Alan Sullivan

“ If he is indeed wise—and many men have told me of his wisdom—he will say nothing until he has heard the last word of the law of the prairie. It is not good that any man should die while he is yet young, and his eye bright, and his knees strong, but the law is greater than life. It does not matter if I myself should not any more see the sun, for behind me there will come others, and yet others, and so long as water runs from Hunter's Peak to the Peace River there will be found men who will speak for the law. Think, Ahjeek, there is no place on the mountain or on the prairie which can hide you. ”

“ HE came up from the coast with the rush that started when gold was found on Ragged Creek, one hundred and eighty miles inland, a whale of a man with a gigantic body and calm, blue eyes. Then, half-way to Eldorado, he stayed on the portage that leads from Black Lake to the Yukon River, and let the rush surge by.
To hundreds of excited men, and to the few hysterical women in that breathless procession, the figure of Big John—for thus he was known—stood out as the strangest thing in all that frost-smitten land. He was within eighty miles of treasure, but let others sweep past and take it. ”

“ A few moments later, Clark stood in the rail mill watching the titanic rolls spew out ribbons of glowing steel. It came over him in a sickening flood that the whole giant undertaking was useless, and instead of the supreme delight he experienced a few months before there was now but a huge mechanical travesty that flouted the unremitting strain and effort of years. He was defacing the everlasting hills with dynamite to make something the commercial world did not want. A surge of protest overcame his spirit, followed by a cynical contempt for the futility of the best efforts of man. ”

“ Perkins, springing with convulsive strength, had laid her nervous grip on the model, her eyes suddenly ablaze with mad cupidity. In a fraction of time she was transfigured into a wild thing dominated by one uncontrollable desire, and her movement had the swiftness of light. Her hands closed like claws, but even as she touched the thing her grip relaxed, for in that instant she knew it was not real. She sent Derrick the same strange look of baffled incredulity he had received from the peddler, then sank back in her chair, trembling and unnerved. ”

“ Slowly along the smooth floor of the chamber came the first breathings of gas. From ruptured fissures and innumerable crevices in the shattered earth it crept. Heavy with portent, it flooded the broken coal about the men's feet. No life-giving breath could penetrate the mountain of fallen rock to dissipate these deadly fumes. At last they both knew it. Don began to ramble, talking now to Nan, now to Jock, and bursting into sudden heartrending appeals for help. Somewhere on the other side of that barrier men were fighting viciously to get at them and drag them up to sunlight. ”

“ She smiled gravely, and at that smile he knew that another voice had reached him from the unknown. It carried no mysterious threat; it was unburdened with tragedy; it emanated neither from wood nor stone nor a jade devil. It was part of the rest, but all grace and purity and joy; a whisper of life, not death. What sped between them then he could never tell, but some echo of that whisper must have reached Jean, for her glance, strange and lingering and perhaps prophetic, met his own for a memorable instant while the color climbed delicately to her smooth cheeks. ”

“ It was the local emporium, and so successfully had Filmer managed his business that the Hudson Bay Company saw nothing inviting in competition. From a plow to a needle, from an ax to a kettle, from ammunition to sugar, Filmer had all things, and what he had not he secured with surprising promptness. He had been mayor so long that his first term was now almost forgotten. By ability, courage, and fairness he was easily the leader in the community. Broad and strong, with a ruddy, good natured face, a fine tenor voice, a keen sense of humor and repartee, he was universally popular. ”

“ Thus began a week which Big John spent almost entirely on the trail. When the tide of travellers ebbed, he made work for himself till nightfall, not daring to see too much of Mary Eden. Men came and went, some with lack-lustre eyes, others in which the light of success burned with a quick, bright flame. These latter hastened to the nearest city to squander that for which they had paid so dearly, knowing well that soon the irresistible call would sound again, and they would take to the trail once more in the hunt for gold. ”

“ One could not imagine anything more devilish and cruel. There was power in the face, an abysmal knowledge that penetrated all human frailty and disguise, and a certain fixed, implacable purpose. Derrick had spent hours in secret scrutiny of the thing, and it seemed to him that here was the presentment of the embodiment of evil, and, fixed with an infinity of patient art, there had been transmitted to this opaque and precious stone the picture of some soul, wicked and irretrievably damned. ”

