Chapter 20

SUCCOUR

Garth was thankful he was alone when it happened. The reaction after their day of joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of will, he hastened back to her.

But the riders having crossed the bed of the stream, and mounted the rise, Natalie already knew as much as he. Her first thought was likewise for him. She turned a solicitous face.

"My poor Garth!" she said. "More care and danger for you!"

The simple words acted on him like a strong tonic. His brow smoothed; his mouth hardened; and he was mightily ashamed for his moment of weakness.

"More fun!" he said with his dry, arrogant note of laughter. "Act four of the drama begins!"

Natalie caught his spirit and laughed back.

"Who was the half-breed, do you suppose?" he said. "Whitey-blue eyes, ugly scar!"

"Don't you remember?" she said quickly. "The stage to the Landing—"

"Xavier! Of course!" he cried.

"And the second woman?"

"I only saw a ring of gray curls under her hat."

"Mary Co-que-wasa!"

"Hm! The entire dramatis personae?" said Garth.

Natalie, not to be outdone, saluted with her good arm, and asked: "Orders of the day, Captain?"

In a truly desperate pass one breaks down—or laughs. Youth laughs. They bolstered each other's courage with their jests, each secretly wondering and admiring of the other.

"We have the house, anyway!" said Garth. "Good old tumbledown shanty!"

"No! Fort Indefatigable!" amended Natalie.

"It'll be besieged all right," said Garth. "We must carry in everything we own, and fill up the rest of the space with wood for the fire. I would share my room with Cy, but the old boy couldn't get his ribs through the door!"

Natalie was told off for sentry duty. She took up her position at the edge of the shore, where she could report on all that transpired in the other camp. It seemed to be the design of these people first to overawe them with a display of force. They pitched camp openly, in and around Mabyn's hut; and moved about all day in plain view. The men amused themselves by shooting their guns at various marks, clearly to show the number and strength of their weapons. Up to dark, Natalie was able to report that none of the five had left camp.

Garth, meanwhile, worked like a Trojan. All the wood cut for the fire was carried inside, and he had, besides, a quantity of logs left over or discarded from the building of the shack; and these were likewise stored. The hut was built so near the edge of the bank there was little possibility of an attack from in front; in each of the other three sides he cut a loophole for observation and defense. The last hours of daylight he spent in hunting near camp; and in setting snares to be visited later. Two rabbits were all that fell to his bag.

At nightfall they locked themselves in. Garth did not stop then, but worked for hours piling the spare logs around the three vulnerable sides of the shack; so that if the bullets should fly, they would be protected under a double barrier.

The night passed without alarms.

In the morning Garth wished to venture forth as if nothing had happened. Inaction was intolerable to him. He insisted it would be fatal for him to act as if he were afraid.

Natalie was all against it.

"But this is the twentieth century after all," he said; "and we're under a civilized Government. They would never dare shoot me in cold blood!"

"Not kill you, perhaps," she said; "but bring you down, helpless!" Tears threatened here; and Garth was silenced.

Opening the shutter in Natalie's room, they could still command a view of the other camp. Grylls and Mabyn were visible; and at intervals the two women appeared. Xavier was missing.

"He will be watching us," Natalie said.

As if to give point to her words, a rifle suddenly barked its hoarse note, close outside. Garth sprang to the loophole in Natalie's room; and was in time to see the poor, stupid, faithful old horse, tethered outside, sink to his knees, and collapse on the grass.

He leaped up, turning an ominous, wrathful face.

"Oh! The damned cowards!" he muttered.

Natalie flew into the adjoining room, and flung herself in front of the door. "You must not go out!" she cried. "What would I do, if you were hurt?"

She was unanswerable, and he turned from the door, sickened with balked wrath, and flung himself face down on his blankets until he could command himself.

As if to give this act time to sink in, nothing further was undertaken against Garth and Natalie all day; though they were undoubtedly under surveillance, because the five were never about their own camp at the same time. It was a bitter, hard day on the besieged; Garth, chafing intolerably, paced the shack like a newly caged animal; and even Natalie suffered from his temper.

