WESTERN CLASSICS: James Oliver Curwood Edition. James Oliver Curwood
away the look of soft pleading, the quivering lines of fear. There was a strangeness in her voice when she spoke--something of the hard determination which Howland had put in his own, and yet the tone of it lacked his gentleness and love.
"Will you please tell me the time?" The question was almost startling. Howland held the dial of his watch to the light of the stars.
"It is a quarter past midnight."
The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the girl's lips.
"Are you certain that your watch is not fast?" she asked.
In speechless bewilderment Howland stared at her.
"Because it will mean a great deal to you and to me if it is not a quarter past midnight," continued Meleese, a growing glow in her eyes. Suddenly she approached him and put both of her warm hands to his face, holding down his arms with her own. "Listen," she whispered. "Is there nothing--nothing that will make you change your purpose, that will take you back into the South--to-night?"
The nearness of the sweet face, the gentle touch of the girl's hands, the soft breath of her lips, sent a maddening impulse through Howland to surrender everything to her. For an instant he wavered.
"There might be one--just one thing that would take me away to-night," he replied, his voice trembling with the great love that thrilled him. "For you, Meleese, I would give up everything--ambition, fortune, the building of this road. If I go to-night will you go with me? Will you promise to be my wife when we reach Le Pas?"
A look of ineffable tenderness came into the beautiful eyes so near to his own.
"That is impossible. You will not love me when you know what I am--what I have done--"
He stopped her.
"Have you done wrong--a great wrong?"
For a moment her eyes faltered; then, hesitatingly, there fell from her lips, "I--don't--know. I believe I have. But it's not that--it's not that!"
"Do you mean that--that I have no right to tell you I love you?" he asked. "Do you mean that it is wrong for you to listen to me? I--I--took it for granted that you were a--girl--that--"
"No, no, it is not that," she cried quickly, catching his meaning. "It is not wrong for you to love me." Suddenly she asked again, "Will you please tell me what time it is--now?"
He looked again.
"Twenty-five minutes after midnight."
"Let us go farther up the trail," she whispered. "I am afraid here."
She led the way, passing swiftly beyond the path that branched out to his cabin. Two hundred yards beyond this a tree had fallen on the edge of the trail, and seating herself on it Meleese motioned for him to sit down beside her. Howland's back was to the thick bushes behind them. He looked at the girl, but she had turned away her face. Suddenly she sprang from the log and stood in front of him.
"Now!" she cried. "Now!" and at that signal Howland's arms were seized from behind, and in another instant he was struggling feebly in the grip of powerful arms which had fastened themselves about him like wire cable, and the cry that rose to his lips was throttled by a hand over his mouth. For an instant he caught a glimpse of the girl's white face as she stood in the trail; then strong hands pulled him back, while others bound his wrists and still others held his legs. Everything had passed in a few seconds. Helplessly bound and gagged he lay on his back in the snow, listening to the low voices that came faintly to him from beyond the bushes. He could understand nothing that they said--and yet he was sure that he recognized among them the voice of Meleese.
The voices became fainter; he heard retreating footsteps, and at last they died away entirely. Through a rift in the trees straight above him the white, cold stars of the night gleamed down on him, and Howland stared up at them fixedly until they seemed to be hopping and dancing about in the skies. He wanted to swear--yell--fight. In these moments that he lay on his back in the freezing snow a million demons were born in his blood. The girl had betrayed him again! This time he could find no excuse--no pardon for her. She had accepted his love--had allowed him to kiss her, to hold her in his arms--while beneath that hypocrisy she had plotted his downfall a second time. Deliberately she had given the signal for attack, and now--
He heard again the quick, running step that he had recognized on the trail. The bushes behind him parted, and in the white starlight Meleese fell on her knees at his side, her glorious face bending over him in a grief that he had never seen in it before, her eyes shining on him with a great love. Without speaking she lifted his head in the hollow of her arm and crushed her own down against it, kissing him, and softly sobbing his name.
"Good-by," he heard her breathe. "Good-by--good-by--"
He struggled to cry out as she lowered his head back on the snow, to free his hands, to hold her with him--but he saw her face only once more, bending over him; felt the warm pressure of her lips to his forehead, and then again he could hear her footsteps hurrying away through the forest.
CHAPTER X
A RACE INTO THE NORTH
That Meleese loved him, that she had taken his head in her arms, and had kissed him, was the one consuming thought in Howland's brain for many minutes after she had left him bound and gagged on the snow. That she had made no effort to free him did not at first strike him as significant. He still felt the sweet, warm touch of her lips, the pressure of her arms, the smothering softness of her hair. It was not until he again heard approaching sounds that he returned once more to a full consciousness of the mysterious thing that had happened. He heard first of all the creaking of a toboggan on the hard crust, then the pattering of dogs' feet, and after that the voices of men. The sounds stopped on the trail a dozen feet away from him.
With a strange thrill he recognized Croisset's voice.
"You must be sure that you make no mistake," he heard the half-breed say. "Go to the waterfall at the head of the lake and heave down a big rock where the ice is open and the water boiling. Track up the snow with a pair of M'seur Howland's high-heeled boots and leave his hat tangled in the bushes. Then tell the superintendent that he stepped on the stone and that it rolled down and toppled him into the chasm. They could never find his body--and they will send down for a new engineer in place of the lost M'seur."
Stupefied with horror, Howland strained his ears to catch the rest of the cold-blooded scheme which he was overhearing, but the voices grew lower and he understood no more that was said until Croisset, coming nearer, called out:
"Help me with the M'seur before you go, Jackpine. He is a dead weight with all those rawhides about him."
As coolly as though he were not more than a chunk of stovewood, Croisset and the Indian came through the bushes, seized him by the head and feet, carried him out into the trail and laid him lengthwise on the sledge.
"I hope you have not caught cold lying in the snow, M'seur," said Croisset, bolstering up the engineer's head and shoulders and covering him with heavy furs. "We should have been back sooner, but it was impossible. Hoo-la, Woonga!" he called softly to his lead-dog. "Get up there, you wolf-hound!"
As the sledge started, with Croisset running close to the leader, Howland heard the low snapping of a whip behind him and another voice urging on other dogs. With an effort that almost dislocated his neck he twisted himself so he could look back of him. A hundred yards away he discerned a second team following in his trail; he saw a shadowy figure running at the head of the dogs, but what there was on the sledge, or what it meant, he could not see or surmise. Mile after mile the two sledges continued without a stop. Croisset did not turn his head; no word fell from his lips, except an occasional signal to the dogs. The trail had turned now straight into the North, and soon Howland could make out no sign of it, but knew only that they were twisting through the most open places in the forests, and that the play of the Polar lights was never over his left shoulder or his right, but always in his face.
They