Bertrand W. Sinclair

“ Stick close to me. If they do run us down, we must take our medicine; we cannot fight the men in red with such odds against us. But I think they’ll look long and sorrowfully ere they come upon us, a night like this,” he finished with a short laugh.
Side by side, two dim figures in the murk, we loped away. Barreau kept a steady unhurried gait. We passed a building or two, dipped into a hollow, splashed through what may have been a river or a pond, for all I could tell, and presently came out upon level plain. Behind us MacLeod’s few lights twinkled like the scattered embers of a campfire. ”

“ Lest it be thought that his plight was twin to my own, I will say that he looked down upon me from the back of a horse as black as midnight, a long-geared brute with a curved neck and a rolling eye. Best of all, at the end of a lariat Barreau held my own red horse.
“That,” said I, “depends on how you look at it. I’ll admit that the outlook is fine—since you have brought me back my runaway horse.”
“I meant that,” he nodded to the glowing horizon. “But I daresay a man gets little pleasure out of a red sky when he is set afoot in a horseless land. ”

“ The same up-piled boxes and bales threw huge shadows to the far end. There was no change save in the men who stood by the fire. Instead of Montell warming his coat-tails before the crackling blaze, a thin-faced man stood up before the fire; a tall man, overtopping Barreau and myself by a good four inches. He bowed courteously, looking us over with keen eyes that were black as the long mustache-end he turned over and over on his forefinger. ”

“ One could see any sort of costume, from sober broadcloth and fine linen to the rainbow garb of a blanket Indian. Even the long-haired frontiersman sacred to fiction was represented by a specimen or two. Altogether it was a motley, high-spirited crowd that we mixed with that night. Of the quieter residential portion of Benton I saw nothing, that time. My way, guided thereto by Bilk, was down the main street, where lights shone and glasses clinked merrily; into divers places where ancient pianos tinkled dance music. Drink and dance and gamble, that was the night life of the town. ”

“ It was a rule of the guardhouse that a prisoner must lie with his feet to the door, so that his head could be seen by the passing guard. Just opposite our door a lamp was bracketed on the wall. What light it gave shone through the bars directly on our faces while we slept. Rules or no rules, a man would shade his face with his arm or a corner of the quilt, when the lamp-glare struck in his eyes. And Barreau, perhaps with that very emergency in mind, had slept with his hat pulled over his face. ”

“ A forty or fifty mile jaunt is not much to a seasoned rider—but I lacked seasoning; however, I was due to get it.
A little before sundown I rode into the long shadow of West Butte, in rare good humor with myself despite the ache in my legs, for by grace of my good red horse I had covered a wonderful stretch that afternoon, and my nag was yet stepping out lightly. On either hand loomed the rugged pyramids of the Sweet Grass—which in truth are not hills at all, but three boulder-strewn, pine-clad mountains rising abruptly out of a rolling plain. ”

“ On the huge roofed-in wharf freight-handlers swarmed like bees. The rumble of hand trucks and the tramp of feet rose to the great beams overhead and echoed back in a steady drone. Lamps fluttered on vibrating walls. Men moved in haste, throwing long shadows ahead and behind them. Boxes, bales, barrels, sacked stuff vanished swiftly down three separate inclines to the lower deck of the Memphis Girl, and from the depths of this freight-swallowing monster came the raucous gabble, freely garnished with profanity, of the toiling stevedores. ”

“ Twilight merged into gray night, and the red blaze of the fire we built glowed on the surrounding trees and the canvas of the tent. A pot of melted snow bubbled and shed steam. Close by it a piece of moose-flesh thawed in the heat. Jessie, still mute, sat on a piece of canvas I spread for her, and held her hands to the flame.
“Now,” Barreau challenged Montell, “is a good time for explanations. Only facts, no matter how they gall you, will serve. Speak up. First begin at the beginning, and tell the truth—to her.” He motioned to Jessie. ”

“ Twilight wrapped the butte. Barreau was bent over a small fire, cooking supper.
“Oh,” he said, looking around, “you’ve come alive, at last. I was about to wake you. The chuck’s ready.”
I washed in the trickle of water that ran away from the spring, and felt like a new man. As to eating, I was little short of ravenous. Never had food made such an appeal to my senses. When the meal was over Barreau settled back against his saddle.
“There will be a moon somewhere near midnight,” he declared. “We’ll move then. After to-night we can travel without cover of the dark. ”

“ Nor does a man forget easily the lessons he is taught in the school of necessity.
With Peace River behind us we edged nearer to the base of the mountains, passing through a stretch of country alive with caribou and deer. Bear—monsters, by the track they left—frightened our picketed horses of a night. The moist earth bordering every pond and spring was marked with hoof and claw. The shyer fur-bearing animals, Barreau told me, surrounded us unseen. Barring a thickly wooded plateau south of the Peace we passed through no forest oppressively dense. ”

“ Watch that rise take fire from the sun. And the mountains over yonder; square-shouldered giants, tricked out in royal purple.”
The sun slid clear of the skyline, and a long shaft of light brushed over the unreckoned miles of grassland till it fell caressingly on our butte. Hollows and tiny threads of creeks nursed deep, black shadows that shrank and vanished as the sun-rays sought them out. Away beyond, to the west, the snow-tipped Rockies stood boldly out in their robe of misty blue. ”