At nightfall he eased his pent-up feelings by a cautious sally. He filled all their vessels in the lake; and revisited his snares, which, however, yielded nothing. They were too near camp. He saw no sign of any adversary; but some of them came about later in the night like coyotes; for in the morning Garth saw that the body of old Cy had been dragged away—in the fear, perhaps, that his flesh might furnish them with food.

After breakfast Garth took his pipe to the window, and folding his arms on the high sill, watched the movements in the camp across the little bay. They were watching him too; he presently sensed a pair of field-glasses in Grylls's hands. Garth laughed and obeying a sudden, ironical impulse, waved his hand. Grylls abruptly lowered the glass and walked away.

Garth was still smiling, when all at once, without warning, Rina came around the corner of his shack and faced him point blank. The smile was fixed in astonishment; Rina was unperturbed.

"What do you want?" he demanded, picking up his gun.

"I got no gun," she said, indifferently, exhibiting her empty hands. "Nick Grylls, him send you letter."

Garth reflected that by letting her in, he stood the chance of getting much useful information; so bidding Natalie stay in her own room, he opened the door.

Rina handed him the note from Grylls. It was scribbled in a small, crabbed hand on the back of a business letter. On the other side Garth had a glimpse of the time-honoured formula: "Dear Sir: Yours of the first instant to hand, and contents noted. In reply we beg to say—" It gave him a queer, incongruous start: outside, it seemed, people still went to and from their offices, absorbed in their inconsequential affairs—while here in the woods he was fighting for his life, and Natalie's honour!

"Where is she?" Rina asked—she had never referred to Natalie by name. "I will fix her hair for her if she want," she added humbly enough.

Natalie immediately came forward, offering her hand. Rina clung to it without speaking, turning away her head to hide welling tears.

"Where did you meet these people?" Garth asked her.

"On the prairie," she answered, low-voiced. "Yesterday, noon spell. They coming this way. Nick Grylls, him mak' moch friend with 'Erbe't, and 'Erbe't, him glad. Nick Grylls big man, rich man, everybody lak to be friend with him. Nick Grylls say him come to help 'Erbe't. Him give 'Erbe't ver' fine gun."

"Humph! Mabyn will pay dear for it!" Garth exclaimed.

"I say so him," Rina said eagerly. "Me, I tell 'Erbe't everybody see Nick Grylls him jus' mak' a fool of you. What he want with you? He want her for himself. 'Erbe't on'y laugh. 'E say—" Rina's voice sunk very low—"'Let him help me get her, and I'll keep her, all right!'"

Garth frowned and clenched his fists. His gorge rose intolerably, at the thought of this precious pair contending which was to have Natalie.

Rina went on: "Nick Grylls say to 'Erbe't, mustn't let her get out of the country. He say 'If she go out she divorce you.'" Rina pronounced the word strangely. "Nick Grylls say he know a place to tak' her all winter, Northwest, many days to Death River, where no white man ever go before. Him think I not hear what he say."

This was valuable information indeed.

Garth opened the letter. It was a curious document, for while the thoughts were like Grylls's, they were clothed in a certain smoothness of phrase more likely supplied by Mabyn:

MR. GARTH PEVENSEY, SIR: (Thus it ran) I am astonished beyond measure at the story I have learned from the lips of my good friend, Mr. Herbert Mabyn. I assure you, sir, that, though this is an unsettled country, we are not accustomed to lawlessness; nor do we propose to stand for it from strangers. You have twice attempted Mr. Mabyn's life; you have stolen and converted to your own use his household effects and supplies; you have unwarrantably imprisoned him on an exposed island to the great detriment of his health. Your purpose in all this is transparent. You seek to part him from his wife; and you are at this moment detaining Mrs. Mabyn in your shack.

