Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE DEVIL IN THE KLONDIKE

  Spurling, having returned from feeding his dogs, had reseated himselfby the window, but he had not again spoken. When Granger had informedhim that a meal was ready, and had called to him to come and partake,he had only shaken his head. When, however, it had been brought tohim, he had eaten hungrily, bolting his food like a famished husky,yet never looking at what he ate, for his eyes were directed along theriver-bed. He used neither fork nor spoon, carrying whatever was setbefore him hastily to his mouth in his hands. His whole attitude wasone of hurry; he rested in haste, as if begrudging the moments whichwere lost from travel.

  Had he been the foremost runner in some great race, who had fallen atthe last lap, and, waiting to recover himself before making the finaldash toward the tape, watched anxiously lest his next rival shouldround the bend, and surprise him before he was up on his feet again,he could not have been more tensely excited. His breath came in gaspsand spasms; his body jerked and trembled even while he sat. He beganto do things, and did not finish them. He opened his mouth to speak,and was silent. He half rose to his feet, and fell back again. Heturned his head to look at Granger, then thought better of it, andcontinued staring into the west. Granger watched him, and wonderedwhat might be the secret which he was hesitating to impart. Was hismind a blank through weariness? Was he arguing out some dreadfulproblem within himself? Or was he only mad?

  What frail and isolated creatures we are!--when once our power ofcommunicating thought is gone, though we breathe and move above theearth, we are more distant one from another than if we were trulydead; for, when a soul has totally forsaken its body, and the body hasceased to express, we, who live, can at least imagine that the thingdeparted sometimes returns and hovers within ourselves. To live and besilent is a remoter banishment from Life than the irrevocable exiledecreed by Death.

  Granger could now see that the change which he had noted in Spurlingmight quite well have been the work of a month or two months, and wasdue to trouble and neglect. The man was unwashed and unfed, and formany nights he had not slept. His eyes were ringed and bloodshot withfatigue, and with incipient snow-blindness. His cheeks were sunken andcadaverous with too much travel; his body was limp with over-work.Should the cause of his excitement be suddenly removed, he wouldcollapse; it was nervous courage which upheld him. And there, despiteall these alterations for the worse, he could still discern the oldSpurling--the man whom he had loved. The brows retained their oldfrown of impudent defiance, and the mouth its good-humoured, recklesscontempt. These had been overlaid by some baser passion, it was true;but they remained, showed through, and seemed recoverable. As helooked, the memory flashed through his mind of Spurling at hisproudest--on that night at the Mascot dance-hall, when they hadcarried into Dawson City the news of the great bonanza they had struckat Drunkman's Shallows. He was standing on a table, surrounded by agroup of miners, leading the singing, roaring out the doggerel chorusof a local mining ballad:

  "Oh, we'll be there with our bags of gold When the Judgment trumpets blare, When the stars drop dead and the moon stands cold, Tell the angels we'll be there."

  Ha, the power of the man and his consciousness of conquest!

  Half to himself he began to hum the tune, beating time on the bareboards with his moccasined feet. In a moment Spurling had jumped up,"For God's sake, stop! I can't endure that," he cried. "Oh, to thinkof it, that I am come to this, and that it is like this we meet afterall these years!" He covered his face with his hands, and, sinkingweakly back in the chair, commenced to sob. Granger went towards him,and bending over him, flung an arm around his neck. For the moment thebody before him was forgotten; the noble spirit of the man who hadonce stood by and helped him, was alone remembered. "Druce, tell meall," he said.

  "I can't; you would shun me."

  "Then why did you come if you could not trust me?"

  "There was nowhere else to go--no other way of escape. They were allaround me."

  "Who were all around you?"

  "Those who had come to take me to be hanged."

  Granger gasped, and shrank aside. Then his worst conjecture wascorrect--it was as bad as that! murder had been done.

  Spurling drew himself up suddenly, throwing back his hands anduncovering a face of ghastly paleness. One might have supposed that hehad been the startled witness to the confession, instead of the manwho had made it.

  "What was that I said just now?" he asked. "You must not believe it.It is not true; I am tired and overstrained. They've hunted me so longthat I myself have come almost to believe their squalid accusations.Don't look at me like that; I tell you I am innocent. . . . Oh well,perhaps I did fire the shot; but, if I did, it was an accident. Ididn't know that the rifle had gone off until I saw him drop . . . andwhen I laid my hand on him to lift him up, I found that he was dead.Ugh! Then I hid him in a hole in the ice, and, because he had been myfriend, I thought he would lie quiet forever there and never tell."

