The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 27

food and warmth had brought complete recovery, Ned took up with Bess the problem of deliverance from the island. He found that for weeks she had been thinking along the same line, and like him, she had as yet failed to hit upon any plan that offered the least chance for success. The subject held them late into the night.

There was no need of a formal pact between them. Each of them realized that if ever the matter came to the crisis, the other could be relied upon to the last ditch. They stood together on that. Whatever the one attempted, the other would carry through. And because of their mutual trust, both felt more certain than ever of their ultimate triumph.

They took different trails in the dawn, following the long circle of their trap lines. All the way they pondered on this same problem, conceiving a plan only to reject it because of some unsurmountable obstacle to its success; dwelling upon the project every hour and dreaming about it at night. But Ned was far as ever from a conclusion when, three days later, he followed the beach on the way to the home cabin.

He had watched with deadened interest the drama of the wild things about him these last days; but when he was less than a mile from home he had cause to remember it again. To his great amazement he found at the edge of the ice the fresh track of one of the large island bears.

There was nothing to tell for sure what had awakened the great creature prematurely from its winter sleep. The expected date of awakening was still many weeks off. But the grizzly is notoriously irregular in his habits; and experienced naturalists have long since ceased to be surprised at whatever he may do. Ned reasoned at once that the present mild weather had merely beguiled the old veteran from, his lair (the size of the track indicated a patriarch among the bears) and he was simply enjoying the late winter sunlight until a cold spell should drive him in again.

The sight of the great imprint was a welcome one to Ned, not alone because the wakening forecasted, perhaps, an early spring, but because he was in immediate need of bear fur. His own coat was worn; besides, he was planning a suit of cold-proof garments for Lenore, to be used perhaps in their final flight across the ice. And he saw at once that conditions were favorable for trapping the great creature.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile ahead, in a little pass that led through the shore crags down to the beach, Doomsdorf had left one of his most powerful bear traps. Ned had seen it many times as he had clambered through on a short cut to the cabin. Because it lay in a natural runway for game—one of the few spots where the shore crags could be easily surmounted—it was at least possible that the huge bear might fall into it, on his return to his lair in the hills.

Ned hurried on, and in a few moments had dug out the great trap from its covering of snow. For a moment he actually doubted his power to set it. It was of obsolete type, mighty-springed, and its jaws were of a width forbidden by all laws of trapping in civilized lands, yet Ned did not doubt its efficiency. Its mighty irons had rusted; but not even a bear's incalculable might could shatter them.

This was not to be a bait set, so his success depended upon the skill with which he concealed the trap. First he carefully refilled the excavation he had made in digging out the trap; then he dug a shallow hole in the snow in the narrowest part of the pass. Here he set the trap, utilizing all the power of his mighty muscles, and spread a light covering of snow above.

It was a delicate piece of work. Ned had no wish for the cruel jaws to snap shut as he was working above them. But his heart was in the venture, for all his hatred of the cruelty of the device; and he covered up his tracks with veteran's skill. Then he quietly withdrew, retracing his steps and following the shore line toward the home cabin.

Surely the mighty strength that had set the powerful spring and the skill that covered up all traces of his work could succeed at last in freeing him from slavery.

Bess had reached the shelter first, and she was particularly relieved to see Ned's tall form swinging toward her along the shore. Doomsdorf was in a particularly ominous mood to-night. The curious glitter in his magnetic eyes was more pronounced than she had ever seen it,—catlike in the shadows, steely in the lantern light; and his cruel savagery was just at the surface, ready to be wakened. Worst of all, the gaze he bent toward her was especially eager to-night, horrible to her as the cold touch of a reptile.

Every time she glanced up she found him regarding her, and he followed her with his eyes when she moved. Yet she dared not seek shelter in the new cabin, for the simple reason that she was afraid Doomsdorf would follow her there. Until Ned came, her defense was solely the presence of Lenore and the squaw.

There was no particular warmth in her meeting with Ned. Doomsdorf's eyes were still upon her, and she was careful to keep any hint of the new understanding out of her face and eyes. Ned's weather-beaten countenance was as expressionless as Sindy's own.

