Lake Clare. They're isolated; ones and twos. On claims of foreshore with their home-made sluice boxes. And sometimes only panning a prospect. They go on day after day, week after week, all summer. And their dust piles up. Then comes the moment. They're just beginning to think of making down river to trade with old Marthe and hit some high spots. But before the getaway the Bull Moose suddenly appears out of—nowhere. He's in full view of the claim, but at a point that's safe from gunplay. He just stands there and looks through his mask with its crazy drooping horns. When his victim's seen him there comes a deep imitation of a moose's bellow at the rutting season, or a laugh. Then he goes. And if you listened to those half-wits you'd guess he just fades away. But the signal's been given. And the next the poor fool knows is a horde of neches armed with an arsenal of store rifles. And, to save his fool hide he's got to pay over his stock of dust. If he shows fight—!"

Danvers gestured and sat back in his chair.

"A white hold-up, who's—'taken the blanket.'" Ferrers nodded.

"Sure, sir."

"Some tough from—Leaping Horse?"

"Maybe, sir. But I don't think so."

"Who?"

"It's only a guess. And maybe it's all wrong. Yet—I'd like you to cast your mind back, sir. I've been on this border patrol four years. They've been mining placer up there a lot longer. You remember how you came to have me detailed up here. Sergeant Sam Peele was in charge here with four men. He skipped. But his men are here still."

"Yes. I remember. Deserted over the border. It was the time of an oil stampede in the Irkuk River district. He'd been an oil man, or something, before he joined up. That's what the inquiry told us."

"That's what the inquiry—concluded, sir. You remember. I was on that inquiry."

"And signed the report."

"Yes." Danvers smiled. "That's so, sir. I signed it. But I was very careful to state that our evidence was meager. And our verdict was more or less an 'intelligent surmise.' Well, Steve Dickson, one of my men, is convinced that Sam Peele never made the Irkuk district. He declared Peele had his eyes always turned on Reliance from the moment color was first struck. He talked of it all the time; thought of it; dreamed of it. And he was a big man, like this Bull Moose. And he'd had years of Indian territory down south. There was a time when he was interpreter to the Indian department in the Blackfeet Reservation. He could interpret half a dozen Indian lingos. He knew Piegan, Cree, Sioux, and Blackfeet. It looks to me as though we shall find the face of Sam Peele under that moose mask—when we get him."

For some thoughtful moments Superintendent Ferrers offered no comment. But at last he nodded at the man across the table with a friendly smile.

"You win, boy," he said amiably. "Four years is long enough for building those foundations. They should be dry by now. We'll have to stir Ottawa into activity. You can write me a very full report and I'll forward it with a strong covering letter. Then you'll have to be ready to go down East yourself. You've convinced me it's time to get after things. And I think you'll be able to convince Ottawa. Anyway it's up to you. The best I can do for you is to give you the opportunity."

"Thanks, sir." Danvers' smile was beaming. "You must have another cigarette," he added, holding out his depleted case. "They're quite good."