 17 In ten seconds, it seemed to Kent, Marat-Radisson was again the splendid creature who had held the three men at bay over the end of her little black gun at Barracks. The sound of Mui's second warning came at first as a shock. Accompanying it, there was a moment of fear, of fear, driven almost to the point of actual terror. Following it came a reaction so swift that Kent was dazed. Within those ten seconds, the girl's slender body seemed to grow taller, a new light flamed in her face. Her eyes, turning swiftly to him, were filled with the same fire with which they had faced the three constables. She was unafraid. She was ready to fight. In such moments as these it was the quiet and dispassionate composure of her voice that amazed him most. It was musical in its softness now, yet in that softness was a hidden thing. It was like velvet covering steel. She had spoken of Niska, the gray goose, the goddess of the three rivers. And he thought that something of the spirit of a goddess must be in Marat-Radisson to give her the courage with which she faced him, even as the metallic thing outside tapped its warning again at the window. Inspector Kedzdi is coming back, she said. I did not think he would do that tonight. He has not had time to go to barracks, said Kent. No, possibly he has forgotten something. Before he arrives, I want to show you the nest I have made for you, James. Come quickly. It was her first intimation that he was not to remain in her room, a possibility that had already caused him some inward embarrassment. She seized a number of matches, turned down her light, and hurried into the hall. Kent followed her to the end of this hall, where she paused before a low, half-door that apparently opened into some sort of a space close under the sloping roof of the bungalow. It is an old storeroom, she whispered. I have made it quite comfortable, I think. I have covered the window, so you may light the lamp. But you must see that no light shows under this door. Lock it on the inside and be very quiet. For whatever you find in there you must thank Monsieur Fingers. She pulled the door slightly open and gave him the matches. The illumination in the lower hall made its way only dimly to where they stood. In the gloom he found himself close to the soft glow of her eyes. His fingers closed about her hand as he took the matches. Maret, you believe me, he entreated. You believe that I love you and that I didn't kill John Barkley, that I am going to fight for you as long as God gives me breath to fight? For a moment there was silence. Her hand withdrew gently from his. Yes, I think that I believe. Good night, James. She went from him quickly. At her door she turned. Go in now, please! she called back softly. If you care as you say you do, go in. She did not wait for his reply. Her own door closed behind her and Kent striking a match, stooped low and entered his hiding-place. In a moment he saw directly ahead of him a lamp on a box. He lighted this and his first movement then was to close the door and turn the key that was in the lock. After that he looked about him. The storeroom was not more than ten feet square and the roof was so close over his head that he could not stand upright. It was not the smallness of the place that struck him first, but the preparations which Marat had made for him. In a corner was a bed of blankets, and the rough floor of the place was carpeted with blankets, except for a two- or three-foot space around the edge of it. Beyond the box was a table and a chair, and it was the burden of this table that made his pulse jump quickest. Marat had not forgotten that he might grow hungry. It was laid sumptuously, with a plate for one, but with food for half a dozen. There were a brace of roasted grouse, brown as nuts, a cold roast of moose meat or beef, a dish piled high with golden potato salad, olives, pickles, an open can of cherries, a loaf of bread, butter, cheese, and one of Kedsty's treasured thermos bottles, which undoubtedly held hot coffee or tea. And then he noticed what was on the chair, a belt and holster and a colt automatic .45. Marat had not figured on securing a gun in the affair at Barracks, and her foresight had not forgotten a weapon. She had placed it conspicuously, where he could not fail to see it at once. And just beyond the chair, on the floor, was a shoulder pack. It was of the regulation service sort, partly filled. Resting against the pack was a Winchester. He recognized the gun. He had seen it hanging in dirty fingers shag. For a matter of five minutes he scarcely moved from where he stood beside the table. Nothing but an unplastered roof was between him and the storm, and over his head the thunder crashed and the rain beat in torrents. He saw where the window was, carefully covered with a blanket. Even through the blanket he caught faintly the illumination of lightning. This window overlooked the entrance to Kedsty's bungalow, and the idea came to him of turning out the light and opening it. In darkness he took down the blanket. But the window itself was not movable, and after assuring himself of this fact he flattened his face against it, peering out into the chaos of the night. In that instant came a flare of lightning, and to Kent, looking down, was revealed a sight that tightened every muscle in his body. More vividly than if it had been day, he saw a man standing below in the deluge. It was not Mui. It was not Kedsty. It was no one that he had ever seen. Even more like a ghost than a man was that apparition of the lightning flare. A great, gaunt giant of a ghost, bareheaded with long, dripping hair and a long, storm-twisted beard. The picture shot to his brain with the swiftness of the lightning itself. It was like the sudden throwing of a cinema picture on a screen. Then blackness shut it out. Kent stared harder. He waited. Again came the lightning, and again he saw that tragic, ghost-like figure waiting in the storm. Three times he saw it, and he knew that the mysterious bearded giant was an old man. The fourth time the lightning came, the figure was gone. And in that flare it was the bowed figure of Kedsty he saw hurrying up the gravel path to the door. Quickly Kent covered the window, but he did not relight the lamp. Before Kedsty could have reached the foot of the stair he had unlocked the door. Cautiously he opened it three or four inches and sat down with his back against the wall, listening. He heard Kedsty pass through into the big room where Marat had waited for him a short time before. After that there was silence, except for the tumult of the storm. For an hour Kent listened. In all that time he did not hear a sound from the lower hall or from Marat's room. He wondered if she was sleeping, and if Kedsty had gone to bed waiting for morning before he set in action his bloodhounds of the law. Kent had no intention of disturbing the comfortable-looking bed of blankets. He was not only sleepless, but filled with a premonition of events about to happen. He felt impinging itself more and more upon him a sense of watchfulness. That Inspector Kedsty and Marat Radisson were under the same roof, and that there was some potent and mysterious reason which kept Kedsty from betraying the girl's presence, was the thought which troubled him most. He was not developing further the plans for his own escape. He was thinking of Marat. What was her power over Kedsty? Why was it that Kedsty would like to see her dead? Why was she in his house? Again and again he asked himself the questions and found no answers to them. And yet, even in this purgatory of mystery that environed him, he felt himself happier than he had ever been in his life. For Marat was not four or five hundred miles down the river. She was in the same house with him. And he had told her that he loved her. He was glad that he had been given courage to let her know that. He relighted the lamp and opened his watch and placed it on the table, where frequently he could look at the time. He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco, he was sure, would reach Kedsty unless the Inspector had acted in the wrong way. Unless the Inspector had actually retired into his bedroom for the night. Half a dozen times he questioned himself as to the identity of the ghostly apparition he had seen in the lightning flare of the storm. Perhaps it was some one of fingers strange friends from out of the wilderness. Mui's partner in watching the bungalow. The picture of that giant of a man with his great beard and long hair, as his eyes had caught him in a sea of electrical fire, was indelibly burned into his brain. It was a tragic picture. Again he put out the light and bared the blanketed window, but he saw nothing but the sodden gleam of the earth when the lightning flashed. A second time he opened the door a few inches and sat down with his back to the wall, listening. How long it was before drowsiness stole upon him he did not know, but it came, and for a few moments at a time as his eyes closed it robbed him of his caution. And then for a space he slept. A sound brought him suddenly into wide wakefulness. His first impression was that the sound had been a cry. For a moment or two as his senses adjusted themselves he was not sure. Then swiftly the thing grew upon him. He rose to his feet and widened the crack of his door. A bar of light shot across the upper hall. It was from Marrette's room. He had taken off his boots to deaden the sound of his feet and he stepped outside his door. He was positive he heard a low cry, a choking, sobbing cry, only barely audible, and that it came from down the stair. No longer hesitating he moved quickly to Marrette's room and looked in. His first glimpse was of the bed. It had not been used. The room was empty. Something cold and chilling gripped at his heart and an impulse which he no longer made an effort to resist pulled him to the head of the stair. It was more than an impulse. It was a demand. Step by step he went down, his hand on the butt of his colt. He reached the lower hall which was still lighted and a step or two brought him to a view of the door that opened into the big living room beyond. That door was partly open and the room itself was filled with light. Soundlessly Kent approached. He looked in. What he saw first brought him relief together with shock. At one end of the long desk table over which hung a great brass lamp stood Marrette. She was in profile to him. He could not see her face. Her hair fell loose about her glowing like a rich sable cape in the light of the lamp. She was safe, alive, and yet the attitude of her as she looked down was the thing that gave him shock. He was compelled to move a few inches more before he could see what she was staring at. And then his heart stopped dead still. Huddled down in his chair with his head flung back so that the terrible gasliness of his face fronted Kent was kedgy. And Kent in an instant knew. Only a dead man could look like that. With a cry he entered the room. Marrette did not start, but an answering cry came into her throat as she turned her eyes from Kedgy to him. To Kent