Drennen

“ Dismounted, Drennen came swiftly through the yawning door to stand at the side of the prone figure. A great, unreasonable and still a natural fear sprang up in his heart; he went down upon his knees with a half sob gripping at his throat. It was a woman, her body twisting before him, and he was afraid that it was Ygerne and that she was dying. Her face was hidden, an arm was flung up, her loosened hair fell wildly about her temples and cheeks. ”

“ Tying the strange horse swiftly, Drennen went back to his bed. He found his rifle and cartridge belt, filled his pockets hit or miss from his food pack, and, making no noise, returned to the flat. Again leading the strange horse he pushed on, up trail, toward the muddy brook.
Too dark to see more than the lowering mass of trees, the blackness of the ground looking a bottomless pit under foot, the wall of cliffs standing up against the stars. But slowly he could find his way to the creek, across, and along the lake shore. ”

“ An evil nature, a flare of temper, a wrong done and redressed in hot wrath and red blood, a mistake or a weakness or a wild spirit born a hundred years too late, any of these things might send a man into the North Woods. But Drennen, who made the statement to Ygerne Bellaire, was in himself an exception to it. ”

“ Drennen's laugh jeered at her.
"You don't burn daylight, do you?" he sneered. "The man has money; he is young; he looks quite the pink-cheeked, impressionable pup, as good as a gilded youth on Broadway. How did he accept the wonder tale of the virgin purity of your red lips, Ygerne?" ”

“ Drennen, passing out, nodded pleasantly to Marc Lemarc, coming in. Lemarc stared after him wonderingly. Drennen looked up and down the street as though searching for some one. His eyes moved restlessly; his agitation was so obvious that any man, seeing him, might see it, too.
It was far too early to hope to see Ygerne. After a brief hesitation Drennen returned thoughtfully to his dugout. His door open, his pipe lighted only to die and grow cold, forgotten, he waited. Now and then when a man passed as infrequently happened, Drennen looked up quickly. He frowned each time as the man went on. ”

“ Drennen's sneer was not for the wrong done but for the weakness of allowing suffering to come afterward. The old man had seemed glad, touched almost to tears, when his son had paid off the old score.... And now Drennen's sneer was for himself. Why had he not kept that forty thousand dollars? Money meant power and power was all that he wanted. Power to crush men who would have crushed him had they been able; power to seek his prey where he would and to pull it down.
Ygerne's note he never read the second time. ”

“ Each one following his own hope and fancy they had gone into the mountains, heading toward the north as Drennen had headed two weeks before, some following the main trail for a matter of many miles, others breaking off to right or to left at tempting cross-trails, hastening feverishly, dreaming dreams and finding rude awakenings. ”

“ Rand flushed, and inspired by his liquor a sudden, unusual stubbornness sprang up in his eyes. He heard Ernestine laugh softly.
"You go to hell," he cried hotly. "I got a right ..."
"No man has a right to lie about me," announced Drennen crisply. The big hands at his sides had clenched swiftly with knotting muscles. ”

“ The human tide sweeping into the Settlement rose steadily during the afternoon. A street which had been deserted twenty-four hours ago was now jammed from side to side. Drennen came to understand dully as the day wore on that there could be but one explanation; a rush like this meant that some fool had dropped his pick into a vein of gold and word of it had flashed across the mountains. Even then, his pain and exhaustion and giddy sickness were such that he did not realise that he himself was to thank for the pouring of hundreds of men into MacLeod's. ”

“ Once more George came forward slowly while Drennen waited for him, again they met, Drennen leaping forward just as the Canadian's sledge of a clenched hand was lifted. Each man threw up a guarding left arm only to have his brawny guard beaten through as again the two resounding blows landed almost like one; this time there was a trickle of red from the Canadian's mouth, a panting, wheezing cough from the American as he received the other's blow full in the chest. For a dizzy moment they stood separated by the very fury of their onslaught, each balancing.
"They are men!" ”

“ For half a score of years this land of hard trails, this far out place where man met man without veneer, where nature's breasts lay stripped of covering and naked, where life was the old life of things elemental, where primal laws were good laws, where there was room enough for the strong and scant room for the weak, David Drennen had found a spacious walled home. ”

“ He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor, garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle. His estimate changed swiftly, but he altered merely in slight detail his plan of attack. After a keen glance about the dugout his words came smoothly. Drennen was no illiterate miner but he was sorely ridden by poverty, just the same.
"Give me your word that you've really found the real stuff," Madden said, "and we'll talk business. Oh, that isn't the ordinary course, to be sure, but I'm willing to make an exception after seeing you; you are not the ordinary man. ”

“ For one thing he had packed off on a lonely prospecting trip two weeks before, impatient at the delayed thaw, unwilling to wait until the trails were open enough for a man to travel off the beaten route. For another thing one never sought Dave Drennen where other men drew together as they had congregated now. If under that hard exterior he felt any of the emotions which other men feel, if he had his joys and his griefs, he chose to experience them alone. ”

“ A bare fisted, relentless, give and take fight such as this promised to be is common enough wherever hard men foregather, dirt-common in a country where the fag end of a long winter of enforced idleness leaves restless nerves raw. The uncommon thing about the brief battle or in any way connected with it lay in the attitude of the onlookers. Rarely is a crowd so unanimous both in expectation and desire. George would kill Drennen or would nearly kill him, and it would be a good thing. ”

“ And yet Drennen, as he moved forward a little to draw his winnings toward him, thrust his face close up to Kootanie George's and said crisply:
"Say that again and I'll slap your face!"
"Damn you!" shouted George.
And with the words came the blow, Drennen's open palm hard against George's cheek.
"And now George will kill him!" cried Ernestine through her set teeth.
CHAPTER V THE WAY OF THE NORTH
"Oh, mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" half sobbed old Marquette. "They will kill one the other! Another time it matters not. But to-night, here!... Stop; I forbid it!" ”