  While these words had been in the saying, Granger had drawn nearer andnearer, so that now the two men stood face to face, almost touching,staring into one another's eyes. Who was this friend who had beenshot? Could it have been Mordaunt? He seized hold of Spurling by thethroat with both hands, and shook him violently, crying, "What was hername? Will you tell me that?"

  Spurling wrenched himself free and his eyes blazed threateningly. "Itwasn't a woman," he said; "thank God, I haven't sunk to that." Thenmore slowly, gazing fixedly on Granger as if to calculate how far itwas safe to confide, "and he wasn't a friend of yours," he added.

  Granger turned away from the window that the murderer might not seehis countenance; his lips moved as if he prayed. He passed his handbefore his eyes as a man does who has been temporarily blinded by asudden flash. He had become terribly aware how near he had been tocommitting the crime for which this man was hunted. The knowledge ofthat fact gave him sympathy, a lack of which is always based onignorance. The compassionate man is invariably one who has beengreatly tempted. In those few seconds whilst he withdrew himself, thewhole portentous problem was argued out, "By how much is this man whointends, better than that man who accomplishes his crime?" Heconcluded that the difference was not one of virtue, but only ofopportunity--which entailed no credit on himself. He had passedthrough Spurling's temptation scatheless, therefore he could affordhim tenderness.

  "Druce," he said, speaking tremblingly, "it is terrible how far twomen can drift apart in the passage of three short years."

  "Then why did you leave me?" asked Spurling sulkily, not yet reassuredof his safety, nor recovered from his rough usage.

  "I left you because I feared that I might do the deed for which youare now in flight."

  Spurling sat up astonished. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "have all men feltlike that? I've often wondered why it was that you went away thatnight, leaving no message and abandoning your claim. Pray, who wereyou fearful of murdering?"

  "Listen. If I tell you, it may make it easier for you to believe me,in spite of what has just happened, when I say that I sincerely wantto help you."

  He was interrupted. "I suppose you know," said Spurling with ashocking attempt at merriment, "that you are losing the thousanddollars which has been offered for my capture alive or dead? It's onlyfair to tell you that. If any man is to make a profit by my hanging,I'd rather that the man should be a friend."

  It was as though one should make an indecent jest in the presence of awoman newly dead.

  "I deserved that you should say that," Granger replied. "But listen tome this once, for we may never meet again; who knows, in this land ofdeath? I want to explain to you how it was that I behaved as I did,and to ask your forgiveness."

  "Then make haste," said Spurling, as he drew his chair nearer thewindow, and returned his gaze to the west.

  Without the dark was falling, though the sky was still faintly stainedwith red. It was thus he sat in the unlighted room as they talkedtogether through the night, a shadowy outli
ne against the misty paneswhich never stirred, but stared far away across the frozen quiet ofthe land.

  Granger spoke again. "You know with what hopes we set out on ourjourney to Dawson; how we went there not for the greed of gold, butfor the sake of that other and more secret adventure which, as a boy,I promised my father I would undertake when I grew to be a man--anadventure which the Yukon gold could make possible and could purchase.That was my frame of mind throughout all the time that we were poor upthere. That first winter in the Klondike, when we were nearly starved,and our money gave out because our grub was exhausted and the price ofprovisions ran so high, when we were thankful to work for almost anywages on Wrath's diggings if only we might get food and keep warm, westill kept our faith in one another and our purpose in sight. You'llremember how we used to talk together throughout those long dark dayswhen, from November to February, we scarcely ever saw the sun and thethermometer sometimes stood at fifty below, and how we would plan forour great expedition to El Dorado, when our fortunes should be made,comforting ourselves for our present privations with thoughts of theland which Raleigh described. Those, despite their misery, were mybest days--I had hope then. Little Mordaunt would sit beside us, withhis face in his hands and his eyes opened wide with wonder, listeningto what we said; when we had finished he would beg us to take himalso, offering as his share, if he should be first to make his pile,to pay the way for all of us. It was then that we three made thecompact which should be binding, that whenever our joint fortunes,whether owned by one alone, or two, or in equal proportions by alltogether, should amount to fifty thousand dollars, we would regard itas common to us all, and, throwing up our workings, would leave theYukon for Guiana, in search of El Dorado. We were good comrades then,and did not calculate what ruin the avarice of gain may bring about inmen.

