Read Ebook: The Danger Trail by Curwood James Oliver

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Ebook has 958 lines and 53964 words, and 20 pages

He could not repress the low ejaculation of astonishment that came to his lips, and as his companion lifted her cup he saw in her face again the look that had stirred him so strangely when he stood in the window of the Hotel Windsor. Howland was not a man educated in the trivialities of chance flirtations. He lacked finesse, and now he spoke boldly and to the point, the honest candor of his gray eyes shining full on the girl.

"I saw you from the hotel window to-night," he began, "and something in your face led me to believe that you were in trouble. That is why I have ventured to be so bold. I am the engineer in charge of the new Hudson Bay Railroad, just on my way to Le Pas from Chicago. I'm a stranger in town. I've never been in this--this place before. It's a very nice tea-room, an admirable blind for the opium stalls behind those walls."

In a few terse words he had covered the situation, as he would have covered a similar situation in a business deal. He had told the girl who and what he was, had revealed the cause of his interest in her, and at the same time had given her to understand that he was aware of the nature of their present environment. Closely he watched the effect of his words and in another breath was sorry that he had been so blunt. The girl's eyes traveled swiftly about her; he saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom, the swift fading of the color in her cheeks, the affrighted glow in her eyes as they came back big and questioning to him.

"I didn't know," she wrote quickly, and hesitated. Her face was as white now as when Howland had looked on it through the window. Her hand trembled nervously and for an instant her lip quivered in a way that set Howland's heart pounding tumultuously within him. "I am a stranger, too," she added. "I have never been in this place before. I came because--"

She stopped, and the catching breath in her throat was almost a sob as she looked at Howland. He knew that it took an effort for her to write the next words.

"I came because you came."

"Why?" he asked. His voice was low and assuring. "Tell me--why?"

He read her words as she wrote them, leaning half across the table in his eagerness.

"I am a stranger," she repeated. "I want some one to help me. Accidentally I learned who you were and made up my mind to see you at the hotel, but when I got there I was afraid to go in. Then I saw you in the window. After a little you came out and I saw you enter here. I didn't know what kind of place it was and I followed you. Won't you please go with me--to where I am staying--and I will tell you--"

She left the sentence unfinished, her eyes pleading with him. Without a word he rose and seized his hat.

"I will go, Miss--" He laughed frankly into her face, inviting her to write her name. For a moment she smiled back at him, the color brightening her cheeks. Then she turned and hurried down the stair.

Outside Howland gave her his arm. His eyes, passing above her, caught again the luring play of the aurora in the north. He flung back his shoulders, drank in the fresh air, and laughed in the buoyancy of the new life that he felt.

"It's a glorious night!" he exclaimed.

The girl nodded, and smiled up at him. Her face was very near to his shoulder, ever more beautiful in the white light of the stars.

They did not look behind them. Neither heard the quiet fall of moccasined feet a dozen yards away. Neither saw the gleaming eyes and the thin, dark face of Jean Croisset, the half-breed, as they walked swiftly in the direction of the Saskatchewan.

THE MYSTERIOUS ATTACK

Howland was glad that for a time there was an excuse for his silence. It began to dawn on him that this was an extraordinary adventure for a man on whose shoulders rested the responsibilities of one of the greatest engineering tasks on the continent, and who was due to take a train for the seat of his operations at eight o'clock in the morning. Inwardly he was experiencing some strange emotions; outwardly he smiled as he thought of what Van Horn would say if he knew the circumstances. He looked down at his companion; saw the sheen of her hair as it rippled out from under her fur turban, studied the soft contour of her cheek and chin, without himself being observed, and noticed, incidentally, that the top of the bewitching head beside him came just about to a level with his cigar which he was smoking. He wondered if he were making a fool of himself. If so, he assured himself that there was at least one compensation. This night in Prince Albert would not be so uninteresting as it had promised to be earlier in the evening.

Where the river ferry was half drawn up on the shore, its stern frozen in the ice, he paused and looked down at the girl in quiet surprise. She nodded, smiling, and motioned across the river.

"I was over there once to-night," said Howland aloud. "Didn't see any houses and heard nothing but wolves. Is that where we're going?"

