The Lady of North Star

CHAPTER IX

THE HUSKS OF THE PRODIGAL

WHEN Roger Bracknell came to himself, he had a splitting head, and no exact recollection of recent events. His head ached so much that he felt moved to press his temples with his hands, but found that it was impossible to do so, owing to his arms being bound to his side. On making that discovery, he lay quite still, with his eyes closed, thinking over the situation. Little by little memory came back to him, and he remembered what had befallen, but his remembrance of events ceased with the moment when his cousin’s pistol had cracked for the third time. Had the bullet struck him? He did not know, but at that moment through the drums throbbing in his head, a voice sounded in his ears, a voice that had external reality, and the tones of which he recognized.

“Do you think he’s dead, Joe? He lies still enough.”

A guttural voice grunted some reply, and there was a sound of movement near him. He opened his eyes, to find himself looking into a dark, frost-scarred face, from which a single eye gleamed malevolently. As that eye encountered his, the dark face was lifted and turned from him, and he caught the reply given over the speaker’s shoulder.

“Him eyes open. He alright!”

“That’s good hearing. I don’t want him to die on our hands, at least not until I have had a little more conversation with him.”

The man Joe gave a careless reply, and moved away. Corporal Bracknell craned his neck a little and looked round.

The slush lamp was still burning, but through the parchment window the grey light of the Northland day penetrated, from which fact he deduced that he had lain where he was many hours. In front of the stove, the man of the evil face, whom he had seen on opening his eyes, was busy preparing a meal, and the odour of frying moose-steak and bacon filled the cabin. In the bunk, propped up among the furs, with his left arm in an improvised sling, he descried his cousin, puffing at a pipe, and regarding him with thoughtful gaze. Their eyes met, and Dick Bracknell smiled.

“Morning, Cousin Roger. I hope that head of yours is not very bad.”

“It is only middling,” answered the corporal truthfully.

“Um! I suspected so! Joe there,” he indicated the Indian bending over the stove, “doesn’t know his strength, and he’s a holy terror with a whipstock. You should see him tackle a big wolf dog that’s turned savage. It’s a sight for gods and men!”

Roger Bracknell did not reply. He had not been aware of the Indian’s entrance on the previous night, but in a flash he divined what had happened to him, and why his head ached so intolerably. His cousin continued with mocking affability.

“He hit you rather hard, I am afraid, but we Bracknells are all a little thick in the skull, and I hope no real harm will follow on Joe’s forceful intervention. In any case you must own that his arrival was a most opportune one.”

“I can well believe you found it so,” answered the corporal.

“I did, Roger my boy, I did. You surprised me last night. I didn’t think you would have gone for a wounded and disabled man. It was scarcely chivalrous, you know.”

“You were armed,” was the reply. “I wasn’t.”

Dick Bracknell waved his pipe airily. “We will let it pass. What is done is done, and the past is always to be reckoned as irrevocable, as I know better than most of the parsons. The present and the future are my immediate concern, and the question is what am I to do with you?”

“That,” answered the corporal quietly, “is scarcely for me to decide.”

“No,” replied his cousin with a little laugh, “but it is a question in which you should be interested.”

Roger Bracknell was interested, intensely interested, but he strove his best to appear unconcerned, and after a moment his cousin continued —

“Joe there has a very simply solution. He suggests another knock on the head, and sepulchre in the river through an ice-hole. It is a course that would be advantageous to me, since your body would not be found before the ice breaks up in the spring, if then, and in the interval we should have time to clear out of the Territories.”

The corporal knew that what he said was true, and shivered a little as he contemplated the suggested way of getting rid of him, but his voice was firm as he asked casually, “Why don’t you accept that solution?”

“Why don’t I accept – ” began the other, and then broke off, glowering at the man who though in his power was apparently undismayed. Then a sneer came on his face. “Blood is thicker than water,” he remarked. “Though you’re willing to forget that we are cousins, and regardless of family ties are prepared to follow your d – d sense of duty, I can’t forget it; and I’m inclined to spare you, and even to cut those bonds of yours on conditions.”

“On conditions! What are they?” asked the corporal.

“That you give me your word of honour that you will not attempt to escape or to attack Joe or myself whilst you are with us.”

The corporal wondered what was in his cousin’s mind and what was behind the offer, but he was careful not to probe into the matter openly.

“You will accept my word of honour?” he asked with a faint touch of surprise in his voice.

“Yes,” answered his cousin sneeringly. “You see, I know you of old. The Bracknell strain runs true in you, whilst it has a twist in me. I know you won’t break your parole – if you give it. And of course, you will give it. It’s your word or your life. Ha! Ha! Quite a Dick Turpin touch there, hey?”

Roger Bracknell considered the matter swiftly. So far as he could see there was nothing to gain by rejecting the offer, since he was completely in the other’s hands, and though his cousin sneered he was clearly quite in earnest.