  "When spring came, we set out to seek the gold which should redeem us,which lay just underground. All that summer we travelled and foundonly pay-dirt or colours, and at times not even that, till we came tothe Sleeping River and pitched our camp at what was afterwardsDrunkman's Shallows. How discouraged we were! We talked of turningback, saying that nothing of worth had ever been found in the SleepingRiver. We called ourselves fools for having wasted our time up there.Then, on what we had determined should be the last night of our camp,when we had made up our minds to return next day, Eric Petersen cameby and joined us. He also had found nothing; worse still, had spentall he had, and, being down in the mouth, got drunk--not decently, butgloriously intoxicated. Somewhere about midnight, when, after twentyhours of shining, the sun had disappeared and the world was stillbright as day, and we were all sleeping, he got up and went down tothe river to bathe his aching head, and stumbled on the banks and,falling in, was nearly drowned. You heard him cry and, waking, randown to the water's edge. As you stooped to pull him out, you sawthat, where his foot had stumbled on the bank, it had kicked up anugget. Then you roused us and, when we had prospected and found thatgold was really there, we each staked a claim, and you an extra one asdiscoverer, and set off that same night on the run to register.

  "It was on the evening of the day we recorded that you had your greattime at the Mascot, leading the singing, and being toasted all round.It seemed to me I had reached El Dorado that night,--and now I knowthat I never shall. So, after the fun was over, we went back to workour claims, and toiled day and night till the river froze up. Thestampede had followed us, and every yard of likely land was staked formiles below and above. My claim yielded next to nothing, andMordaunt's soon pinched out; but your two were the richest on theShallows.

  "I was soon compelled to work for you for wages. Mordaunt, when he hadtaken ten thousand dollars out of his claim, agreed to do likewise.We should both have left you at that time and gone away to prospectafresh, had it not been for our early understanding that whatever weearned was owned conjointly. Just before the winter closed down uponus, we had taken out nearly fifty thousand dollars, the figure atwhich we had agreed to quit the Yukon; I had one, Mordaunt ten, andyou had thirty-five thousand dollars--forty-six thousand in all.Mordaunt and I talked to you about selling out and starting on ourgreater quest, but you held us to the fifty-thousand limit, sayingthat six months' postponement more or less would make no difference,and that we had better have too much than too little capital in handbefore our start was made. We yielded to your judgment inasmuch as youwere the richest man, never suspecting that you were alreadycontemplating going back on your bargain to share and share alike withus.

  "But after the burning had commenced, and the winter had settled downfor good, and the days had grown short and gloomy, we noticed a changein your manner--one of which you, perhaps, were not fully conscious.Your conversation became masterful and abrupt; you made us feel thatwe were your hired men, and were no longer partners in a future andnobler enterprise. Gradually the certainty dawned upon us that you hadrepudiated your compact, and did not include us in your plans. Goldfor its own sake I had never cared about as you had; I only valued itfor the power it had to forward me in the quest of which I had dreamedsince I was a child--the following in my father's footsteps anddiscovering of the city of the Incas, and, perhaps, of my fatherhimself.

  "When I had seen you growing rich whilst I remained a poor man, I hadfelt no jealousy; for I trusted in the promise we had exchanged andrelied on your honesty in keeping your word. But, when I had perceivedyour new intention, something went wrong inside my brain, so that Ibegan to construe all your former good as bad. I thought that from thefirst you had never intended to keep your word, and had brought meinto the Klondike to get me out of the way, so that, possessed of thesecret information which I had given you, you might steal a march onme, and set out for El Dorado by yourself. Whether that was yourpurpose I do not know; but, for doubting you, you can scarcely blameme. So, day by day, as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, andpiled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck,drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirtwhich often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Everyshovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet youstack, is helping Spurling to betray you the earlier.'

  "At first I would not believe my own judgment, but drove my anger downby replying, 'He is no traitor; he is my friend.' But at night when Icame up, and you spoke to me pityingly about my hard luck and your ownincreasing wealth, I knew what you meant. Mordaunt didn't seem tomind; he had ten thousand dollars of his own, so he only said, 'Givehim time. He's all right. He'll remember and come round. His head'sturned for the moment by his fortune and he's lost his standards ofwhat is just. I daresay if this happened to you or me, we should havebeen as bad.'

  "But that did not comfort me much, for I thought, 'A man who canbetray and lie to you once, can always lie and betray.' I could notsleep at night for thinking about it and I brooded over it all theday; there was ever before my eyes the vision of you, sailing up theGreat Amana without me.

