XIV
Bess had followed the trail through the snow dear to the dark edge of the woods when the sound of voices behind her caused her to turn. Neither Doomsdorf nor Knutsen had spoken loudly. Indeed, their tones had been more subdued than usual, as is often the way when men speak in moments of absolute test. Bess had not made out the words: only the deep silence and the movements of the wind from the sea enabled her to hear the voices at all. Thus it was curious that she whirled, face blanching, in knowledge of the impending crisis.
Thereafter the drama on the shore seemed to her as something that could not possibly be true. She saw in the deep silence Doomsdorf overturn and push off the boat, Knutsen's desperate effort to rescue it, the flash of light from the former's upraised pistol. And still immersed in that baffling silence, the brave seaman had groped, swayed, then toppled forward into the shallow water.
It was a long time after that the report of the pistol reached her ears, and even this was not enough to waken her to a sense of reality. It sounded dull, far-off, conveying little of the terrible thing it was, inadequate to account for the unutterable disaster that it had occasioned. Afterward the silence closed down again. The waves rolled in through the harbor mouth with never a pause. The dark shadow that lay for an instant on the face of the waters slowly sank beneath. The boat drifted ever farther out to sea.
Except for the fact that Doomsdorf stood alone on the shore, it might have been all the factless incident of a tragic dream. The blond man walked closer to the water, peering; then the pistol gleamed again as he pocketed it. The wind still brushed by, singing sadly as it went; and the sleet swept out of the clouds. And then, knowing her need, she strove to waken the blunted powers of her will.
She must not yield herself to the horror that encroached upon her. Only impotence, only disaster lay that way. She must hold steady, not break into hopeless sobs, not fall kneeling in impotent appeal. Bess Gilbert was of good metal, but this test that had been put upon her seemed to wrench apart the fibers of her inmost being. But she won the fight at last.
Slowly she stiffened, rallying her faculties, fighting off the apathy of terror. Presently her whole consciousness seemed to sharpen. In an instant of clear thought she guessed, broadly, the truth of that tragedy beside the sea; that Knutsen had died in a desperate attempt to break free from an unspeakable trap into which he and his charges had fallen. He had preferred to take the chance of death rather than submit to the fate that Doomsdorf had in store for him.
Just what that fate was and how it concerned herself, Bess dared not guess. She had known a deadly fear of Doomsdorf at the first glance; she had instinctively hated him as she had never hated any living creature before; and now she knew that this was the most desperate moment of her life. He had shown himself capable of any depth of crime; and that meant there must be no limit to her own courage. She too must take any chance of freedom that offered, no matter how desperate; for no evil that could befall her seemed as terrible as his continued power over her.
It meant she must work quick. She must not lose a single chance. The odds were desperately long already: she must not increase them. In an instant more he would be glancing about to see if his crime were observed. If she could conceal the fact that she had witnessed it, he would not be so much on guard in the moment of crisis that was to come. Her body and soul seemed to rally to mighty effort.
She was already at the edge of the timber. Stooping down, she made one leap into its shelter. She was none too soon: already Doomsdorf had looked back to see if the coast were clear.
Everything depended on Ned, henceforth. She couldn't work alone. With his aid, perhaps, they could destroy this evil power under which they had fallen before it could prepare to meet them. Doomsdorf's cabin—a long, log structure on the bank of a dark little stream—was only a hundred feet distant in the wood. Now that she was out of sight of the shore, she broke into a frenzied run.
She had no desperate plan as yet. In Ned's manhood alone lay her hope: perhaps in the moment or two before Doomsdorf appeared Ned could conceive of some plan to meet him. Perhaps there was a rifle in the cabin!
She fought back the instinct to scream out her story from the doorway. At the bidding of an instinct so sure and true that it partook of a quality of infallibility, she checked her wild pace before she crossed the threshold. Everything depended on Ned and the cool, strong quality of Ned's nerves. She must not jeopardize his self-control by bursting in upon him in frenzy, perhaps exciting him to such an extent that he would be rendered helpless to aid her. She must keep him cool by being cool herself. She caught her breath in a curious deep gasp, then stepped into the room.