I flatter myself I am not without weight and standing in this community; and I hereby warn you that in the absence of the regular police, I mean to see this wrong righted. If Mrs. Mabyn is immediately returned to her husband, you will be allowed to go unmolested. If you still detain her, we will seize her by force, as we have every right, moral and legal, to do. We know you have only food enough for a few days, so in any case the end cannot remain long in doubt.

NICHOLAS GRYLLS.

Scorn and amusement struggled in Garth's face. His nostrils thinned; he suddenly threw up his head and grimly laughed.

"Well, this beats the Dutch!" he said feelingly.

Natalie, reading the cunningly plausible sentences over his shoulder, was inclined to be anxious. "Surely he has no legal right over me," she said.

"Not a shadow!" Garth said.

"Grylls may have believed this story Mabyn told him," she said.

"Not a bit of it!" Garth said quickly. "Grylls is not so simple." He stuck the letter sharply with his forefinger. "I'm a newspaper reporter," he went on dryly, "you can believe me, this is a perfect, a beautiful, a monumental bluff! I'm almost inclined to take off my hat to him! But the length of it gives them away, rather; they must have spent all day yesterday cooking this up."

"What will you do?" Natalie asked.

A wicked gleam appeared in Garth's eyes. "Oh, wouldn't I love to answer it in kind!" he said longingly.

"An innocent, simple little billet-doux that would make them squirm. Why, that's my business!"

"Better not," said Natalie anxiously.

"You're right," he said with a sigh. "It's the first thing you learn: never to write when you feel that way. But it's mighty hard to resist it!"

Rina understood little of all this. "You send answer back?" she asked.

"No. Tell him there's no answer," said Garth. "Tell him we nearly died laughing," he added.

That night Garth determined not to leave the cabin until shortly before dawn. He had seen Xavier leave the other camp before dark; and he guessed the breed youth had been told off to watch them. From what he had observed of the incontinuity of the breed mind in any given direction, he strongly suspected if they kept still throughout the first part of the night Xavier would fall asleep before morning. He had a little plan in his mind, which he did not confide to Natalie. About three o'clock, therefore, he called Natalie to bar the door after him; and he sallied forth, concealing from her that he carried a coil of light rope.

He was gone more than an hour, of which every minute was an age to poor Natalie crouching over the fire and straining her ears. She had successively pictured every possible accident that might have befallen him, before her heart leaped at the sound of his signal at the door.

Garth was for sending her back to bed forthwith, but Natalie apprehended he had not been gone so long for nothing; and presently she heard him stand two guns in the corner.

"What have you got?" she asked eagerly.

"Oh, I just made a trade." Garth airily returned. "Thirty feet of clothesline for a Winchester and a bag of cartridges. I threw in a handkerchief to boot. Pretty good, eh?"

Natalie pulled him in by the fire, and made him light his pipe and tell her what had happened.

"Well, I had a hunch Xavier was watching us to-night," he began. "I bore a grudge against Xavier's pretty face, and I thought I'd have a little fun with him, you see."

Natalie glanced up in alarm.

"A fellow would go mad, if he couldn't do anything," Garth apologized. "I'll be good now for a week."

"Xavier?" said Natalie inquiringly.

"I wouldn't have minded a little bit, giving the brute his quietus," Garth said coolly. "He killed my horse. But he had no chance to put up a fight; and I couldn't murder him; so at this present moment he's unhurt—except his feelings. But Grylls will half kill him in the morning!"

"What did you do to him?" she demanded.

"I was pretty sure he would be watching the path we have made to the trail," Garth went on. "I figured he would be on my left hand—his right; it's the position a man instinctively takes. You can't shoot so well over your right. So I crawled along the path, inch by inch on my stomach—"

"Garth!" she cried in horror. "If I had known!"

"Exactly!" he said. "So I didn't tell you. But there was no danger, really. It was too dark for him to shoot me—pitchy dark there, under the trees. I couldn't see an inch before my nose; and as I went I felt with my hand out in front of me, both sides the path. Thistledown was nothing to the lightness of my touch.