Her white teeth gleamed at him and he was conscious of a warm pressure against his arm as the girl signified that they were to cross. His perplexity increased. On the farther shore the forest came down to the river's edge in a black wall of spruce and balsam. Beyond that edge of the wilderness he knew that no part of Prince Albert intruded. It was possible that across from them was a squatter's cabin; and yet if this were so, and the girl was going to it, why had she told him that she was a stranger in the town? And why had she come to him for the assistance she promised to request of him instead of seeking it of those whom she knew?

He asked himself these questions without putting them in words, and not until they were climbing up the frozen bank of the stream, with the shadows of the forest growing deeper about them, did he speak again.

"You told me you were a stranger," he said, stopping his companion where the light of the stars fell on the face which she turned up to him. She smiled, and nodded affirmatively.

"You seem pretty well acquainted over here," he persisted. "Where are we going?"

This time she responded with an emphatic negative shake of her head, at the same time pointing with her free hand to the well-defined trail that wound up from the ferry landing into the forest. Earlier in the day Howland had been told that this was the Great North Trail that led into the vast wildernesses beyond the Saskatchewan. Two days before, the factor from Lac Bain, the Chippewayan and the Crees had come in over it. Its hard crust bore the marks of the sledges of Jean Croisset and the men from the Lac la Ronge country. Since the big snow, which had fallen four feet deep ten days before, a forest man had now and then used this trail on his way down to the edge of civilization; but none from Prince Albert had traveled it in the other direction. Howland had been told this at the hotel, and he shrugged his shoulders in candid bewilderment as he stared down into the girl's face. She seemed to understand his thoughts, and again her mouth rounded itself into that bewitching red O, which gave to her face an expression of tender entreaty, of pathetic grief that the soft lips were powerless to voice, the words which she wished to speak. Then, suddenly, she darted a few steps from Howland and with the toe of her shoe formed a single word in the surface of the snow. She rested her hand lightly on Howland's shoulder as he bent over to make it out in the elusive starlight.

"Camp!" he cried, straightening himself. "Do you mean to say you're camping out here?"

"I beg your pardon," he said softly. His cheeks burned hotly at what he had done, and turning squarely about he strode up the trail. He had not taken a dozen paces, when far ahead of him he saw the red glow of a fire. Then a hand caught his arm, clutching at it almost fiercely, and he turned to meet the girl's face, white now with a strange terror.

"What is it?" he cried. "Tell me--"

He caught her hands again, startled by the look in her eyes. Quickly she pulled herself away. A dozen feet behind her, in the thick shadows of the forest trees, something took shape and movement. In a flash Howland saw a huge form leap from the gloom and caught the gleam of an uplifted knife. There was no time for him to leap aside, no time for him to reach for the revolver which he carried in his pocket. In such a crisis one's actions are involuntary, machine-like, as if life, hovering by a thread, preserves itself in its own manner and without thought or reasoning on the part of the creature it animates.

For an instant Howland neither thought nor reasoned. Had he done so he would probably have met his mysterious assailant, pitting his naked fists against the knife. But the very mainspring of his existence--which is self-preservation--called on him to do otherwise. Before the startled cry on his lips found utterance he flung himself face downward in the snow. The move saved him, and as the other stumbled over his body, pitching headlong into the trail, he snatched forth his revolver. Before he could fire there came a roar like that of a beast from behind him and a terrific blow fell on his head. Under the weight of a second assailant he was crushed to the snow, his pistol slipped from his grasp, and two great hands choked a despairing cry from his throat. He saw a face over him, distorted with passion, a huge neck, eyes that named like angry garnets. He struggled to free his pinioned arms, to wrench off the death-grip at his throat, but his efforts were like those of a child against a giant. In a last terrible attempt he drew up his knees inch by inch under the weight of his enemy; it was his only chance, his only hope. Even as he felt the fingers about his throat, sinking like hot iron into his flesh, and the breath slipping from his body, he remembered this murderous knee-punch taught to him by the rough fighters of the Inland Seas, and with all the life that remained in him he sent it crushing into the other's abdomen. It was a moment before he knew that it had been successful, before the film cleared from his eyes and he saw his assailant groveling in the snow. He rose to his feet, dazed and staggering from the effect of the blow on his head and the murderous grip at his throat. Half a pistol shot down the trail he saw indistinctly the twisting of black objects in the snow, and as he stared one of the objects came toward him.

"Do not fire, M'seur Howland," he heard a voice call. "It ees I--Jean Croisset, a friend! Blessed Saints, that was--what you call heem?--close heem?--close call?"