it was like looking upon the dead in two ways. Marrette Radisson, living and breathing, was whiter than Kedgy, who was white with the unbreathing power of the actually dead. She did not speak. She made no sound after that answering cry in her throat. She simply looked. And Kent spoke her name gently as he saw her great wide eyes blading duly their agony and despair. Then, like one stunned and fascinated, she stared down upon Kedgy again. Every instinct of the manhunter came alive in Kent's brain as he too turned toward the Inspector of Police. Kedgy's arms hung limp over the side of his chair. On the floor under his right hand was his colt automatic. His head was strained so far over the back of the chair that it looked as though his neck had been broken. On his forehead close up against his short cropped iron gray hair was a red stain. Kent approached and bent over him. He had seen death too many times not to recognize it now, but seldom had he seen a face twisted and distorted as Kedgy's was. His eyes were open and bulging in a glassy stare. His jaws hung loose. His—it was then that Kent's blood froze in his veins. Kedgy had received a blow, but it was not the blow that had killed him. Afterward he had been choked to death, and the thing that had choked him was a tress of woman's hair. In the seconds that followed that discovery Kent could not have moved if his own life had paid the penalty of inaction. For the story was told there about Kedgy's throat and on his chest. The tress of hair was long and soft and shining and black. It was twisted twice around Kedgy's neck, and the loose end rippled down over his shoulder, glowing like a bit of rich sable in the lamp light. It was that thought of velvety sable that had come to him at the doorway, looking at Marrette. It was the thought that came to him now. He touched it. He took it in his fingers. He unwound it from about Kedgy's neck, where it had made two deep rings in the flesh. From his fingers it rippled out full length, and he turned slowly and faced Marrette Radisson. Never had human eyes looked at him as she was looking at him now. She reached out a hand, her lips mute, and Kent gave her the tress of hair. And the next instant she turned with a hand clasped at her own throat and passed through the door. After that he heard her going unsteadily up the stairs. End of Chapter 17 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 18 of The Valley of Silent Men This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Valley of Silent Men by James Oliver Kerwood Chapter 18 Kent did not move. His senses for a space were stunned. He was almost physically insensible to all emotions, but that one of shock and horror. He was staring at Kedgy's gray white twisted face when he heard Marrette's door close. A cry came from his lips, but he did not hear it. Was unconscious that he had made a sound. His body shook with a sudden tremor. He could not disbelieve, for the evidence was there. From behind, as he had sat in his chair, Marrette Radisson had struck the inspector of police with some blunt object. The blow had stunned him, and after that he drew a hand across his eyes as if to clear his vision. What he had seen was impossible. The evidence was impossible. Assaulted in deadly peril, defending either honor or love, Marrette Radisson was of the blood to kill. But to creep up behind her victim it was inconceivable. Yet there had been no struggle. Even the automatic on the floor gave no evidence of that. Kent picked it up. He looked at it closely, and again the unconscious cry of despair came in a half-grown from his lips. For on the butt of the colt was a stain of blood and a few gray hairs. Kedgy had been stunned by a blow from his own gun. As Kent placed it on the table, his eyes caught suddenly a gleam of steel under the edge of a newspaper, and he drew out from their hiding place the long-bladed clipping scissors which Kedgy had used in the preparation of his scrapbooks and official reports. It was the last link in the deadly evidence, the automatic with its tell-tale stain, the scissors, the tress of hair, and Marrette Radisson. He felt a sensation of sudden dizziness. Every nerve center in his body had received its shock, and when the shock had passed it left him sweating. Swiftly the reaction came. It was a lie, he told himself. The evidence was false. Marrette could not have committed that crime, as the crime had visualized itself before his eyes. There was something which he had not seen, something which he could not see, something that was hiding itself from him. He became, in an instant, the old James Kent. The instinctive processes of the manhunter leaked to their stations like trained soldiers. He saw Marrette again as she had looked at him when he entered the room. It was not murder he had caught in her wide-open eyes. It was not hatred. It was not madness. It was a quivering, bleeding, soul crying out to him in an agony that no other human eyes had ever revealed to him before. And suddenly a great voice cried out in his brain, drowning all other things, telling him how contemptible a thing was love, unless in that love was faith. With his heart choking him, he turned again to Kedsty. The futility of the thing which he had told himself was faith gripped at him sickeningly, yet he fought for that faith, even as his eyes looked again upon the ghastly torture that was in Kedsty's face. He was becoming calmer. He touched the dead man's cheek and found that it was no longer warm. The tragedy must have occurred an hour before. He examined more closely the abrasion on Kedsty's forehead. It was not a deep wound, and the blow that had made it must have stunned the inspector of police for only a short time. In that space the other thing had happened. In spite of his almost superhuman effort to keep the picture away from him, Kent saw it vividly. The swift turning to the table, the inspiration of the scissors, the clipping of the long, truss of hair, the choking to death of Kedsty as he regained consciousness. Over and over again he whispered to himself the impossibility of it, the absurdity of it, the utter incongruity of it. Only a brain-gone mad would have conceived that monstrous way of killing Kedsty, and Marat was not mad, she was sane. Like the eyes of a hunting ferret, his own eyes swept quickly about the room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On the walls hung there as trophies were a number of weapons. On one end of Kedsty's desk, used as a paper weight, was a stone tomahawk. Still nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by papers, was a boot lace. Under his limp right hand was the automatic. With these possible instruments of death close at hand, ready to be snatched up without trouble or waste of time, why had the murderer used a truss of woman's hair? The boot lace drew Kent's eyes. It was impossible not to see it, 48 inches long and quarter-inch wide buckskin. He began seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marat Radisson had been standing. And again the unanswerable question pounded in Kent's brain. Why had Kedsty's murderer used a truss of hair, instead of a buckskin lace, or one of the curtain cords hanging conspicuously at the windows? He went to each of these windows and found them locked. Then, a last time, he bent over Kedsty. He knew that in the final moments of his life, Kedsty had suffered a slow and torturing agony. His twisted face left the story. And the Inspector of Police was a powerful man. He had struggled, still partly dazed by the blow. But it had taken strength to overcome him, even then, to hold his head back, to choke life out of him slowly with the noose of hair. And Kent, now that the significance of what he saw began to grow upon him more clearly, felt triumphing over all other things in his soul a slow and mighty joy. It was inconceivable that with the strength of her own hands and body, Marat Radisson had killed Kedsty. A greater strength than hers had held him in the death chair, and a greater strength than hers had choked life from the Inspector of Police. He drew slowly out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him. He found that the front door was as Kedsty had left it, unlocked. Close to that door he stood for a space, scarcely allowing himself to breathe. He listened, but no sound came down the dimly illuminated stairway. A new thing was pressing upon him now. It rode over the shock of tragedy, over the first roused instincts of the manhunter, overwhelming him with the realization of horror such as had never confronted him before. It gripped him more fiercely than the mere killing of Kedsty. His thought was of Marat, of the fate which dawn and discovery would bring for her. His hands clenched and his jaws tightened. The world was against him, and tomorrow it would be against her. Only he, in the face of all that condemning evidence in the room beyond, would disbelieve her guilty of Kedsty's death. And he, Jim Kent, was already a murderer in the eyes of the law. He felt within him the slow growing inspiration of a new spirit, the gathering might of a new force. A few hours ago he was an outcast. He was condemned. Life, for him, had been robbed of its last hope. And in that hour of his grimest despair, Marat Radisson had come to him. Through storm that had rocked the earth under her feet and said ablaze the chaotic blackness of the sky over her head, she had struggled for him. She had counted no cost. She had measured no chances. She had simply come because she believed in him. And now, upstairs, she was the victim of the terrible price that was the first cost of his freedom. For he believed, now that the thought came to him like a dagger stroke, that this was so. Her act in freeing him had brought about the final climax, and as a result of it, Kedsty was dead. He went to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet, he began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marat's name even before he came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his arms outstretched. But he came silently to her door and looked in. She lay in a crumpled, huddled heap on her bed. Her face was hidden, and all about her lay her smothering hair. For a moment he was frightened. He could not see that she was breathing. So still was she that she was like one dead. His footsteps were unheard as he moved across the room. He knelt down beside her, reached out his arms, and gathered her into them. Marat! he cried in a low voice. He felt the sudden quiver like a little shock that ran through her. He crushed his face down so that it lay in her hair, still damp from its wetting. He drew her closer, tightening his arms about her slender body, and a little cry came from her, a cry that was a broken thing, a sob without tears. Marat! it was all he said. It was all he could say in that moment when his heart was beating like a drum against her breast. And then he felt the slow pressure of her hands against him, saw her white face, her wide, staring eyes within a few inches of his own. And she drew away from him, back against the