He refused to be depressed, at once, by the air of suspense and impending disaster that hung over the cabin. Thus was the day of his home-coming—looked forward to throughout the bitter days of his trap line—and was not Lenore waiting, beautiful in the lantern light, for him to speak to her? Yet the old exultation was somehow missing to-night. His thoughts kept turning back to the pact he had made with Bess—to their dream of deliverance. What was more curious, Lenore's lack of warmth that had come to be a matter of course in their weekly meetings almost failed to hurt. His mind was so busy with the problem of their freedom that he escaped the usual despondency that had crept upon him so many times before.

It was a peculiar paradox that while this was his day of days, the one day in five that seemed to justify his continued life, it was always the most hopeless and miserable, simply because of Lenore's attitude toward him. It wasn't entirely her failure to respond to his own ardor. The inevitable disappointment lay as much in his own attitude toward her. It was as much the things she did as those she failed to do that depressed him; the questions she asked, her patronage of Bess, her self-pitying complaints. Always he experienced a sense of some great omission,—perhaps only his failure to feel the old delight and exultation that the mere fact of her presence used to impart to him. He found it increasingly hard to give full attention to her; to let his eyes dwell always on her beauty and his ears give heed to her wrongs.

She found him preoccupied, and as a result increased her complaints. But they left him cold to night. Her lot was happiness itself compared to that of Bess, and yet Bess's spirit of good sportsmanship and courage was entirely absent in her. But he must not keep comparing her with Bess. Destruction lay that way! He must continue to adore her for her beauty, the charm that used to hold him entranced.

She was all he had asked for in his old life. If they ever gained freedom, he would, in all probability, find in her all that he could desire in the future. They could take up their old love anew, and doubtless she would give him all the happiness he had a right to expect—more than he deserved. Likely enough, if the test ever came, she would show that her metal too was the finest, tempered steel! At least he could continue to believe in her until he had cause to lose faith.

And the test was not far-distant now. He was not blind to the gathering storm; at any moment there might ensue a crisis that would embroil all three of them in a struggle to the death. Not one of them could escape, Lenore no more than himself or Bess. She was one of the triumvirate,—and surely she would stand with them to the last.

If the crisis could only be postponed until they had made full preparations for it! Yet in one glance, in which he traced down Doomsdorf's fiery gaze and found it centered upon Bess, he knew that any instant might bring the storm!

He felt his own anger rising. A dark fury, scarcely controllable, swept over him at the insult of that creeping, serpent gaze upon Bess's beauty. But he mustn't give way to it yet. He must hold himself for the last, dread instant of need.

The four of them gathered about the little, rough table, and again the squaw served them, from the shadows. It was a strange picture, there in the lantern light,—the imperturbable face of the squaw, always half in shadow; the lurid wild-beast eyes of Doomsdorf gleaming under his shaggy brows; Lenore's beauty a thing to hold the eyes; and Bess horrified and fearful at what the next moment might bring. Hardly a word was exchanged from the meal's beginning to its end. Bess tried to talk, so as to divert Doomsdorf's sinister thoughts, but the words would not come to her lips. The man seemed eager to finish the meal.

As soon as they had moved from the table toward the little stove, and the squaw had begun the work of clearing away the dishes, Doomsdorf halted at Bess's side. For a moment he gazed down at her, a great hand resting on her chair.

"You're a pretty little hell-cat,” he told her, in curiously muffled tones. “What makes you such a fighter?”

She tried to meet his eyes. “I have to be, in this climate,” she answered. “Where would you get your furs”

He uttered one great hoarse syllable, as if in the beginning of laughter. “That's not what I mean, and you know it. You'd sooner walk ten miles through the snow than give an inch, wouldn't you?” His hand reached, closing gently upon her arm, and a shiver of repulsion passed over her. “That's a fine little muscle—but you don't want to work it off. Why don't you show a little friendship?”

The girl looked with difficulty into his great, drawn face. Ned stiffened, wondering if the moment of crisis were at hand at last. Lenore watched appalled, but the native went on about her tasks as if she hadn't heard.