“I might be disposed to give my word, if – ”

“Man,” broke in the other savagely, “you had better. There are no ifs and buts about it. Look at Joe there. He doesn’t strike you as one who will be over delicate, does he? If I let him loose you’ll be running down the Elkhorn under the ice inside ten minutes. You’d better agree – and quickly. No!” he lifted his pipe to check the words on the corporal’s lips. “Hear me out. There’s another condition yet, and it is this. As soon as I am able to travel you will accompany me without demur for four days. On the fifth day, I’ll release you and you can do your worst.”

The corporal hesitated. There was something here that he did not understand, and again he wondered what lay behind the proposal. His cousin watched him, and as he did not speak, addressed him again.

“I may remind you what the situation is. You are in my power. If you can’t give me your word, if I don’t fall in with Joe’s more primitive suggestion, I can keep you tied up here, and I can leave you tied up when we move on; or I can lash you on to a sledge, and, willy nilly, take you along with us. That must be quite plain to you. But I prefer an amicable arrangement… You will give me your word?”

Corporal Bracknell recognized the truth of his cousin’s utterances. There was little choice in the matter, and after a little more reflection he agreed.

“Yes, Dick, I give you my word of honour.”

“I thought you would!” Dick Bracknell laughed shortly as he spoke, and then turned to his Indian companion. “Just take your knife, Joe, and cut those thongs.”

The Indian turned from the stove and growled something in a dialect which the corporal did not understand. He guessed, however, that the Indian was demurring, and with mingled feelings waited to see what would happen. His cousin spoke again, and this time there was a peremptory note in his voice.

“Cut those thongs, I tell you; and don’t stand there growling at things you don’t understand.”

He added something in his native tongue, and watching the Indian’s scowling face, the corporal saw the frown lift, and a flicker of evil laughter leap into the single eye. A moment later the Indian stepped up to him, and with a hunting knife cut the hide thongs which bound him, and then returned to the stove.

The corporal stretched his arms, then his whole body, and after that rose slowly to his feet. His cousin watched him with eyes that smiled inscrutably.

“Feels better, hey? You’re a sensible man, Cousin Roger, and now I guess we shall get along famously. A pity, though, that I shan’t be able to sit down to breakfast with you.”

“What I can’t understand is how you come to be here at all,” blurted the corporal.

“Oh,” laughed the other, “that’s as simple as you please. When I was plugged down by North Star, I must have lapsed into unconsciousness – for the first time on any stage. Whilst I was lying there in the snow – ”

“I examined you,” broke in the corporal. “I thought that you were dead!”

“But as you see I wasn’t,” replied the other, “and whilst I was lying there in the snow; Joe, who was waiting with the dogs, having heard the shots came to look for me. He carried me to the sled, took me to the woods on the other side of the river, made a fire, and having doctored me brought me along here. He’s a good sort is Joe, though his looks are against him.”

The corporal did not reply. From the trails he had found in the snow, he had already guessed part of the story which he had just heard and was not surprised at it. The wounded man laughed shortly.

“Joe is attached to me. I once did him a service, and if I told him to do it he’d run amuck through Regina barracks without demur. He doesn’t love the mounted police, as he owes his lost eye to one of them, so you will see, cousin, that only my family affection saves you.”

The Indian turned his scarred face from the stove, and laid the table in primitive fashion. Then having attended to his master, he placed a tin plate with moose meat and beans before the corporal, filled a mug with steaming coffee, and with a grunt invited him to eat. The officer did so readily enough. He had eaten nothing for fourteen hours and was feeling hungry.

“Plain fare,” commented his cousin, “but wholesome, and if one brings to it the sauce of hunger, it’s at least as good as anything we had at Harrow Fell… And that reminds me, cousin. How is the governor?”

The corporal remembered the dignified Sir James Bracknell as he had last seen him, and although he had had his own quarrel with him, felt resentment at the tone in which the question was asked.

“He was very well when last I saw him,” he answered stiffly.

“How long ago is that?”

“Two years.”

“Um! that’s a goodish time. May I inquire if he knows your whereabouts?”

“I think not. I didn’t tell him of my intentions when I came here. We – er – had a difference of opinion.”

Dick Bracknell laughed. “I don’t blame you for that. He’s a starchy old buffer is the governor, and a regular perambulating pepper pot.” He was silent for a moment, and then he inquired jerkily, “How – a – did he take – that – a – a – little affair of mine?”

“You mean the selling of the plans of the Travis gun?”

“There’s no need for you to be brutal!” was the sharp reply. “I’ve paid pretty heavily for that piece of madness. You’ve to remember that I’m the heir of Harrow Fell, and that if I show my nose in England I shall probably get five years at Portland or Dartmoor.”