  "If nothing else had happened and it had remained at that, I suppose Ishould have finished my winter's contract with you and have gone outagain in the spring, either with Mordaunt or alone, prospecting formyself. As it was, I began to argue with myself. 'What better righthas Spurling to this gold than I?' I said. 'If I had chosen thisclaim, as I might have done, all the wealth which is now his wouldhave been mine. Had that been the case, I should have held to mybargain and have dealt squarely by him. Since he refuses to allow methe share which he promised me, I have a right to take it.'

  "You know what followed, how I hid some nuggets in my shirt, and youaccused me and discovered them. You called me a thief, and threatenedto expose me to the law of the mining camp. I told you that, since wehad made that agreement to share conjointly whatever we found, I hadas big a right to take charge of some of the gold as you yourself.Then you laughed in my face and struck me, asking if that was theusual way in which a labourer spoke to his employer. That blow droveme mad. I made no reply, for I had become suddenly crafty; I awaited arevenge that was certain and
from which there could be no rebound.From that day forward the lust to kill was upon me; wherever I lookedI saw you dead, and was glad. When the Northern Lights shot up theyseemed to me, instead of green or yellow, to be always crimson, thebloodcolour. When they crept and rustled through the snow along themountain heights, I fancied that they were a band of murderers whofled from their crime, and turned, and beckoned, and pointed to me,and whispered 'Come.' As my imagination wrought within me I grewsilent; not even Mordaunt could rouse me. But he guessed what washappening, and would often come to me and say, 'Don't getdown-hearted. Whatever Spurling does, I still hold to my promise. Youand I are partners with a common fund. We have eleven thousand dollarsalready, so cheer up.'

  "But it wasn't envy of your wealth had driven me mad; it was fear lestyou should go off and leave me behind, and should get to Guiana and toEl Dorado first. I couldn't shake off my hallucination however much Itried--which wasn't much; always and everywhere I could see you dead.You know that the Klondike with its few hours of winter daylight, itsinterminable nights, its pale-green moon which seems to shine foreverin a steely cloudless sky, and its three long months when men rarelysee the sun, is not a much better place than Keewatin in which to heala crippled mind. So, with the passage of time, there was worse tocome.

  "One morning as I came to the shaft, I found a stranger waiting there.It was dark, I could not see his face; since he said nothing, I passedhim and, descending to the bed-rock, commenced to scatter the lastnight's burning that I might get at the thawed-out muck. Presently Iheard the sound of someone following, and the creak of the rope as helet himself down in the bucket. I thought it was you, so I did notturn, but sulkily went on with my work. The footsteps came after mewherever I went, standing behind me. At last I swung round in anger,supposing that you had come to torment me; at that moment I had it inmy heart to strike you dead. In the light of the scattered fire, Idiscovered that it was not you, but instead a man of about my heightand breadth. 'What d'you want?' I asked him. He did not answer. 'Whosent you here?' I said. He was silent. Then I grew frightened; seizinga smouldering brand, having puffed it to a blaze, I thrust it beforehis face--and saw _myself_.

  "I was down there all alone and underground; no one could have heardme had I cried for help. In my terror I grew foolish and laughedaloud; _it seemed to me so odd that I should have such fear ofmyself_. When I had grown quiet, 'Who sent you here?' I asked again.

  "At last he answered, 'You called me.'

  "'What have you come for?' I questioned.

  "'To murder Spurling,' he replied.

  "Then in a choking whisper I muttered, 'Who are you?'

  "And he answered me, 'Your baser self.'

  "I looked for a way of escape, but he stood between me and the mouthof the shaft; to get out I would have had to pass him. I tried to makehim speak with me again that I might draw him aside, and so might slippast him and get above ground; but he refused to stir. Then I grewfascinated, and went near him, and peered into his face. He was likeme, yet unlike; he was more evil--what I might become at my worst. Hewas to me what you were, when you just now arrived, to the man whom Iloved in London, and who saved my life in Tagish Lake. Having studiedhis body and his face I loathed him, and drew myself away to thefarthest hiding-place. There I crouched beside the gold streak forten hours until the last glow of fire had died out, and I was left indarkness. Then, though I could not see him, I knew that he was there.