“You can't expect—much friendship—from a prisoner,” Bess told him brokenly. Her face, so white in the yellow lantern light, her trembling lips, most of all the appeal for mercy in her child's eyes—raised to this beast compared with whom even the North was merciful—wakened surging, desperate anger in Ned. The room turned red before his eyes, his muscles quivered, and he was rapidly reaching that point wherein his self-control, on which life itself depended, was jeopardized. Yet he must hold himself with an iron hand. He must wait to the last instant of need. Everything depended on that, in avoiding the crisis until he had made some measure of preparation.

The loss of his long-bladed skinning knife increased the odds against him. He had put considerable reliance in its hair-splitting blade; and since he had perfected the sheath of caribou leather whereby he could keep it open in his pocket, he had hoped that it might be the means of freedom. In the three days since its loss he had been obliged to carry one of the butcher knives from the supplies at Forks cabin,—a sharp enough implement, but without the dagger point that would be so deadly in close work. However, he moved his arm so that he could reach the hilt of the knife in one motion.

But with the uncanny watchfulness of a cat Doomsdorf saw the movement. For one breath Ned's life was suspended by a hair: Doomsdorf's first impulse was to seize his pistol and bore the younger man through and through with lead. It was a mere madman's whim that he refrained: he had a more entertaining fate in store for Ned when affairs finally reached a crisis. He leered down in contempt.

“Your little friend seems to be getting nervous,” he remarked easily to Bess. “So not to disturb him further, let's you and I go to the new cabin. I've taken some fine pelts lately—I want you to see them. You need a new coat.”

He seemed to be aware of the gathering suspense, and it thrilled his diseased nerves with exultation. But there was, from his listeners, but one significant response at first to the evil suggestion that he made with such iniquitous fires in his wild eyes and such a strange, suppressed tone in his voice. Bess's expression did not change. It had already revealed the uttermost depths of dread. Ned still held himself, cold, now, as a serpent, waiting for his chance. But the squaw paused a single instant in her work. For one breath they failed to hear the clatter of her pans. But seemingly indifferent, she immediately went back to her toil.

Bess shook her head in desperate appeal. “Wait till morning,” she pleaded. “I'm tired now”

Ned saw by the gathering fury of their master's face that her refusal would only bring on the crisis, so he leaped swiftly into the breach. “Sure, Bess, let's go to look at them,” he said. “I'm anxious to see 'em too”

Doomsdorf whirled to him, and his gaze was as a trial of fire to Ned. Yet the latter did not flinch. For a long second they regarded each other in implacable hatred, and then Doomsdorf's sudden start told that he had been visited by inspiration. His leering look of contempt was almost a smile. “Sure, come along,” he said. “I've got something to say to you too. To spare Lenore's feelings—we'll go to the other cabin.”

Ned was not in the least deceived by this reference to Lenore. Doomsdorf had further cause, other than regard for Lenore's sensibilities, for continuing their conversation in the other cabin. What it was Ned did not know, and he dared not think. And he had a vague impression that while he and Doomsdorf had waged their battle of eyes, Bess had mysteriously moved from her position. He had left her just at Doomsdorf's right; when he saw her again she was fully ten feet distant, within a few feet of the cupboards where the squaw kept many of the food supplies, and now was busy with her parka of caribou skin.

She led the way out into the clear, icy night. It was one of those still, clear, late winter evenings, not so cold as it had been, when the frozen, snow-swept world gave no image of reality to the senses. The snow wastes and the velvet depths of the sky were lurid, flashing with a thousand ever-changing hues from the giant kaleidoscope of the Northern Lights. Moved and held by this wonder that never grows old to the northern man, Doomsdorf halted them just without the cabin door.

As they watched, the procession of colors suddenly ceased, leaving world and sky an incredible monochrome in red. It was wanly red at first, but the warm hue slowly deepened until one could imagine that the spirits of all the dead, aroused for some cosmic holiday, were lighting flares of red fire. It was a strange sight even for these latitudes; but this lambent mystery is ever beyond the ken of man. The name that Doomsdorf had given his island had never seemed so fitting as now. In the carmine glow the bearded face of the master of the isle was suddenly the red-hued visage of Satan.

But the light died away at last, and the falling darkness called them back to themselves. The lust that fired Doomsdorf's blood, the fear like the Arctic cold in the veins of Ned and Bess was all worldly enough. For a moment he studied their pale, tense faces.