The corporal knew that this was true, and was conscious of a little compunction. Without alluding to it he answered the question. “Sir James took that very badly. It was hushed up, of course, but when you disappeared, and your name was gazetted among the broken, he pressed for an explanation, and got it. As you can guess, proud old man as he is, it wasn’t a nice thing for him to hear.”

“No… Poor old governor!”

A strained silence followed, and a full two minutes passed without any one speaking. Then the corporal glanced at his cousin. The latter was sitting in his bunk, staring straight before him, with a troubled look in his eyes. He moved as the corporal looked at him, and as their eyes met, he laughed in a grating way.

“The husks are not good eating,” he commented, “and I’ve been feeding on them ever since the day I skipped from Alcombe.”

The corporal was still silent, a little amazed at his cousin’s mood, and the other spoke again. “Don’t you go thinking I never regret things, Roger my boy. There never was a prodigal yet who didn’t lie awake o’ nights thinking what a fool he’d been. And for some of us there’s no going back to scoop the ring and the robe and to feast on the fatted veal… There are times when I think of the Fell, and hear the pheasants clucking in the spinney. And I never sight at a ptarmigan but I think of the grouse driving down the wind on Harrow Moor. Man – it’s Hell, undiluted.”

The corporal pushed the tin plate from him. He felt strangely moved. He had thought of his cousin as wholly bad, and now he found good mingled with the evil. He turned round.

“Dick, old man,” he said in an unsteady voice, “you might make good yet, if you tried.”

His cousin laughed harshly. “Not me, you know better. What were you after me for? Whisky-running? Yes! I thought so. That’s bad enough for a man of – a – my antecedents. But there are worse things credited to Koona Dick, as you’ll learn. I’ve got too far. What is it that fellow Kipling says? ‘Damned from here to Eternity’? That’s me, and I know it.”

“You can pull up!” urged the other. “You can make reparation.”

“Reparation!” exclaimed the other. “Ah! you are thinking of – Joy – my wife, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered the corporal simply.

Dick Bracknell’s mood changed swiftly. “What’s Joy to you?” he demanded hoarsely. “You know her, you’ve talked with her, consoled her, I don’t doubt. What’s she to you?”

As he spoke his tones became violent, and he half threw himself out of the bunk, as if he would attack his cousin. The Indian started to his feet, and his one eye glared at the officer malevolently. The corporal did not move. As his cousin shouted the question the blood flushed his face, and in his heart he knew that he could not answer the question with the directness demanded.

“Don’t be a fool, Dick,” he replied quietly. “I never saw Joy Gargrave till four days ago, and if I talk of reparation, well, you’ll own it is due to her.”

Dick Bracknell’s jealous passion died down as suddenly as it had flamed. He threw himself back in the bunk and laughed shakily.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, “but it is one of the things that can’t be done.”

“You could let her divorce you!” blurted out the corporal. “It would be the decent thing to do.”

“When did I ever do the decent thing,” retorted his cousin sneeringly. “No, Joy’s my wife – and I’ll keep her. It is something to know that there are millions I can dip my hands in some day, and a warm breast I can flee to – ”

“Not now at any rate,” broke in the corporal sharply, only by an effort restraining himself. “Joy has started for England.”

“For England – when?” Dick Bracknell’s face and tones expressed amazement, but his next words were burdened with suspicion. “You’re not lying to me?”

“No, it is the truth. Joy started for England yesterday morning. I saw her start.”

“And I can’t follow,” commented the prodigal bitterly. “That’s part of the price I pay.”

He did not speak again for a long time, and the corporal charged his pipe, lit it, and sat smoking, staring into the stove, and reflecting on the mess his cousin had made of his life.

At the end of half an hour the Indian went out, and then Dick Bracknell broke the silence.

“I wonder what Joy thinks of me? Did she tell you?”

“She knows how she was trapped – you are aware of that, of course? I think she will never forgive you.”

“I’m not surprised,” was the reply, “and yet, Roger, I think the world of her. When I married her I loved her – and I wasn’t thinking of her money overmuch. It was Lady Alcombe who put that rotten scheme in my head. If I’d only been patient, and run straight, and not been tempted by that agent to sell the secret of the Travis gun – but there’s a whole regiment of ‘if’s’ so what’s the use of gassing? Anyway, Joy’s mine – and no man else can get her while I live.”

It was the last word he said upon the subject, and nearly three weeks later, having recovered sufficiently to travel, he journeyed with his cousin and the Indian up the Elkhorn. On the fourth morning of that journey Roger Bracknell woke, to find that preparations were already well advanced for departure. One team was already harnessed with a larger complement of dogs than usual, whilst his own sled, with three dogs standing by, was still unharnessed. His cousin indicated it with a jerk of his head.