“ They stared at each other, Clark's keen features suffused with interest, Shingwauk's black eyes gazing lustrous from a dark bronze face seamed with innumerable wrinkles. His visage was noble with the proud wisdom of the wilderness and the unnamable shadow of traditions that went back through uncounted centuries of forest life. Clark, recognizing it, felt strangely juvenile. Presently Shingwauk, with some subtle intuition of who and what was the man who stood so quietly, waved his hand. The motion took in the works, the blockhouse, the canal, in short the entire setting. ”

“ It had spread its potent and invisible filaments half round the world, penetrated the Burmese jungle, and haled this shifty-eyed man back to the tiny Sussex village from which he had fled under the shadow of a great crime as yet undetected. How could these filaments have been set in motion if not at the demand of the dead Millicent whose quiet features now surveyed this recaptured wanderer? What would the thing that had been Millicent arrange next? At the thought of this Derrick’s pulse gave a throb of excitement. Then he looked Martin full in the face. ”

“ Two hours later the startled chief accountant, from a window in his office, saw a swarm of a thousand men surge through the big gates of the works and, trampling the guard, flow irregularly forward.
The mob spilt on, a river of big strong men, unaware of its own strength. They were not bent on willful destruction, but the whole mass was animated by an inchoate desire to find out something for itself. At the door of the rail mill stood the superintendent and his firemen, with drawn revolvers. The rioters liked these men because they worked with and understood them. ”

“ Mystery, breathless, confusing, and baffling, stole in on her like a secret assailant, attacking all senses save that of fear. Her pulse slowed—and beat tumultuously. She stepped to the bell and rang hard. Derrick looked at her with wonder.
“What’s the matter? There’s nothing to be frightened about!”
“How do you know?” she stammered. “I feel queer because I don’t know. I want to see some one who isn’t just ourselves,” she went on chaotically, “and I’m the more vexed because it has to—to be Perkins.” ”

“ At seven minutes past eight the mayor began to speak. He had been somewhat at a loss just how he might introduce Clark, for, as a matter of fact, the only information he had about the visitor was what the visitor himself had volunteered. But here, as always, Clark's tremendous personality had expressed itself. Filmer glanced at his alert but motionless figure, and perceived that the other was a man of much greater experience and power than himself, and in this the mayor was subject to exactly that influence which Clark was in the habit of exerting without any effort whatever. ”

“ Who had lifted this thing from the place where it should be, and where was that place? It had brought death to Millicent. What would it bring to others? He pictured Perkins, haunting the room of tragic memory that would not let her go. How much more did Perkins see than that to which she had sworn? He pictured Martin, his thick fingers among the rose-trees. What was written on the screen of Martin’s mind, what had jerked him out of the jungle, and why should fear be written on his swarthy face at sight of the stranger of that morning? How could he fear a man he did not know? ”

“ In his eyes the figure of Clark had long achieved titanic proportions. Innumerable things had been demonstrated to be possible, and to be chief engineer of such an enterprise had been, thought Belding, all that any man could ask. It was true that in the fatigue of work he had often imagined that Clark was going too fast, but always the thing had been done. Now it seemed the ironical jest of the gods that a shade too much carbon in a steel rail should wreck the whole endeavor.
And there was Elsie. He had never been able to give her up. ”

“ Then the peddler, with restless intelligence in his ageless eyes, himself a traveler from the same land of strange peoples, tongues, and gods, tramping indomitably along the deep Sussex lanes till he arrived as though by chance at the door of one who apparently knew him not, yet regarded his advent with fear and astonishment. And, last of all, Jean Millicent, the shadow of tragedy clouding her bright youth, a creature made for love and tenderness and care but weighted with brooding apprehensions, toward whom his own spirit had begun to move, striving, seeking, and hoping. ”

“ He drove off in a rattling buckboard, and the woods swallowed him. A little crowd had gathered in the dock, glancing after the bishop and then down at the slender deck of the Evangeline. The stranger looked up at them, nodded and disappeared. Presently Joe stretched an awning over the long boom of the main mast, and Clark sat in the shade listening to the silence and surveying this isolated village. What, he wondered, could keep people in so forgotten a community, with its unpaved street, its straggling wooden houses, its background of unbroken bush. ”