wall, still huddled like a child on the bed, with her eyes fixed on him in a way that frightened him. There were no tears in them. She had not been crying. But her face was as white as he had seen it down in Kedsty's room. Some of the horror and shock had gone out of it. In it was another look as her eyes glowed upon Kent. It was a look of incredulity, of disbelief, a thing slowly fading away under the miracle of an amazing revelation. The truth thrust itself upon him. Marat had not expected that he would come to her like this. She had believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping from her as he would have run from a plague. She put up her two hands in the trick they had of groping at her white throat, and her lips formed a word which she did not speak. Kent, to his own amazement, was smiling and still on his knees. He pulled himself to his feet and stood up straight, looking down at her in that same strange, comforting, all-powerful way. The thrill of it was passing into her veins. A flush of color was driving the deathly pallor from her face. Her lips were parted, and she breathed quickly, a little excitedly. I thought you would go, she said. Not without you, he said, I have come to take you with me. He drew out his watch. It was two o'clock. He held it down so that she could look at the dial. If the storm keeps up, we have three hours before dawn, he said. How soon can you be ready, Marrette? He was fighting to make his voice quiet and unexcited. It was a terrific struggle. And Marrette was not blind to it. She drew herself from the bed and stood up before him, her two hands still clasped at her throbbing throat. You believe that I killed Kedsty, she said in a voice that was forced from her lips. And you have come to help me, to pay me for what I tried to do for you? That is it, James? Pay you, he cried. I couldn't pay you in a million years. From that day you first came to Cardigan's place, you gave me life. You came when the last spark of hope in me had died. I shall always believe that I would have died that night. But you saved me. From the moment I saw you, I loved you, and I believe it was that love that kept me alive. And then you came to me again, down there, through this storm. Pay you, I can't. I never shall be able to. Because you thought I had killed a man made no difference. You came just the same, and you came ready to kill, if necessary, for me. I'm not trying to tell myself why, but you did. You are ready to kill, and I am ready to kill, tonight, for you. I haven't got time to think about Kedzdi. I'm thinking about you. If you killed him, I'm just telling myself there was a mighty good reason for it. But I don't believe it was you who killed him. You couldn't do it with those hands. He reached out suddenly and seized them, slipping his grip to her wrists, so that her hands lay upward in his own. Hands that were small, slim-fingered, soft-palmed, beautiful. They couldn't, he cried almost fiercely. I swear to God they couldn't. Her eyes and face flamed at his words. You believe that, James? Yes, just as you believe that I did not kill John Barkley. But the world is against us. It is against us both now, and we've got to hunt that hidden valley of yours together. Understand, Marrette? And I'm rather glad. He turned toward the door. Will you be ready in ten minutes? he asked. She nodded. Yes, in ten minutes. He ran out into the hall and down the stair, locking the front door. Then he returned to his hiding-place under the roof. He knew that a strange sort of madness was in his blood, for in the face of tonight's tragedy only madness could inspire him with the ecstatic thrill that was in his veins. Kedgy's death seemed far removed from a more important thing, the fact that from this hour Marrette was his to fight for, that she belonged to him, that she must go with him. He loved her. In spite of whoever she was and whatever she had done, he loved her. Very soon she would tell him what had happened in the room below, and the thing would be clear. There was one little corner of his brain that fought him. It kept telling him, like a parrot, that it was a tress of Marrette's hair about Kedgy's throat, and that it was the hair that had choked him. But Marrette would explain that too. He was sure of it. In the face of the facts below he was illogical and unreasonable. He knew it. But his love for this girl who had come strangely and tragically into his life was like an intoxicant, and his faith was illimitable. She did not kill Kedgy. Another part of his brain kept repeating that over and over, even as he recalled that only a few hours before she had told him quite calmly that she would kill the inspector of police, if a certain thing should happen. His hands worked as swiftly as his thoughts. He laced up his service boots. All the food and dishes on the table he made into a compact bundle and placed in the shoulder pack. He carried this and the rifle out into the hall. Then he returned to Marrette's room. The door was closed. At his knock the girl's voice told him that she was not quite ready. He waited. He could hear her moving about quickly in her room. An interval of silence followed. Another five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. He tapped at the door again. This time it was opened. He stared, amazed at the change in Marrette. She had stepped back from the door to let him enter and stood full in the lamp-glow. Her slim, beautiful body was dressed in a velvety blue corduroy. The coat was close fitting and boyish. The skirt came only a little below her knees. On her feet were high-topped caribou boots. About her waist was a holster and the little black gun. Her hair was done up and crowded under a close fitting turban. She was exquisitely lovely as she stood there waiting for him, and in that loveliness Kent saw there was not one thing out of place. The corduroy, the turban, the short skirt, and the high laced boots were made for the wilderness. She was not a tender foot. She was a little sourdough, clear through. Gladness leaped into Kent's face. But it was not the transformation of her dress alone that amazed him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she looked at him. Her lips were red as he had seen them that first time at Cardigan's Place. Her pallor, her fear, her horror were gone, and in their place was the repressed excitement of one about to enter upon a strange adventure. On the floor was a pack, only half as large as Kent's, and when he picked it up he found it of almost no weight. He fastened it to his own pack, while Moret put on a raincoat and went down the stair ahead of him. In the hall below she was waiting when he came down with Kedsty's big rubber slicker in her hands. You must put it on, she said. She shuddered slightly as she held the garment. The collar was almost gone from her cheeks as she faced the door beyond which the dead man sat in his chair, but the marvelous glow was still in her eyes as she helped Kent with his pack and the slicker, and afterward stood for an instant with her hands touching his breast and her lips as if about to speak something which she held back. A few steps beyond them they heard the storm. It seemed to rush upon the bungalow in a new fury, beating at the door, crashing over their heads in thunder, daring them to come out. Kent reached up and turned out the hall light. In darkness he opened the door. Rain and wind swept in. With his free hand he groped out, found Moret, drew her after him, and closed the door again. Entering from the lighted hall into the storm was like being swallowed in a pit of blackness. It engulfed and smothered them. Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and he saw Moret's face, white and drenched, but looking at him with that same strange glow in her eyes. It thrilled him. Even in the darkness it was there. It had been there since he had returned to her from Kedzty and had knelt at her bedside with his arms about her for a moment. Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle of it come to him. It was because of him. It was because of his faith in her. Even death and horror could not keep it from her eyes. He wanted to cry out the joy of his discovery, to give wild voice to it in the teeth of the wind and the rain. He felt sweeping through him a force mightier than that of the night. Her hands were on his arm as if she was afraid of losing him in that pit of blackness. The soft cling of them was like a contact through which came a warm thrill of electrical life. He put out his arm and drew her to him so that for a moment his face pressed against the top of her wet little turban. And then he heard her say, There is a scow at the bayou, James. It is close to the end of the path. Monsieur Fingers has kept it there, waiting, ready. He had been thinking of Crossen's place and an open boat. He blessed Fingers again as he took Mahat's hand in his own, and started for the trail that led through the poplar thicket. Their feet slopped deep in wet and mud, and with the rain there was a wind that took their breath away. It was impossible to see a tree an arms-length away, and Kent hoped that the lightning would come frequently enough to guide him. In the first flare of it he looked down the slope that led riverward. Little rivulets of water were running down it. Rocks and stumps were in their way, and underfoot it was slippery. Mahat's fingers were clinging to his again, as she had held to them on the wild race up to Kedsty's bungalow from the barracks. He had tingled then in the sheer joy of their thrill, but it was a different thrill that stirred him now, an overwhelming emotion of possessorship. This night, with its storm and its blackness, was the most wonderful of all his nights. He sensed nothing of its discomfort. It could not beat back the joyous racing of his blood in his body. Sun and stars, day and night, sunshine and cloud, were trivial and inconsequential to him now. For close to him, struggling with him, fighting through the night with him, trusting him, helpless without him, was the living, breathing thing he loved more than he loved his own life. For many years, without knowing it, he had waited for this night, and now it was upon him. It inundated and swept away his old life. He was no longer the huntsman but the hunted. He was no longer alone, but had a priceless thing to fight for, a priceless and helpless thing that was clinging to his fingers in the darkness. He did not feel like a fugitive, but as one who has come into a great triumph, he sensed no uncertainty or doubt. The river lay ahead, and for him the river had become the soul and the promise of life. It was Mahet's river and his river, and in a little while they would be on it. And Mahet would then tell him about Kedsty. He was sure of that. She would tell him what had happened while he slept. His faith was illimitable. They came into the sodden dip at the foot of the ridge, and the lightning revealed to him the edge of the poplar growth in which O'Connor had seen Mahet many weeks ago. The Bayou trail wound through this, and Kent struck out for