“ Then I bethought me of my neglected snowshoeing, and sallied forth on the track of that free, effortless stride which had so far eluded me. At the gate of the stockade I turned back, on the impulse of the moment, and went to the Montell cabin to ask Jessie if she were a snowshoe expert or wished to become one.
“Thank Heaven for a chance to see the outside of this stockade wall once more,” she cried, in mock fervor. “Will I go snowshoeing? Yea, and verily. I detest being mewed up, and I don’t like to wander off alone. This big desolate country is so forbidding. ”

“ Almost at once she leaned forward again, glaring straight at Barreau.
“It would be of a piece with your past deeds,” she cried, “if you should break this flimsy jail and butcher my father and myself while we slept. Oh, one could expect anything from such as you!” And then she was gone, the guard striding heavy-footed after her. A puzzled expression crept over Barreau’s face, blotting out the ironic smile.
“It was a dirty trick of me to speak so,” he muttered, after a little. “But my God, a man can’t always play the Stoic under the lash. ”

“ Barreau muttered. “Not that my conscience would ever trouble me. He’s protected in a way he doesn’t dream of. And he’s too wary of me to lay himself liable. If anything happens it will be an accident; you know how it would have been to-night. You, sitting right there, could not have declared it otherwise, no matter what your private opinion might have been. He has pretty well calculated the chances. No, Mr. Montell is not going to put himself in any position where I’d be clearly justified in snuffing him out.” ”

“ Louis Charbonnes myself, and I wondered that I had never heard of Montell or his daughter. Barreau smiled when I spoke of this later.
“That’s Montell all over,” he drawled. “Marrying a Charbonne stands out as one of the big things he has accomplished. He can’t help boasting of it now and then. I imagine that if he were dying in a snowbank that thought would cheer him in his last hour. He regards it as a distinct achievement. He was a big, perfectly-formed, good-looking brute when he met her, and from all I know it was a case of two strong natures brushing aside all obstacles. ”

“ If we are being followed, they will scarcely think to look for us there. And I know of no other place in this bald country where our picketed horses would not stand out like the nose on a man’s face. How it blows!”
It did. So that speech was next to impossible, even had we been inclined to talk. The wind struck us quartering and muffled a shout to inconsequent syllables. But beyond those few words Barreau kept mute, leaning forward in his stirrups at a steady lope. We must have covered near twenty miles before the eastern skyline gave a hint of dawn. ”

“ We lay at the post doing naught but eat and sleep and watch the long storehouse creep higher log by log, till the skeleton of a roof took form above the blackened walls. At night the eight of us would sprawl around a fire in the open, talking of everything under the sun, sometimes playing with a soiled and tattered pack of cards that these exiles cherished as their dearest possession. If we were in hostile territory no hint of apprehension cropped out in our intercourse ”

“ I cannot say what there was in Barreau’s tone that stirred Montell to the depths. It may have been that finding himself checkmated, dominated by a man he hated so sincerely, another fierce spasm of rage welled up within and ruptured some tautened blood-vessel. It may have been some weakness of the heart, common to fleshy men. ”

“ And at the far end of the stockade a group of men chattered noisily about a roaring fire. Yet the lights and sounds, the buildings of men and the men themselves seemed inconsequential, insignificant, proportioned to their surroundings like the cheeping of a small frog at the bottom of a deep well. ”

“ And he was still asleep, his head resting on one doubled-up arm, when I got up and lighted the candle at seven in the morning. My slumbers had been beset by disturbing visions of violent deeds, the by-product of what I had seen and heard that evening; Barreau, by his cheerful aspect on arising, had banished his troubles while he slept.
The day dawned, clear and cold and very still. It passed, and another followed, and still others, till I lost track of their number in the frost-ridden cycle of time. Montell’s momentous stumble grew to be a dim incident of the past ”

“ Fore and aft, lines were run out and made fast by a dim figure that flitted from behind the woodricks. The mate growled an order, and a gangplank joined the Moon’s deck to the wharf. Down this we filed, his Sorrel Whiskers glanced over one shoulder at me.
At once my grimy companions, Bilk among the number, fell upon the pile of wood. For a moment I stood undecided—then made to walk boldly past the mate. Back of the wharf I saw the land, a sloping rise dotted with farmhouses, take form in the growing light; and I was for St. Louis whether or no. But Tupper forestalled me. ”

“ It was no difficult matter for me to arrive at the conclusion that I was in a fair way to go into the Northwest afoot—should I be lucky enough to arrive at all. Red seemed to have gone into hiding. At least, he remained unseen, though I ascended divers little eminences and stared my hardest, realizing something of the hopelessness of my quest even while I stared. That Sweet Grass country is monstrously deceptive to the unsophisticated. Overlooking it from a little height one thinks he sees immense areas of gently undulating plain; and he sees truly. ”

“ You cannot come. Bolton, and—and Bob will see you safe to St. Louis. If nothing happens I shall be there in the spring.”
She laid her head against his breast and sobbed, wailing over him before us all. I bit my lip at the sight, and putting my pride in my pocket went over to them.
“Barreau,” I said, “I don’t, and probably never will, understand a woman. You win, and I wish you luck. But unless you hold a grudge longer than I do, there’s no need for you to play a lone hand. Let the dead past bury its dead, and we will all go over the mountains together. ”

“ Deep-water men paint lurid pictures of hell-ships, but I have my doubts, from what I’ve seen and heard, of any wind-jammer that ever sailed the seven seas being worse that some of the flat-bottomed craft that bucked the Missouri and Mississippi in the year of our Lord eighteen eighty-one.
The mate, a sullen, red-whiskered brute, hustled me down ’tween decks, rummaged in a locker and brought forth a frayed suit of cotton overalls, and a pair of brogans two sizes too large for my feet—and they are not small by any means. ”