“We part company today, Roger. I’m sorry to rob your dog team, but Joe insists as he’s afraid you’ll get down to the police-post too soon for us, if we leave you your full team. Besides, we’re tackling a stiff journey and we shall need dogs before we’re through. We’re starting immediately, and you’ll have to breakfast alone, and by the time you’re through with it your parole is off. You understand?”

The corporal nodded, and his cousin continued, “With only three dogs you won’t be such a fool as to try and trail us, and we’ve left you enough grub to get you down to North Star comfortably. Your rifle’s there on the top of your sled, and I trust you not to try and use it on us till you’ve eaten your breakfast… So long, old man.”

He turned lightly away, without waiting for his cousin to speak, and the corporal heard him humming an old chanson of the Voyageurs —

The song failed suddenly, and as Joe the Indian cracked his whip to the waiting dogs, Dick Bracknell looked back over his shoulder. His face was white and twisted as if with pain, and there was anguish in his eyes. The corporal took a hasty step towards him, but was waved back, and the team moved forward, the runners singing on the windswept ice. For ten minutes the officer stood watching, until the cavalcade passed out of sight behind a tree-clad island, but Dick Bracknell did not look back once. The corporal turned to the fire with a musing look upon his face, and whilst he prepared breakfast, his mind was with the man travelling up the river. The interrupted chanson haunted him and he found himself searching for the unsung fragment. For a time it eluded him, but presently he found it and hummed to himself —

and as he found it he understood to the full the look of pain upon his cousin’s face. Again he looked up the river. Beyond the island a line of black dots appeared, and by them marched two larger dots.

“Poor devil!” he murmured as he turned again to the fire.

CHAPTER X

A DESPERATE SITUATION

AN HOUR LATER Roger Bracknell started on his way back to the police-post, in a not very happy frame of mind. The chief of Fort Pilgrim was a man with little tolerance for failure, and the corporal knew that when he made his report it would be received with frowns. That was inevitable, but there was nothing for it but to return. His cousin and the Indian Joe had taken very effective measures to prevent him following on their trail when they had left him with a depleted dog-team and with only sufficient rations to carry him as far as North Star Lodge. Sorry as he was for his cousin he yet resented the action which had left him helpless, and his failure rankled as he swung steadily forward on the southward trail. Before the end of the day, however, a thought came to him. Duty was duty, and if he could reach North Star Lodge, there would be dogs there, and he could requisition them in the King’s name, and return to the pursuit. It did not seem a very nice thing to contemplate, but his oath of service left him no option, whilst the officer at Fort Pilgrim was bound to look askance at the whole affair, if he returned to explain that Koona Dick was his cousin, and that he had escaped him. Besides, there was Joy to consider. She could never be safe from molestation whilst Dick Bracknell was at large. It was even possible that the latter, finding the Territory growing too hot for him, might venture to follow her to England, and as her husband claim his rights. That must be prevented at all costs, even at the cost of Dick suffering incarceration in the penal prison at Stony Mountain.

The end of the day, however, brought an unlooked-for event, which made an end of these half-formed plans. He had camped for the night, and having fed his dogs with the dried salmon-roe which formed their staple food, was preparing his own meal, when one of the animals gave a sudden sharp howl of pain. He looked hastily round, and saw the dog twisted in some kind of spasm, its backbone arched, its legs jerking in a strange fashion. He went to it, and as he approached the spasm ended, and the dog lay in the snow completely exhausted. He was stooping over it, wondering what was the matter when the other two dogs howled simultaneously, and he turned swiftly to see one of them leap straight in the air, and in a moment both of them were in spasms similar to the one he had already witnessed, and before his eyes one of them curled up like a bow, then suddenly relaxed, and lay stark and dead.

A dark suspicion shot through his mind, as he jerked himself upright. The first dog was plainly at the point of death, whilst the third was twisted by spasms that could have but one ending. He knew that there could be no recovery, that he could do nothing for them, and in a swift impulse of mercy he drew his pistol and shot them. Then he strode to the sled, and lifting the small bale of dog food carried it to the fire, and by the flames of the burning pine examined it carefully. He had not to look long before he came upon some small white crystals in the creases of the roe. They might be snow, they might be frost crystals, but he did not think that they were either, and selecting one of the smallest of the white specks he placed it on his tongue. It was exceedingly bitter in taste.

“Strychnine!” he cried aloud, and then stood looking at the dead dogs with horror shining in his eyes. As he stood there one question was beating in his brain. “Who has done this thing? Who? Who?”

His thoughts flew back to his cousin. Had he – No! He could not believe that; for whoever had placed the strychnine in the dog food, had callously planned to murder him. And bad as Dick Bracknell was, the corporal felt that his cousin would not have done a thing like this.

“There’s that Indian – Joe,” he said, speaking his thoughts aloud. “From what Dick said he was afraid of me … and he would have disposed of me at the beginning if he had had his way!” He was silent for a little time, then he nodded his head. “Yes! The Indian did it without Dick’s knowledge.”