it blindly in the darkness. He did not try to talk, but he freed his companion's hand and put his arm about her when they came to the level ground so that she was sheltered by him from the beat of the storm. Then Brush swished in their faces, and they stopped, waiting for the lightning again. Kent was not anxious for it to come. He drew the girl still closer, and in that pit of blackness, with the deluge about her and the crash of thunder over her head, she snuggled up against his breast, the throb of her body against him, waiting, watching with him. Her frailty, the helplessness of her, the slimness of her and the crook of his arm, filled him with an exquisite exultation. He did not think of her now as the splendid, fearless creature who had leveled her little black gun at the three men in barracks. She was no longer the mysterious, defiant, unafraid person who had held him in a sort of awe that first hour in Kesti's place, for she was crumpled against him now, utterly dependent and afraid. In that chaos of storm something told him that her nerve was broken, that without him she would be lost and would cry out in fear. And he was glad. He held her tighter. He bent his head until his face touched the wet, crushed hair under the edge of her turban. And then the lightning split open the night again, and he saw the way ahead of him to the trail. Even in darkness it was not difficult to follow in the clean-cut wagon-path. Over their heads the tops of the poplars swished and wailed. Under their feet the roadway in places was a running stream, or inundated, until it became a pool. In pitch blackness they struck such a pool, and in spite of the handicap of his packs and rifle, can't stop suddenly, and picked Mahet up in his arms and carried her until they reached high ground. He did not ask permission. And Mahet, for a minute or two, lay crumpled up close in his arms, and for a thrilling instant his face touched her rain-wet cheek. The miracle of their adventure was that neither spoke. To Kent the silence between them had become a thing which he had no desire to break. In that silence, excused and abetted by the tumult of the storm, he felt that a wonderful something was drawing them closer and closer together, and that words might spoil the indescribable magic of the thing that was happening. When he set Mahet on her feet again her hand accidentally fell upon his, and for a moment her fingers closed upon it in a soft pressure that meant more to him than a thousand words of gratitude. A quarter of a mile beyond the poplar thicket they came to the edge of the spruce and cedar timber, and soon the thick walls of the forest shut them in, sheltering them from the wind. But the blackness was even more like that of a bottomless pit. Kent had noticed that the thunder and lightning were drifting steadily eastward, and now the occasional flashes of electrical fire scarcely illumined the track ahead of them. The rain was not beating so fiercely. They could hear the wail of the spruce and cedar tops, and the slush of their boots in mud and water. An interval came where the spruce tops met overhead when it was almost calm. It was then that Kent threw out of him a great deep breath and laughed joyously and exultantly. Are you wet little gray goose? Only outside, big otter, my feathers have kept me dry. Her voice had a trembling, half sobbing, half rejoicing note in it. It was not the voice of one who had recently killed a man. In it was a pathos which Kent knew she was trying to hide behind brave words. Her hands clung to the arm of his rubber slicker, even as they stood there close together, as if she was afraid something might drag them apart in that treacherous gloom. Kent, fumbling for a moment, drew from an inner pocket a dry handkerchief. Then he found her face, tilted it a bit upward, and wiped it dry. He might have done the same thing to a child who had been crying. After that he scrubbed his own, and they went on, his arm about her again. It was half a mile from the edge of the forest to the bayou, and half a dozen times in that distance Kent took the girl in his arms and carried her through water that almost reached his boot tops. The lightning no longer served them. The rain still fell steadily, but the wind had gone with the eastward sweep of the storm. Close hung with the forest walls, the bayou itself was indiscernible in the blackness. Marrette guided him now, though Kent walked ahead of her, holding firmly to her hand. Unless fingers had changed its location, the scow should be somewhere within 40 or 50 paces of the end of the trail. It was small, a two-man scow, with a tight little house built to midships. And it was tied close up against the shore. Marrette told him this as they felt their way through brush and reeds. Then he stumbled against something taut and knee-high, and he found it was the tie-rope. Leaving Marrette with her back to the anchor tree, he went aboard. The water was three or four inches deep in the bottom of the scow, but the cabin was built on a platform raised above the floor of the boat, and Kent hoped it was still dry. He groped until he found the twisted wire which held the door shut. Opening it, he ducked his head low and entered. The little room was not more than four feet high, and for greater convenience he fell upon his knees while fumbling under his slicker for his waterproof box of matches. The water had not yet risen above the floor. The first light he struck revealed the interior to him. It was a tiny cabin scarcely larger than some boxes he had seen. It was about eight feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low that even kneeling his head touched it. His match burned out and he lighted another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit of split birch that projected from the wall. He crept to it and lighted it. For a moment he looked about him, and again he blessed fingers. The little scow was prepared for a voyage. Two narrow bunks were built at the far end, one so close above the other that Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing between. There were blankets. Within reach of his arm was a tiny stove, and close to the stove a supply of kindling and dry wood. The whole thing made him think of a child's playhouse. Yet there was still room for a wide comfortable cane-bottom chair, a stool, and a smooth plain board fastened under a window so that it answered the purpose of a table. This table was piled with many packages. He stripped off his packs and returned for Moret. She had come to the edge of the scow and called to him softly as she heard him splashing through the water. Her arms were reaching toward him to meet him in the darkness. He carried her through the shallow sea about his feet and laughed as he put her down on the edge of the platform at the door. It was a low, joyous laugh. The yellow light of the candle sputtered in their wet faces. Only dimly could he see her, but her eyes were shining. Your nest, little gray goose, he cried gently. Her hand reached up and touched his face. You have been good to me, James, she said, a little tremble in her voice. You may kiss me. Out in the beat of the rain Kent's heart choked him with song. His soul swelled with the desire to shout forth a peon of joy and triumph at the world he was leaving this night for all time. With the warm thrill of Mahet's lips he had become the Superman, and as he leaped ashore in the darkness and cut the tie-rope with a single slash of his knife he wanted to give voice to the thing that was in him as the Rivermen had chanted in the glory of their freedom the day the big brigade started north. And he did sing under his laughing sobbing breath. With a giant strength he sent the scow out into the bayou, and then back and forth he swung the long one-man sweep, twisting the craft riverward with the force of two pairs of arms instead of one. Behind the closed door of the tiny cabin was all that the world now held worth fighting for. By turning his head he could see the faint illumination of the candle at the window. The light, the cabin, Mahet. He laughed innamely, foolishly, like a boy. He began to hear a dull, droning murmur, a sound that with each stroke of the sweep grew into a more distinct cataract like roar. It was the river. Swollen by flood it was a terrifying sound, but Kent did not dread it. It was his river. It was his friend. It was the pulse and throb of life to him now. The growing tumult of it was not menace, but the joyous thunder of many voices calling to him, rejoicing at his coming. It grew in his ears. Over his head the black sky opened again, and a deluge of rain fell straight down. But above the sound of it the rush of the river drew nearer and still nearer. He felt the first eddying swirl of it against the scow head and powerful hands seemed to reach in out of the darkness. He knew that the nose of the current had caught him and was carrying him out on the breast of the stream. He shipped the sweep and straightened himself, facing the utter chaos of blackness ahead. He felt under him the slow and mighty pulse of the great flood as it swept toward the slave, the Mackenzie, and the Arctic. And he cried out at last, in the downpour of storm, a cry of joy, of exultation, of hope that reached beyond the laws of men. And then he turned toward the little cabin, where through the thickness of sodden night the tiny window was glowing yellow with candle light. End of CHAPTER XIII. RECORDING BY RODGER MALINE THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD CHAPTER XIX To the cabin Kent groped his way and not, and it was Mahet who opened the door for him and stepped back for him to enter. Like a great wet dog he came in, doubling until his hands almost touched the floor. He sensed the incongruity of it, the misplacement of his overgrown body in this playhouse thing, and he grinned through the trickles of wet that ran down his face and tried to see. Mahet had taken off her turban and raincoat, and she too stooped low in the four feet space of the cabin, but not so ridiculously low as Kent. He dropped on his knees again. And then he saw in the tiny stove a fire was burning. The crackle of it rose above the beat of the rain and the roof, and the air was already mellowing with the warmth of it. He looked at Mahet. Her wet hair was still clinging to her face. Her feet and arms and part of her body were wet, but her eyes were shining, and she was smiling at him. She seemed to him in this moment like a child that was glad it had found refuge. He had thought that the terror of the night would show in her face, but it was gone. She was not thinking of the thunder and the lightning, the black trail, or of Kedsty lying dead in his bungalow. She was thinking of him. He laughed outright. It was a joyous, thrilling thing, this black night with the storm over their heads and the roll of the great river under them. They too, alone, in this cockleshell cabin that was not high enough to stand in and scarcely big enough in any direction to turn around in. The snug cheer of it, the warmth of the fire beginning to reach their