"Sure enough, no more than thirty yards behind the house here, I touched his moccasin—you couldn't mistake the feel of a moccasin. And, just as I expected, he was sitting on my left. That was a pretty good guess if—"

"Oh! Go on! Go on!" she begged.

"He had his back against a tree. I listened for his breathing. They breathe very light—tubercular, probably. Finally, I decided he was asleep.

"Well, I mosied around behind him; and then I grabbed him. He let out just one little squawk; and then he shut his mouth. He struggled; slippery as an oiled cat, but not very strong. Finally I got him gagged with my handkerchief. Then I tied him up with my rope; round and round; just like the stories we read when we were kids. I expect I pinched him some; that was for poor old Cy.

"Afterward I sat down opposite him; and lit my pipe; and thought over what I'd do with him, now I had him. We certainly weren't going to feed his ugly phiz; and he was no use as a hostage, for Grylls wouldn't give a hang what became of him. Meanwhile I was relieving my mind, by telling him a few plain truths about making war on dumb beasts. Hope he understood!"

Natalie concealed a smile. "What did you say?" she asked.

"Never mind," said Garth. "It was more forcible than polite. It's been sizzling inside me for two days. Finally I decided to return him to his own camp."

"Their camp!" exclaimed the startled Natalie.

"Not all the way," he said; "but just where they'd see him in the morning. Horrible example, and all that, you know. So I hoisted him on my back, and carried him around to the brook. I propped him against a tree there, with his face turned home." Garth chuckled. "To finish the thing up brown, I suppose I ought to have pinned a placard on his breast: Notice! This is the fate that awaits all who—et cetera. But I didn't think to take any writing materials along with me!"

"Oh, Garth!" said Natalie reproachfully, as he finished.

He turned a face of whimsical penitence. "Honest, I won't do it again!" he said. "But I was under two hundred pounds pressure. It was a case of blow off or bust!"

They could joke for each other's benefit; but privately neither attempted to disguise from himself what a desperate pass they had reached. When they parted for the night, Natalie would lie staring wide-eyed at the fire, and ceaselessly reproaching herself for having drawn Garth into the sad tangle of her life; while he, tossing on his blankets on the other side of the partition, blamed himself no less bitterly for having allowed her to run into danger; and wrung his exhausted brain for an expedient to save her.

A little beleaguered garrison watching its small store lessen day by day, and counting the crumbs—this is the situation of all to try the soul. But a garrison is always buoyed up by the hope of succour; and Garth and Natalie could expect none. On the other hand there was no possibility of treachery within this garrison; no need to measure out the rations, or to guard the store; for each was jealous of the other's having less; and each sought to give away his share.

There was no variety in those days. They waited in vain for an attack—even longed for it; for behind their walls, the odds would be more nearly equal. But the other party knew this too; and preferred to starve them out. Garth's snares yielded nothing in four days; the only flesh they ate during that time was a fish he caught with a line set at night in the lake. Their stores were reduced to a few handfuls of flour and a little tea. Meanwhile their enemies feasted insolently all day about their fire; this siege was child's play for them; they were so perfectly sure of their prey in the end.

There came a night at last when Garth and Natalie no longer cared to keep up the show of joking; they liked to be quiet instead; and they instinctively drew close together. They sat in the inner room; her head dropped frankly on his shoulder; and her hand lay in his. It made his heart ache to see how thin it was. But her spirit was still strong.

"Garth!" she said suddenly. "Let's make a break for it! Anything would be better than this!"

He shook his head. "No go, dearest," he said. "I've been over that, over and over it, every night for a week!"

"Couldn't we start down the lake in the canoe?" she said. "And make our way from some point below? We could cover our tracks that way, and gain much time. You have a rough map and a compass."

"They would discover in the morning that the canoe was gone," he said.

"They might not miss it for a day or two."