  "At last Mordaunt came and called to me. I begged him to come down.Thinking I was wounded, he lit a lantern and descended in haste. As heapproached, I looked to see where _myself_ had been standing; but,though I had felt him there the moment before, directly Mordaunt camehe vanished. In my horror I told Mordaunt everything--and what do youthink the little fellow did? Instead of laughing at me, or fleeingfrom me for his life because I was mad, he set down his lamp and,throwing his arms about me, knelt down there on the bed-rock andprayed. If it hadn't been for Mordaunt I should certainly have killedyou in the days which followed. Whenever I was alone or in yourcompany, that thing, which was my baser self, was there. He wouldstand behind you, so that you could not see him, with his handupraised as if about to strike. He would beckon to me that I alsoshould get behind you, and when you spoke to me contemptuously orharshly the evil of his face would reflect a like passion in meagainst you. But whenever Mordaunt was present he vanished, and I hadrest from temptation; therefore I say that Mordaunt saved you.

  "I kept on hoping that when spring came I would be able to leave, andthus rid myself of my evil dread; but the longer I stayed the greatergrew my peril. At length the crisis came.

  "You had been down river across the ice to Dawson on the spree and toarrange for the carriage of your bullion to Seattle. It was night, andI was just returning from the shaft, where I had been giving a lastlook to the burning. I had a rifle in my hand, and, as I arrived atthe door of the cabin, raising my eyes, saw you coming up-stream withyour dogs, with your head bent low as if you were tired. Also I saw inthe moonlight that _that other_ was noiselessly following you, strideby stride, stealing up behind. I saw him waving his arms to me,gesticulating madly and signing to me to kneel down and fire.

  "Suddenly all power of resistance left me; with my eyes upon his face,the memory of all the wrongs which you had dealt me, and my hatred ofyou, swam uppermost in my mind. I knelt down in the snow to takesteadier aim and had my finger on the trigger, when the gun wassnatched from behind. I turned fiercely round and found Mordauntstanding there. 'Quick,' he said, 'come inside.' He thrust the riflebeneath a pile of furs, and bade me tumble into my bunk and pretendsleep. Shortly after, I heard you come in and say that one of yourdogs had been shot dead; but I did not stir. You came over and gazeddown suspiciously at me, but seemed satisfied with Mordaunt's accountof how I had been lying there for the past two hours wearied out withthe day's work. Next day I could not look you in the eyes; also thememory of a woman I had loved had come suddenly back and changed me,making me ashamed. So two nights later I gathered together the fewthings I had and, abandoning my claim, fled.

  "If I could not trust myself with you, I could not trust myself in theYukon. Every miner travelling with gold seemed to me a possible victimfor my crime. I went about in fear lest I should see that evil thing,which called himself _myself_, returning to keep me company throughlife. I fled to escape him and, hoping to leave him behind me in theKlondike, went over the winter trail to Skaguay, the route by whichtwo years earlier we had fought our way up, took steamer to Vancouverand came on thence to Winnipeg. My money was all but exhausted when Igot there, I was broken in spirit and at my wit's end. By chance I metwith Wrath, on whose claim in our first winter we had worked. He hadgone back to his independent trading, and, at my request foremployment, sent me up here to look after his interests at MurderPoint. I was glad to come; after my experience on the Sleeping River,I was distrustful of myself in the company of men, never knowing whenthat _foreshadowing of my evil desires_ might not return to hound meon to fresh villainies and despair. For one who wished to be alone,Heaven knows, I chose well. You're not burdened with too much societyin Keewatin--that isn't the complaint which is most often heard."

  Outside the night had long since settled down--a night which with snowand starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making theinterval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it waspossible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howleddismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches,lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was stillagain, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of theice, when a crack rent its path across the surface and far below theriver shook its gyves, as though clapping its hands in expectation ofthe freedom of the spring to come.

  Against the window the silhouette of Spurling loomed up, with thedrifting dimness of the starlight for background, and the square ofsurrounding darkness for a frame of sombre plush; he seemed aman-portrait whom some painter had condemned forever to motionles
snessand silence with the magic of his brush, and had nailed on astretcher, and had hung up for ornament.

  At last he turned his head and stared into the blackness of the room,searching with his eyes for Granger. "So the deed which you feared todo, I have done," he said. "And here we sit together again, now thatthree years have passed; I, the man whom you hoped to murder and theman who has committed your crime; you, the man who stole from me,fired on me, missed aim, and ran away, and yet who at this presenttime are my judge. It is very strange! One would have supposed thatwith the breadth of a continent between us, you in Keewatin, I inYukon, we need never have met. There is a meaning in this happening;God intends that you should help me to escape."