The half-breed's thin dark face came up smiling out of the white gloom. For a moment Howland did not see him, scarcely heard his words. Wildly he looked about him for the girl. She was gone.

"I happened here--just in time--with a club," continued Croisset. "Come, we must go."

The smile had gone from his face and there was a commanding firmness in the grip that fell on the young engineer's arm. Howland was conscious that things were twisting about him and that there was a strange weakness in his limbs. Dumbly he raised his hands to his head, which hurt him until he felt as if he must cry out in his pain.

"The girl--" he gasped weakly.

Croisset's arm tightened about his waist.

"She ees gone!" Howland heard him say; and there was something in the half-breed's low voice that caused him to turn unquestioningly and stagger along beside him in the direction of Prince Albert.

And yet as he went, only half-conscious of what he was doing, and leaning more and more heavily on his companion, he knew that it was more than the girl's disappearance that he wanted to understand. For as the blow had fallen on his head he was sure that he had heard a woman's scream; and as he lay in the snow, dazed and choking, spending his last effort in his struggle for life, there had come to him, as if from an infinite distance, a woman's voice, and the words that it had uttered pounded in his tortured brain now as his head dropped weakly against Croisset's shoulder.

He tried to repeat them aloud, but his voice sounded only in an incoherent murmur. Where the forest came down to the edge of the river the half-breed stopped.

THE WARNING

In only a subconscious sort of way was Howland cognizant of anything more that happened that night. When he came back into a full sense of his existence he found himself in his bed at the hotel. A lamp was burning low on the table. A glance showed him that the room was empty. He raised his head and shoulders from the pillows on which they were resting and the movement helped to bring him at once into a realization of what had happened. He was hurt. There was a dull, aching pain in his head and neck and when he raised an inquiring hand it came in contact with a thick bandage. He wondered if he were badly hurt and sank back again on the pillows, lying with his eyes staring at the faint glow of the lamp. Soon there came a sound at the door and he twisted his head, grimacing with the pain it caused him. Jean was looking in at him.

"Is it bad, Croisset?"

"So bad that you will be in bed for a day or so, M'seur. That is all."

"Impossible!" cried the young engineer. "I must take the eight o'clock train in the morning. I must be in Le Pas--"

"It is five o'clock now," interrupted Jean softly. "Do you feel like going?"

Howland straightened himself and fell back suddenly with a sharp cry.

"The devil!" he exclaimed. After a moment he added, "There will be no other train for two days." As he raised a hand to his aching head, his other closed tightly about Jean's lithe brown fingers. "I want to thank you for what you did, Croisset. I don't know what happened. I don't know who they were or why they tried to kill me. There was a girl--I was going with her--"

He dropped his hand in time to see the strange fire that had leaped into the half-breed's eyes. In astonishment he half lifted himself again, his white face questioning Croisset.

"Do you know?" he whispered eagerly. "Who was she? Why did she lead me into that ambush? Why did they attempt to kill me?"

The questions shot from him excitedly, and he knew from what he saw in the other's face that Croisset could have answered them. Yet from the thin tense lips above him there came no response. With a quick movement the half-breed drew away his hand and moved toward the door. Half way he paused and turned.

"M'seur, I have come to you with a warning. Do not go to Le Pas. Do not go to the big railroad camp on the Wekusko. Return into the South." For an instant he leaned forward, his black eyes flashing, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. "Perhaps you will understand," he cried tensely, "when I tell you this warning is sent to you--by the little Meleese!"

His breath came a little faster as he whispered the words to himself. They appealed to him now with a significance which he had not understood at first. He was sure that in that cry there had been real terror; almost, he fancied, as he lay with his eyes shut tight, that he could still hear the shrill note of despair in the voice. The more he tried to reason the situation, the more inexplicable grew the mystery of it all. If the girl had calmly led him into the ambush, why, in the last moment, when success seemed about to crown her duplicity, had she cried out in that agony of terror? In Howland's heated brain there came suddenly a vision of her as she stood beside him in the white trail; he felt again the thrill of her hands, the touch of her breast for a moment against his own; saw the gentle look that had come into her deep, pure eyes; the pathetic tremor of the lips which seemed bravely striving to speak to him. Was it possible that face and eyes like those could have led him into a deathtrap! Despite the evidence of what had happened he found himself filled with doubt. And yet, after all, she had lied to him--for she was not a mute!

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