“ In Fisette they saw the man who had won out for the second time while they sat and smoked. There was a seeking out and sharpening of picks blunted by inumerable taps on forgotten ridges, and a stuffing of dunnage bags, and a sortie to Filmer's store for flour and bacon and a few sticks of forty per cent. dynamite, and patching of leaky shoe packs. Twenty-four hours later the little station up at the works was crammed with men whose leathern faces were alight with an old time joy, and whose eyes sparkled with the flame of a nearly extinguished fire. ”

“ Derrick stared at the portrait, his features transfigured with something that was not altogether wonder. It was all unreal yet enormously real. What surprised him most was that he should be admitted so readily to this “no man’s land” where mystery, like a cloaked figure, moved among the shadows of tragedy. How much was here? How much of it was his own fancy? Who was the real Millicent, the man within the man who had been afraid before he died? How and why did Millicent die? Did evil take on an embodiment and, emerging like an apparition from the unknown, butcher him where he sat? ”

“ It is probable that at the time there was not on the North American continent a man more highly endowed than Clark with gifts of sheer psychological power. Belding, young in his world, could not recognize it as such, but he fell the more completely under the wizard-like spell of his companion's imagination. The days, shortened by late sun and long nights, passed with early journeys to the temporary office which Clark had built at the canal, where they compiled endless surveys and plans in which the scope of the future was graphically depicted. ”

“ He went off a little later, passing Martin, who only touched his cap. He did look like another man, but neither of them spoke. The shadow of despair seemed to have left his face and to be replaced by a gravity that was new and dignified. Derrick strode on with the consciousness that the wind had blown through himself as well as Beech Lodge. He admitted his debt to Edith and now saw her cheerful sanity in a fresh light. It was strange to have leaned on a person, however dear, because they were incapable of being torn by one’s own reactions. ”

“ As he gazed at its ineffable tenderness there came to him a slow surcease of strain. Flotsam and jetsam of eternity they might all be, his missionaries and Clark and himself, but underneath were the ever-lasting arms, on which,—and he thanked God for this,—some had already learned to lean. There flashed into his mind his own arrival at St. Marys, the northern center of his vast diocese; the joy with which the neighboring Indian tribes had welcomed him and the name "The Rising Sun" which they had forthwith given him. ”

“ When I got here, I knew by Martin’s face that the god was not far off. So now”—here he glanced dominantly at Derrick—“this thing must go back with me. The god of all evil lives in it, and whoever keeps it will be cursed. Joy will die for him, and fear will come, and love be changed to a dream of terror. God hides in that stone, and sacrifices must be made in front of it. What becomes of me does not matter. The woman killed the man, because the image commanded her. ”

“ The penetrating gaze followed the pigmy vessel as it dipped to the larger stretch of the bay, dwindling with the glint of two blades that flashed with clock-like regularity in the afternoon sun. Soon it reduced to a speck and was out of sight. Clark turned to his office, still contemplating the dignity of his visitor, the stark simplicity of this archaean aristocrat. How soon, after all, he pondered, might not he himself and his works look aboriginal beside the achievements which science had yet to unfold to the world? ”

“ Derrick saw it and racked his brain. It was not an old thought that moved behind the mask now, but some conception new to that mysterious mentality. Were Blunt indeed the criminal, and assuming his return to recapture his prize, why should the suggestion of this produce so vivid a reaction? If this were the truth, why conceal it? What could this woman lose by coming into the open? She would write herself down a liar, and an innocent man be avenged. No, there was something else, and it beckoned a mystical finger to Derrick’s imagination and invited him on. ”

“ Elsie was tempted to probe this gray-eyed man about Belding, but presently gave it up. She was conscious that while she was talking to Clark the figure of the engineer faded into the background.
"So there's really no one?" she went on reflectively.
"Only my mother," he said gravely, "that is, so far."
At that her heart experienced a new throb. He was infinitely removed from any man she had ever dreamed of.
"Are you never lonely?"
"Perhaps I am," he replied with utter candor, "but I fill my life with things which to most people are inanimate, though to me they are very much alive. ”