"They have the smoke of our fire to go by, too."

"They're careless. We might get a good start."

"Dearest, even if we had many days' start, they know we must make for the Settlement. How easy it would be to head us off!"

"But it might succeed," was all she could say.

"It's seventy-five miles," he said sadly. "You're not strong yet. How could you walk it, without food to support you on the way?"

"You have your gun," she said faintly.

"There's no hunting on the open prairie for a man on foot!"

Natalie dropped her head back on his shoulder; and said no more.

Garth's face grew grimmer and grimmer in the firelight. "Do not lose heart, dear," he said at last, in a gentle voice that was strangely at variance with his eyes. "Matters will take a turn to-morrow; I promise you that."

"What are you going to do?" she asked anxiously.

"I'm thinking it out," he said, evasively. "I'll tell you when it's pieced together."

She was too weary to question him further.

In the darkness of his own room, he faced the thing. There was to be no sleep for him this night. The alternative had been there from the first; but hitherto he had averted his eyes from it, hoping against hope. Now it could be put off no longer. It was Natalie's life against theirs; and throughout the hours of the night, he steeled his heart to launch five souls to eternity—two of them the souls of women. Rina he knew would be transformed into a tigress by the death of Mabyn; so even Rina, whom Natalie loved, must go too. He found himself dwelling with horror on the harmony of her beauty, the deep fire of her eyes, the soft play of colour in her cheeks—which he was to mar!

Supposing he succeeded, the dreadful consequences were painfully clear to him; the hideous noise it would make in the world when they got out; the ugly look it would have, with no one to bear out his story but Natalie, and her lawful husband among the dead! Grylls's lying letter had shown him how easy it would be to paint that side of the story in the colours of justice. For himself, Garth cared nothing; but the thought of Natalie, the sport of a world of malicious tongues, maddened him. But there was no help for it; it had to be done.

His plan was simple in the extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind from the north, presaging snow.

After starting the fire, he meant to climb the rising ground behind; and when they ran to beat out the flames, he would pick them off one by one. His gun would shoot as fast as he could think; he might get all five then. And if any regained the hut, they would soon be driven out again. Whichever way they ran, Garth could run as fast on the higher ground; and none of them was such a shot as he. Grylls first; then Mabyn; then the breeds. He meant to wait until dawn, so that if any escaped the radius of the fire, he could get them by daylight.

But no executioner may have imagination; in the darkness of his room the attitudes of the slain were pictured to Garth as clearly as if they already lay before him: Grylls's gross body huddled in the grass; Mabyn hideous in death; and Rina cold and still in her wistful beauty. Cries of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward burying the bodies—partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done, Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part them forever. But it must be done!

When his watch showed half-past four—the dawn was later now—he arose to start. He called Natalie to bar the door after him. He told her he was going merely to look about and that she must not worry if he was not back until daylight. Natalie was scarcely awake. He yearned mightily to take her soft, sleepy form in his arms for once before they were imbrued; but he dared not, knowing she would instantly interpret the act as a possible farewell.

When she closed the door behind him, he felt as one lost to hope.

As he grasped the canoe, preparatory to pushing it off, he suddenly became aware through his sharpened senses—he could not have said how—that some one was very near him. He noiselessly dropped to one knee; and unslinging his gun, waited. The wind was making confusing noises and he could not be sure. The suspense became too great to be borne in silence.

"Who's there?" he said sharply.

There came a strange, new, and yet familiar voice out of the darkness: "Garth, is that you?"

His heart began to beat wildly. "Who are you?" he whispered.

"Charley!" returned the voice with the boyish break in it.

They sprang to their feet simultaneously, not ten paces apart in the grass.

"I've brought you grub!" sang the boy. "How's Natalie?"

In an instant they were in each other's arms. A swift reaction passed over Garth; his knees weakened under him; he clung to the boy's shoulders; and lowered his head.

"Oh, thank God! thank God!" he murmured.