“ He drank his second cup of coffee, stuffed his old pipe full of coarse tobacco and went outside. Sefton and Lemarc had passed out of sight. Drennen hesitated just a second, pausing at the door. He was pitifully weak. He supposed that the thing for him to do was to crawl back to his bunk for the remainder of the day and the long night to follow. He clamped his pipe stem hard between his teeth. He'd do nothing of the kind. Did strength, any more than anything else in the world, come to a man who lay on his back and waited for it? He needed exercise. ”

“ Because you come when you do now, a thousand years too soon or a dozen years too late! Because I hate you as I have never learned how to hate a man no matter what thing he had done! I don't know what there is in me that is stronger than I am and that makes me keep my hands off your throat. Do you know what you have done, Ygerne, with the infernal witchery of you? You have made me love you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a rotten world! I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you! ”

“ There was a yard, or spar, in the water alongside of her, the rigging of which had hitched itself in some way about the rail, so that to every lurch on one side the boom rose half its length, with a flash of the sun off the wet end of it, and this went on regularly, till after watching it a bit I turned my eyes away with a shudder, feeling in a sense of creeping that possessed me for an instant the sort of craziness that would come into a dying brain aboard the craft to the horrible maddening monotony of the rise and fall of that spar. ”

“ At that, the sledge-rope galls one's neck with a continual, endless, yielding drag, resulting in back pains peculiar to itself. It is this eternal, maddening pull, with the pitiful, crawling gait, that tells; horse's labor and a snail's pace. The toil begets a perspiration which the cold solidifies midway through the garments. At every pause the clammy clothes grow chill, forcing one forward, onward, with sweating body and freezing face. In extreme cold, snow pulverizes dryly till steel runners drag as though slid through sand. ”

“ Excuse the burden of my song;
This day a Drag must die!
Because, although a herring red
May, like a fox, be tracked,
The Drag is absolutely dead
In point of literal fact.
Yet hounds and horses after go,
With huntsmen’s horns, and cry
Of “Yoicks!” and shout of “Tallyho!”
This day a Drag must die!
Chorus—With a hey, ho, &c.
A Drag’s as good to ride behind
As ever a fox’s tail,
Well drawn about, with turn and wind,
O’er many a hill and dale.
Fence, hedgerow, palings, turnpike gate,
The rider’s pluck will try,
As much as though ’twere true to state,
This day a Drag must die! ”

“ He leant forward in his saddle—his eyes were wide with hunger—the hunger of fierce, stifled excitement. With one sweeping glance he took in all the scene before him—the struggling hosts that seemed to circle to the far horizon—the smoke blending with the dark sky above—the stars blending with the distant fires—the distant fires that brought the dull glitter of far bog and quagmire into the play of universal flame. Burning flame that added crimson to the flowing blood—flesh to the glancing steel—gold to the poured-out mead—and snow to the naked limbs of the frenzied dancers. ”

“ The drifts often lay across the road like a wall, some feet above the heads of the horses; and we had dug through one or two, and had been once upset, and often near it, before we came to the steepest part of the ascent. The horses had by this time begun to feel the excitement of the rum given them by the driver at the last halt, and bounded on through the snow with continuous leaps, jerking the sleigh after them with a violence that threatened momently to break the traces. ”

“ A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half–awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent–up and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. ”

“ Now the air is dead under a smother of falling flakes that fluff up ankle-deep, knee-deep, till the sled plunges along behind, half buried, while the men wallow and invent ingenious oaths. Again the wind whirls the snow by in grotesque shapes, wonderful storm beings, writhing, whipping, biting as they pass, erasing bank and mountain. Yet, always there is that aching, steady tug of the shoulder-rope, stopping circulation till the arms depend numbly; and always the weary effort of trail-breaking. ”

“ I came along at a horrible crawl, which was getting slower and slower; for it’s no use to deny it—us big chaps have so much to carry on one pair of legs that we’re downright lazy ones. There I was, getting slower and slower, and smoking my pipe, and in a rare nasty temper, cussing away at that old sledge for being so heavy, and that sleepy that I kept dropping off fast as a top, and waking up again to find myself going on like a bit o’ machinery. ”

“ The brave little animal made a desperate effort to recover itself, but it had lost its balance, and in its agony it made a bound, which took it ten feet forward, and along the rapid slope, where it seemed to stand for a moment, and then, to the horror of all, it began to slip and stumble rapidly down the steep side of the ravine towards a part that was nearly perpendicular, and where horse and rider must be hurled down to immediate death. ”

“ The frenzy of a mad monster ruled our fate. We were almost flying. The 80 h. p. car sped on with the rapidity of a falling body. We could no longer breathe the wild rushing air. Sometimes the hooter gave a strident cry.
We flashed through Grey-l’Abbaye like lightning. ”

“ Another horse whinnied, quivering with suppressed rage, and after some convulsive wriggling, rushed headlong at the fence behind which we were standing. The rough-riders ride so splendidly that they seem part of the horse, rising and falling with the movement of the bucking. ”

“ If any human approached, the horse would give warning, by snort or by tug upon the rope by which he attached the horse to himself.
"Nothing like a real horse for an alarm clock," he murmured sleepily. "Hope that Flame had sense enough to ride home whatsoever!"
He was more tired than he had realized before throwing himself down upon his improvised couch of brush. Every muscle of his body from gun-belt up ached from the strain of that hemlock crossing. After covering himself with the slicker, carried rolled on the cantle of his saddle, he soon slept. ”