chilled bodies, and the inspiring crackle of the birch in the little stove filled Kent for a space with other thoughts than those of the world they were leaving. And Mahet, whose eyes and lips were smiling at him softly in the candle glow, seemed also to have forgotten. It was the little window that brought them back to the tragedy of their flight. Kent visioned it as it must look from the shore, a telltale blotch of light traveling through the darkness. There were occasional cabins for several miles below the landing, and eyes turned riverward in the storm might see it. He made his way to the window and fastened his slicker over it. We're off, gray goose, he said then, rubbing his hands. Would it seem more home-like if I smoked? She nodded, her eyes on the slicker at the window. It's pretty safe, said Kent, fishing out his pipe and beginning to fill it. Everybody asleep, probably, but we won't take any chances. The scow was swinging sideways in the current. Kent felt the change in its movement and added, No danger of being wrecked either. There isn't a rock or rapids for thirty miles. River clear as a floor. If we bump a shore, don't get frightened. I'm not afraid of the river, she said. Then, with rather startling unexpectedness, she asked him, Where will they look for us tomorrow? Kent lighted his pipe, eyeing her a bit speculatively as she seated herself on the stool, leaning toward him as she waited for an answer to her question. The woods, the river, everywhere, he said. They'll look for a missing boat, of course. We've simply got to watch behind us and take advantage of a good start. Will the rain wipe out our footprints, James? Yes, everything in the open. But perhaps in a sheltered place? We were in no sheltered place, he assured her. Can you remember that we were, Grey Goose? She shook her head slowly. No, but there was mooey under the window. His footprints will be wiped out. I am glad I would not have him or Monsieur Fingers or any of our friends brought into this trouble. She made no effort to hide the relief his words brought her. He was a little maize that she should worry over Fingers and the Old Indian in this hour of their own peril. That danger he had decided to keep as far from her mind as possible. But she could not help realizing the impending menace of it. She must know that within a few hours Keddie would be found and the long arm of the wilderness police would begin its work. And if it caught them, she had thrust her feet toward him and was wriggling them inside her boots so that he heard the slushing sound of water. Ugh, but they are wet, she shivered. Will you unlace them and pull them off for me, James? He laid his pipe aside and knelt close to her. It took him five minutes to get the boots off. Then he held one of her sodden little feet close between his two big hands. Cold, cold as ice, he said. You must take off your stockings, my hat, please. He arranged a pile of wood in front of the stove and covered it with a blanket, which he pulled from one of the bunks. Then, still on his knees, he drew the cane-share close to the fire and covered it with a second blanket. A few moments later Mariette was tucked comfortably in this chair with her bare feet on the blanketed pile of wood. Kent opened the stove door. Then he extinguished one of the smoking candles, and after that the other. The flaming birch illumined the little cabin with a mellower light. It gave a subdued flush to the girl's face. Her eyes seemed to kent wonderfully soft and beautiful in that changed light. And when he had finished, she reached out a hand, and for an instant it touched his face and his wet hair so lightly that he sensed the thrilling caress of it without feeling its weight. You are so good to me, James, she said, and he thought there was a little choking note in her throat. He had seated himself on the floor close to her chair with his back to the wall. It is because I love you, Grey Goose, he replied quietly, looking straight into the fire. She was silent. She, too, was looking into the fire. Close over their heads they heard the beating of the rain, like a thousand soft little fists pounding the top of the cabin. Under them they could feel the slow swinging of the scow as it responded to the twists and vagaries of the current that was carrying them on. And kent, unseen by the girl who was looking away from him, raised his eyes. The birch light was glowing in her hair. It trembled on her white throat. Her long lashes were caught in the shimmer of it. And, looking at her, kent thought of Kedsty, lying back in his bungalow room, choked to death by a tress of that glorious hair so near to him now that, by leaning a little forward, he might have touched it with his lips. The thought brought him no horror. For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek, the small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as a bit of thistle down. And he knew the two hands like that could not have killed a man who was fighting for life when he died. And kent reached up and took the hand and held it close in his own, as he said, little gray goose, please tell me now, what happened in Kedsty's room? His voice thrilled with an immeasurable faith. He wanted her to know, no matter what had happened, that his faith and his love for her could not be shaken. He believed in her and would always believe in her. Already he was sure that he knew how Kedsty had died. The picture of the tragedy had pieced itself together in his mind bit by bit. While he slept, Mahet and a man were down in the big room with the Inspector of Police. The climax had come and Kedsty was struck a blow in some unaccountable way with his own gun. Then, just as Kedsty was recovering sufficiently from the shock of the blow to fight, Mahet's companion had killed him. Horrified, dazed by what had already happened, perhaps unconscious, she had been powerless to prevent the use of a tress of her hair in the murderer's final work. Kent, in this picture, eliminated the bootlaces and the curtain cords. He knew that the unusual and the least expected happened frequently in crime. And Mahet's long hair was flowing loose about her. To use it had simply been the first inspiration of the murderer. And Kent believed, as he waited for her answer now, that Mahet would tell him this. And as he waited, he felt her fingers tighten in his hand. Tell me, Grey Goose, what happened? I don't know, James. His eyes went to her suddenly from the fire, as if he was not quite sure he had heard what she had said. She did not move her head, but continued to gaze unseeingly into the flames. Inside his palm her fingers worked to his thumb and held it tightly again, as they had clung to it when she was frightened by the thunder and lightning. I don't know what happened, James. This time he did not feel the clinging thrill of her little fingers and soft palm. Deep within him he experienced something that was like a sudden and unexpected blow. He was ready to fight for her until his last breath was gone. He was ready to believe anything she told him, anything except this impossible thing which she had just spoken. For she did know what had happened in Kedsty's room. She knew, unless suddenly his heart leaped with joyous hope. You mean you were unconscious? He cried in a low voice that trembled with his eagerness. You fainted, and it happened then? She shook her head. No, I was asleep in my room. I didn't intend to sleep, but I did. Something awakened me. I thought I had been dreaming, but something kept pulling me, pulling me downstairs. And when I went I found Kedsty like that. He was dead. I was paralyzed, standing there when you came. She drew her hand away from him, gently but significantly. I know you can't believe me, James. It is impossible for you to believe me. And you don't want me to believe you about it? Yes, I do. You must believe me. But the tress of hair, your hair, around Kedsty's neck, he stopped. His words, spoken gently as they were, seemed brutal to him. Yet he could not see that they affected her. She did not flinch. He saw no tremor of horror. Steadily she continued to look into the fire. And his brain grew confused. Never in all his experience had he seen such absolute and unaffected self-control. And somehow it chilled him. It chilled him, even as he wanted to reach out and gather her close in his arms, and pour his love into her ears, and treating her to tell him everything, to keep nothing back from him that might help in the fight he was going to make. And then she said, James, if we should be caught by the police, it would probably be quite soon, wouldn't it? They won't catch us. But our greatest danger of being caught is right now, isn't it? she insisted. Kent took out his watch and leaned over to look at it in the fire glow. It is three o'clock, he said. Give me another day and night, Grey Goose, and the police will never find us. For a moment or two more she was silent. Then her hand reached out and her fingers twined softly around his thumb again. James, when we are safe, when we are sure the police won't find us, I will tell you all that I know about what happened in Kedsty's room. And I will tell you about the hair. I will tell you everything. Her fingers tightened almost fiercely. Everything, she repeated. I will tell you about that in Kedsty's room, and I will tell you about myself. And after that I am afraid you won't like me. I love you, he said, making no movement to touch her. No matter what you tell me, Grey Goose, I shall love you. She gave a little cry scarcely more than a broken note in her throat, and Kent, had her face been turned toward him then, would have seen the glory that came into it and into her eyes like a swift flash of light and passed as swiftly away. What he did see when she turned her head were eyes caught suddenly by something at the cabin door. He looked. Water was trickling in slowly over the sill. I expected that, he said, cheerfully. Our scow is turning into a rain-barrel, my hight. Unless I bail out we'll soon be flooded. He reached for his slicker and put it on. It won't take me long to throw the water overboard, he added. And while I'm doing that I want you to take off your wet things and tuck yourself into bed. Will you, Grey Goose? I'm not tired, but if you think it is best, her hand touched his arm. It is best, he said, and for a moment he bent over her until his lips touched her hair. Then he seized a pail and went out into the rain. End of chapter 19, Recording by Roger Moline Chapter 20 of The Valley of Silent Men Chapter 20 It was that hour when, with clear skies, the grey northern dawn would have been breaking faintly over the eastern forests. Kent found the darkness more fog-like, about him was a greyer, ghostlier sort of gloom. But he could not see the water under his feet, nor could he see the rail of the scow or the river. From the stern, ten feet from the cabin door, the cabin itself was swallowed up and invisible. With the steady, swinging motion of the rivermen he began bailing. So regular became his movements that they ran in a sort of rhythmic accompaniment to