Then that gasp became very nearly a sob. The way of deliverance was not clear. A wrinkled native woman, an Aleut or an Eskimo, who was evidently Doomsdorf's wife, looked up at her with dark inscrutable eyes from the opposite side of the room.
It was a heart-breaking blow to Bess's hopes. The presence of the woman increased, to a dread degree, the odds against her. She was ugly, brown as leather, heavily built; her face gave no sign that human emotion had ever touched her heart, yet she was likely a staunch ally of their foe.
The whole picture went home to her in a glance. Lenore was huddled in a chair before the stove, yielding herself to the blessed warmth, already shaking off the semi-apathy induced by the night's chill. But as yet there was no hope in her. She was shivering, helpless, impotent. Ned bent over her, his arms about her, now and then giving her sips from a cup of hot liquid that he held in his hand. His care, his tender solicitude, struck Bess with a sense of unutterable irony. Evidently he had no suspicion of the real truth.
He looked up as Bess entered. Partly because the light was dim, partly because he was absorbed in the work of caring for Lenore to the exclusion of all other thought, he failed to see the drawn look of horror on Bess's face. “I'll need a little help here, Miss Gilbert,” he said. “I want to get this girl to bed. The night seemed to go harder with her than with the rest of us, and rest is the best thing for her.”
Bess almost sobbed aloud. The sound caught in her throat, but quickly she forced it back. Ned was already himself again; the danger and stress of the night had seemingly affected him only so far as to enscribe his face with tired lines, to leave him somewhat hollow-eyed and drawn. In reality, he was the man of cities come again. He was on solid earth; food and shelter and warmth were his once more; his old self-confidence was surging through him with the glow from the stove. He had no ink ling of the truth. His mind was far from danger.
At that instant she knew she must work alone. She must give no sign of her own desperation before this stolid squaw. And yet she almost screamed with horror when she realized that any second she might hear Doomsdorf's step on the threshold. She glanced about till she located the Russian's rifle, hung on the wall almost in front of the squaw's chair.
“Did you hear a shot?” she asked. With all the powers of her spirit, she kept her voice commonplace, casual.
“Yes,” Ned answered. “It wasn't anything—was it?” His tone became cold. “Will you please give me a little help with Miss Hardenworth?”
“It was a bear—Mr. Doomsdorf shot at it with his pistol,” she went on in the same casual way. She thought it incredible that they would not take alarm from the wild beating of her heart. She turned easily to the squaw. “He wants me to bring his rifle so he can shoot at it again,” she said. “That's it—on the wall?”
She stepped toward the weapon. Even in her own heart she did not know what was her plan of action after that gun was in her hands: she had not yet given thought to the stress and desperate deed that lay before her. She only knew that life, honor, everything that mattered in this world depended on the developments of the next few seconds. Later, perhaps, resistance would be crushed out of her; her cruel master would be constantly on guard: in this little moment lay her one chance. She knew vaguely that if she could procure the weapon, she could start down to the shore and meet Doomsdorf on the way. Perhaps her nerve would break soon; it could not keep up forever under such a strain. Thus her whole universe depended on immediate action. She must not hesitate now. She must go any lengths. Her eyes were cold and remorseless under her straight brows.
“Sure—take him gun,” the squaw answered her.
She was vaguely aware that Ned was watching her in amazement. He was speaking too, his voice coming from infinitely far off. “I'm surprised, Miss Gilbert,” he was saying with grave displeasure. “You don't seem to realize that Miss Hardenworth is still in a serious condition. Perhaps you will be willing to forget Mr. Doomsdorf's sport for a moment”
But Bess hardly heard. Her hands were trembling, waiting for the feel of the steel. Now the Indian was getting up and presently was lifting down the weapon. But she did not put it at once into Bess's hands. She pushed back the lever, revealing the empty breech. Then Bess saw a slow drawing of her lips—a cruel upturning that was seemingly as near as she could come to a smile.
“Sure—take him gun,” she said. “Got any shells?”
Bess shook her head. Her heart paused in her breast.
“Maybe him got shells. He took 'em all out when he saw your canoe come in.”