“There's no need of going farther,” he said in his deep, rumbling voice. “There was no need of even coming here. You seem to be forgetting, you two, where you are—all the things I told you at first.”

He paused, and his voice had dropped, and the tone was strange and even, dreadful to hear, when he spoke again. “I've evidently been too easy with you,” he went on. “I'll see that I correct that fault in the future. You, Ned, made a serious mistake when you interfered in this matter to-night. I'll see if I can't teach you to keep your place. And Bess—long ago I told you that your body and your soul were mine—to do with what I liked. You seemed to have forgotten—but I intend that you will call it to mind—again.”

But Ned still faced him when he paused, eyes steadfast, his face an iron gray in the wan light. His training had been hard and true, and he still found strength to stand erect.

“I want to tell you this—in reply,” he answered in the clear, firm voice of one who has mastered fear. “We know well enough what you can do to us. But that doesn't mean that we're going to yield to you—to every one of your evil wishes. Life isn't so pleasant to either of us that we'll submit to everything in order to live. No matter what you do to me—I know what I'll do to you if you try to carry out your wicked designs by force.”

Doomsdorf eyed him calmly, but the smile of contempt was wholly gone from his lips. “You'll show fight?” he asked.

“With every ounce I've got! You may master me—with every advantage of weapons and physical strength—but you'll have to kill me first. Bess will kill herself before she'll yield to you. You won't be better off—you'll simply have no one to do your trapping for you. It isn't worth it, Doomsdorf.”

He eyed them a moment, coolly and casually. “When I want anything, Ned, I want it bad enough to pay all I've got for it,” he said in a remarkably even tone. “Don't presume that I value your lives so much that I'll turn one step from my course. Besides, Ned—you won't be here!”

Ned's eyes widened, as he tried to read his meaning. Doomsdorf laughed softly in the silence. “You won't be here!” he repeated. “You fool—do you think I'd let you get in my way? It will rest as it is to-night. To-morrow morning you start out to tend your traps—and you will tend Bess's lines as well as your own. She will stay here—with me—from now on.”

Ned felt his muscles hardening to steel. “I won't leave her to you”

“You won't? Don't make any mistake on that point. If you are not on your way by sun-up, you get a hundred—from the knout. You won't be able to leave for some time after that—but neither will you be able to interfere with what doesn't concern you. I'll give you a few in the dawn—just as a sample to show what they're like. Nor am I afraid of Bess killing herself. It's cold and dark here, but it's colder and darker—There. She'll stand a lot before she'll do that.”

“That's definite?” Ned asked.

“The truest words I ever spoke. I've never gone back on a promise yet.”

“And believe me, I won't go back on mine. If that's all you have to say”

“That's quite all. Think it over—you'll find it isn't so bad. And now—good night.”

He bowed to them, in mock politeness. Then he turned back into his cabin.

For a moment his two prisoners stood inert, utterly motionless in the wan light. Ned started to turn to her, still held by his own dark thoughts, but at the first glance of her white, set face he whirled in the most breathless amazement. It was in no way the stricken, terrified countenance that he had seen a few moments before. The lips were firm, the eyes deep and strange; even in the half-light he could see her look of inexorable purpose.

Some great resolve had come to her,—some sweeping emotion that might even be akin to hope. Was she planning suicide? Was that the meaning of this new look of iron resolution in her face? He could conceive of no other explanation; in self-inflicted death alone lay deliverance from Doomsdorf's lust. He dared not hope for any happier freedom.

He reached groping hands to hers. “You don't mean”—he gasped, hardly able to make his lips move in speech—“you don't intend?”

“To kill myself? Not yet, by a long way.” The girl's hand slipped cautiously out from the pocket of her jacket, showing him what seemed to be a small, square box of tin. But the light was too dim for him to make out the words on the paper label. “I got this from the shelf—just as we left the cabin.”

The hopeful tones in her voice was the happiest sound Ned had heard since he had come to the island.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Nothing very much—but yet—a chance for freedom. Come into the cabin where we can scratch a match.”

They moved into the newer hut of logs, and there Bess showed him the humble article in which lay her hopes. It was merely a tin of fine snuff from among Doomsdorf's personal supplies.