his thoughts. The monotonous splash, splash, splash of the outflung pails of water assumed, after a few minutes, the character of a mechanical thing. He could smell the nearness of the shore. Even in the rain the tang of cedar and balsam came to him faintly. But it was the river that impressed itself most upon his senses. It seemed to him, as the minutes passed, like a living thing. He could hear it gurgling and playing under the end of the scow. And with that sound there was another and more indescribable thing, the tremble of it, the pulse of it, the thrill of it in the impenetrable gloom, the life of it as it swept on in a slow and mighty flood between its wilderness walls. Kent had always said, you can hear the river's heartbeat if you know how to listen for it. And he heard it now. He felt it. The rain could not beat it out, nor could the splash of the water he was throwing overboard drown it, and the darkness could not hide it from the vision that was burning like a living coal within him. Always it was the river that had given him consolation in times of loneliness. For him it had grown into a thing with a soul, a thing that personified hope, courage, comradeship, everything that was big and great in final achievement. And tonight, for he still thought of the darkness's night, the soul of it seemed whispering to him a sort of peon. He could not lose. That was the thought that filled him. Never had his pulse beat with greater assurance. Never had a more positive sense of the inevitable possessed him. It was inconceivable, he thought, even to fear the possibility of being taken by the police. He was more than a man fighting for his freedom alone, more than an individual struggling for the right to exist. A thing vastly more priceless than either freedom or life, if they were to be accepted alone, waited for him in the little cabin, shut in by its sea of darkness. And ahead of them lay their world. He emphasized that, their world, the world which, in an elusive and unreal sort of way, had been a part of his dreams all his life. In that world, they would shut themselves in. No one would ever find them. And the glory of the sun and the stars and God's open country would be with them always. Moret was the very heart of that reality which impinged itself upon him now. He did not worry about what it was she would tell him tomorrow or day after tomorrow. He believed that it was then when she had told him what there was to tell, and he still reached out his arms to her, that she would have come into those arms. And he knew that nothing that might have happened in Kedsty's room would keep his arms from reaching to her. Such was his faith, potent as the mighty flood hidden in the gray ghost gloom of approaching dawn. Yet he did not expect to win easily. As he worked, his mind swept up and down the three rivers from the landing to Fort Simpson, and mentally he pictured the situations that might arise and how he would triumph over them. He figured that the man at Barracks would not enter Kedsty's bungalow until noon at the earliest. The police gasoline launch would probably set out on a river search soon after. By mid-afternoon the scow would have a fifty-mile start. Before darkness came again they would be through the death chute where Folette and La Ducère swam their mad race for the love of a girl, and not many miles below the chute was a swampy country where he could hide the scow. Then they would start overland, west and north, given until another sunset and they would be safe. This was what he expected. But if it came to fighting he would fight. The rain had slackened to a thin drizzle by the time he finished his bailing. The aroma of cedar and balsam came up to him more clearly and he heard more distinctly the murmuring surge of the river. He tapped again at the door of the cabin and Moret answered him. The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals when he entered. Again he fell on his knees and took off his dripping slicker. The girl greeted him from the berth. He looked like a great bear, James. There was a glad welcoming note in her voice. He laughed and drew the stool beside her and managed to sit on it, the roof compelling him to bend his head over a little. I feel like an elephant in a bird cage, he replied. Are you comfortable, little Grey Goose? Yes. But you, James, you are wet. But so happy that I don't feel it, Grey Goose. He could make her out only dimly there in the darkness of the berth. Her face was a pale shadow and she had loosened her damp hair so that the warmth and dry air might reach it more easily. Kent wondered if she could hear the beating of his heart. He forgot the fire and the darkness grew thicker. He could no longer see the pale outline of her face and he drew back a little possessed by the thought that it was sacrilegious to bend nearer to her like a thief in that gloom. She sensed his movement and her hand reached to him and lay lightly with its fingertips touching his arm. James, she said softly, I'm not sorry now that I came up to Cardigan's place that day when you thought you were dying. I wasn't wrong. You are different. And I made fun of you then and laughed at you because I knew that you were not going to die. Will you forgive me? He laughed happily. It's funny how little things work out sometimes, he said. Wasn't a king lost once upon a time because some fellow didn't have a horseshoe? Anyway, I knew of a man whose life was saved because of a broken pipe-stem. And you came to me and I'm here with you now because of what? she whispered. Because of something that happened a long time ago, he said. Something you wouldn't dream could have anything to do with you or with me. Shall I tell you about it, Mahet? Her fingers pressed slightly upon his arm. Yes. Of course it's a story of the police, he began, and I won't mention this fellow's name. You may think of him as that red-headed O'Connor if you want to, but I don't say that it was he. He was a constable in the service and had been away north looking up some Indians who were brewing an intoxicating liquor from root. That was six years ago, and he caught something. The moruge, we sometimes call it, the red death, or smallpox. And he was alone when the fever knocked him down three hundred miles from anywhere. His Indian ran away at the first sign of it, and he had just time to get up his tent before he was flat on his back. I won't try to tell you of the days he went through. It was a living death. And he would have died. There is no doubt of it if it hadn't been for a stranger who came along. He was a white man. Mahet, it doesn't take a great deal of nerve to go up against a man with a gun when you've got a gun of your own, and it doesn't take such a lot of nerve to go into battle when a thousand others are going with you. But it does take nerve to face what that stranger faced. And the sick man was nothing to him. He went into that tent and nursed the other back to life. Then the sickness got him, and for ten weeks those two were together, each fighting to save the other's life, and they won out. But the glory of it was with the stranger. He was going west. The constable was going south. They shook hands and parted. Mahet's fingers tightened on Kent's arm, and Kent went on. And the constable never forgot, gray goose. He wanted the day to come when he might repay. And the time came. It was years later, and it worked out in a curious way. A man was murdered, and the constable, who had become a sergeant now, had talked with the dead man only a little while before he was killed. Returning for something he had forgotten, it was the sergeant who found him dead. Very shortly afterward a man was arrested. There was blood on his clothing. The evidence was convincing, deadly. And this man Kent paused, and in the darkness Mahet's hand crept down his arm to his hand, and her fingers closed around it. Was the man you lied to save? She whispered. Yes. When the half-breeds bullet got me, I thought it was a good chance to repay Sandy Mactrigger for what he did for me in that tent years before. But it wasn't heroic, it wasn't even brave. I thought I was going to die, and that I was risking nothing. And then there came a soft, joyous little laugh from where her head lay on the pillow. And all the time you were lying so splendidly. James, I knew—she cried—I knew that you didn't kill Barkley, and I knew that you weren't going to die. And I knew what happened in that tent ten years ago. And, James, she raised herself from the pillow. Her breath was coming a little excitedly. Both her hands, instead of one, were gripping his hand now. I knew that you didn't kill John Barkley, she repeated, and Sandy Mactrigger didn't kill him. But he didn't, she interrupted him almost fiercely. He was innocent, as innocent as you were. James, I—James, I know who killed Barkley. Oh, I know, I know! A choking sob came into her throat, and then she added, in a voice which she was straining to make calm, Don't think I haven't faith in you, because I can't tell you more now, James, she said. You will understand quite soon. When we are safe from the police, I shall tell you. I shall keep nothing from you then. I shall tell you about Barkley, and Kedsty, everything. But I can't now. It won't be long. When you tell me we are safe, I shall believe you. And then, she withdrew her hands from his, and dropped back on her pillow. And then, what? he asked, leaning far over. You may not like me, James. I love you, he whispered. Nothing in the world can stop my loving you. Even if I tell you, soon, that I killed Barkley? No, you would be lying. Or, if I told you that I killed Kedsty? No matter what you said, or what proof there might be back there, I would not believe you. She was silent. And then, James, yes, Nisga, little goddess, I'm going to tell you something now. He waited. It is going to shock you, James. He felt her arms reaching up. Her two hands touched his shoulders. Are you listening? Are you listening? Yes, I am listening. Because I'm not going to say it very loud. And then she whispered, James, I love you. End of Chapter 20. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 21 of The Valley of Silent Men This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Valley of Silent Men by James Oliver Kerwood Chapter 21 In the slowly breaking gloom of the cabin, with Marat's arms around his neck, her soft lips given him to kiss, Kent for many minutes was conscious of nothing but the thrill of his one great hope on earth come true. What he had prayed for was no longer a prayer. And what he had dreamed of was no longer a dream. Yet for a space the reality of it seemed unreal. What he said in those first moments of his exultation he would probably never remember. His own physical existence seemed a thing trivial and almost lost, a thing submerged and swallowed up by the warm beat and throb of that other life a thousand times more precious than his own, which he held in his arms. Yet with the mad thrill that possessed him, in the embrace of his arms, there was an infinite tenderness, a gentleness, that drew from Marat's lips a low, glad whispering of his name. She drew his head down and kissed him, and Kent fell upon his knees at her side and crushed his face close down to her, while outside the pattern of rain on the roof had ceased and the fog-like darkness was breaking with gray dawn. In that dawn of the new day Kent came at last out of the cabin and looked upon a splendid world. In his breast was the glory of a thing newborn and the world, like himself, was changed. Storm had passed. The gray river lay under his eyes. Shoreward he made out the dark outlines of the deep spruce and cedar and balsam forests. About him there was a great stillness, broken only by the murmur of the river and the ripple of water under the scow. Wind had gone with the black rain-cloud, and Kent, as he looked about him, saw the swift dissolution of the last shadows of night and the breaking in the east of a new paradise. In the east, as the minutes passed, there came a soft and luminous gray, and after that swiftly, with the miracle of far northern dawn, a vast, low-burning fire seemed to start far beyond the forests, tinting the sky with a delicate pink that crept higher and higher as Kent watched it. The river, all at once, came out of its last drifting haze of fog and night. The scow was about in the middle of the channel. Two hundred yards on either side were thick green walls of forest, glistening fresh and cool with the wet of storm and breathing forth the perfume which Kent was drawing deep into his lungs. In the cabin he heard sound. Moret was up, and he was eager to have her come out and stand with him in this glory of their first day. He watched the smoke of the fire he had built, hardwood smoke that drifted up white and clean into the rain-washed air. The smell of it, like the smell of balsam and cedar, was to Kent the aroma of life. And then he began to clean out what was left of the water in the bottom of the scow, and as he worked he whistled. He wanted Moret to hear that whistle. He wanted her to know that day had brought with it no doubt for him. A great and glorious world was about them and ahead of them, and they were safe. As he worked his mind became more than ever set upon the resolution to take no chances. He paused in his whistling for a moment to laugh softly and exultantly as he thought of the years of experience which were his surest safeguard now. He had become almost uncannily expert in all the finesse and trickery of his craft of hunting human game, and he knew what the man-hunters would do and what they would not do. He had them check-mated at the start. And besides, with Kedsty, O'Connor, and himself gone, the landing was shorthanded just at present. There was an enormous satisfaction in that. But even with a score of men behind him Kent knew that he would beat them. His hazard, if there was peril at all, lay in this first day. Only the police gasoline launch could possibly overtake them. And with the start they had he was sure they would pass the death-shoot, conceal the scow, and take to the untracked forests north and west before the launch could menace them. After that he would keep always west and north, deeper and deeper into that wild and untraveled country which would be the last place in which the law would seek for them. He straightened himself and looked at the smoke again, drifting like gray white lace between him and the blue of the sky, and in that moment the sun capped the tall green tops of the highest cedars and day broke gloriously over the earth. For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the scow and then, with a suddenness that drew him up as if a whiplash had snapped behind him, he caught another aroma in the clean forest-scented air. It was bacon and coffee. He had believed that Merritt was taking her time and putting on dry footwear and making some sort of morning toilet. Instead of that she was getting breakfast. It was not an extraordinary thing to do. To fry bacon and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achievement, but at the present moment it was the crowning touch to Kent's paradise. She was getting his breakfast. And coffee and bacon. To Kent those two things had always stood for home. They were intimate and companionable. Where there were coffee and bacon he had known children who laughed, women who sang, and men with happy, welcoming faces. They were home-builders. Whenever you smell coffee and bacon at a cabin, O'Connor had always said, they'll ask you into breakfast if you knock at the door. But Kent was not recalling his old trail-mate's words. In the present moment all other thoughts were lost in the discovery that Merritt was getting breakfast. For him. He went to the door and listened. Then he opened it and looked in. Merritt was on her knees before the open door of the stove, toasting bread on two forks. Her face was flushed pink. She had not taken time to brush her hair, but had woven it carelessly into a thick braid that fell down her back. She gave a little exclamation of mock disappointment when she saw Kent. Why didn't you wait? she remonstrated. I wanted to surprise you. You have, he said, and I couldn't wait. I had to come in and help. He was inside the door and on his knees beside her. As he reached for the two forks, his lips pressed against her hair. The pink deepened in Merritt's face, and the soft little note that was like laughter came into her throat. Her hand caressed his cheek as she rose to her feet, and Kent laughed back. And after that, as she arranged things on the shelf table, her hand now and then touched his shoulder or his hair, and two or three times he heard that wonderful little throat note that sent through him a wild pulse of happiness. And then, he sitting on the low chair and she on the stool, they drew close together before the board that answered as a table, and ate their breakfast. Mahut poured his coffee and stirred sugar and condensed milk in it, and so happy was Kent that he did not tell her he used neither milk nor sugar in his coffee. The morning sun burst through the little window, and through the open door Kent pointed to the glory of it on the river and in the shimmering green of the forest slipping away behind. When they had finished, Mahut went outside with him. For a space she stood silent and without movement, looking upon the marvelous world that encompassed them. It seemed to Kent that for a few moments she did not breathe. With her head thrown back and her white throat bare to the soft, balsam laden air she faced the forest. Her eyes became suddenly filled with the luminous glow of stars. Her face reflected the radiance of the rising sun, and Kent, looking at her, knew that he had never seen her so beautiful as in these wonderful moments. He held his own breath, for he also knew that Niska, his goddess, was looking upon her own world again after a long time away. Her world and his. Different from all the other worlds God had ever made. Different even from the world only a few miles behind them at the landing. For here was no sound or whisper of destroying human life. They were in the embrace of the Great North, and it was drawing them closer, and with each minute nearer to the mighty pulsing heart of it. The forests hung heavy and green and glistening with the wet of storm. Out of them came the tremulous breath of life and the glory of living. They hugged the shores, like watchful hosts guarding the river from civilization, and suddenly the girl held out her arms and Kent heard the low, thrilling cry that came to her lips. She had forgotten him. She had forgotten everything but the river, the forests, and the untrodden worlds beyond them, and he was glad. For this world that she was welcoming, that her soul was crying out to, was his world, for ever and ever. It held his dreams, his hopes, all the desires that he had in life. And when at last Maret turned toward him slowly, his arms were reaching out to her, and in his face she saw that same glory which filled her own. I'm glad, glad, she cried softly. Oh, James, I'm glad! She came into his arms without hesitation. Her hand stroked his face, and then she stood with her head against his shoulder, looking ahead, breathing deeply now of the sweet, clear air filled with the elixir of the hovering forests. She did not speak or move, and Kent remained quiet. The scow drifted around a bend. Shoreward a great moose splashed up out of the water, and they could hear him afterward, crashing through the forest. Her body tensed, but she did not speak. After a little he heard her whisper, It has been a long time, James. I have been away four years. And now we are going home, little grey goose. You will not be lonely? No. I was lonely down there. There were so many people and so many things that I was homesick for the woods and mountains. I believe I would have died soon. There were only two things I loved, James. What, he asked. Pretty dresses and shoes. His arms closed about her a little more tightly. I—I understand, he laughed softly. That is why you came, that first time, with pretty high-heeled pumps. He bowed his head, and she turned her face to him. On her upturned mouth he kissed her. More than any other man ever loved a woman. I love you, Nisga, little goddess. He cried. The minutes and the hours of that day stood out ever afterward in Kent's life as unforgettable memories. There were times when they seemed illusory and unreal, as though he lived and breathed in an insubstantial world made up of gossamer things which must be the fabric of dream. These were moments when the black shadow of the tragedy from which they were fleeing pressed upon him, when the thought came to him that they were criminals racing with the law, that they were not unenchanted ground but in deadly peril, that it was all a fool's paradise from which some terrible shock would shortly awaken them. But these periods of apprehension were, in themselves, mere shadows thrown for a moment upon his happiness. Again and again the subconscious force within him pounded home to his physical brain the great truth that it was all extraordinarily real. It was Moret who made him doubt himself at times. He could not quite yet comprehend the fullness of that love which he had given him. More than ever, in the glory of this love that had come to them, she was like a child to him. It seemed to him in the first hours of the morning that she had forgotten yesterday and the day before, and ill the days before that. She was going home. She whispered that to him so often that it became a little song in his brain. Yet she told him nothing of that home, and he waited, knowing that the fulfilment of her promise was not far away. And there was no embarrassment in the manner of her surrender when he held her in his arms, and she held her face up so that he could kiss her mouth and look into her glowing lovely eyes. What he saw was the flush of a great happiness, the almost childish confession of it, along with the woman's joy of possession. And he thought of Kedsty, and of the law that was rousing itself into life back at Athabasca Landing. And then she ran her fingers through his own, and told him to wait, and ran into the cabin, and came out a moment later with her brush. And after that she seated herself at the fulcrum of the big sweep, and began to brush out her hair in the sun. I'm glad you love it, James, she said. She unbound the thick braid, and let the silken strands of it run caressingly between her fingers. She smoothed it out, brushed it until it was more beautiful than she had ever seen it in that glow of the sun. She held it in her arms, and she saw the sun. She held it up so that it rippled out the shimmering cascades about her, and then, suddenly, Kant saw the short tress from which had been clipped, the rope of hair that he had taken from Kedsty's neck. And as his lips tightened, crushing fiercely the exclamation of his horror, there came a trembling happiness from Marat's lips, scarcely more than the whisper of a song, the low, thrilling melody of Le Chaudière. Her arms reached up, and she drew his head down to her, so that for a time his visions were blinded in that sweet smother of her hair. The intimacy of that day was in itself like a dream. Hour after hour they drifted deeper into the great north. The sun shone. The forest-walled shores of the river grew mightier in their stillness and their grandeur, and the vast silence of unpeopled places brooded over the world. To Kant it was as if they were drifting through paradise. Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still water was gradually giving away to a swifter current. Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left farther and still farther behind them. Watching the shores, looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind, at times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness, Kant and Marat found the gulf of strangeness passing swiftly away from between them. They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the death of John Barkley. But Kant told of his days in the north, of his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses. And from that he went away back into dim and distant yesterdays, alive with mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on a farm. To all these things Marat listened with glowing eyes, with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own emotions. She told of her own days down at school, and of their appalling loneliness, of childhood spent in the forests, of the desire to live there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself, or her life, in its more vital aspects. She said nothing of the home in the valley of silent men, nothing of father or mother, sisters or brothers. There was no embarrassment in her omissions. And Kant did not question. He knew that those were among the things she would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he would tell her they were safe. There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour, when they should leave the river and take to the forests. He explained to Moet why they could not float on indefinitely. The river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all traffic to the far north. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they would be discovered. In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be safe. He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they passed through the death chute. It would carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward, through which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone ashore now. He loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean swallows a ship, would they be beyond the peril that threatened them from the landing. Three or four times between sunrise and noon they saw life ashore and on the stream. Once a scow tied to a tree, then an Indian camp, and twice trapper-shacks built in the edge of little clearings. With the beginning of afternoon Kent fell growing within him something that was not altogether eagerness. It was at times a disturbing emotion, a foreshadowing of evil, a warning for him to be on his guard. He used the sweep more to help their progress in the current and he began to measure time and distance with painstaking care. He recognized many landmarks. By four o'clock, or five at the latest, they would strike the head of the shoot. Ten minutes of its thrilling passage and he would work the scow into the concealment he had in mind ashore, and no longer would he fear the arm of the law that reached out from the landing. As he planned he listened. From noon on he never ceased to listen for that distant putt putt putt that would give them a miles warning of the approach of the patrol launch. He did not keep his plans to himself. Mahet sensed his growing uneasiness and he made her a partner of his thoughts. If we hear the patrol before we reach the shoot we'll still have time to run ashore, he assured her, and they won't catch us. We'll be harder to find than two needles in a haystack, but it's best to be prepared. So he brought out his pack and Mahet's smaller bundle and laid his rifle and pistol holster across them. It was three o'clock when the character of the river began to change and Kent smiled happily. They were entering upon swifter waters. There were places where the channel narrowed and they sped through rapids. Only where unbroken straight waters stretched out ahead of them did Kent give his arms a rest at the sweep. And through most of the straight water he added to the speed of the scow. Mahet helped him. In him the exquisite thrill of watching her slender, glorious body as it worked with his own never grew old. She laughed at him over the big oar between them. The wind and sun played riot in her hair. Her parted lips were rose-red, her cheeks flushed, her eyes like sun-warmed rock violets. More than once, in the thrill of that afternoon flight, as he looked at the marvelous beauty of her, he asked himself if it could be anything but a dream. And more than once he laughed joyously and paused in his swinging of the sweep and proved that it was real and true. And Kent thanked God and worked harder. Once a long time ago Mahet told him she had been through the shoot. It had horrified her then. She remembered it as a sort of death monster, roaring for its victims. As they drew nearer to it Kent told her more about it. Only now and then was a life lost there now, he said. At the mouth of the shoot there was a great knife-like rock, like a dragon's tooth, that cut the shoot into two roaring channels. If a scow kept to the left-hand channel it was safe. There would be a mighty roaring and thundering as it swept on its passage, but that roaring of the shoot, he told her, was like the barking of a harmless dog. Only when a scow became unmanageable, or hit the dragon's tooth, or made the right-hand channel instead of the left, was there tragedy. There was that delightful little note of laughter in Mahet's throat when Kent told her that. You mean, James, that if one of the three possible things doesn't happen, we'll get through safely? None of them is possible with us, he corrected himself quickly. Weave a tight little scow, we're not going to hit the rock, and we'll make the left-hand channel so smoothly you won't know when it happens. He smiled at her with splendid confidence. I've been through it a hundred times, he said. He listened. Then suddenly he drew out his watch. It was a quarter of four. Mahet's ears caught what he heard. In the air was a low, trembling murmur. It was growing slowly, but steadily. He nodded when she looked at him, the question in her eyes. The rapids at the head of the shoot, he cried, his voice vibrant with joy. We've beat them out! We're safe! They swung around a bend, and the white spume of the rapids lay half a mile ahead of them. The current began to race with them now. Kent put his whole weight on the sweep to keep the scow in mid-channel. We're safe, he repeated. Do you understand, Mahet? We're safe! He was speaking the words for which she had waited, was telling her that at last the hour had come when she could keep her promise to him. The words, as he gave them voice, thrilled him. He felt like shouting them, and then all at once he saw the change that had come into her face. Her wide, startled eyes were not looking at him but beyond. She was looking back in the direction from which they had come, and even as she stared her face grew white. Listen! She was tense, rigid. He turned his head, and in that moment he came to him above the growing murmur of the river—the putt, putt, putt of the police patrol boat from Athabasca Landing. A deep breath came from between his lips. When Mahet took her eyes from the river and looked at him, his face was like carbon rock. He was staring dead ahead. We can't make the shoot, he said, his voice sounding hard and unreal to her. If we do, they'll be up with us before we can land at the other end. We must let this current drive us ashore, now. As he made his decision, he put the strength of his body into action. He knew there was not the hundredth part of a second to lose. The outreaching suction of the rapids was already gripping the scow, and with mighty strokes he fought to work the head of his craft toward the westward shore. With swift understanding Mahet saw the priceless value of a few seconds of time. If they were caught in the stronger swirl of the rapids before the shore was reached, they would be forced to run the shoot, and in that event the launch would be upon them before they could make a landing farther on. She sprang to Kent's side and added her own strength in the working of the sweep. Foot by foot, and yard by yard, the scow made precious westing, and Kent's face lighted up with triumph as he nodded ahead to a timbered point that thrust itself out like a stubby thumb into the river. Beyond that point the rapids were frothing white, and they could see the first black walls of rock that marked the beginning of the shoot. We'll make it, he smiled confidently. We'll hit that timbered point close in shore. I don't see where the launch can make a landing anywhere within a mile of the shoot, and once ashore we'll make trail about five times as fast they can follow it. Mahet's face was no longer pale, but flushed with excitement. He caught the white gleam of teeth between her parted lips. Her eyes shone gloriously, and he laughed. You beautiful little fighter, he cried exultantly. You—you—his words were cut short by a snap that was like the report of a pistol close to his ears. He pitched forward and crashed to the bottom of the scow. Mahet's slim body clutched in his arms as he fell. In a flash they were up, and mutely they stared where the sweep had been. The blade of it was gone. Kent was conscious of hearing a little cry from the girl at his side, and then her fingers were gripping tightly again about his thumb. No longer possessed of the power of guidance, the scow swung sideways. It swept past the wooded point. The white maelstrom of the lower rapids seized upon it, and Kent, looking ahead to the black maw of the death-trap that was waiting for them, drew Mahet close in his arms and held her tight.