“ Derrick shook his head.
“Then don’t go, sir. It’s no place for a white man, and less for a white woman. Folks seem to go mad there without knowing it, a sort of slow, creeping madness that by and by gets them. It’s the jungle that does it, with the smell of the orchids like a woman’s breast, air that thick and heavy you could almost cut it with a knife like cheese, soft under your foot with things dying and being born. ”

“ There lounged some fifty men, the pick of Baudette's crew, big and broad shouldered, in light colored woollen jackets, shoepacks and blazing shirts. Each toyed with an ax handle that swung lightly between strong, brown fingers. They were a loose-jointed lot, active as cats, and moved with the superlative ease of the skilled woodsman. Clark's jaw thrust out and he glanced grimly at his visitor.
"If they think they can get it that way, they're mistaken."
"You don't understand," came the even voice. "These are my friends, and yours. St. Marys is full of people who are after you. ”

“ He remembered, too, that at times Martin had looked like an honest man. And did villains ever love roses like this gardener of his?
“Martin,” he said, “you’d better leave the sergeant alone while he’s making this search; he won’t need you.”
The man nodded with the air of one who has nothing to fear, cast another contented glance at the peddler’s body, and went out. They watched him cross the drive, hesitate a moment as though deliberating which way to turn, then stand, his hands deep in his pockets, staring down the road. Again Derrick felt reassured. ”

“ Manson was, in truth, an example of those who, externally impassive and unemotional, harbor at times a secret and consuming thought at variance with all outward semblance, and, keeping this remotely hidden, feed it with all the concentrated fire of an otherwise inactive imagination. That afternoon he quietly secured an option on a portion of the fields across which he walked so stolidly, and, with this as a beginning, turned his thoughts to the acquisition of more and more land. Simultaneously his expressed views on the outcome of Clark's activities became more pessimistic than ever. ”

“ Good is ever the same, and it is only evil that changes, assuming a thousand lovely shapes, inviting, alluring, the wine that, having tasted, no man may forget. Come and drink deep while your blood is hot. There are those who wait to show you the way, and soon it will be too late.”
Thus spoke the jade lips; thus cajoled the jade eyes. Even the milky fingers with their narrow, transparent nails seemed to lose their stiffness and beckon, while the blood deserted Derrick’s heart and the hair prickled on his head. ”

“ Next day, at the iron mine, he stood listening to the deep cough of the big crusher and the loose rattle of machine drills. A little on one side, and as yet unshaken by dynamite, was the knoll on which Wimperley and the rest had been told what they were sitting on, and he smiled at the recollection. Surveying the widening excavation, he reflected that here, after all, was the heart of the entire enterprise. In fifty—in a hundred years—the mine would still be unexhausted. ”

“ Burke saluted and went out. There was the slight jingle of a chain, and the front door closed. Derrick pushed back the oaken panel. Involuntarily he glanced at the portrait. Millicent seemed satisfied. He was avenged now.
Then over the young man began to creep sensations in which there was no triumph, no pride, no self-congratulation. The blank-faced woman over whom Martin was crouching in the silent cottage seemed to rise up and point a thin accusing finger. Why had he done this thing? Her secret had been torn from her, and her life with it. What had she ever done to Derrick? ”

“ It was mid-afternoon when the Evangeline, gliding smoothly over the polished surface of the bay, drew in towards the Consolidated dock, and Clark, watching from the shadow of a mountain of bales of pulp assembled for shipment, saw the Indian pilot amidship at the wheel and the bishop, in a big, coarse, straw hat, standing in the slim bow, a coil of rope in his hands and a broad smile on his big sunburnt face. ”

“ Fisette felt in his pocket for the small angular fragment he always carried, and was about to hand it to Wimperley, when again he remembered Clark's command. He was to say nothing to any one. So the half-breed, with wonder in his soul, laid more wood on the fire and, squatting in the shadow of a rock, stared at the stream now shrouded in the gloom, and waited for what might come.
"But there's none in this damned country," blurted Stoughton, "so get back to Birch's picture of the shareholders on the moss." ”